Tyler came back to life in a flash of panic and desperation.

  His body jerked awake, the breaths coming quick on his lips as he tasted sweet air after brushing inches away from death.

  Holy shit, holy shit. Where am I? Where's the bird? Am I dying?

  The surge of thoughts came at a million miles per second, the emotions flooding back as he replayed the memories one by one. He needed to get back to the island. He needed to protect the tree. He needed to —

  A wave of pain crashed through him as he tried to get into a sitting position.

  Fuck.

  The agony shot through his swollen joints like a thousand tiny needles, the sharp, red-hot torment grating against his nerves in a horrendous bout of sensation. The inflammation was back, like it had never even left.

  Because of course it was.

  And what was worse was what he saw as he looked down at himself. His limbs were absolutely emaciated — his skin stretched pale and thin against his bones, his veins standing out garishly as they traced along his thin arms. All the muscle that he’d put on from his intense training on the island was just gone. As he brought a hand gingerly to his chest, he could feel the clear outline of each rib going down his torso.

  Tyler grimaced, taking in the cold gray room that he’d ended up in. He was in a bed. Surrounded by walls of decorative gray tiles, and with plastic blinds covering a tinted glass window across the room.

  Somehow, he was back in civilization. In some random office building, wearing what almost looked like a hospital gown. Suddenly, fear began to well up in his throat.

  He felt weak, not at all like the person who could leap from thirty-foot trees and fight off dozens of duneclaws at once.

  It was like all those months of training and cultivation had simply disappeared.

  The inflammation seemed to eat at him, like acid slowly corroding away at his strength in body and mind alike. This was too familiar. Far too familiar. Just like after the car crash, after that horrible moment where his entire life had gone to shit.

  And he didn’t even have any magical bananas to help him.

  He didn’t have much of anything, really. His old, grimy pajamas were gone. His weapons were gone. The pouch he kept on his waistband with all his collected trinkets was gone. And the Core of Protection…

  “God dammit,” he muttered.

  Of course, it was gone too. That connection that he felt with it was thin and frayed, so distant as to almost be invisible.

  “Why? Why does this always happen to me.”

  Of course, the moment he’d finally found some success. The moment he’d settled into his new life, the moment he’d been about to master the island. That was when the Storm had come, tearing it all away.

  And now he was left in the same old place as always — weak and broken, without any of the things that had previously empowered him.

  The Core of Protection had saved his life countless times. It was like a safety blanket for him, a guarantee that no matter what he dived into, he would have a last resort. And it was the only thing he had tracing back to the man who’d changed his life.

  And now it was gone.

  “Fuck!” he spat, slamming his palm against the wall —

  Crack.

  “... what?”

  His hand hurt. That wasn’t the surprising part — it had hurt even before he’d hammered the wall with it. What was surprising was that despite this being a weak hit from an awkward angle, fueled by frustration rather than any genuine desire to cause damage…

  The wall had broken.

  Right where his palm had been, there was now a five-fingered hole. The cracked decorative tiles slowly fell away, revealing the damaged drywall underneath.

  “Did I do that?”

  Tyler clenched his fists. They felt so weak, and yet he knew for a fact that he hadn’t been this strong before. If he’d put all his strength into it, with technique and a better angle, he could have probably done something like that. But without even trying?

  He Analyzed himself.

  Congratulations. You have advanced to Journeyman.

  “Journeyman,” he muttered.

  Tyler had struggled for weeks to figure out what the secret was to advancement. He hadn’t been able to figure it out, despite the countless hours of poring over the Ancestors’ Carvings and his own soul. But now…

  He’d done it.

  At the realization, it was as if someone had popped the growing balloon of worry and defeat inflating in his chest. He wasn’t back at square one. His time on the island hadn’t been some weird dream or vision.

  In fact, he was even stronger than before.

  He laughed, the whirlwind of emotions and life-or-death tension slowly bleeding from his mind. He was a Journeyman now — the same stage as a Reaman Warrior. And he could still advance even further. He could get so strong that even that fucking bird wouldn’t be able to do anything to him.

  He wondered what had triggered it.

  “Was it my fight with the bird? Going into the Storm again? Or… almost dying?”

  And now that he thought about it, while the inflammation was bad, it still had to be better than what he’d dealt with before his Awakening. And given just how mangled he remembered his body being before he blacked out, that was something he could be immensely thankful for.

  Advancement solves all issues. That was a Reaman proverb that he’d had spinning around in his head for a while now. He’d found that while it wasn’t quite all the way true, it certainly made a hell of a difference. Not to mention the sheer increase in power that Journeyman signified.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  He dove into his inner self, marveling at just how deep his core felt now. It wasn’t just the volume, but the density of his mana that was incomparable to any increase he’d gotten from the advancement steps within Novice. He settled into the Flowing Sands, slowly drawing this newfound power out into his body. It felt so strong now, ready to be used —

  His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps outside the door.

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  “Hello? Were you the source of that noise?” A cautious masculine voice sounded from outside the room.

  Oh shit.

  “Y-yeah! Sorry — one second!”

  Tyler forced himself out of bed, groaning as he nearly toppled over. It wasn’t just the inflammation — his body felt unwieldy, every motion taking him further than he was used to, overcorrections spawning more overcorrections as he struggled to find his balance.

  Hah, I might need a cane again.

  But with a bit more help from the Flowing Sands, he managed to stumble over to the door. He opened it, revealing a bland hallway illuminated by shards of magical light.

  “What were you doing?” A tall redheaded man asked as he surveyed Tyler with an expression of concern. The man was wearing a thick coat and a knife on his belt, and he winced as he looked down at Tyler’s emaciated limbs.

  Brandon Frie - Aspect of Wind

  A person. That’s the first other person I’ve seen in months. He also has an Aspect.

  “Sorry. I was just… uh.”

  There was so much he wanted to say. So much he wanted to ask. His voice felt weird after months of disuse.

  The man walked up to him, extending a hand. He had a subtle pressure around him, like a hyper-minimized version of what the bird and Savadiere had.

  “Must’ve been disorienting, waking up in some random room. But try to keep quiet around here, alright? This is our residential district, and we have other refugees recovering in some of the surrounding rooms.”

  “Right, right. Sorry, I’m still trying to —”

  Tyler stumbled as he tried to meet the handshake.

  As he attempted to right himself, he felt a pair of meaty hands grasp at his shoulders. “Shoot, my bad. You're injured, and you’ve been out cold for two weeks. I should have come over to you. I’m Brandon, by the way.”

  Brandon lifted him like he was a doll, setting him next to the bed once more.

  Tyler blinked in surprise. He supposed the strength of a Journeyman didn’t change the fact that you weren’t even a hundred pounds.

  But then the man pushed down on his shoulders to get him to sit, and he realized that he could barely feel the pressure. It was like he was faced with a gentle breeze, not the force of a dude almost a foot taller than him. He knew the guy wasn’t using anywhere near his full strength… but Tyler wasn’t even trying to keep standing.

  After a moment of stillness, Tyler purposefully sat down.

  Brandon patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t do anything too strenuous, alright? Trust me, I saw the state you were in right after we found you.”

  Tyler nodded, but internally, he was preparing to do something strenuous the moment he had the chance.

  Even though it hurt to move, he felt an urge to run, to jump, to punch through a tree and punt a duneclaw through the stratosphere. This change felt bigger than anything he’d ever seen before, and that little advancement gremlin in his head was shouting that he needed to test his limits, right now. But first, he found the question-asking part of his brain had finally righted itself.

  “Right. Of course. Uh, but can you tell me where I am? You’re actually the first person I’ve seen in months.”

  The guy nodded. “Ah. Yeah, that makes sense. We’ll get you all up to speed… but I think I should get someone else before we get into that.”

  He turned to walk down the hallway, but another redhead had already appeared in the doorway — the woman was short and wore a slight smirk, with a crossbow slung over her shoulder. The two looked similar enough that he wondered if they were siblings.

  Lisa Frie - Aspect of Blood

  “Lisa.”

  “Hey! How’s that guy doing? Is he —”

  Her expression froze as she glanced over to him, her mouth opening to form a big ‘O.’

  “He’s awake,” Brandon said dryly.

  “Oh.” She blinked once, then twice. “Oh shit! You survived. Heck yeah, dude!”

  She extended a hand for a high five, and Tyler awkwardly met it from his position on the bed.

  “I’m Lisa. Peak-Novice. Man, you really made it! You were almost dead out there — like, seriously minutes away. Holy shit, I’m kinda proud of myself. My magic is usually better at short-term stabilization than long-term healing.”

  “Ouch, yeah. I must have been in a pretty bad state.” Tyler winced. “Thanks for picking me up, though. It’s nice to meet you two — I’m Tyler.”

  He didn’t want to think about just how close he’d come to death against the bird. Maybe he had died, even? The memories all blended together at the end, like a giant whirlwind of pain and emotion.

  Then he realized what she’d said. Peak-Novice.

  She’s strong. At least, strong by his standards.

  And now that he was looking, he could see there was an uncommon amount of Resilience gathered around her — around both of them, really. That pressure around her was slightly stronger than Brandon’s, but not by much.

  He gulped.

  If she was a Peak-Novice, he could only imagine how powerful those birds had been.

  “Oh, here!” Lisa put her hand on his chest, and he felt something warm wash over him. “That should help a bit.”

  He breathed just a tad easier as his inflammation dimmed. It felt similar to the healing from the bananas, but while that had been a wave of rushing relief, this was more like a total-body hot compress. He could feel her magic spooling through his veins, kneading slightly at his muscles. It was a minor effect, but just the fact that it had happened was blowing his mind.

  I’m with other people again. Other people with magic.

  The thought felt so strange. It was like he’d woken up from a dream, only to find that it hadn’t been a dream at all.

  Tyler opened his mouth to thank her, but he paused as he saw her staring intensely at his chest.

  “Man, this is so weird. I can sense you’re hurt, but your blood is healthy. Did you take any steroids or something after we dropped you off? Two weeks ago, it was all like Help! I’m on the verge of death and if you don’t give me all of your magic this instant I’ll just stop flowing to his brain. But now… phew! I would not wanna be a virus trying to attack you.”

  Tyler felt a grin creep onto his face. “That’s good to know.”

  And that was a good point, actually. Going from washing his hands a dozen times a day to being stuck inside a cave and eating alien bug meat felt like a great way to get sick, but he’d felt perfectly fine ever since he’d arrived on the island. Was that the Resilience as well?

  Brandon rolled his eyes from beside them. “Anyways, now that you’ve met my dumbass sister —”

  “Hey!”

  “— we’re from the 21st Branch of the Stormchasers, out on the southern side of our organization’s territory. We found you unconscious in a pile of debris not too far from here.”

  “Stormchasers,” Tyler muttered. “That wouldn’t be the Dimensional Storm that you’re chasing, would it?”

  Lisa giggled, and Brandon gave a low snort as the siblings exchanged looks.

  She walked past Tyler, moving to the window and yanking the blinds up. “See for yourself.”

  Tyler gulped. “Holy shit.”

  It was as if someone had taken the prototypical city and carved off the top to make it a perfect waffle texture. Skyscrapers upon skyscrapers lined the horizon in neat straight lines, connected with bridges so densely packed between them that they almost formed a mesh. And scattered among them were the eye-catching rooftops of foreign structures with wholly different architecture, from man-sized crystalline bulbs lined with spikes to enormous temples that strongly reminded him of Ancient Greece.

  Tyler was suddenly reminded that the cave he had spent all his time in until now was from an alien world.

  Were any of these structures from Korshaan, he wondered? What about that world where the seagulls came from? And what of the peoples who built these ruins?

  To his right was an enormous tangle of vines wrapped around the neighboring building, and to his left what looked to be a fusion between a medieval tower and a modern luxury hotel. Something that looked like a mountain loomed in the distance, spilling water from a ginormous waterfall that originated from who-knows-where.

  And as he went up to the window and looked down, he saw the churning of dark violet waves lapping against the bottoms of the buildings dozens of feet below them.

  He’d seen the skyscrapers under the water next to the island, but he hadn’t realized that they led to this.

  A flash of light burst out in the distance, and he saw something blue and transparent form in mid-air, just in time to block a massive fireball shooting towards their building. The attack burst against the barrier with a sharp crack, expanding outwards into a rain of embers that slowly drifted downwards into the chaotic sea.

  “Wow…” Tyler gasped. “What the fuck?”

  Brandon chuckled behind him. “So, any questions?”