Syleena sat beneath a fir tree, its snow-covered branches hanging above her like small clouds.
Beside her lay a small pile of random items. Branches, bones, stones. Refinement materials.
Her complete focus rested on the refinement orb centred in her palm. She reached for an ingredient and tossed it inside.
Silence.
She closed her eyes and tried to guide the rules threading out from the ingredients into something coherent. Then something backfired.
The orb retracted back into her through her fingertips. She buckled forward, clenching her teeth as blood forced its way through and fell in small drops into the snow below.
'Another failure.'
She spat blood over her shoulder.
It was only a rank two mote, but she had attempted it almost ten times already. Her soul was damaged enough now that she didn't want to risk another try. Not with everything coming. Not with her battle strength already stretched thin.
"Fuck."
A stone coffin emerged beside her as she pushed herself to her feet. She tossed in the leftover ingredients and dismissed the mote.
Syleena ran her fingers through her hair and leaned back against the tree.
"What should I do." she murmured.
This was a mote she had wanted to refine for a long time but had only recently gotten around to attempting. A one use mote that could, much like the Aether mote, reduce her presence. Rank two, but with considerable potential. She suspected it would combine with her soul-bound mote to make her even harder to detect. She also knew to be careful. Unlike the Aether mote, which she could deactivate at will, a one use mote was permanent the moment she consumed it. Its effect would be with her for life, as far as she knew.
Her eyes drifted.
Was it worth another attempt, risking further soul damage? Or was there another way to get the mote without paying that price?
Her gaze dropped to the ground.
She did know someone with better odds at refining it than her.
Some time ago Syleena had stumbled upon an encrypted message in the black market. It had taken her an entire day to break. What she found inside was an offer of mote refinement, and given how extraordinarily rare refinement Luminaires were, and how universally useful their services were, she had been immediately intrigued. She had spent several nights spying on the secret meeting place.
When she discovered the refinement Luminaire was Kael she had been pleasantly surprised.
But as time passed, the surprise had curdled into something more complicated. Knowing someone like him had awakened into a pathway she considered among the most dangerous in existence had only made her more wary of him.
And now she was considering hiring him for a refinement.
The funds weren't the problem. She had more than enough. But hiring him would mean trusting him with the refinement recipe, and that she was unwilling to do.
"To hell with it." She sighed and pushed herself off the tree.
The illusion of choice, yet again playing games with her.
—
Upon entering the hideout Syleena glanced at Sophie, sitting unnaturally straight, holding a book with almost shaking hands.
She left her for now and walked over to Kael.
"Kael." she started. "I want to order a refinement."
Kael turned toward her.
"I'm always happy to help a customer."
Syleena crossed her arms.
"I'll provide all the ingredients and the mindstones. Just name your price."
She waited. Kael said nothing, as though the question had pulled him somewhere deeper. She already knew the price wouldn't be cheap. He was in the same position she was, two families wanting him dead, his body in poor shape, and clearly occupied with something in his inner realm. Whatever number he arrived at would reflect all of that.
A full minute passed in silence.
"I'll need refinement materials." Kael said finally. "And a soul-bound mote recipe."
Syleena went completely still.
'A soul-bound mote recipe?'
A short laugh escaped her, hollow and humourless.
"You can't be serious."
There was no way. No way Kael could possibly know soul-bound motes were refinable. No way he could know she had one. The concept alone was absurd. Every Luminaire knew soul-bound motes only appeared at awakening. Everyone knew their refinement was considered impossible to achieve. For someone to gain a new one, another Luminaire would have to willingly surrender theirs, permanently damaging their own soul in the process. Only noble families with sufficient resources and desperation ever seriously considered it.
A soul-bound mote was fused to the soul itself. That was the entire nature of what it was. Everyone knew this.
Everyone here except perhaps Syleena, or so it should have been.
'Why is he asking for a soul-bound mote recipe. How does he even know that concept exists?'
Was he taking a shot in the dark, or did he genuinely know soul-bound motes could be refined? Did he know Eireindaile's history well enough to know that their first ancestor had secretly been a refinement pathway Luminaire, just like him, and had studied that exact thing?
Syleena's suspicion deepened.
No. It didn't matter. He shouldn't know. Couldn't know. He was a refinement pathway Luminaire, yes, but nowhere near experienced or strong enough to have studied soul-bound motes at any real depth.
"No. Absolutely not."
Kael turned back to the desk without a word and closed his eyes.
Syleena's jaw tightened at his back.
—
Inside his inner realm, Kael's eyes remained fixed on his river of Will.
'So it is possible to refine a soul-bound mote.'
He had never considered actually accepting her offer. Too dangerous. The cost to his soul and his battle strength was not something he could afford right now. But the question had been sitting at the back of his mind for some time and he had wanted an answer.
The deeper he went into studying Point Aegis the more a particular thought kept surfacing. If regular motes could be refined, why not soul-bound ones? And if that was possible, what would it mean? Soul-bound motes ranked up alongside their Luminaire. If someone could refine additional ones and consume them, the compounding effect on their battle strength would be staggering. Something close to unreasonable.
The problem was he had no way to study it. Obsidian Shard couldn't be used on itself. He needed another soul-bound mote to examine, and he had no access to one. No Luminaire would allow him into their inner realm to study something fused to their soul. The thought had been growing more frustrating the longer he sat with it.
Then Syleena walked in asking for a favour.
He was never going to accept. But he could still get something from the conversation. And he had.
The request alone had caught Syleena so off guard she had let a reaction surface. And while it wasnt a definie answer, it was enough for Kael to connect the dots.
He was just about to enter Point Aegis once more, when a sound reached his ears.
"Fine...."
He returned from his inner realm instantly and turned towards Syleena raising an eyebrow slightly.
He had just asked about something so ridiculous he would never have to take her up on the offer. Was she genuinely taking the offer?
"I agree with your requests, but only if you get to refinement immediately."
Kael studied her. She was serious.
"Very well. But I can't guarantee success. And if it comes to it I'll prioritise myself first."
He knew it was blunt. He also knew Syleena would understand. In his current state he couldn't sustain continuous refinement regardless of how much he wanted to. If it came down to it he would abandon the refinement entirely to preserve enough battle strength for whatever might follow.
"So we have an agreement?" Syleena asked.
"Yes." Kael said. "Write both recipes down and I'll get started."
Syleena shook her head.
"One additional condition. You'll never pass this recipe on. And you won't write it down."
'So that's how it is.'
Even though Syleena had seemingly cut away every tie to her noble roots, some things had been instilled too deeply to fully disappear. Like the tradition of never committing recipes to paper, passing them only by word of mouth to blood relatives.
"I promise." Kael said.
Syleena nodded and pushed off the wall to lean against the desk.
"As you know, soul-bound motes differ from regular motes. Only one can exist at any given time, in the same way only one primordial mote of any kind can exist at once."
Kael kept his expression still.
'Primordial?'
Primordial as in above rank five? Primordial as in the mythical belief that people existed who had advanced beyond rank five? It made sense in a way. Paragons existed, which meant there had to be ranks beneath them. But the casual way she said it, as though reminding him of something he already knew, as though the existence of primordial motes had never been in question.
Most Luminaires understood on some level that rank six existed. But Kael was certain he had never met anyone who could name one, let alone point one out. They were like myths that couldn't be denied and couldn't be proven either.
And what did she mean by primordial motes behaving like soul-bound ones? Only one could exist at a time?
'She overestimates my knowledge.'
She was speaking as though covering old ground. The reality was that every word of this was new.
"No one in my family has managed to refine the mote my ancestor created. But I can assure you of its authenticity. I have no doubt it's real." Syleena continued.
Things finally settled in Kael's mind. He understood now why she had even mentioned primordials. She must have assumed he knew that only one soul-bound mote of the same type could exist at a time, so by mentioning that no one had ever managed to refine it, she'd ensured that if Kael had what it took, he could be the one to do so.
"And because no one has managed to refine it, no one knows what type of mote it is or what it does."
Kael shook his head.
"It doesn't matter."
With that, Syleena turned towards Sophie. "Could you please leave us for a moment." Sophie nodded enthusiastically and left the two alone.
Syleena placed the bag she'd brought with her beside Kael, then proceeded to go over the recipes.
It took over two hours, and when it was finally over, Kael felt a dull headache creeping up on him.
Absurd. That was what it was.
The first ten minutes she had gone over the mote she personally wanted to create, a simple mote with around twenty-five ingredients. When Kael heard about it, things became clear. Syleena hadn't failed because she was lacking. Luck simply hadn't been on her side, and it seemed like some of her confidence had dwindled. That, or she simply didn't want to risk any more soul damage.
But that wasn't what had caused the headache. It was the soul-bound mote.
The next two hours she had gone over it in full. It needed more than three thousand ingredients to be refined, ranging from common to unreasonably rare, rare enough that Kael had never even known something like that existed. Ingredients ranged from water sourced from a dried lake on the eastern continent, to a flower that had gone extinct during the Desolate Era three hundred million years ago, when Smolten still ruled over the world.
The idea of someone reverse-engineering such an absurd mote almost drove Kael insane. Just who was Eireindaile's first ancestor?
That, combined with the fact that he had to memorize every single ingredient, pushed his mind to the point where he'd rather lie under a rock on a windy day than remember another one.
"It's settled then," Kael said, massaging his temples. "I'll start tomorrow morning."
The moment the words left his lips, Sophie stepped into the hideout with her arms wrapped around herself. Snow clung stubbornly to her hair as she trembled violently. She had stood outside for two hours straight.
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Short refresher because I feel like a teacher.
Definitions
Motes
Motes are creations forged through refinement, where the laws hidden inside different materials, called refinement ingredients, are forced into harmony and given form through human will.
For example, Point Aegis might be formed by combining the law of hardness from tungsten, the law of stability from mountain stone, and the law of fixation from fossilized bone. When refined together, these laws create a mote capable of imposing extreme durability onto a single point of the body.
Luminaires
Luminaires are special because, after awakening, they can use their Will and Thoughts in ways mortals cannot.
For example, a Luminaire can transfer their will into a mote, overwrite the mote's existing will, and force it to act according to the user's commands.
Laws Beneath
All things contain hidden Laws.
A rock is hard because of the laws governing hardness and structure. Fire burns because of the laws governing heat and combustion. These laws are the unseen framework that determines how the world behaves.
Theoretically, if someone could remove the law of heat from fire and replace it with a law of cold, the fire might still look identical while becoming freezing instead of hot.
This is the foundation of refinement. Luminaires guide and align the laws contained within ingredients inside a refinement orb until those laws reach a state where they work together to create a new effect.
A Mote's Inner Realm
This is the place Kael entered through the Obsidian Shard mote. So far, he is the only Luminaire known to be capable of doing this.
Inside exists a River of Will containing Thoughts, similar to his own.
Different forms of existence possess different combinations of Soul, Will, and Thought:
Beasts possess Soul and Thought.
Motes possess Will and Thought.
Humans possess Soul, Will, and Thought.
it's believed that beasts can think, but not in the same way humans do. Their thoughts are driven more by instinct than reasoning.
Motes possess Will and Thought, but because they lack Soul, they cannot truly direct their own will freely.
Humans are unique because they possess all three components, which is what allows them to control motes in the first place.
When Kael entered the inner realm of the mote, the Thread of Rules acted in place of a Soul. Instead of free will, the mote could only follow the rules that formed its existence.
You can think of Soul as something close to true free will.
Refinement
When refining, a Luminaire pulls laws out of ingredients by placing them into the refinement orb. They then guide and align those laws toward a desired result or design.
Every Luminaire can theoretically refine motes. Most simply refuse to.
This is because refinement is horrifically inefficient when it comes to resources, and the backlash from failure is not exactly pleasant either.
A rank two mote, for example, only has around a thirty percent success rate even if everything is done perfectly.
(If I remember correctly. Yes, I am the author.)
Because of this, most Luminaires would rather buy a guaranteed mote from somewhere like the black market instead of gambling away ingredients, sanity, and possibly parts of their soul trying to refine one themselves.
Also, Kael is refining at a borderline absurd rate for someone at his level. Most Luminaires at his rank perform little to no refinement at all, especially not repeatedly. Since the story follows him closely, it can start to feel normal, but from the perspective of the world around him, his behavior is closer to controlled self-destruction mixed with academic obsession.
General Information
Upon awakening as a Luminaire, a person gains the ability to create a refinement orb and truly study refinement. This is one reason why Refinement Luminaires are so rare.
As far as we know, the pathway someone awakens into is usually connected to their natural talent or experience.
For example, someone who has studied the blade for ten years may awaken into a Blade pathway because they already possess natural affinity and understanding in that area.
Refinement is different.
As mortals, people can only study refinement theoretically because they cannot control their own Will. Since refinement relies heavily on intuition, law manipulation, and guiding Will itself, becoming a Refinement Luminaire is considered one of the hardest pathways to awaken into.
I will probably start posting refreshers like this from time to time (for my own sanity as well).
So if there is anything you want clarified or reminded about, feel free to ask.