“What exactly is a shroud? Not philosophically. The work of my predecessors like Heidlebrand and Arrond has expounded on that topic in ways I could never achieve. No, I refer to the actual, physical manifestation itself. Every single one, utterly unique, yet sharing so many characteristics. The substance of a shroud is unlike anything else in existence. It has some properties of solids, liquids, and gasses simultaneously while also acting as a form of energy. Shrouds assume some of the properties of their namesake, a fire shroud can burn, and a knife shroud can cut without actually manifesting the object.

Facts like this make studying shroud material difficult. We don’t even know where shroud comes from. The energy that resides in a shrouded and regenerates after it is expended. Why does it assume different forms for each shrouded? The laws that govern our reality seem to be mere suggestions in the face of shroud. How can that be possible?

Study of this subject has been further complicated by the lack of proper nomenclature. Shroud is the term used to refer to both the physical substance that forms when a shrouded wishes to affect the world and the inert energy that they draw from to form that substance. This is down to the insistence of the Church, who contend that they are the same thing and should be named as such. This has made scientific inquiry into the practical differences between the two immensely frustrating, as the Church insists on calling any attempt to create more apt terminology as blasphemy.” Opening to ‘The Study of Shroud: A Scientific Inquiry’ by Mark Clesian.

Erik did not win a prize. Caeden wasn’t sure what part of the events leading up to the fight that had led Erik to believe he would get one, but he was thoroughly disappointed anyway.

“I don’t see what’s so confusing!” Erik pouted as they walked to their next class. They had split with Lily, who had a different class from them next. “It was a competition. I won, I get a prize. That’s how competitions work!”

“I’m not sure what happened qualifies as a competition.” Caeden reasoned.

“Of course it was! We were fighting; that’s automatically a competition.” Erik nodded sharply with a little huff.

“Maybe? I think that’s more down to you having a broad definition of what competition is.”

“That’s a load of crap! I’m being deprived of my rightful prize!” Erik stared around, righteous indignation burning in his eyes.

“Ok, Mr. Winner, maybe cool it a bit.” Caeden patted Erik’s shoulder lightly, like he was approaching a feral animal.

“You’re patronizing me.” Erik accused.

“Oh, endlessly,” Caeden admitted.

Erik scowled at him before he couldn’t hold it, and he broke down laughing. “I really wish she would have given me something, though. I did win a fight.”

“I think you threw her off so much; she wasn’t sure what to do.” Caeden laughed as well, thinking back to the look of bewilderment on their teacher’s face after Erik’s exclamation.

“That's where it's at, man, gotta keep ‘em guessing.” Erik wiggled his eyebrows.

“Don’t hit on our teacher,” Caeden warned.

“I don’t know, that whole ‘I’ll kick your ass and make you apologize for it’ vibe was kinda doing it for me.” Erik rubbed his chin.

“You have some serious issues.” Caeden shook his head. “C’mon, I think this is the one.”

The section of the Mess they were in had changed to the style of the Bronze Seat, with exposed pipes and vents scattered all over for purposes Caeden couldn’t fathom. All of it obviously made out of bronze. There were even small chips of ether built-in, reminding Caeden heavily of the War God’s interior, just made out of bronze instead of infused aluminum. The classroom they entered was also significantly different. It was much smaller, with only enough seats for a dozen students. The room was flat, with a series of tables facing one wall with a podium in front of it.

Unlike last class, most of the seats were already occupied, so Caeden and Erik were forced to sit in the back. Looking over their fellow classmates carefully, Caeden noted that the islanders had occupied the front of the room, just like in general education. This had forced all the continental into the back, where they were sitting in uncomfortable silence while the islanders joked and laughed.

Not long after they sat, the teacher entered. Caeden made a note to try and make it here quicker tomorrow. The teacher was a middle-aged man with solid features. His tan looks went well with his blond well-groomed, closely shaved beard and shaved head. Smiling broadly, his cheery voice boomed in the small room.

“Hello, welcome to modifiers! I’m David Kines. We’ll be covering some major techniques most modifiers can use and then shifting to a more personal approach. I’ll be talking with each of you briefly to get a feel for how you’ve used your shroud so far and maybe give you some pointers for what you could try! Now, let's get started!” The level of relentless positivity reminded Caeden of someone.

“So!” David clapped his hands, “Modifiers change the world around them by imbuing things with their domain or taking that domain away. For example, my shroud is Compress.” He reached into his robe and pulled out a pebble. A shimmering blue haze with clumps of green surrounded the pea-sized rock. Rapidly, it expanded to the size of a fist. “See, I can remove the compression from the object or essentially expand it. Crucially, this actually restores my shroud instead of expending it. Object shrouds can do something similar by converting materials within their shrouds domain.”

Caeden was reeling. He had never tried to use his shroud to dull an object, but it sounded like that was possible. How would that work with Physical Enhancement? Could he weaken literally anything? That was insane! How had he not known this?! It opened up so many new strategies, and it would help mitigate his low shroud capacity.

“That leads into one of the main advantages modifiers have over object or creature shrouds. You will be able to draw from your surroundings much more often. Take me as an example. Practically everything in existence is compressed to a certain degree. That’s all free power for me. An object shroud has to look for a specific material to be able to actively regain their shroud, but not a modifier.” David continued. “However, this aspect of our shrouds has some limitations.”

David squeezed the rock in his hand, and it instantly shattered into dust. “The pebble grew, but that was decompression. It didn’t add to the mass of the pebble; it simply spread it over a larger area, making for a bigger but incredibly fragile object. Every modifier shroud will have quirks like this. Your shroud only controls a very specific aspect of existence. Anything that you don’t control will react to any changes you make. Keep that in mind.”

“Now, I wanted to talk to everyone a bit about each of your shrouds. After all, every shroud is different, and there might be some quirks that you are finding difficult to work with. In the meantime, the back of the room has several cabinets built into the wall. Inside you will find a variety of items. I’d like for you to try removing your domain from those objects, then adding it back.”

Caeden hadn’t noticed the cabinets when he came in. They blended seamlessly into the wall, but now that he knew they were there, it was easy to use his aura to find their location. He needed to remember to apply the extra senses his aura gave much more frequently.

Erik grabbed a square of cloth, and Caeden had a butterknife. He figured he could make it sharp first, then attempt to remove it. Being in the back of class, they had been the first to get to the cabinets. So Caeden watched everyone else search through the cupboards for something to use. There was a lot of variety in what was in those cabinets and just as much variety in what people chose.

Meanwhile, David was at the front of the class, talking to the first student. Sporadically, either of them would manifest their shroud for a moment before they would go back to talking. They only spoke for a few minutes before he moved on.

Caeden focused back on the knife in his hand. Checking the edge, he found it just as dull as he was expecting. Then he called up Sharp and ran it over the edge. Caeden had done this hundreds, thousands of times as an ethersmith. The dull edge rapidly sharpened until Caeden was sure he could have cut straight through the bronze table. Then he tried to dull the edge back.

This did not go well. Caeden ran his shroud over the edge, trying to dull it, willing it to lose the sharpness he just gave it. Nothing happened. In fact, he could practically feel his shroud fighting him. It just wasn’t capable of doing what he was trying. The feeling he was getting ran counter to what he had just seen, and he wasn’t sure what he was doing wrong.

“Uh, I’m not sure how to fix this.” Erik interrupted his concentration. Looking over, Caeden saw that Erik had managed to take his cloth apart so thoroughly that he was essentially holding a ball string. In the few minutes, he had been trying to figure this out, Erik had practically evaporated his target. That was how unstitched it was.

“You figured it out?” Caeden couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice.

“Yeah, I did! No need to sound so surprised. I’m a smart guy!” Erik huffed.

“Fair enough.” Caeden felt bad for underestimating his friend. After all, Erik had proven how capable he was on multiple fronts. His usual attitude just made Caeden forget that sometimes. “Care to give a clue to a thoughtless peasant, oh great and powerful shrouded?”

Erik nodded haughtily, “So long as you understand your place. You just have to run your shroud over it, and kinda push,” He made a thrusting gesture with his hand, “Then pull back,” He whipped his hand around, “And you kinda scoop with it until the shroud just whooshes out.” He looked at Caeden. “Got it?”

“You would be a terrible teacher.”

“I take offense to that.”

“Pretty sure a teacher would find that lesson offensive.” Caeden raised an eyebrow. “What was that supposed to mean? It was a load of gibberish.”

“Maybe you’re just not smart enough to understand; ever think of that?” Erik shot back.

“I don’t think anyone is intelligent enough to make sense of that nonsense. Never mind, I’ll figure it out myself. Have fun with your ball of yarn.” Caeden turned back to his knife.

“I will, thank you very much!” Caeden watched from the corner of his eye as Erik ran his shroud over what remained of his cloth until he gave up and decided to start wrapping the yarn around his hands until they were thoroughly tangled. Shaking his head, he focused once more.

A half an hour of frustration and no progress followed until David made his way back to them. By that point, Caeden was thoroughly fed up. He wasn’t sure what he was doing wrong. Every method he tried to dull the edge, nothing happened.

“How are things going over here?” David smiled.

“Not great,” Caeden admitted. “No matter what I try, I can't dull the edge.” He offered up the knife for David to look at.

“Hmm,” His bearded smile slipped, “What’s your shroud exactly?”

“Sharp.”

“Ahh, I think I understand. You’re conceptualizing this wrong.”

Caeden frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What you need to understand is that your shroud can’t make the knife dull. It can only make it less sharp.”

“That’s literally the same thing.”

David laughed. “In physical reality, yes, it is. But shrouds are more than physical. You are trying to make the shroud dull, which isn’t something your shroud can do. What you need to do is absorb the sharpness that is there. The fact that the edge dulls is more of a side effect than the intent. Lay your shroud over the edge.” He directed, Handing the knife back.

Caeden followed his direction, red light laying across the knife.

“Now, I want you to try and feel the sharpness that is just underneath your shroud.”

Caeden complied, closing his eyes and focusing all his attention on the edge. He could feel it through his shroud, could feel how sharp it was. It was a familiar sensation, exactly like his shroud itself.

“Now, pull that sharpness out.”

Caeden reached into the knife, wrapped his shroud around that familiar sensation, and pulled. He felt a rush as all the shroud he had used to sharpen the butterknife in the first place came back to him. “Oh my shroud, he was actually right,” Caeden muttered to himself, suddenly understanding the nonsense Erik had told him. He would never have been able to understand it without having already done it, but Erik had been right.

He opened his eyes, looking at the now completely dull knife. He might have had a hard time cutting butter with this. He looked at David. “Thank you.”

“That was well done. You caught on quick. What’s your control tier?”

“Five.”

“Hmm, Well done. You’re much higher than the average.” David nodded in satisfaction.

“Thanks, it was more of an accident that my control got that good.” He waved his mangled hand with its two missing fingers. “When this happened, I thought I was never going to be an ethersmith. So I trained and trained until I could do this.” Caeden wrapped his hand in sharp, forming the pseudo-fingers he had been using for years. “The hardest part was learning to dull…my…shroud.”

The conversation was immediately lost on him as a monumental idea struck him. If his shroud was sharp, just like a blade, and it had physical form… He created two small edges out of Sharp and swiftly ran the edge of one across another. It worked. He could feel the edge of one shave the other just a little bit smaller, making it just a little bit sharper. It actually increased his reserve by an infinitesimal degree.

“I think I can make an infinite amount of shroud.”