Chapter 12: Primary Aether Path: Celestial Hoarding
Fabrisse’s room resembled a secondhand bookshop crossbred with a nostalgic attic. It overflowed with annotated journals, old field guides, rejected thesis scrolls, and sentimental clutter no sane person would inventory, and the only reason why it looked remotely neat was because Dubbie insisted on tidying it up, even after Fabrisse had specifically told her not to.
He liked the kind of chaos he’d created. There was a logic to the mess, a cartography of clutter only he could read. The seventh shelf creaked under the weight of old geology pamphlets and snack tins he refused to throw away for ‘structural reasons.’ His desk was a mosaic of quills, ink blotches, and half-scribbled diagrams, with a single Stupenstone perched on top like a paperweight that had earned tenure.
And right in the center of it all, glowing above a pile of folded robes and enchanted paper receipts, floated the glyph:
| [PRIMARY AETHER PATH: Celestial Hoarding] Aetheric output and spell amplification scale directly with the quantity of stored objects of the same kind within your Aetherhold. Emotional and historical resonance increase potency. Improvements come in the form of synergy with existing hoarding skills. [SYSTEM TIP: Clutter is power.] [WARNING: Inventory overflow may cause ambient anomalies.]
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