Ashan listened in silence, his face a placid, attentive mask.
Inside, a storm was tearing itself apart.
A neat conclusion, he thought coldly. The world isn't black and white but gray.
Dris understood it.
The others—save Ballio—had accepted it without resistance.
But for me, Ashan realized, this is still an incomplete model.
His hazel eyes sharpened slightly, not outwardly, but inward—focusing on a truth he had long circled without naming.
I despise dichotomies.
Humans carve existence into opposing halves, then congratulate themselves for noticing the overlap.
They call that wisdom.
I call it laziness.
His gaze drifted across his companions.
He did not see gray.
He saw a riot of color.
There is no white. No black. No gray.
There are hues.
Clusters of conflicting shades layered atop one another, each painting their own image onto the same blank canvas.
To one observer, you are a hero. To another, a villain. To most, you are irrelevant.
A single tone can define no soul.
We are mosaics.
The root of his distaste was simple—and sharp.
It is the judging gaze of others. Beings who do not understand their own fractured nature, yet insist on compressing entire lives into convenient labels.
A faint smile touched his lips.
Isn't that the purest hypocrisy?
And yet… hypocrisy itself is not evil.
To rise from the depths, one must wear masks.
The true fool is not the hypocrite—but the one who lies to himself.
The strongest hypocrisy is conscious hypocrisy. To know you are wearing a mask, to wear it anyway because it serves a purpose greater than comfort.
Something inside him loosened.
The path ahead sharpened.
I understand myself better now.
I am grateful to all who have died for my ascent.
I will do anything for survival. For immortality.
Even if I die pursuing it, I will have no regrets.
My humanity is not rotting.
It is… adapting.
"Ashan?" Dris's voice broke in, a hand shaking his shoulder. "Are you zoning out?"
The entire internal realignment had taken mere seconds.
Something irreversible had shifted.
"Yeah," Ashan replied calmly. "Let's move."
He turned to Ballio, his gaze steady—unflinching.
"And Ballio," he added, "don't reduce people to terms like 'morally gray.' That's still a cage. Humans are far more complex than that."
He walked toward the huts.
Dris scratched his head. "Did you understand any of that?"
"No," Roderic said flatly. "Let's finish. We're exposed."
Imla and Damara advanced toward one of the huts.
The three non-team members moved on to another.
"You're not going to…?" Ballio asked, noticing Helma remained seated.
She waved him off. "No. I need a break. And someone needs to keep watch."
Their eyes met.
Ballio looked down at his hands, clenching and unclenching them.
"Do you think I'm even built for this?"
Helma didn't soften her tone. "Only you can decide that."
He offered a crooked smile. "You know—"
The words were drowned by the final, desperate cries from the huts.
Helma rose. "Break's over. Vestiges."
They worked.
"It would've been easier to burn the huts," Dris muttered.
"And announce ourselves to the entire forest," Roderic shot back.
The Ganshka tribe ceased to exist.
***
"Back to the hideout," Ashan ordered.
The hunt yielded twenty vestiges—five souls and fifteen vital.
We're short two soul vestiges for the core team, Ashan calculated. Two will have to wait.
He glanced at Helma.
She sighed. "Don't ask. I tried absorbing both types before. Nearly shattered my root chakra. I won't risk it again until you fix the energy loss."
"That may take time," Ashan replied.
"But eventually, you'll have to risk it."
"I know." Her shoulders sagged.
Ballio and Helma stood watch as the others formed a circle.
Dark-green orbs pulsed softly.
Ashan assumed the root mudra.
Prana surged.
Atmic followed.
He guided both toward his Muladhara.
The clash came.
The loss.
Still there.
But reduced.
The vestiges accelerate everything, he noted. And the wastage is shrinking.
With a final whispered mantra, he opened his eyes.
Close.
Very close.
But still wrong.
His gaze shifted to the archer of the Rat faction, immersed in Sharir Sadhana.
Serpent and Rat.
Same house.
Different paths.
What if…
Ensuring no one watched, Ashan's eyes swirled grayish-white.
[Viksana: Analyse]
The boy's Vidya unfolded.
[Sharir Vidya: Thief Motion]
Ashan felt it immediately.
Gaps.
Just like mine.
Pushing past the ache, he did something unprecedented.
He analyzed both Sharir Vidyas simultaneously.
[Binding Coil Path]
[Thief Motion]
The streams overlapped.
Interlocked.
And suddenly—
The missing sections were illuminated.
Like two broken keys snapping into alignment.
This is it.
Pain detonated behind his eyes. He cut the siddhi instantly, gasping.
They complete each other.
These Vidyas share a common origin.
Individually, they are crippled.
His heartbeat thundered.
Then what about the Atma Vidyas?
What about the other houses?
The seven sins. Two factions each.
Was this division never meant to be a separation but a combination?
Ashan exhaled slowly.
Don't leap ahead.
Verify.
But for the first time since entering the Order, he wasn't digging blindly.
He had found bedrock.
And he held the tool to shatter it.