"Information about the very beginning is fragmentary and conflicting. The oldest shrouds, born in the early days of man, say that the One Shroud was here in the world with us and guided our first steps at the base of the Pillar. The gods, the ones that deign to speak with us, say that they were here before the humans, and they saw the one who made the world. A being they called He Who Stands Above. WE do not know if this entity and the One Shroud are the same, or different individuals. Very little physical evidence is left of that time, many ages past. All we have ever found are structures scattered across the sea that none can enter nor break. Whatever importance they hold, only the One Shroud truly knows." Excerpt from 'On the Origin of Everything' by Heidlebrand the Enlightened the Heretic.

Caeden was sitting on a bench in a viewing room at the aft of the War God, looking out over the Starry Sea behind them as they headed toward the Pillar. He was watching the massive waves beat against the coast of some continent he did not know the name of. It was hours since the explosion that had severely injured his uncle.

Using his shroud, Anthony had jumped to the War God in one leap, with Caeden in tow, carrying his uncle in his arms. With Physical Enhancement running through his whole body, Caeden was a hulking beast of purple and gold, easily holding his uncle's large frame. His shroud ran out moments after they landed on the deck, but that was enough for some medical staff to come and whisk Unc away to the infirmary.

Caeden had been told in no uncertain terms that he was to leave them to their work. Him hovering around would just be in the way. Being told to sit and wait was slowly killing him. With nothing else to do, Caeden just wandered around the ship. Along the way, he ended up at the bunk he had been assigned, where he grabbed the lump of metal that used to be all his smithing tools.

Now he sat, staring back and forth between it and the window. Staying at his bunk was a nonstarter since it was among other bunks, many with sleeping crew in them. Caeden was hoping that experimenting with his new shroud and this lump of metal would distract him from his uncle's condition, so he made his way here, to a little room at the bottom of the ship. Instead of experimenting, he had ended up mostly looking out the window.

It was his first time seeing the Starry Sea. Coasts on the continents were dangerous, constantly being slammed with massive waves. So Caeden had heard about the water that surrounded his homeland. He had heard about its magical, cosmic light. The swirling nebulas and brilliant galaxies visible in the waves. But he had never seen it. Now he was, from miles above. No words could do justice to the view he had now. It was beautiful beyond words.

"Your uncle will make it."

Caeden nearly fell off the bench. He looked to Anthony, who must have just entered the viewing room. He looked tired. More than the last few hours would account for.

"I'm here to explain a few things to you, but I figured I would lead with that."

Caeden felt waves of relief wash over him as tension bled from his body. "...Thank you. For everything. If you hadn't… There's no way he would have survived."

Anthony looked pained. "Don't thank me just yet." He sat down next to Caeden, letting out a weighty sigh. "It's also our fault that he was injured. At least, partially. The investigation that happened after our departure uncovered some evidence. Residue left by the explosive points to some similar incidents. Most notably, the riots of Greenvale."

The pause lasted for a long moment. "I'm assuming that's supposed to mean something to me?"

"Right," Anthony shook his head. "I forgot how little news the serf villages get. A couple of years ago, Greenvale turned into a warzone because of a group calling themselves 'The Revolution'. I know, a very creative name, right? Anyway, they had access to some advanced ethertech that has the CA spooked. Right now, they're looking at this as another similar attack. We're not sure if I was the target, or you were."

"Why would they target me? I'm just some random guy." Caeden snorted. No one had any reason to attack him.

"Two reasons. The incident at your forge."

"Oh. Right." He had briefly forgotten. Caeden had been blown up twice in as many days. "This is the second time."

"Exactly. The other reason is, there have been similar attacks on other students being collected. We think they're changing tactics, trying to take out shrouded before they can become stronger and learn how to use their shrouds. Since the collection period is scheduled, it's easy for them to plan around." He let out a weary, empty sigh, "So it looks like we put you in danger and nearly cost your uncle his life. I'm sorry, kid."

Caeden sat, staring out the window, processing it all. He was angry, deeply angry at both the Central Authority for hauling him off and the Revolution for so casually maiming an innocent man. He could understand having a problem with the CA. Obviously, he had a bone to pick himself. But letting that take precedent over the lives of normal uninvolved people was just as much a crime. He stewed in his anger for some time, letting it pass over and through him. He had learned to let go of his rage a long time ago.

"There's just one problem with all this." Once he had calmed down, it seemed obvious to him.

"What do you mean?"

"Why would they try to use the same method when it didn't work the first time? I know the yield potential of that rendering barrel. I did the math myself. What we were hit with earlier was like, a tenth of that. Plus, rigging a skipper to explode is a lot more technical than a Molotov through a window. It just doesn't add up." There was something he was missing here.

Anthony frowned, rising from the bench. "I'll need to consult with the investigator. They're making a task force to address the attacks on students. An outlier like what you're describing might be an important clue."

"Wait!" Caeden stopped him before he could walk off. "Thanks again. For saving my uncle and telling me all this. Really."

Anthony smirked. "Section 20 Subsection 59 of the Criminal Code dictates that the victim of a crime has the right to know about the course of the investigation into their assailant. Just doing my job." He turned to leave, "But, for what it's worth… You're welcome."

Caeden laughed. For all that he hated it, Anthony hid behind his job, using it as an excuse to right some of the wrongs he saw. Caeden was immensely grateful to have met the sarcastic, closed-off man, all more after everything he had done to help Caeden at a difficult time. He obviously felt guilty about what happened to Unc, but out of everyone, Caeden placed none of the blame on Anthony. He had been kind and helpful to a fault.

Even if he was a sarcastic dick.

Feeling the weight of the world fall off his shoulders, Caeden returned to his misshapen metal lump with much more enthusiasm. He was sure that Unc would have lasting injuries from that explosion but alive was alive. Caeden had heard of the miracles of healing that could be performed with shrouds and ethertech. So long as he was still breathing, his uncle could get better.

Taking a look at his shrouds, Caeden checked to see how Physical Enhancement was doing. It was a novel experience, completely draining a shroud. Apparently, covering his entire body was much more intensive than anything Caeden had ever done with Sharp. It had been years since he had emptied that shroud. Back when he was trying to gain enough control to make his pseudo-hand, Caeden had used up Sharp every day, multiple times a day, practicing endlessly. Recently, he only ever used as much as he needed to get his work done, which was hardly anything at all compared to his maximum.

Letting his mind travel to that space where his shrouds sat, he was happy to find that Physical Enhancement had regenerated nearly a fourth of its maximum in the last few hours. Comparing his two shrouds, Caeden noticed that he had significantly more Physical Enhancement than Sharp. Roughly ten times more.

"Wow, doing my whole body is costly if it wiped me out from full in only a few minutes. I can use Sharp as a pseudo-hand for hours. That consumption rate is insane. Just goes to show, proper control is where it's at. I bet if I could get PE to just enhance my skin, it would have protected me just as well without costing nearly as much." Caeden muttered, hypothesizing as he worked to get the tiniest bit of his purple and gold shroud to manifest as possible.

He had spent weeks with Sharp when he was younger, figuring out how to bend it into articulated fingers. During that time, he had grown to enjoy the process, figuring out just how much he could do. It was a lot like etherforging, finding the right balance of types to make the perfect infusion. Now that he was cut off from his forge, all that curiosity was focused on his new shroud and this lump of metal.

Playing a hunch, Caeden pulled a bit of PE into his right hand. The shroud wouldn't leave his skin no matter how hard he pushed, so he slapped his palm on the metal and tried to push the shroud into it right from his hand. The metal ate it up instantly. It was the exact same reaction Sharp had. Excited to see what would happen, he made a ball of Sharp and shoved that into the metal at the same time he fed PE into it. The mental strain of using both shrouds at once was a new challenge, but the rewards were worth it.

The lumpy circle of reddish, purply-gold mass hummed. It felt like it almost came alive under his hand, syncing up with Caeden in a way he swore he felt down to his soul. He pulled his hand away, and magically, the metal followed, entirely weightless as it clung to his hand. "Well, that is just too cool."

"You got that right!"

"Fuck!" Caeden whipped around at the chipper voice, thrown from his mental space. Following that motion, the metal flew from his hand like a frisbee, careening right toward the head of the man by the door.

Showing a ridiculous degree of flexibility and excellent reflexes, he ducked under the disk, which clanged heavily into the wall before dropping to the floor. He straightened back up, a goofy smile plastered on his face.

"Well, that was surprising. Sorry for startling you. Name's Erik. Heard you got picked up by the CA too. Figured I should introduce myself." Never dropping the smile, Erik extended his hand.

Thrown by the casual disregard for a potentially fatal incident and the overwhelmingly positive energy Erik was radiating from every pore on his smiling, freckled face. "... Caeden. Nice to meet you." Overcoming his shock, Caeden shook his hand.

While he did, he looked Erik over. He was a thin guy but taller. Not much, maybe a couple of inches, but he had Caeden beat on height. However, Caeden would bet he had a hundred pounds on the guy. He was practically skin and bones. Not in an unhealthy way, just unreasonably thin. He had a narrow face to match, with his still smiling mouth dominating his features. A wild mop of rusty brown hair and matching eyes contrasted strongly against his pale complexion, marred by a few small freckles on his cheeks and across his nose.

Feeling a strange sense of familiarity, Caeden dug through his memories, trying to think of where he had seen the man. They were roughly the same age. Maybe around Earthstrom?

"So, where are you from?"

"Oh, a little town a ways from Earthstrom on Arturus. You?"

So not that. "A serf village working for the Dromar family. Though I was originally from Earthstrom."

"Wow, we're about the same age, right? And you left home? What were you doing, working the fields?"

The incessant positivity was starting to rub off on Caeden, and he was less concerned about figuring out where he had seen Erik before. Maybe he just looked like somebody else. "I was an ethersmith. Learned the trade from my uncle."

"Wow! That's incredible!" Erik plunked down on the bench and stared intently at Caeden. "I want to be a doctor, but I'm not nearly skilled enough yet. It's awesome that you're a full professional at our age. I'm kinda jealous."

Caeden ducked his head at the genuine praise. "I just like the craft. My uncle is much better than me. All I was doing was making and fixing plow heads and odds and ends. Nothing impressive."

"I think that's pretty impressive on its own. Did you make that?" He gestured to the lump of metal.

Caeden went over and picked it up, the weight reduction still in effect. He fiddled with it, flipping the big hunk of metal around. He answered as he went. "Ahh, sort of. This just happened more like. I didn't make it intentionally." Thinking back to that day, it hit him.

"Hey, You wouldn't happen to have a brother, would you?"

Erik's face immediately fell, "Oh Shroud, what did he do this time? I was wondering what happened when he and his friends went on a road trip. He gets into nothing but trouble, I swear." He shook his head sadly.

"Seriously? About this high, red hair, thin as you are?" As Caeden spoke, Erik was nodding along resignedly. "He was threatening an old woman to steal a sack of money from her. Then when I intervened, he threatened to have you come and beat the shit out of me."

By the time he finished talking, Erik had his face buried in his hands and was groaning softly like he was in physical pain. "I'm so, so sorry. This is all my fault."

"What? How?" Caeden couldn't imagine this kind, affable guy being involved in robbing an old lady.

"Ever since we were little, Trav has been using my shroud to get away with everything. I swear I try and get him to stop, and he just escalates."

Caeden shook his head. "That's not really your fault."

"Still, I feel responsible. What did he do?"

"Oh, I just ran him off. Showed him and his friends my shroud, and they booked it out of there like their asses were on fire." Caeden shrugged it off.

Erik frowned, "That's good; it's not like him to let something like that go. Honestly, he's kinda vindictive."

"He probably didn't have time to do anything. Someone blew up my house that night." The second he said it, the whole night came together in his head. "Oh my Shroud. That mothe-"

For the third time, in less than three days, Caeden was blown up.

To be fair, it wasn't exactly an explosion this time. Instead, the whole ship shook, and the floor disappeared out from under him in a massive screeching mess of twisted metal and shattered ethertech. Immediately, both he and Erik were falling through the air, hundreds of miles above a new continent.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit." Caeden cursed as he fell. By some miracle, there was no debris immediately around him, but there was a lot of very hard-looking ground under him.

Calming himself was an exercise in will, but he had time, considering how high up the War God had been cruising. First, he took stock of his surroundings. His lump of metal had stuck his body, just like before, and it wasn't flying off in the wind. Erik was falling nearby, looking almost unphased by the imminent threat to their lives.

The War God was listing through the sky. Already, Caeden could see a number of shrouded working along the outside of the ethership, trying desperately to keep it flying. The back of the ship was missing a massive chunk out of it, and one of the flight crystals was visibly cracked. Caeden shuddered to think of what had done that kind of damage to the flying fortress.

Finally, the most important thing. The landing. Under them was a red, barren land with very little in the way of features. The only thing of note was a series of large towering rock pillars under them. Besides that, it was a blank, bloody-red plane. This high up, Caeden could barely see the Starry Sea back the way they came. They weren't that far inland.

"Ok, this is ok. I can manage this. We're good." Caeden hyped himself up. Ready to go, Caeden wrapped a cuff of Sharp around Erik's wrist and pulled him in. Shouting over the wind, Caeden told him what he was going to do.

"Oh, that's good!" Erik shouted back, chipper as ever. "I was a little worried! Don't worry about me. My shroud is great for stuff like this!"

Caeden didn't have much of a choice. It was going to be hard enough to survive on his own. He simply didn't have the resources or ability to protect the both of them.

It took a couple minutes for them to finally fall all the way down to the pillar of rock underneath. Just before they hit, As best he could, Caeden threw all his effort into both of his shrouds. He used long strands of Sharp to slow his descent as fast as he could, cradling his whole body in a cocoon of red strands. That took the majority of his focus. With what little mental energy he could spare, Caeden flooded his body with Physical Reinforcement at the last second.

It worked almost perfectly.

His speed dropped off to a fraction of what it was. The first hiccup came when his feet hit the ground. In an instant, all of his remaining Physical Enhancement vanished, absorbing the impact and protecting his body. That left him unprotected when his momentum flipped him across the surface of the pillar, threatening to cast him over the edge.

Desperately, Caeden expanded his cocoon, wrapping himself completely and sending four long lines of Sharp to stab deep into the rock, anchoring himself. His desperation broke his focus partially, and while he did manage to catch himself, his shroud dug into his body in several places, opening up a series of cuts across his back and along his arms.

Having completely exhausted Sharp as well, Caeden dropped to the pillar's surface just in time to see Erik's landing.

He slammed into the ground at full speed, and stuck.

"What the- Erik?!" Caeden had no idea what he had just seen.

The man in question popped to his feet, smiling all the same. "Whew! That was a rough one! Probably would have broken a lot of bones."

"What is your shroud, man?' Caeden was stunned.

"Oh, I never mentioned it, did I? It's-" Suddenly, Erik's entire demeanor switched. His face became a deadly serious mask, and even his posture shifted, projecting authority and intent. "You're injured."

"Yeah, I got cut by my shroud on the dismount. I'll be fine."

"With your rate of bleeding, that's not certain. Especially if some of those are deeper than they look. Hold still." He crouched down next to Caeden, Carefully inspecting every cut. "I'm going to close some of these. Do not resist my shroud."

That was something Caeden had noticed when he went to grab Erik in the air. Initially, it had felt like shoving his shroud through wet cement, then he had felt Erik allow his shroud in, and the resistance disappeared.

Following the demanding instructions of this new, serious Erik. Caeden let his shroud into his body, an uncomfortable sensation. That was, until it started rapidly closing all his cuts.

"Whew, all done." Smiling, Erik returned. "My shroud is Stitch, by the way. Pretty great for a Doctor, right?"

Before he could respond, There was a grinding noise from a particular outcropping of rock jutting from the pillar they were on. Following the sound, a portion of the rock pulled back, revealing a very artificial-looking stairway.

Caeden looked at Erik, who looked at him. "So, entering the secret magic doorway is a bad idea, right?"

"Yeah, probably."

"Ok, glad you agree."

ROAR!

"Oh, come on! Cut me a break!" Caeden lamented. Angry, violent, loud roaring rose up all around them. "I guess magic stairs are better than whatever monster nest we just woke up."

"Yeah, probably."