Two weeks of classes dulls the constant panic into something Aster almost mistakes for hope. He’s still behind—still fumbling through the insane marriage of capitalism and spiritual cannibalism this world calls normal—but the gaps in his knowledge feel less like bottomless chasms and more like potholes. He can almost imagine catching up. Maybe even thriving.

  He sits cross-legged in the attic, crucible humming in front of him, the astral material slowly dissolving into its two distinct parts. Angry Red Mist roils like a miniature storm cloud as the condensed Aether gas pools inside the crucible’s glass dome, Earth-heavy and humming with potential. Beneath that, what Aster at first thought was leftover ash had slowly become painfully bright to his spirit sense as he continued refining more Aether types and opened more of his gates. Later he learnt it wasn’t just ash, but a jumbled lattice of the thing’s lingering intent—slow, embryonic twitching that would slowly regrow a consciousness if left to its own devices on the Astral Cradle.

  He quickly uses his will to scatter the lattice so it doesn’t form an astral rat or possum inside the house's security boundary Matter had set up.

  Is that likely to happen? He isn’t ready to be made another joke for his lack of understanding, so he doesn’t think he’ll find out unless he looks into it for himself.

  Having dealt with the ash, he now focuses on the Mist.

  He’s been using a technique Yani gave him over the one they taught in class. It increases the technical parts but helps with the cost per refinement, even allowing him to capture and store the Elemental Aether instead of it being burnt away by the simpler but more wasteful process. He had to maintain tight control over the heat and spiritual pressure to break the Astral Material into vapor, then carefully sift through it with his will to filter the parts into their individual elemental hues.

  After storing what he doesn’t need in a special glass vial, he inspects the gaseous globe, looking like a miniature version of a red Venus.

  The gas swirls lazily, dense with ambient Spirit Earth Aether. Steady. Calm. Stable. Aster leaves this gate for last. After opening his Sacral Gate, he quickly finds out that the gates aren’t as simple as he first thought. You’re either in resonance with the gate or at dissonance. The Root Gate deals with emotions of financial stability, security, and trust—everything Aster is not. Which makes this one especially tricky.

  He exhales through his nose. His mind reaches down, bypassing his more comfortable channels—Heart, Solar Plexus, Sacral—and hovers at the base of his spine.

  The Root Gate.

  The final one left.

  The one that stays clenched tighter than his bank account.

  He already hates it.

  Fine. If the gate demands stability, he’ll fake it.

  Stand up straight with your shoulders back.

  The phrase floats up from some half-remembered self-help book Aster was handed by someone who looked at his life and decided they knew better than him what was wrong with it. He got halfway through before realizing it’s basically fortune cookies for guys who think therapy is a communist plot, a leaflet as long as the Bible, boiled down to the simple idea that posture cures existential rot.

  He’s too jaded to fall for it back then, but maybe he can fake it now. Chin up, chest out, spine in soldier’s formation. If the Root Gate wants a man who has his life together, he’ll wear that illusion like a pressed suit with the bed made.

  [?? You can’t fake it, sweetheart. Your Astral Vessel isn’t your battered future spouse you can gaslight into thinking you’re all there. It knows when you’re locked up tighter than a nun at a wine mixer. You gotta be open. And I mean all the way open, like a bisexual partner suddenly in an open relationship. Unashamed. Hungry.]

  Aster grits his teeth. “Not listening.”

  The Root Gate pulses in his awareness—hard, red, and resentful. He isn’t sure if it’s resisting because he isn’t aligned with the ideals of Security and Foundation… or if it simply shares his opinion about being touched.

  If you don’t feel it, fake it, he thinks, as he starts unspooling a tendril of Spirit Earth Mist from the miniature ball of gas, guiding it to the gate like he did with the others.

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  The blockage stays unmoving.

  Aster continues to force the mist with his will harder, having as much success as if he were trying to shift a rusted lock using only sarcasm and trauma.

  [?? I’m telling you. She’s as dry as sandpaper for you.]

  He ignores him, focusing on the mantra. Stand up straight with your shoulders back. Feel the authority. Project competence. Dominate the room, even if the room is your own damn spine.

  This time, the gate doesn’t just resist; it judges him—like a grad student being negged by a mechanic. Like it knows posturing is just insecurity in drag. Like it knows he just longs to be held but is too repressed to understand it.

  Thoughts surge up like bile: bounced rent. School debt. The number of times he asked someone to “spot him” and never paid them back. The feeling of being one unpaid invoice away from oblivion. The crawling anxiety that no matter how far he runs, he’ll never outrun the version of himself who’s only ever been a liability to others.

  The gate recoils as if it can taste his self-loathing and spits it back in denial. You have no claim here. You’ve never been secure.

  [?? See? Told you. Posture porn isn’t a personality.]

  Is it wrong? He’s never had safety. Never even seen it as a possibility. Maybe security is just another lie people tell themselves to sleep better at night. He even wonders if he’s ever felt love before.

  The voice comes then. Not Blenkinsop’s smug drawl, but something that feels more real than the body he sits in. Either his soul pinging him behind the simulation or his fundamental beliefs over reality side-swiping the bullshit framework he came up with to survive before realizing the Astral Plane exists.

  NO!

  The word detonates through him.

  He sees his life again, only this time not from his own eyes. The reel of failures, humiliation, and bone-deep hopelessness rewinds, but the lens shifts. He isn’t experiencing it through his eyes, but seems to be looking down at himself.

  There he is, his younger self, gaunt, tired, clutching the frayed ends of hope like it might burn him. Crying silently under blankets too thin to keep out the winter air. Trying to be an adult in a world that isn’t built for him. And for the first time, Aster sees him not as a failure, not as the idiot who “should’ve done better,” but as a child who’s been hurting.

  The wyrm’s curse. The parasite nestled in his core that sabotages every attempt at stability, not bad luck or weakness, but a deliberate infection. A slow poison that warps his way of life so far it changes his internal clock, making him think this is normal.

  But it isn’t, and it isn’t failure. Not weakness. A curse. Something that has been done to him.

  The shame that festers for years wavers in the light of that truth. His younger self looks up at him—eyes red, exhausted—and Aster, for the first time, doesn’t look away.

  He steps forward and pulls that boy into his arms. No speeches. No conditions. Just the weight of his own body holding what he had been, saying without words: It wasn’t you.

  Something deep in the Root Gate shifts. Not from force, not from defiance, but from the quiet knowledge that comes with forgiveness and acceptance.

  Teary-eyed and jaw set, he tries again, spooling another Aether thread from the gas globe.

  He tightens his diaphragm, locks his posture, and tries to embody the feeling of being stable. That the ground beneath him will never shift. That the world isn’t a benevolent force waiting for him to slip.

  And slowly, surprisingly, the Root Gate begins to relent.

  The Earth Aether seems to finally bypass the resistance as it begins to trickle through, thick and particulate like nutrient-rich fog. He feels it as pressure building in his pelvic floor, gravity turned inward. The Spirit Earth Aether dissolves the blockage, not in a rush, but a steady pour, like water soaking deep into roots after a drought. The mist breaks the blockage down, dissolving channels through it to reach the other side. The pressure reaches its peak…

  …before it suddenly gives way with a pop as a channel reaches the other side—not wide, but just enough. Enough to taste Earth Aether sliding inside, slow and gritty, like wet clay being drawn through silk.

  The sensation of the Earth Gate opening feels strange. Not sharp, but deep. Low. Like if his point of gravity shifted from holding him to the earth, to him holding himself to it.

  His awareness dims at the edges as his body eagerly channels this new energy alongside the other Spirit Hues as it joins the energy circuit perpetually circulating Aether throughout his vessel.

  [?? Penetration successful! Estimated Root Gate dilation: 2.4%]

  [?? You are now marginally more emotionally secure over your financial place in the world.]

  [?? Also, congratulations on losing your shame of self. No other red pill grifter will ever have a hold on you.]

  Aster lets his head drop forward onto his knees with a groan.

  “Never,” he mutters, “ever tell anyone I tried to open my Root Gate while quoting a self-help book!”

  [?? Too late. I’ve already updated your dating profile.]

  “Blenkinsop, I will uninstall your soul.”

  [?? That’s what she said to her dating app after seeing you quote Incel Ghandi on your profile.]

  Aster chokes on a laugh.

  He feels… heavier. More here. Less likely to drift. The anxiety hasn’t vanished, but something beneath it has grown teeth. He might not be safe, but he isn’t entirely ungrounded anymore.

  Before he can catch his breath, something else slips into his awareness—not Blenkinsop’s familiar smarms. This feels… cleaner. Sterile. Like a hospital corridor at three in the morning, where no one dies loudly enough to be noticed.

  [?? Tutorial phase complete.]

  Aster stiffens.

  “…What?”