Chap 181: Fitting Into the Puzzle

The Market

A magical market awaited them at the village, brimming with stalls covered in brightly dyed cloth. Tee couldn’t help her curiosity.

“Why wouldeth Vergants requireth markets if they seldom eat?” she asked aloud, puzzled.

Aven chuckled faintly, as though he had expected the question. “We eat minimally, yes, but food is not only for survival. We consume herbal teas, roots, and occasional delicacies to attune ourselves to nature. To drain Ether and remain sober enhances verging—it sharpens the connection to the planet. The market supplies those needs.”

Tee’s eyes widened as she looked around. The stalls were unlike anything in her world. Flowers that changed color with each breath of wind sat in clay pots, some petals glowing faintly like lanterns. Frames displayed moving pictures, cycling through serene landscapes as though windows to other realms. 

There were fizzy strawberry cordials in crystal bottles, Pie Corks wrapped in crackling leaves, Soup Cups that steamed themselves, honey sticks dripping gold, sweet noodles wrapped in fragrant plant leaves, and even twigs that—when chewed—tasted uncannily like roasted chicken.

Engel, who walked quietly at her other side, occasionally picked fruits for her, handing them over with little more than a nod. Tee tried them all, tasting worlds of flavor in every bite.

Later, Tee marveled at a distant view she had only glimpsed before in foresight. Seeing it in person filled her with an almost sacred awe. They traveled past a sprawling woodland where the trees whispered as they passed, their leaves rustling though no wind blew. Each trunk seemed to lean slightly toward the group, acknowledging their presence.

When they reached a bridge of stone and vine, Tee’s senses suddenly tingled. Her skin prickled with warning.

Without warning, the ground beneath them twisted and molded, grabbing at their feet like hands of earth. Three robed figures leapt from beneath the bridge, spears in hand. The tips of their weapons glowed faintly red.

“Bandits,” Aven muttered grimly.

Something surged inside Tee. She didn’t think—she reacted. Ether burst from her body, creating a vast orb of energy that surrounded them like a shield. The translucent bubble shimmered with light, humming like a living thing.

Her eyes glowed white as the orb began to shrink, pressing in on the bandits as though to crush them. Their weapons clattered to the ground as terror overtook them. One by one, they dropped to their knees in surrender, eyes wide at the power she radiated.

Tee blinked, confused. What had she just done? The orb vanished as she dismissed it, and the bandits fled as though hunted by some unseen predator.

“They could probably sense your energy levels,” Aven said calmly, watching them disappear. “They knew they were no match.”

Tee frowned. “What did they want anyway?”

“They force victims,” Aven explained, “allowing them to hijack their Verge. Knowledge stolen that way can be sold on the black market.”

The thought sickened Tee.

Veylara

Their journey next took them to Veylara, the Vergant village hidden behind a massive waterfall. Tee gasped as she beheld it for the first time. The water poured like a shimmering curtain, concealing a cavern vast enough to house a city.

Inside, glowing blue waters flowed through canals, casting light onto stone buildings carved with glowing symbols. The architecture was intricate, bridges spanning the waterways, towers reaching upward, all lit by bioluminescent plants that clung to walls and ceilings. The sound of the waterfall created a constant thunderous backdrop, yet within the cavern it became almost soothing.

It felt like something out of legend—something that should not exist, and yet did. Tee whispered, “It’s like Atlantis…”

She was grateful for the many sights and experiences. It reminded her what it felt like to live. Her journey was only beginning, but Tee knew one thing with certainty. The rules of reality were not fixed. They could be read, rewritten, and bent. And with every glyph she learned, she was one step closer to rewriting her own fate.

The Western Time Temple

The Western Time Temple was unlike any structure Tee had ever seen. It seemed to defy reason, clinging like a barnacle to the underside of a massive cliff face. From a distance, it appeared almost inverted, a city suspended beneath the vast overhanging plateau. 

Hidden from the eyes of travelers above and unreachable from the jagged valleys below, the temple’s placement made it both sanctuary and fortress. Its very existence felt like a secret whispered by the earth itself, preserved only for those worthy enough to find it.

Inside, the temple sprawled like an ancient labyrinth. Wide courtyards opened into meditation chambers lined with stone benches worn smooth by centuries of use. Archways framed murals that told stories not with words, but with sweeping imagery—painted visions of the planet’s birth, of fire and flood, of civilizations rising and falling in rhythm with the lifestream. 

The silence there was never empty. The faint whistle of wind through the temple arches seemed to carry voices of the past. Tee could almost hear the echoes of laughter, chants, and debates that had once filled the halls.

That was no ordinary temple. It was situated deep within a Vergant village, the one known across the land as the seat of time study. Those Vergants were masters of the Verge, diving backward into the current of memory to uncover knowledge lost to the ages. 

Forward travel, however—the act of peering into futures not yet written—remained impossible. The modern world called such attempts prophecy, but there it was forbidden, not because of morality but because reality itself resisted it. Time was a river that only allowed swimming against the current.

Aven strode ahead with the confident eagerness of someone leading honored guests to a place close to his heart. Tee followed, her eyes darting to every mural and inscription, drinking in as much detail as she could. Engel walked beside her with quiet calm, his expression unreadable, as though the wonders of the temple were things he had long since absorbed.

They came at last to a great chamber. One side of the room opened outward, revealing a breathtaking view of the village below, where stone terraces climbed up and down the cliffside, lit by the pale glow of lanterns. On the floor of the chamber lay a richly woven carpet. Upon it sat two elderly women in meditation.

One woman wore a dark robe marked with swirling Vergant tattoos that ran from her arms to her throat, symbols of time and memory etched into her very flesh. The other wore a plain white robe with little ornamentation, her presence understated, her appearance almost deliberately bland.

As Aven approached, both women opened their eyes, their gazes sharp despite the years that weighed on their bodies.

“My love,” Aven said warmly, a smile breaking across his face.

Aven went to the bland woman, kneeling and taking her hand with such gentleness, and told Tee, “This is Hana.”

Tee blinked, startled. Her eyes darted to the woman in white. So that was Hana—the notorious figure Aven had spoken of with such fondness. Tee had imagined someone striking, ageless, perhaps powerful. Instead, Hana looked… old. Wrinkled, fragile even, as though she might have been Aven’s grandmother.

To Aven, appearances were irrelevant. Hana’s soft, wrinkled smile carried a radiance that transcended age.

“Hana,” Aven said, squeezing her hand, “this is Tee—the one I’ve mentioned. Like you, she is from the modern world.”

“Aven has spoken much of you,” Hana said kindly, her voice warm but faint with the years.

Tee nodded stiffly, uncertain what to say.

Aven explained further, his tone full of pride. He told Hana that Tee had already mastered the Verge, and not merely by study but because she was a Sentinel of the planet. He added that she was also an Ether source, capable of basic sorcery in ways few others could claim.

Hana’s eyes widened, sparkling with admiration. “I’m so jealous,” she said with a soft laugh, covering her mouth with one hand. “You are very lucky, Tee. To walk such a path so early.”

Tee didn’t know how to respond. Compliments from strangers never sat well with her, especially when the stranger was treating her like some prodigy she didn’t feel she was.

Hana went on to share her story. Tee listened, her curiosity grudgingly pulling her in. Long ago, Hana and her companions had traveled across distant lands in search of rare healing herbs, a quest undertaken under the governance of Priman. 

But fate had other plans. A volcano erupted without warning, belching black ash that blotted out the sun. Amid the chaos, Hana was separated from her crew. The day was marked forever in her memory by darkness and fire.

She thought she would die there, buried in ash and suffocated by smoke. But instead, strangers came—mysterious people unlike any she had ever known. They healed her with techniques that defied explanation, mending wounds she had thought fatal. Their hospitality disarmed her, and their ways fascinated her. She had come to believe she was rescued not merely by chance, but by destiny.

Her fascination only grew when she was introduced to sorcery. She admitted that she had not wanted to leave. And so, when Priman made her an “experiment,” she endured it willingly, though her progress in sorcery had always been painfully slow.

Yet Aven had been her anchor. His patience, his teaching, and his bond with her had helped her achieve what she could never have done alone. Through him, she had even touched the Verge herself. She smiled at him, her expression tender. Then, without hesitation, she leaned forward. The two shared a kiss—not a quick peck, but a passionate kiss between lovers.

Tee blinked. Once, twice, then ten times in quick succession, as though her eyes refused to process what they were seeing. She gaped, her mouth falling open in raw disbelief. Aven, making out with… her? An old woman? Something about the sight unsettled her deeply. But she kept her mouth shut.

Leaning slightly toward Engel, Tee whispered, “Are those two in a romantic relationship?”

Engel, unfazed, replied evenly, “Yea. Aven was sore enraptured with the modern world, and Hana was swiftly made the jewel of his eye.”

Tee’s voice dropped lower, incredulous. “Yeah, but she’s… old.”

Engel tilted his head, not comprehending the problem. In that moment, Tee realized she was the only one disturbed by the sight. Among Vergants, love was not bound by appearance, by age, or even by time. She felt suddenly out of place, her modern-world sensibilities clashing with the customs there.

After leaving Hana behind, their quest for knowledge resumed.

Sealed Bonds

The next lesson Aven guided Tee into was one of Vergant practicality.

“Vergants draw their energy from verging with the planet,” Aven explained as they walked beneath a vaulted hall lined with glowing glyphs. “Only life pulled from the lifestream can connect. Non-living things cannot verge, nor perform sorcery.”

Tee tilted her head. “And how do you make objects do… anything magical?”

“That,” Aven said, “is where Sealed Bonds come in.”

He went on to explain that Sealed Bonds allowed non-living objects to perform sorcery through a Vergant’s intervention. A bond was forged between the life energy and matter, enabling the object to carry a fragment of sorcery.

It was the reason, he continued, that devices like the Sentinels’ telecoms could not rely on verging alone. Telecoms required a store of Ether energy compacted into crystalline form. The Vergants inscribed glyphs into them, bonding the stored energy to the object. That was how they functioned—recreating glyphs to enact teleportation to the mission base.

Each telecom, once activated, transported its bearer to a specific point in the mission base. The Ether did not merely provide power, it manipulated reality itself, scattering and reassembling molecules in a feat that would have been incomprehensible in Tee’s old world.

She couldn’t help but shiver. The idea of being broken down into nothing but energy and rebuilt elsewhere made her stomach twist, even if she had already experienced it.

Manipulating Others

Later, Tee asked a question that had been nagging her since she arrived. “How do Vergants know when someone else is… manipulating them?”

Aven’s expression turned grim. “They don’t—at least, not in the way you think. When manipulation occurs, a battle is waged within the Verge. It is an epic clash of wills. But here is the danger. Whoever loses the battle loses the memory of it. They do not even remember they were manipulated.”

Tee’s brows knit. “So you wouldn’t even know you’d been attacked?”

“Correct. And even if you win, the oppressor appears only as a silhouette. A black figure. Their identity is hidden.”

Engel added softly matching Aven’s modern speech, “And manipulating life requires immense Ether—far more than the everyday manipulation of water, trees, or time. Only those who stray from the norm—apprentices, researchers, experimenters—possess the knowledge and power to do so. It narrows the field.”

Tee swallowed. The thought of unseen forces bending minds and bodies unsettled her deeply.

Aven described one particular form of manipulation, a Seal that forced the brain to release dopamine each time the victim saw the manipulator. The victim would believe themselves to be in love, mistaking the artificial rush for genuine feeling.

“But such Seals rarely last,” Aven said. “They drain too much energy. Eventually the bond breaks, and the feelings fade. The illusion of love crumbles.”

Tee thought of Hana’s fond smile, of the kiss she had witnessed, and felt a ripple of unease she could not quite shake.

The Being Called the Planet

That night, as they sat in a chamber overlooking the cliffs, Tee brought up another question. “Why do some call it ‘The Planet’? Like it’s a person?”

Engel nodded. “Because one must know how to verge with it, to link your essence to its essence. Ether flows through everything from Apocalypse Prime. It sustains life. It allows sorcery. And when you die, you degrade and return to the lifestream. To some, that is evidence that the planet itself is alive.”

“Alive?” Tee repeated, skeptical.

“Yea,” Engel said. “Some believe the planet is a being that came with the cataclysm, merging with this world. That it blessed us with Ether.”

Aven said nothing, his silence speaking louder than words.

Tee rolled her eyes, unwilling to concede belief but unable to argue against the devotion in their voices.

After their studies in the temple, the trio explored the village itself. Tee marveled that no Vergant gave her hostile looks. No whispers of condemnation. No stares branding her as an outsider.

The harbor city sprawled below, carved into cliffs and mountains, terraces stacked like steps toward the sky. Bridges arched between stone towers, some draped with hanging gardens. 

On the water, three great ships sailed with ornate sails shaped like fans or wings, gliding toward the foreground. Smaller boats darted around them, their sails bright against the gold reflection of the setting sun. The city looked both ancient and thriving, caught in that impossible space where civilization and nature seemed to embrace.

Tee studied glyphs, read histories, examined records of failures. Aven occasionally entered her Verge to help her refine it. Her Balance Seal glowed like a sun, and within it memories shimmered. She saw herself on a beach with her old Academy friends, splashing water, laughing. But there were other faces—blurred, unfamiliar, yet somehow part of her Verge. She walked farther, faces growing indistinct until the world dissolved into blank blackness.

“You’ve reached your limit,” Aven told her gently. “But the stronger your Verge becomes, the more you will see. You are linking with the planet’s Verge itself. The Verge is omnipresent"

Their journey took them farther still, to villages where people soared on glider staffs that unfolded into wings, manipulating air to keep aloft. They rode great winged beasts toward the horizon, the village below glowing with orbed roofs like jewels. Over vast waters, Tee glimpsed two Vergants dueling on the surface itself, their blonde and black hair flashing like banners.

At night they lay back and watched the sky. Shooting stars fell with unnatural precision, as though drawn across the heavens by some unseen hand.

Other marvels followed. A forest aglow with fireflies, fields where unicorns grazed with regal serenity, waters where mermaids sang in haunting voices. Every place they went, Tee felt both smaller and greater, as though she were seeing pieces of a vast puzzle whose image was only beginning to emerge.