I could feel my bones melting and regrowing. I felt all of it. I understood why my god would tell me to do this now, and I hated him for it.

  This was pain I had never experienced in either life. I had known pain that struck the soul before, pain so absolute it tore consciousness away entirely, leaving nothing but darkness. This was different. Lamb was kneeling over me, actively pouring divine magic into my body to keep me whole, and it still hurt so much that I hovered at the edge of passing out. I never quite crossed it. That was the cruelty of it. The pain rode a razor-thin line just below unconsciousness, perfectly measured. It was never enough to let me escape, never enough to knock me out. I stayed awake just enough to feel all of it, every second stretching thin and endless. I wished I could pass out. I wished, briefly and without shame, that I could die. And Lamb made sure I did neither.

  I kept vomiting. Other horrible bodily functions followed, things I will not put into words. Through all of it, Lamb stayed over me, steady hands, steady voice, telling me it would pass even as it very clearly got worse.

  The pain kept climbing until my breathing broke. For a moment, I couldn't breathe at all. My chest locked up, and all that came out of me was a rasping, gasping edge of sound. Then, slowly, painfully, my lungs caught again. Breath returned in shallow pulls, then deeper ones, until it became something close to normal.

  Lamb’s hands were coated in the black ooze coming out of me. It smeared her sleeves, her skin, the floor beneath us. The room must have reeked. Not just from me, but from the other trainees laid out on nearby cots, their bodies going through a similar process, theirs finished or finishing, mine still actively tearing me apart.

  Lamb did not so much as flinch at the smell.

  I switched my sight back toward my magical sight, hoping it would distract me. It should have been instant.

  Between my normal vision and mana sight, I rotated through that third, unknown version of sight again, and I lingered there before the switch finished. I saw things I did not understand.

  Something was pushing the ooze out of my body. I could see it in tiny motions, in the way my own flesh worked against it. Whatever I was looking at, my body was forcing the black filth out through my pores.

  The ooze fought back.

  It tried to cling and bind itself to me, and it tried to pull itself inward again. That was why it was so sticky. It did not want to leave.

  My pores looked alive in that third sight, and the ooze looked alive too. It was truly fucking awful. It was also fascinating enough to distract me from the pain for a few precious seconds.

  Then I noticed my hands.

  The circuits I had carved into them were glowing with a light I could not describe. Mana, in wizard sight, was octarine, a greenish-orange, kitty-odorous color that made my eyes ache if I stared too long. This was different. This was almost golden-blue with a faint tinge of purple, like the opposite of octarine. It wrapped around what I could only call my cells, even though I did not know what I was really seeing.

  Maybe I was hallucinating from the stench and the pain. Maybe this was real.

  Lamb noticed my eyes while I stared at my hands.

  “What are you doing?” Lamb asked, her tone clinical as her eyes flicked from my face to my hands, assessing rather than accusing.

  “I’m trying to figure out what I’m seeing,” I said.

  “What are you seeing?” Lamb pressed, leaning closer, trying to determine whether I was describing an observation or losing coherence.

  “I don’t know how to describe it,” I said. “It looks like the ooze is trying to bind itself back into me, and my body is rejecting it. Something in me is rejecting it.”

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  Lamb’s gaze sharpened as she followed my line of sight. “How are you seeing that?”

  “My eyes are a little messed up,” I said. “I don’t know if I’m seeing this or if I’m hallucinating.”

  She nodded once, apparently filing the concern away for later, and kept pouring divine magic into me without breaking rhythm.

  I couldn't see the mana she was using anymore, not while that third sight was hovering at the edges, but I could feel it. I knew it was there.

  I'd done so many stupid things in such a short period of time. I wanted this to be the last of it for a while. I knew it wouldn't be. For the moment, I was just grateful that I no longer smelled like death.

  That small mercy mattered more than it should have.

  Lamb leaned back just enough to really look at my face. “Who did that to your eyes?”

  I hesitated.

  Her expression tightened as she followed the implications. “Were they trying to get you to see something? To do something for them?” She exhaled slowly. “It is sad that someone would do this to a child. I don't believe your father would've allowed it. These marks look clean. Now that I know who your father is, this troubles me. When would this have been done?”

  “I did it to myself,” I said.

  “Yourself?” Lamb repeated, genuine shock breaking through her professional mask.

  “Yes,” I said quietly.

  “How did you even know how to do this?” Lamb asked.

  “I was an ancient wizard,” I said.

  Her eyes sharpened again, disbelief and calculation mixing. “An ancient wizard, and you would do this to yourself?”

  “This body has no mana,” I said. “I didn't see a problem with it.”

  She studied me as my shaking finally eased, carefully throttling back the flow of divine magic as if testing whether I would hold together without it. “You understand what those marks will do to your future.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I chose them because I needed them.”

  She shook her head slightly, decision already made. “Whatever you think you know, you do not. I will be adding this to my report, so you are aware.”

  “I really don't care what you put in your report,” I said. “I do thank you for not letting me go through that alone.”

  She straightened, slipping fully back into authority. “I need to separate you from the patient,” Lamb said. “You are an aggravating child. But the patient in front of me is just a child.”

  She paused at the door, one hand already on the frame. “Next time, plan,” she said. “If you are going to finish this, take the rest at once.” Taking the remaining percentage will force a full upgrade. It will not be as debilitating as this.” She gestured to the other trainees on the cots. “And now I am going to burn my clothes and take far too many baths. This will never come out.”

  She looked back once. “You are welcome.”

  She left, her demeanor shifting from healer to someone who clearly did not approve of my decisions.

  I had hoped we had made progress. Maybe we had. But it was clear we were never going to be friends in this life.

  After Lamb made me rest, the rest of the year quietly lost its edge. The sharp excitement of training dulled into routine, and days began to blur together in a way that felt almost peaceful.

  There was a moment with my parents that I knew was coming the instant they saw my eyes. They were upset, more hurt than angry, that I had done something so permanent without telling them. We argued. We talked. In the end, they forgave me, because that is what parents do when their child makes a mistake they cannot undo. I promised them that I would not undo what I had done or stop pursuing the path I had chosen. I knew it was not the path they would have picked for me, but I also knew I loved them deeply. There was friction between us now, yes, but there was love first, and always.

  I didn’t see Rowan again after she left the healer’s guild. She was assigned to a different dungeon, for what I guessed was her own protection, and no one told me where she had gone. It was disappointing, but I understood. That was how this life worked.

  We said goodbye to Myrda. Randall took his leave as well. Greta took the magic class with us to a new guild hall in a copper zone near the western wall, where trainees from the other forts joined us. It was all copper-ranked adventurers. We had massive bunkhouses and very little in the way of personal training. There was no hall manager like Myrda. Staff rotated in and out. It was run more like a city guildhall, than Myrda’s hall.

  Greta still saw us once a week, but no longer as a daily instructor. She rotated with other staff, watching from a distance and making sure the regions we were sent into would not kill us outright.

  Were told that copper abilities didn’t arrive with fanfare, and for most people, that was true. For most of my classmates, they emerged slowly, as functions of the body they did not yet understand. You learned what you could do by trying things that made no sense.

  Winnie, of course, was the first to figure hers out. She could grow larger when she wanted to. Even at copper, it was impressive. One day she would be a dwarven giant.

  Meka, Winnie, and I adventured together, taking quests and gathering what we could. I spent much of my free time running the nearby tin zones. I found two more tin mini bosses that year. Maybe not next year, but soon enough, I would stand alongside my class as a full copper. The thought excited me.

  I stuck to my regimen every day I could. By the end of the year, I was up to ten repetitions on all of my exercises. My form was closer to where I wanted it to be. Progress was slow, but it was real.