“Please observe the first test,” Elder Merrick spoke, advancing on me with the knife.

  “Cael, I’d ask you to stand,” he continued.

  I didn’t wanna stand. I was terrified. Did he mean to stab me with that thing?

  “Wait.”

  It was the woman on the floating sword who’d spoken. With a short leap, she descended from her sword and cleared ten feet, taking a position between me and Elder Merrick, her dress robes swaying.

  “Master Cailong, have I offended you?” the elder asked, immediately dropping to his knees as she looked over him.

  “You’re scaring him,” she slowly said, before plucking the blade from his hand and extinguishing it. “You seem to have concluded he is a monster before even beginning to run your tests.”

  She said the word as if she didn’t believe in them. The thought that she might be less barbaric than the rest of these guys calmed me a little. She also happened to look kind, not to mention captivating.

  “Stand,” she said to me, motioning with a finger.

  I did as I was told. I couldn’t understand it, I just felt safe following her instructions.

  She immediately took the silver blade and plunged it into my stomach.

  I coughed blood. I wheezed. I felt betrayal stinging in my abdomen.

  Why had I thought I could trust her?!

  I was about to double over spasming when the blade was retracted, and the hole in my stomach had already been patched by the soft touch of her hand.

  It was like she’d never stabbed me. Like I’d imagined the whole thing. Not only that, but my body felt soothed. Not to the point of my past injuries fading, but enough that I didn’t feel like I might keel over anymore.

  “There,” she said, eyes on me, their blue gentle and calming like the sea. “That’s the hard part out of the way. Are you alright?”

  I… slowly nodded. My heart was still thumping, but any residual pain I felt was leaving already, and despite how spooked I felt, I knew I was okay. Everyone was staring between me and Master Cailong in awe.

  “See? Not a warebeast. My technique wouldn’t heal the wound otherwise.”

  “Th-that… that only eliminates some types,” Elder Merrick insisted.

  “You wish me to burn him too? Fine.”

  She placed a hand on my wrist. Held it steady.

  “How warm does that feel, Cael?”

  Barely warm at all. Her hand was soft and her body heat was regular. And then… No. Suddenly it wasn’t.

  It was hot. It was hot!

  I tried to pull my hand away, but she held me steady. After the temperature had risen to that of coffee being spilt on me, she finally let me go, allowing me to shake my wrist and attempt to cool it off.

  I’d had half a mind to run into the nearby lake and shove my hand inside, but a couple of seconds after she’d let go of me, the pain was already fading.

  “Satisfied?” she asked the elder with a smile. “He’d surely be in agony right now if what you believed was true.”

  “It eliminates some possibilities,” the elder admitted. “Thank you for assisting me with my tests.”

  “Of course,” Cailong smiled, her eyes placid. “You wish to bring out the salts and garlic next?”

  The elder nodded from his kneeling position, and another elder clapped his hands twice. Two initiates ran off in the direction of a nearby building, then quickly returned with a small cut of meat, a fillet of beef perhaps, which seemed to have been heavily seasoned with salts, garlic, and herbs.

  It… honestly smelled pretty good. When it was placed in front of me without utensils, I looked between Cailong and Merrick in nervous anticipation.

  “Eat some,” she insisted, flicking her fingers and slicing the steak into pieces.

  She took a bite herself, as if to show that it wasn’t poisoned. It honestly did relax me a little.

  I ate a small morsel. Waited for something terrible to happen.

  …tasty. I chewed and swallowed my bite without any trouble, and even considered having another.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “There. Not a plant spirit, not a night creature, and not a ghostly possession. Satisfied?”

  “Shouldn’t he eat all of it, just so we’re sure?” one of the Voss clansman spoke up.

  Cailong looked to him with a blank expression, then at me, a smile upon her face. “How about it, Cael? You hungry?”

  Honestly, yes. Normally I’d be too nervous to eat, but after she’d given me permission, I felt pretty content to wolf it down. Plus, I knew there was a good chance that me doing so might help to appease some of the people watching over me, so I made sure to chew all of my food thoroughly and make it clear I wasn’t having any trouble keeping it down.

  “What’s next?” Cailong asked, seeming faintly amused by this whole ordeal. “Consecrated water? Pressing a warding talisman against him? Surrounding him with mirrors and seeing if he looks too pointy in their reflections?”

  “Master Cailong, we would ask that you perform a spiritual examination on the boy, to ensure that his spirit has not been supplanted or placed under another’s control, or that his body has not been replaced.”

  “Really, Merrick?” Cailong asked, eyebrow arched. “You believe that a changeling has kidnapped Cael Soulgrave and replaced him with a clone?”

  “We wish to eliminate all possibilities, guildmaster.”

  Cailong rolled her eyes. She groaned. “Fine. This takes a toll on me, you know.”

  “Not like any of you have to do it,” she muttered, drawing closer to me and then sitting down beside me, cross-legged.

  She placed her hands upon each of my temples for a moment. She breathed in deeply.

  “This will feel weird, just a heads up.”

  That was all the warning I got before I felt a new consciousness invade my brain.

  I had to close my eyes just to stop myself from falling back from the immediate dizziness I felt. It was like my soul was pressing against another person’s, and that person was rooting around inside my very essence trying to check and grab at everything they possibly could.

  When I thought I’d finally gotten used to the sensation, it only intensified. I felt as if the proverbial floorboards of my subconscious were being peeled back and looked under. My entire mind was alight with anxiety. What could I do to protect my innermost thoughts, or the truth of my transmigration? Could I put up a barrier of some kind?

  Then, at once, I heard a voice within my brain. The voice was that of Cailong, but it sounded much sharper than before. It resonated through my entire body.

  “Try not to react,” she said, projected into my brain. “I know what you are.”

  She withdrew a couple of layers from my mind. I felt the space to breathe. The space to think.

  “You’re fascinating… I’ve only met two others like you. Are your memories from your past life still accessible for you?”

  I froze up. I wasn’t supposed to react. Was it really okay to tell her anything?

  My life was in the balance here. She’d discovered me, and she could just as easily tell the other council members everything and likely have me killed in the process.

  I may as well be honest. She didn’t seem as if she was going to hurt me.

  “I… yes, I can remember.”

  Speaking with a mental link felt insane. It was like I could hear my own voice reverberating in my skull, nothing like my inner thoughts.

  “That’s wonderful. I’m going to come find you later. You clearly need help accessing your mana. Besides, I’m sure I can learn so much from you…”

  All at once, then, she retracted her consciousness from me. It was like having an ice pick pulled out of my brain and my core all at the same time. I felt the lack of warmth for a full minute after.

  “Master Cailong, may I ask what happened?” another elder spoke, rising from his chair only to bow before her.

  “Nothing that exciting,” Cailong lied.

  “You were gone such a long time, though, master. You looked rather strained at one point.”

  “I decided to watch the fight between Cael and Damian,” Cailong said, a smile playing on her lips. “I wished to see what had gotten everyone here so worked up and paranoid, so I searched through Cael’s recent memories…”

  “And?” Elder Merrick asked. “What did you find?”

  “That Cael had been eating the meat of spirit beasts for days,” Cailong continued. “It’s likely that is the result of his increase in strength.”

  “He has such a constitution at his level?” Elder Merrick gasped, as if he’d never even considered the notion. “Most Ascendants don’t dare dine on spirit beasts until they’re at least Tier 3!”

  “Cael Soulgrave has an advanced poison resistance for his age, built in his childhood for the sake of avoiding assassinations.” Cailong continued.

  That… was actually true. She was spinning the truth here, but just how much did she know about me, or how much had she been able to glean about me from the short time she was in my head?

  I mean, I was hardly complaining. The woman was saving my skin, but still…

  “Still, does the consumption of weaker spirit beasts truly account for this vast of a jump in power?”

  “For an early Tier 1, it might,” Elder Merrick admitted. “Not many at that level are able to keep beast meat down.”

  “It’s true,” I added, trying to feed into the lie. “I think I ate too much the night I got injured, though. I felt like I could barely move after eating that boar.”

  “We should see if the Regis girl corroborates these events,” another councilman stated. “She accompanied him the night he was injured.”

  “I can ask her,” Cailong smiled, before bowing to me. “Pardon the rough proceedings, Cael. I hope the council are easy on you for the remainder of this meeting.”

  “See you again soon,” her voice sounded in my mind, just before she bid her farewells and flew away, perched on her sword once more.

  Jeez, she’d really come through for me. I didn’t know who she was, but I needed to thank her when we next met.

  That and hope she didn’t have some nefarious reason for sparing me. I needed a break from vicious assholes.

  “Now, there are only two more matters for us to settle,” Elder Merrick stated, his voice having immediately regained its presence. “The matter of your continued feud with the Voss family, and the matter of your outstanding debt to our guild, which is sizable.”

  Shit, I owed these guys money too? Cael hadn’t even realised that!