The ink on the parchment had barely dried, yet Icarus could already feel the power humming beneath the carefully drawn glyphs. The Lensbearer Pathway—it was real. Fragile, raw, incomplete—but it existed. He had walked the mental corridors of the Thought Engine, glimpsed the design hidden in the seams of reality, and returned with an uncut gem. Now came the true challenge: refinement.
He exhaled and pushed the draft aside.
"I'll need materials," he murmured. "Essences. Catalysts. A ritual site untouched by the Bishopric's gaze."
Lysandra had remained quiet, her presence steady behind him like a sentinel.
"We can't stay in the vault forever," she said, brushing her damp hair behind one ear. "The Bishopric will trace the leyline fluxes soon. That pulse from the Engine wasn't subtle."
"I know."
"And this new Sequence... it's not just a tweak, Icarus. It's a heresy."
He looked up at her. "That's the point."
The next day, they left the ruins behind. Icarus wore the mask of a merchant-scholar again, his robes plain but well-maintained. Lysandra adopted the guise of a seeress, wrapped in gray silk and scented herbs that cloaked her presence. Together, they passed through the towns of the outer Calonian marshlands like whispers.
Their destination: the Waking Marsh.
Legends told of it as a place where dreams bled into reality, where reflections acted independently from their source. It was an anomaly, ignored by cartographers and feared by mystics—but it was perfect for what Icarus needed. The first ritual of the Lensbearer required a mirror that didn't reflect light, but truth.
By the fourth day of travel, the mists around them thickened unnaturally. Shapes moved where none should. Words whispered from the trees. Yet Lysandra pressed forward with unflinching calm, and Icarus, too absorbed in his calculations, barely noticed.
"Here," she said finally, stopping before a ring of black-stone totems half-sunken into the mire.
The ground within was dry—unnaturally so.
"This place repels time," she whispered.
Icarus nodded, setting his pack down.
He drew out a series of ritual components:
A shard of silver from a defiled scrying dish.
A drop of his own blood, willingly offered.
Powdered obsidian mixed with salt and the ash of forgotten books.
He placed them in a bowl carved from petrified yew. Then, from his scroll case, he unrolled the first incantation of the Lensbearer Sequence—new words, raw and unstable, etched in a sigil language that even he barely understood.
"Lensbearer, Seeker of Unspoken Images," he intoned, "I call upon the Eye that watches through dreamglass and shadow. Pierce the veil. Show me the Lie."
The bowl ignited in black flame, flickering without heat. Smoke curled upward, forming a perfect circle in the air—an eye, unblinking.
A low hum resonated from the stone pillars. The marsh stilled.
Then the mirror appeared.
It wasn't a physical object. It was space itself warping, condensing into a patch of air that shimmered like oil and glass. When Icarus looked into it, he didn't see his face.
He saw himself, suspended in memory and thought: the boy who had stolen books from the monastery. The man who had refused to join the Bishopric's ranks. The scholar who had watched friends vanish for knowing too much. And beneath it all, something else—a shadow of a self yet to be born. The Lensbearer.
The mirror pulsed.
From the air, a droplet of liquid condensed—viscous, silver-blue, and impossibly heavy for its size.
Lysandra caught it in a glass vial.
"Icarus… you did it."
He could barely speak. "That's… the first draft. Sequence 9: Potion of the Inner Lens."
That night, in a shallow cave by the marsh's edge, Icarus held the vial in trembling hands. The fluid within rippled with potential. It wasn't merely a blend of ingredients—it was a crystallized concept, something born from the Thought Engine's language and the Waking Marsh's unreal laws.
"I should wait," he murmured. "Test it. Study it longer."
Lysandra was silent.
"But I won't," he said, and uncorked the vial.
The scent was cold—like old glass and forgotten ink. He drank it in one go.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then came the shift.
His eyes burned. Not just from pain, but from input. Every surface, every shadow around him fractured into thousands of truths. He saw the history of the cave wall, the echo of Lysandra's footsteps as lingering impressions in the air, the ghosts of thought she had discarded during the day.
The world became transparent. Layers peeled back. He saw what was, what had been, and the choice of what could be.
Lysandra caught him as he fell to his knees, blood dripping from his eyes.
"I see… everything," he gasped.
"You're not done," she said softly. "This is just the beginning."
Sequence 9: Lensbearer.
Core Ability: Perceptual Schism.Can isolate multiple perspectives of a single truth and observe them simultaneously. Passive side-effect: cannot be lied to directly.
Ritual Affinity: Mirrors, obsidian, forgotten reflections, and truth-anchored incantations.
Future Sequences Unknown. Development ongoing.
Far away, in the cloistered towers of the Bishopric, a scribe stumbled backward from a glowing scry-crystal.
"My lord," she whispered, trembling, "we've detected a new Pathway. It's not on the Sealed Tree."
The High Inquisitor turned sharply, his golden mask gleaming.
"Where?"
She pointed to the map. "The Waking Marsh."
A moment of silence.
"Send the Red Choir," he ordered. "And burn everything."