Chen Yè sat in his office, staring at the stack of delivery receipts on his desk.
Five years.
It has been five years since the evaluation. Five years since he'd been sorted into this role—liaison between the divine existence system and the mortal world. Delivering conceptual tools to approved recipients. Maintaining the infrastructure that connected two realms that weren't supposed to touch.
Safe work.
That was why everyone wanted it. Most paths available to the unevolved led to suffering. Some led to death. A precious few led here.
Chen Yè had fought for his. Not with fists—with observation, positioning, making himself useful in ways that couldn't be easily replaced. When the assignments came, he'd secured this one.
He turned his attention to the letters on his desk.
His teammates. All ten of them—the ones who had gathered in Bai Zixian's courtyard, trained together, tried to help each other understand truths that refused to be understood. They'd been sending messages for months, spending what must have been significant achievement points on correspondence the system didn't offer for free.
Which meant they considered this worth the cost.
He scanned the most recent messages.
Carefully worded details about their missions. References to a first deployment that had gone badly, though none described what actually happened. Mentions of the Eminence taking a disciple. And beneath all of it, repeated requests for help.
They wanted to evolve to the next stage.
He'd warned them years ago—don't reveal your concepts openly, keep the method secret, protect the only advantage the powerless possessed. They'd followed his advice. Which meant they couldn't explain the problem directly.
But the letter stated the problem.
Harmonization.
The Attuned stage required becoming one with your concept—attuning yourself to the truth you'd already understood. Simple enough, for those whose concepts emerged from their own deepest natures.
But the six he'd defined...
Their concepts came from him. From his observations, his interpretations, his understanding of what their representations meant. Accurate—the evolutions proved that. But not native. Not born from their own comprehension.
How do you harmonize with something someone else gave you?
He didn't know the answer.
Part of him didn't want to find out. Going back meant returning to the divine existence realm. Meant walking among beings whose mere presence had threatened to crush his consciousness. Meant five years of careful distance dissolving overnight.
But if he refused—if they grew powerful enough to resent the limitations he'd created—what then?
The calculations ran themselves. They always did.
He set aside the letters and rose from his desk.
First, the orphanage.
---
✦
As he walked through the city, he found himself thinking about the ledger.
During his first days as liaison—processing at the reception hall, being assigned his position—he'd glimpsed a document. A delivery record, marked with dates that didn't match the mortal calendar.
Year 82,560 of the Lunarian Calendar.
He'd stared at that number until the attendant noticed and removed the document from view. No explanation. No acknowledgment that he'd seen something he shouldn't.
The mortal calendar dated back 2,542 years.
He'd done the arithmetic once, then stopped.
Some questions were better left unasked. He'd learned that on the streets, refined it in the divine existence realm, made it a principle he didn't examine too closely because examining it meant acknowledging how much he'd chosen not to know.
The orphanage appeared ahead—the same crumbling building he remembered, the same faces watching from windows that had never been properly repaired. Children who would fight for survival in a world that didn't care whether they lived or died.
He walked through the gates.
Some things never changed.
---
The concept stone deposited Chen Yè in the reception hall.
Crystalline walls. Ambient light from nowhere and everywhere. The particular weight of air that marked divine existence territory.
Five years.
The place felt exactly the same.
He spotted one of the unevolved near the healing station—a boy he vaguely recognized from the evaluation, face twisted in pain while attendants worked to repair whatever damage he'd sustained. The smell of regeneration hung in the air. That metallic scent mixed with something organic.
Chen Yè looked away.
He approached the reception desk and stated his business. Temporary stay. Waiting for teammates.
The attendant's expression shifted when she processed his identification. Not quite respect. Something adjacent to it.
He was given a private room. Small, but private. A door that closed.
He noted the difference without comment.
---
✦
They arrived faster than expected.
He woke to knocking—insistent, eager, the sound of people who had been waiting too long. He opened the door.
Ten figures filled the corridor. The same faces he remembered, changed by years he hadn't witnessed. Healthier. Stronger. More refined in the way all divine existences grew refined as they advanced.
But weighted down by something.
They crowded into his quarters without waiting for invitation, finding places to sit on his bed, the floor, against walls. The comfortable familiarity of people who had survived too much together to worry about formalities.
"How have you been?"
The question came out before he could stop it.
Vera Lin answered first. "Surviving. Mostly."
The others nodded.
"The missions are brutal," Noah said. His voice still carried that dream-touched quality—slightly distant, as if part of him remained elsewhere. "Some teams didn't come back."
"The training helped," Bai said quietly. "What we learned before deployment. It kept us alive when others..." He trailed off. "We were lucky."
Ash spoke up. "There's a joint mission coming. Children from all the rulers' domains." His expression tightened. "They're saying it's preparation for something bigger."
They talked through the night.
Five years of separation. Missions some had spent months completing. Experiences they couldn't fully describe—either because the memories were too raw, or because the system had forbidden certain details.
Sera described a mission where half her team died in the first hour. "We were told it was low-risk," she said, her voice flat. "They were wrong."
Quinn talked about fighting creatures their training hadn't prepared them for. "We adapted," he said. "Or we died."
Maya spoke last. "Some of us are stuck. Can't evolve to the next stage. They're threatening reassignment if we don't progress soon."
The room went quiet.
Reassignment. A word that meant different things depending on context. None of them good.
Chen Yè woke hours later to find them still there. Still waiting.
"You're sure you want to do this now?" he asked.
"Yeah."
Unanimous. Immediate.
"You have a lot of free time," he observed dryly.
No one laughed.
"What's the issue?"
Vera spoke first. "They told us we need to be compatible with our concept to evolve. Harmonize with it. But we can't. It's like..." She searched for the words. "Trying to fit into clothes that aren't quite the right size. They work. But they don't feel natural."
Chen Yè went silent.
He turned to Bai. "What were you obsessed with as a child? What did you enjoy most?"
Bai considered. "Reading. History. The origination of things—where traditions came from, why cultures developed the way they did. I used to spend hours in my father's library, trying to trace everything back to its source."
"And your concept is Memory."
He turned to Noah.
The dream-touched boy smiled sheepishly. "I slept all the time. Got my ass whipped for it constantly." His expression grew distant. "At some point I started wishing I could get things done while sleeping. So I wouldn't be useless anymore."
"And your concept is Dream."
Finally, Kiran.
The void-eyed boy was quiet for a moment. "I used to play hide and seek with my uncle. He always caught me—every single time. I became obsessed with finding somewhere I could never be found. Somewhere I could disappear completely."
"And your concept is Void."
The room had gone silent.
Chen Yè looked at each of them in turn. At Bai, Noah, and Kiran, whose concepts matched their deepest childhood obsessions. Then at Vera, Sera, Quinn, Maya, Ash, and Leah—the six he had defined, whose concepts came from his observations rather than their own discoveries.
"Don't tell me," Bai said quietly.
"Yes."
The representation wasn't random.
It was you. The truest expression of who you were at your core—your obsessions, your desires, your fundamental nature made manifest. The concept that emerged from it should have been inevitable. As natural as breathing.
But the six he'd defined carried concepts that were accurate, functional, foreign. His interpretations imposed from outside. They worked. They would always work.
They would never feel like theirs.
The six stared at him with expressions ranging from horror to resignation to something that might have been accusation.
Chen Yè met their gazes.
"I'm sorry," he said.
The words came out quieter than he intended.
He meant them.
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