Night came and went over the green hollow, and the eleven did not move from where they sat.
The waterfall ran on. The umbrella trees swayed. Lamplight rose and dimmed in the little woven houses as those not deep in meditation kept a quiet watch over those who were, and the world simply let them work.
It was not a fight, this. There was no monster to read, no enemy to out-think. There was only the long, patient descent into the self, the same work Tenebria had first done at the mouth of a dungeon, only far, far deeper this time.
Erix sat with his eyes closed and let the Boundless Hunter fall away from him, piece by piece.
He set aside the Amber Mantle first, the shape he had built it into with his own two hands. He set aside Constellation, and Fang Flight, and the Boundless Verdict, all the techniques he had layered on top of the truth beneath them, because none of that was the Art. That was only what he had done with it.
