The harsh sunlight filtering through the apartment window did little to dispel the lingering strangeness Olt felt. He sat slumped on the edge of the worn, orange couch, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. The acrid taste of bile was still sharp on his tongue. The nausea had passed, leaving behind a bone-deep exhaustion and a trembling uncertainty.

  Mariah stood a few feet away, near the cluttered coffee table. She had discarded the bucket. Her expression was a mixture of clinical observation and cautious concern. The remnants of the potent Indigo aroma still clung faintly to the air.

  "Alright, Olt," Mariah began, her voice calm and instructional, though her eyes held an undeniable spark of curiosity. "Let's see what, if anything, happened. Go ahead, try to summon the Aether."

  Olt looked up at her, his face pale. The memory of the terrifying trip – Nero, Salazar, the impossible landscapes – was still vivid. It was a nightmare clinging to the edges of his waking mind.

  "Now?" he asked, his voice rough. "Mariah, I… I'm wiped out. And after that experience…"

  "I know," she said, her tone softening slightly. "But it's better to try now, while the effects… might still be present. Just focus. See if you can feel anything."

  He hesitated, glancing down at his hands resting limply in his lap. The idea of willingly trying to access that power, after the horror it had seemingly unleashed in his mind, felt daunting. But he also felt a desperate need for answers, and for some understanding of what was happening to him. He nodded slowly.

  "Okay. Okay, I'll try."

  Taking a deep, steadying breath that did little to calm the frantic rhythm of his heart, Olt closed his eyes. He tried to push away the lingering images of the Aether realm, focusing instead on the quiet hum of the city outside, and the feeling of the worn couch beneath him. He extended his hands slightly, palms facing upwards. He willed something to happen, concentrating on the memory of the power surging through him during the fight. He tried to focus on that strange, instinctive energy. He pushed, searching for that internal spark Mariah had described.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a faint warmth began to build. It wasn’t throughout his body, but localized, specific. It intensified, becoming a cool, tingling energy that pulsed beneath the skin.

  Olt opened his eyes.

  He stared down at his hands in stunned silence. His right hand looked perfectly normal, resting against the dark fabric of his trousers. But his left hand was bathed in a soft, ethereal blue light. The glow emanated from within, outlining the bones and veins beneath the skin. It pulsed gently with an unnatural energy.

  "Mariah…" he breathed, lifting his glowing hand, turning it over, and examining it with a mixture of awe. "It's… look."

  Mariah stepped closer, her professional calm momentarily replaced by wide-eyed surprise. She leaned in, as she focused intently on his left hand. She ignored the right completely.

  "That's… strange. Very strange."

  She looked up at him, her dark eyes searching his.

  "It's only your left hand? Can you feel it anywhere else? In your chest? Your legs?"

  Olt concentrated again, turning his awareness inward, trying to sense the energy flow. He shook his head.

  "No, just here."

  He flexed the fingers of his glowing hand. The movement felt normal, yet charged with this alien energy.

  "It's… weird. "It's like a pressure. It builds up, but also fades. Like I only have a little bit of time with it."

  He looked back at Mariah, trying to explain.

  "It's not like a timer I can see, but… I can feel it… running out."

  Even as he spoke the words, he could feel the sensation diminishing. The pressure lessened, the cool tingling subsided. The blue glow surrounding his left hand grew dimmer, and then, like a snuffed candle flame, vanished completely.

  He stared at his hand, now looking perfectly ordinary again, flexing his fingers. The power was gone as quickly as it had appeared. He looked up at Mariah, bewilderment on his face.

  "It's gone."

  Mariah nodded slowly, her eyes still fixed on Olt's now-normal hand. Then, she lifted to meet his confused look. The initial shock on her face was replaced by a thoughtful, almost clinical assessment.

  "That's the instinct," she confirmed, her voice regaining its professional composure. "Users just know. That feeling of it fading, the sense of a limit… that's part of it, even if yours is… localized like this."

  She took a step back, crossing her arms as she began to explain, pacing slightly in the cluttered living room.

  "It's how we manage the power. That’s how we know our limits, gauge how much energy we have left, how much resilience we can draw on, and even how much a specific action or taking a hit will cost us."

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  Mariah paused, searching for the right words.

  "Think of it like… like a constant internal calculation. You don't see numbers floating in the air, but you perceive them. You'll feel a countdown for how long you can maintain the Aether state. That’s what we call the Reserve Timer. You'll sense your overall energy, your durability, as a percentage. Think of it like points…Resilience Points, or RP. And when the Aether shuts down, either because the timer runs out or your RP drops too low, you'll feel another timer start. That is the Cooldown, telling you how long until you can access it again."

  She stopped pacing and looked directly at Olt, emphasizing her next point.

  "It's strictly about you, though. Your own body, your own power. You can't 'read' someone else's numbers. It's self-awareness, not some kind of power scanner. You figure out opponents by seeing how much damage they do to your resilience, by watching how bright their Aether glows, by learning their patterns."

  Mariah gestured towards his hand again.

  "It's also how we track progress in training. You'll start to feel your strength improve, maybe sense your resilience percentage increase slightly over time, or your cooldown period shorten. It's all instinctive data."

  She sighed, running a hand through her hair. The academic returned to her tone.

  "Physicists theorize that because the universe functions mathematically, Aether users can actually perceive or process that underlying data directly. It’s another one of the Aether's mysteries, just like why we can't remember the trip."

  She fell silent, letting the complex information settle over Olt. He sat there, staring blankly ahead, trying to reconcile the terrifying experience of the trip with this sudden influx of quantitative self-perception. It was another layer of strangeness.

  Mariah nodded slowly, processing the implications of Olt's limited, yet instinctively understood, power. The mechanics were fascinating, almost textbook, yet the manifestation was entirely wrong. The contradiction sparked a thought, connecting his anomaly to the Aether's greatest mystery.

  "Memory loss…" she murmured, almost to herself. "That's always been a given. We just accept it. But… maybe…"

  She looked back at Olt with a sudden realization.

  "Maybe your unusual awakening means you bypassed that somehow." She leaned forward slightly.

  "Olt, do you remember anything from your trip? Anything at all?"

  Olt flinched, the question hitting a raw nerve. The terrifying images, the chilling voice, and the feeling of utter helplessness. It all flooded back. He hesitated, looking down at his hands, then back up at Mariah. His eyes were clouded with the lingering horror.

  "Yeah, I remember."

  He shuddered involuntarily, wrapping his arms around himself despite the warmth of the room.

  "It wasn't good. It was bad."

  Mariah leaned forward, the scientist in her momentarily overriding her concern.

  "What was it? What did you see?"

  There was an undeniable excitement beneath her worried tone.

  Olt swallowed hard, the effort visible in the tightening of his throat. He looked pale, shaken, and still physically recovering. The need to share, however, made him struggle with the instinct to bury the horror. He searched for the words, his eyes darting around the cluttered room as if seeking escape.

  "It was that thing again," he finally managed. "The creature from before."

  He looked at Mariah.

  "It said it was attached to me. It said…things like it are attached to every user."

  He paused, the concept settling upon him.

  "They’re egregore."

  He let out a shaky breath, and a humorless, dark chuckle escaped his lips.

  "Every user has one. Mine turned out to be a damn monster."

  He looked away, the casual joke falling flat against the backdrop of genuine fear.

  Mariah stared at him, the pieces clicking into place with clarity.

  "A monster…" she repeated softly, her mind racing. "That’s… intense."

  Her eyes widened as the implication struck her. "Wait… is that why no one remembers their trip? Is it like some form of disassociation? Trauma? Your mind blocking out something horrible?"

  She looked directly at Olt, her earlier excitement replaced by deep concern.

  "Is that what it felt like? Traumatic?"

  Olt shook his head. He did so slowly.

  "No, I don't think so. Not just trauma."

  He looked past Mariah, unfocused, as if seeing the other realm superimposed over the cluttered apartment.

  "Because I saw another one. Not just the monster."

  His voice softened.

  "It was… different. Beautiful, peaceful, almost a paradise. Where it lived, I mean. Compared to that thing's place, this other one lived in a paradise."

  He tried to make sense of the contradiction.

  "I saw two of them. There was a monster and a cowboy in a green paradise. How can memory loss just be about trauma, if there's both?"

  Mariah's breath caught. The clinical concern vanished, replaced by something else entirely. It was a feverish, scientific curiosity. Her eyes widened, her posture shifting from cautious observation to eager engagement.

  "Wait… paradise? You saw paradise? And another one? A different egregore?"

  The implications hit her like a jolt of pure adrenaline.

  "Olt, this is incredible!"

  She almost bounced off her feet, forgetting the gravity of his recent ordeal in the face of this potential breakthrough.

  "You remember! You actually remember your trip!"

  She gestured emphatically, the scientist in her taking over completely.

  "Tell me everything! Everything you saw, everything you felt! Start from the beginning! Don't leave out a single detail!"

  Olt recoiled slightly, taken aback by her sudden, almost manic enthusiasm. The raw terror of his experience was still fresh, and her excitement felt jarring, and insensitive. A frown touched his lips.

  "Mariah, I almost died…twice. And I saw things… things I can't even…"

  Mariah stopped abruptly, seeing the look of hurt on his face. The scientific fervor instantly cooled, replaced by a flush of embarrassment and genuine remorse.

  "Olt, I'm sorry," she said quickly, her hand reaching out tentatively before dropping back to her side. "You're right. That was wrong of me. I just… This is huge. If you remember, it changes everything we thought we knew. I just want to understand. So I can help you understand. Help you deal with… whatever this is."

  Olt looked at her, seeing the sincerity beneath the earlier outburst. He sighed, running a hand over his face. He was exhausted, terrified, confused, but he also knew Mariah was right. He needed to understand this, and she was perhaps the only person who could help him make sense of it. He took a deep, shaky breath, as he prepared himself to share the bizarre and terrifying journey he had just endured.