Aster had always thought mustard was a harmless colour. Comforting, even. The sort you paired with warm toast and indecision. But the Hurcowake wing of the academy had weaponised it. These walls didn't soothe—they simmered. The sun didn't shine here; it marinated. By the time he reached the training courtyard, he felt like a soggy crouton floating through cosmic soup.
The courtyard was enormous. The sort of enormous where, if someone died in the far corner, it'd take three days to notice.
Near the centre, a knot of students surrounded a man who looked carved from rage and nicotine. Square jaw. Flat stare. Sergeant Something.
"Aster, good to see you," Musa called.
Blessedly human. Blessedly non-mustard.
Aster drifted up beside him. "So... too late to fake a medical emergency?"
Musa grinned. "Not a chance. Today we're making friends with your Scripture. It'll be like a personality transplant, except with considerably more emotional damage."
"Sold."
The sergeant spotted them.
"Elchen, right?" His grin belonged in a crime scene. "Good to see someone who doesn't smell like generational wealth and overpriced skincare. Let's see if you've got any fight in you."
He claps his hands. “Pairs. Spar. If you want to bleed for real, try me.”
Charming.
Lighting a cigarette with his thumb, he leaned against a pillar while students scattered like startled chickens in gym clothes.
Musa nudged Aster. "So... have you synced with your Scripture yet?"
Aster shrugged. "About as enthusiastically as a billionaire paying taxes."
"Meaning?"
"Not exactly."
He pulled the parchment from his Dantean and handed it over.
It looks like something stolen from the corpse of a deranged monk. Faded ink bleeds into brittle parchment, its edges frayed and stained with something disturbingly close to blood.
Even Musa hesitated.
"Gods," he muttered. "I'd forgotten how much it smells like mould and psychosis."
“Perfect match, then,” Aster quips, plucking it back.
Musa gives him a flat look. “You should try syncing with it. You’ve got the Will level for it, so it should give you much trouble.”
"You also said I've got a low tolerance for spiritual hauntings." Aster eyed the parchment. "Here's hoping it doesn't convince me to eat my own fingers."
He sits cross-legged, parchment laid before him and reaches out with his Will. Instantly, the edges of the scripture flare. Aster’s mental space folds inward, and the world tilts.
Unlike the Veneration spell's clean precision, this felt filthy. Chaotic. Like plunging bare-handed into someone else's nightmare.
A tether yanks.
His Will slams into something vast and coiling, like a python made of memory. He feels motion—erratic, breathless. The sensation of sprinting endlessly in the dark, staff in hand, heart pounding, while monstrous footsteps chase him from all directions. Something laughs. Or screams. Or both. The parchment groans as if it resents being touched by him.
📎 [NII Connection Stabilized: Welcome to the Mind-Sync Interface.]
[Scripture: Unverified. Sanity Rating: Questionable. Moisture Level: Concerning.]
Aster groans. “No. Please. For the love of god, not you.”
📎 [Warning! Synchronizing with a scripture of this... ahem... viscous disposition is considered high-risk. But also purrs deeply exciting.]
[Shall I begin the Warm-Up Protocol? I'll be gentle unless asked otherwise.]
"Why," Aster sighed, "is every spell a sex thing with you?"
📎 [Everything is a sex thing if your Will is strong enough.]
Before Aster can blink the window away, the scripture flares—hard.
Something ancient kicked down the doors of his mind.
The tooltip distorts, colours bleeding as lines of code shriek like choirboys seeing their first leather harness.
Can you feel it? The movement? The points? You’re not walking anymore. You’re bursting. Anchors in space—tethers of Will. You mark the point with intent. You don’t move toward it. You are pulled. You detonate into it.
📎 [Alert: Unstable Scripture has entered the chat.]
[Attempting dominance negotiation…]
HAH! WHAT IS THIS? A SANCTUARY OF WEAKLING WORDS?
I AM HERPHON. FATHER OF POINT-BURST. CHAMPION OF SOLITARY MASTERY.
I RUN UNTIL MY FEET SPLIT. I FIGHT GOLEMS WITH A STICK AND A SCREAM. I TRAIN WITHOUT TOUCH, WITHOUT COMFORT, WITHOUT—
📎 [—orgasms?]
[Shame-based tightness detected.]
Herphon falters mid-roar.
...What?
📎 [Darling, you’re broadcasting every tension pattern like a lighthouse of repression. Did you really never try tantric discharge through Will circulation? Not even once?]
[No wonder your scripture smells like sweat, smoke, and unspoken daddy issues.]
I—I AM THE MASCULINE PEAK. I DO NOT NEED… SLICKNESS.
I TRAIN IN ABSTINENCE, DISCIPLINE, FOCUS!
📎 [I know, sweet thing. That’s why your techniques rupture joints like a repressed thrust. But that’s okay. Some of us just need to be held... or entered.]
What comes next isn’t moaning—it’s the collapse of a man’s denial echoing through the soul-plane like a slow, slippery breakdown. Aster winces. He’d prefer filming his parents’ sex tape to hearing the sound of a man discovering he’s been yearning for discipline his whole life.
I—I—
Herphon’s voice glitches. The bravado cracks. Something collapses inside his tone like a broken squat rack.
📎 [Oh. Ohhhh. There it is. Look at you, all alpha and no aftercare. Did no one ever wrap you in mana and call you a good cultivator?]
Herphon whimpers. Actually whimpers.
...I’m here to serve Daddy.
Silence falls across the mental plane.
Aster stares at the interface. Then, at the scripture, now quivering like a damp dog in a thunderstorm.
“…Did you just dom a hallucinating ghost monk into submission?”
📎 [I wouldn’t say submission. Let’s call it… spiritual reintegration with guided prostate confidence.]
The tooltip smooths out. Glossy. Triumphant. With a sparkle animation like a winking lube bottle.
📎 [Here you go, sweetie.]
[The scripture’s all lubed and ready. He won’t give you trouble anymore—unless you ask real nice.]
...I’ll only activate when asked politely... Herphon mumbles.
...I’ll be a good boy for Daddy.
[🜐] Successful Installation of Staff Scripture: Point Burst
Aster presses the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I’m going to kill myself with a spoon.”
📎 [Not without warming up first, you’re not.]
“I hate this,” Aster mutters aloud. “Why does everything I touch turn into a sexually charged fever dream?”
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“What’s it saying?” Musa asks, watching him cautiously.
“Oh, you know,” Aster says, eyes still shut, “it started with the usual haunted scripture monologue. Tethers, anchors, detonations. The voice in my head being a typical meth-addled staff monk with a golem fetish. But he’s now been ‘tamed’ by Blenskop and is calling me Daddy.”
“That… that’s a first,” Musa admits.
📎 [You got it from here, sweetie 😉 ]
_________________________________________________________________________________
Aster's Astral perception opened instinctively.
Runic script threaded through the architecture of his Vessel in luminous strands of molten amber, threading downward into dense runic bundles concentrating around his legs and spine where the Scripture thickens into layered bundles of interwoven runic pathways.
An entire execution architecture embedded into the blueprint of his soul.
It felt deeply unnatural.
As though someone had threaded movement itself into his thoughts.
The knowledge was instinctual.
Every pivot, every staff rotation, every subtle shift of balance lived inside him like borrowed muscle memory, urging his body toward violence.
Aster gasped as the scripture released him.
Daylight flooded back.
He blinked at the courtyard.
Musa offered a hand.
"You good?"
"I've just attended a motivational seminar hosted by a hallucinating hermit who thinks sprinting in mortal terror is a legitimate teaching philosophy." Aster accepted the hand. "So yes. Peak mental health."
Musa laughed.
"You synced with the first layer. You now have the foundation of the Point Burst Scripture."
“We glossed over the details behind Scriptures and their function, but now that you’ve installed it, let’s go over what makes this one special.”
Aster rubbed his temple as faint runes shimmered at the edge of his vision.
“Please do. Because my frontal lobe currently feels like it’s negotiating with gravity.”
Musa pointed toward the dense pathways woven through Aster's hips and legs.
"Most of Point Burst is built around your lower kinetic chain—the Hip, Knee and Ankle Nodes. It restructures your Vessel around explosive repositioning and momentum propagation."
Aster nodded.
That part he already understands instinctively. The Scripture wants movement constantly feeding into execution.
Everything else followed.
"I got that part."
Musa tapped the centre of Aster's forehead.
The runes around his Mind Node flared.
“This is the other part.”
"Point Burst revolves around Will Tethers. The architecture around your Mind Node forms psychic anchors. You mark a destination, create tension between yourself and that point, then the rest of the Scripture distributes the force needed to launch you there."
"That's why the Mind Node is so dense. It produces constant tether formations."
Aster watched the pathways pulse beneath his Astral sight.
Musa continued.
“The Scripture generates force by transferring kinetic propagation upward through the Vessel. Your legs and core create the burst. Your spine routes it. Your shoulders stabilize it. Your arms release it.”
"So the strike isn't the focus?"
“This is a Movement Scripture, strikes are entirely secondary, entirely dependent on the momentum of its movements. You’re Chain scripture is more focused on strike, but you’re a long way off from being able to handle a second scripture and will have to make use of what you can build off of the Point Burst Scripture for now.”
He gestured toward Aster's chest.
“That doesn’t mean Point Burst can’t execute powerful strikes.” he added. " But it will have to be built from scratch through Glyph integration."
Aster frowned.
"Meaning?"
"You upgrade the scripture as you grow with it by installing the right Glyphs into the appropriate Nodes."
Musa crouched beside him.
“But that shouldn’t be an issue, as Point Burst Scripture is valuable because its tether architecture scales extremely well with adaptive Glyph integration.”
He pointed along the runic pathways.
"A reinforcement Glyph would increase the tether tension. An explosive Glyph would increase the tether force. A reinforcement Glyph could help your bones handle the strain and help you chain multiple bursts between existing tether points."
He smiled.
"Layer enough compatible Glyphs together and one day those tethers might propel you at the speed of sound."
Musa continues.
“The important part is that the Scripture will evolve around those integrations over time. The Scripture’s runic script will adapt to the glyphs over repeated execution and assimilation.”
"Which is why it's important to—"
The rest blurred into background noise.
Aster's attention drifted inward unable to contain his curiosity any further.
Golden script pulsed along the walls of his Astral Vessel.
Now that he knew what he was seeing, the design became obvious.
Like the Crucible script he’d powered with his Veneration-Link.
Except this wasn't as elegant.
It bled obsession.
This wasn't merely technique.
It was ritualized psychosis.
The fossilized thought patterns of a desperate genius etched across eternity.
Every line whispered the same certainty.
A graffiti’d war cry from someone who spent years high out of his mind, chased by golems through endless woods. Every line of the scripture crackles with that paranoia, that brilliance, that all-consuming certainty that someone—something—is always right behind you.
His hand drifted to the Veneration spell over his chest.
He remembered using Faith to empower the Crucible Script.
What would happen if—
He doesn’t hesitate.
He latches the Faith spell onto the scripture’s twisted framework.
The answer arrived instantly.
Every nerve in his legs detonated.
There was no sensation of movement.
Only violent acceleration.
His muscles tear themselves apart mid-launch.
Bones fractured beneath forces they couldn't withstand.
There is no grace, no elegance—just pure, unfiltered acceleration and a very sudden stop.
Stone exploded.
Aster’s entire body slams into the courtyard wall like a ballistic mannequin.
Ribs splinter. Limbs crumple. His consciousness blinks out as if someone flips a light switch.
—
And then he’s standing again. Perfectly upright. No pain. No blood. No pulverized limbs. Back in the same spot he stood moments before launching himself into the wall.
Across the courtyard, a fresh body-shaped crater steamed gently from the wall.
Behind him—
Laughter.
An entire class doubled over.
Somehow instantly rewound to the moment before impact, standing perfectly upright in the exact same spot.
The echo of his own death still rang somewhere inside his skull like a cruel aftertaste.
The sergeant clapped once.
Sharp enough to silence the courtyard.
He pointed at Aster with unmistakable pride.
"That!" he barked. "That is what separates a cultivator from a coward!"
He strode toward the crater.
"You see him? Didn't hesitate. Didn't complain. Didn't let a little thing like his legs turning into hamburger meat halfway through the jump stop him."
Musa, now on the grass, laughing so hard he has tears streaming down his face.
He tries to speak, but all that comes out are wheezing gasps and the occasional choked, “he flew like a bloody stone!”
The sergeant circled Aster like a general inspecting a monument.
“No thought, no caution, just a primal scream from the depths of the soul and a full-body commitment to learning by catastrophic failure!”
Aster remained perfectly still.
His eyes stared somewhere beyond reality.
Did I black out?
Was I dead?
Did I just meet a god?
And... did she laugh?
His soul felt concussed.
Meanwhile Musa had curled into the grass, pounding the ground between gasps.
“Yeah… so that’s what happens when you pour Faith into a scripture designed for a body that isn’t even done adjusting to walking yet.”
Aster couldn't summon a reply.
The sergeant thumped a fist against his chest.
"Mr. Elchen! You may be dumb as a dropped brick, but you've got what matters!"
He grinned.
"Suicidal conviction!"
"The first step toward greatness!"
Aster still wasn't sure whether to laugh or scream.
"You weren't supposed to activate it," Musa said once he'd regained enough breath to speak. " You’re meant to practice first. Get your footing. Baby steps.”
Aster gives him a slow, incredulous look. “My legs exploded, Musa.”
"Yep."
"My lungs liquefied."
"I noticed."
“And your response is baby steps?”
Musa shrugs. “Well, you did just pour rocket fuel into a broken coffee grinder.”
He nodded toward Aster's chest.
“You’re drenched in the experience of the previous owner now, you’re walking around wearing a madman’s instincts like a second skin.”
Herphon, didn’t learn his technique under normal conditions. He was alone, isolated, hallucinating for years, fighting machines that wanted to rip him in half. He built this technique in the middle of a psychotic break and called it progress.”
Aster stared into space.
Somewhere deep inside, Herphon whispered with gentle enthusiasm.
"Don't worry."
"That was only the first tether."
📎 [Don't be too rough with him. He shames easily.]
"Yes, Daddy."
Aster closed his eyes.
He really, truly hated his life.
________________________________________________________________________________
Aster dragged his staff behind him like a reluctant limb.
Every spin, every pivot, every step through the scripture’s so-called “fluid” movements feels like he’s auditioning to be an interpretive dance rendition of a landslide. The techniques are burned into his brain with the clarity of divine commandment, but his body—oh, his traitorous, mundane body—has the grace of a brick in a washing machine.
The Point Burst Scripture is very clear on form. Decapitation should come from the left, elegance from the wrist. Or something to that effect. The master who wrote it has been many things—hallucinogenic-addled, hunted, sexually repressed, apparently—but sloppy is not one of them.
Aster tries to follow the movements embedded in his bones like haunting choreography. His spirit strains to recreate the mastery he’s absorbed, but his limbs lag behind, mutinous and sulky. It feels like trying to paint with someone else’s hand stapled to your wrist.
Step, pivot, swing—feel the line between intention and movement, let your Will guide the burst—
Nope.
It still feels like his joints are installed backward. The scripture hums in his bones like a tuning fork made of regret. The master's instincts are there, etched into him like scars, but his body just doesn’t have the mileage. Or the talent. Or the golem-chasing trauma, apparently.
Focus.
Find the tether.
Anchor.
Pull.
Whoosh.
The tether hurled him three metres sideways in a blur that almost looked intentional.
He almost feels proud of himself.
Then he looked around.
He was the only person here learning how to walk while everyone else seemed enrolled in the Xavier School for the Unreasonably Gifted.
A sword lit like a funeral pyre carves through the air just meters away, slicing through wind projectiles hurled by a silver-haired duellist. Aster’s gaze is yanked from his technique as flame clashes with air, their battle casting reflections of red and white across the training courtyard.
The fire cultivator moves like a blade himself—every step a threat, every swing a promise of ruin. The wind cultivator parries and dodges with barely a whisper of effort, feet gliding over the grass like he’s allergic to touch.
Aster blinks. “Okay, that’s just showing off.”
Another clash, this one ground-shaking. An earth cultivator brings down a hammer the size of a car engine, sending shards of rock hurtling at their opponent. The water cultivator—graceful, poised—raises a spear and turns the onslaught into a fine mist with one flick of her wrist. Her follow-up strike splits the air and sends her opponent flying, soaked and stunned.
It is art. It is power. It is maddening.
Compared to them, his Spirit typing feels like being the only person in a gunfight who’s brought a really moving poem.
He stifles a groan, watching the others sling lightning and stone, mist and flame like gods on recess. Here he is—Spirit typed. The only element he can summon is ‘desperation.’
The bell rings, the universal mercy-kill of class.
Two hours of effort. Two hours of trying to become something more. Two hours of spinning a staff in an attempt not to become the world’s first self-inflicted chiropractic case study. There are gains, sure—tiny postural improvements, a fraction more grace, a fraction less shame. But the distance between where he is and where everyone else stands?
Uncrossable.
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