The first thing he smelled was meat. Not the usual strips of dense, salty, heavy with the iron-tang of processed protein. This was different.

  Dion opened his eyes.

  He was on the floor of the copper room. Still. Cold against his cheek. His own reflection in the burnished walls stared back; it was pale and gaunt, like someone else's face peering from the metal.

  The smell came from somewhere else.

  He pushed up. His arms shook, yet they held.

  P-7 stood in the doorway. In its mismatched hands, a wooden plate. On the plate—

  Dion's eyes lit up.

  The bunny. It was cooked. The crystalline fur was gone, replaced by a glistening dark crust. Steam rose from it.

  The kind that carried scent, that meant something had been taken from fire to table moments ago.

  His mouth watered before he could stop it.

  P-7 shuffled forward, set the plate on the floor beside him, then wobbled as it took a step back.

  "Break... fast," it spoke softly, the word fractured as usual. "You... ne... ed."

  Dion stared at the meal. He'd killed it and ran with its corpse while a hundred glowing eyes chased him through the dark.

  That was... how many days ago?

  He couldn't remember.

  His stomach growled.

  Dion picked up a piece. The meat was warm. Almost too hot. He brought it to his mouth.

  He bit.

  The crust gave way, then the flesh beneath was tender in a way protein strips never were, never could be. Juice, actual juice, ran across his tongue.

  He chewed. Swallowed. Reached for another.

  P-7's stitched face shifted between something that might have been satisfaction, or relief, or just the light catching wrong on the mismatched panels.

  Like always, it stood watch as Dion ate, piece after piece, until the plate was clean and his fingers were slick with grease.

  "How long was I out?" Dion finally asked.

  P-7 tilted its head.

  "A...fe..w… ho..ur..s. Mast..er.... Lo..o..ked. Lef..t." A pause. "Sa..i..d... let…hi..m... sle..ep."

  Dion wiped his hands on his pants slowly and processed his words.

  The Alchemist, being considerate. That was new. The last thing he remembered was the word.

  Again.

  His body still ached from the constant use of Wither’. Deep in the bones. The eighteenth time he used it on the rock had been final; he collapsed afterward.

  He already knew his limits. They scaled with the size and state of whatever he used Wither' on,

  The only reason he was able to use it in quick succession was that it was a small piece of rock.

  No, it wasn't just that.

  Now he understood its makeup, causing the cost of Wither to drastically decrease.

  If he were being honest with himself, it was a good thing. Still, there really was no point in constantly causing the rock to dissolve.

  As if on cue, Dion heard the steps.

  Van Helmont reached the doorway. His eyes, one pale, one dark, swept the room. The empty plate. P-7 frozen and Dion on the floor, grease still on his fingers.

  "You're awake," he said. "Good. We continue."

  Dion sighed. On second thought, he took back his words about the alchemist being considerate.

  —

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  Days bled into weeks. Weeks into months. The same rock remained a constant, returned to the table each time by Van Helmont's indifferent hand.

  "Again."

  The word had replaced greeting, farewell, everything. It was the only context left.

  Apart from his usual hunt in the outer verge, the rest of each day was spent testing just how much he could endure the backlash of Wither

  Dion's fingers moved across the stylus, logging each attempt.

  Entry 17. Target: quartz crystal. Duration: 10 seconds. Scale: 4. Vertigo, moderate.

  Entry 110. Target: quartz crystal. Duration: 7 seconds. Scale: 4. Same.

  Entry 395. Target: quartz crystal. Duration: 4 seconds. Scale: 3. Headache behind the eyes.

  Entry 664. Target: quartz crystal. Duration: 2 seconds. Scale: 2. A pulse of dizziness. Gone before he could name it.

  Six hundred and sixty-four attempts in total. Six hundred and sixty-four times, he'd reached into that stone and pulled pieces of it apart with his mind.

  Each log told two stories.

  The first was his progress over the past month. What once took ten seconds took seven. Then five. Then two.

  The second was the creation of his own. No. Not creation. He was simply cataloguing.

  With the Alchemist's guidance, he'd built a scale for his own deterioration. A record of every cost. Every collapse. He'd started calling it the Drain Log.

  The name fit.

  Dion stared at a new page as the stylus lit up.

  Scale 1-2: dull headache, lingering tremor, minutes of fatigue. The background noise of his existence now.

  Scale 3: pain behind the eyes. Hands that wouldn't steady. Hours of waiting to feel like himself again. He'd stopped remembering what "he" felt like.

  Scale 4-6: vertigo. Mild, moderate, crippling. The world tilting, the floor rushing up to meet him.

  These had become disturbingly frequent.

  Scale 7: he'd felt it twice. Once with the Skollynx, fighting for his life in the Locus. Once in this room, on a night he'd rather forget.

  The feeling wasn't really pain, not exactly. It felt more like something reached into him while he wasn't looking and scooped out a piece he'd never get back.

  Above 7?

  Dion stared at it for a long time. He had no data. No frame of reference. Only a dreaded feeling.

  Whatever sat above 7 wasn't meant to be touched by him.

  He brought down the stylus.

  Something about today was different.

  It wasn't a difficult conclusion to come by; the Alchemist had ended yesterday's lesson in the copper room and simply... left. No "again." No next instruction. Just silence and an open door.

  Dion shook his head, a weary smile tugging at his lips. Knowing the man, he was probably thinking of more ways to break him.

  He found himself comparing the Alchemist to his father. In more ways than one, they felt the same.

  The same stillness before speaking. The same way of watching, measuring just before delivering judgment.

  The same refusal to explain until after the lesson had carved its groove into him.

  Still, his father loved him. To the alchemist, he was useful until he was not.

  Dion descended the spiral steps; they felt much more familiar now. He rounded the final curve and stopped.

  Dion stared a bit surprised, he had just thought about him, and he appeared, standing by the supposed entrance.

  Was it a coincidence? He hardly ever saw the Alchemist between lessons. After the first lesson, he had been given days. The second had ended yesterday, and now he was here.

  You're in his house, he reminded himself. He can stand wherever he wants.

  Still, the timing felt off.

  He reined in his thoughts and kept walking. His eyes darted toward the amber resins as he passed.

  Over a month, and he still couldn't shake the unease they brought. The things inside each one. Watching. Always watching.

  His gaze turned back to the Alchemist.

  He had been heading out to hunt by himself this time, no longer needing P-7's guidance.

  The paths were etched into him now, every safe route, every place the crystalline beasts and, more importantly, the metallic ones nested.

  Now, he doubted it was possible anymore. For some reason, he knew the alchemist wasn't here randomly.

  He never did anything by chance.

  The alchemist stood in the usual grey robe, unaware of Dion's thoughts. He finally spoke.

  "You've grown accustomed to the outer verge."

  It was a question, and not. He was used to it by now. The Alchemist never asked a question he didn't already have the answer to.

  He simply nodded.

  "Good." Van Helmont's mismatched eyes drifted toward the tree line. "Then you're ready for the next step.”

  Huh…next step

  Dion's head tilted in confusion. Unfortunately, the Alchemist didn't dwell on it.

  His words turned into something quite unexpected.

  “This wall is a lie,” he stated, his voice reaching Dion, causing him to blink.

  “A lie?”

  Surprisingly, the alchemist nodded in response before continuing.

  “It presents a facade of unity, when it is in fact a coalition of dissimilar materials, each with its own agenda,” his palms tracing the uneven wall.

  “its own rate of decay, its own secret yearning. Their alliance of the materials is temporary.” Lorian gestured with one pale hand.

  “Your task is to map its hypocrisy. Interrogate it. Show me where it wants to fail.”

  Map the hypocrisy.

  Tell him where it wants to fail.

  The words themselves should have sounded ridiculous. The ghost of Prince would have scoffed at such absurdity. Being asked to find fault in a wall should have felt absurd.

  But the person Dion was becoming simply picked up his stylus without hesitation.

  Moving on from dissolving rocks to this. It filled him with a joy he hadn't known was possible. Frankly, it was ridiculous.

  A problem lingered in the back of his mind. His power granted him something like true sight, a secondary ability he'd come to think of as separate.

  But its main purpose was to dissolve.

  There was no way to use one without the other. In simple terms, the wall would dissolve if he attempted what the alchemist asked.

  He approached anyway. The Alchemist had to know this, yet he was allowing it.

  Dion breathed out. In the next second, familiar sapphire light pulsed in his eyes.

  The wall transformed.

  Wood and metal fused in grotesque union, but his lens revealed the truth. Hairline fissures. Softer sedimentary layers. Points already surrendering to gravity and time.

  The iron plate wasn't solid. It was a lattice yearning for rust. Scab-like corrosion bubbled around the rivets. A weeping stain of oxidation from a slow leak somewhere behind.

  But the ceramic section spoke to him most. It looked solid. Under the lens, it was a web. Microscopic cracks crazing over a brittle heart.

  He tapped it gently with his stylus.

  A void lay behind. A pocket where insulation had crumbled away.

  Dion worked for an hour, his hands moving rapidly as he pressed on the stylus. He wasn't just listing flaws; he was building a schematic of failure.

  Unknown to Dion, something far more astonishing was happening to the wall itself. Under his use of Wither, it seemed to be holding up just fine.

  No, it was more than that. The wall was dissolving, yet it was regenerating at an incredible pace, more than Wither could keep up with.

  If Dion had been more observant, he would have noticed the anomaly. Something his powers couldn't instantly dissolve.

  Meanwhile, the Alchemist simply watched. In the next second, his gaze stretched out.

  His lips curved into a small, imperceptible smile, noticing something interesting in the next second, his gaze reverting to Dion, his thoughts unknown.