The next morning, the fog had not lifted, and the city seemed almost alive with whispers. Every shadow, every dripping corner, carried a sense of anticipation, as if the spirits themselves were aware that I had survived yesterday.
Lumo hovered beside me, its glow steady but alert. "Today," I said aloud, "we take things further."
I had survived my first real battle, but surviving wasn't enough. I needed to learn to control fear, not just react to it. And the only way to do that was to create a "game" a controlled scenario where I could experiment without risking everything.
I found an abandoned courtyard surrounded by crumbling buildings. Perfect. The walls would contain the spirits, and the narrow entrances would let me control their movements.
"Alright, Lumo," I whispered, "we'll test multiple spirits at once. I want to see how fear interacts, how energy flows."
Minutes later, two small spirits appeared, drawn by curiosity or perhaps the pull of my growing energy. They were timid, flinching at every shadow I created, their fear radiating outward in waves that I could feel and absorb.
I shaped illusions around them: walls that seemed to shift, figures that whispered from the mist, sudden flashes of movement in the corners of their eyes. The spirits shrieked and scattered, and I felt the energy surge into me, filling my limbs with warmth and strength.
This was different from yesterday. Before, it was reactive absorbing what came at me. Now, it was proactive. I was setting the rules, guiding the flow of fear, testing how much energy could be gathered, and observing how the spirits adapted.
One of them tried to escape, but Lumo intercepted, gently guiding it back into the "arena." I realized something: even fear itself could be manipulated. It wasn't just power it was a resource, a puzzle to solve.
Hours passed. I experimented with multiple illusions, varying levels of fear stimuli, and observed how the spirits' reactions differed. Each scenario taught me more about the subtle nuances of fear: the small tremor of panic, the sharp pulse of terror, the slow burn of unease. Each emotion could be harvested and directed, like energy flowing through a circuit.
By evening, I had my first successful "fear game." The spirits had reacted, learned, and adapted, and I had responded in turn, shaping their fear into energy that strengthened me without harming them permanently. It was a breakthrough: a proof that I could control not just my own power, but the flow of negative energy around me.
But as the night deepened, a creeping thought gnawed at me. What if the larger, more intelligent spirits the ones I hadn't faced yet entered my games? Could I control them too? Could I survive if the stakes were real and the consequences deadly?
I shook the thought away for now. That was a problem for tomorrow. Tonight, I had learned to play the game and in a world built on fear, learning to play was the first step to survival… and power.