Veil of Aether

Back at Kei’s worksite the next day, the chaos from before had evolved into something shocking—order.

A long, neat line had formed outside the canteen, packed with quiet, disciplined men waiting their turn. No pushing, no yelling. Just patient silence. It was almost eerie considering the uproar the day before.

As promised, Kei returned with enough grilled goat meat to feed everyone. He’d prepped it early that morning and stored it in a wooden container he’d crafted himself—reinforced by Silvie’s Nature Force to preserve its structure. And while his early fire runework was still inefficient for full-on cooking, the strokes he carved were stable enough to turn the container into a heated storage box, keeping the food warm all the way to lunch.

The moment the meal bell rang, the canteen filled with the rich, smoky scent of grilled meat—and the men nearly lost it.

Those same "tough guys" who had tried intimidating Kei and Inpu yesterday? They were first in line, practically drooling. Hunger overpowered pride, and for a second, it looked like another frenzy might erupt.

But Kei had prepared for exactly that.

Even in this unfamiliar world without proper tools, he hadn't forgotten what he was capable of. While he couldn’t forge weapons with ore or use crafting stations, he’d taken a chisel from the worksite and turned to stone. Simple, solid, and everywhere. He carved a makeshift weapon by hand—rough in shape but sharp in purpose.

And then came the part he was truly passionate about.

Kei began feeding the brick weapon with his own aether. Not in a rush, not all at once—but steadily, day after day, like a smith stoking a fire. Aether soaked into the grain of the stone, reinforcing its density, gradually turning it into something far sturdier than its crude appearance suggested.

He didn’t rely on raw infusion alone. By now, Kei had long since immersed himself in the study of runes—something he’d picked up during his early days in this world. What began as idle curiosity had evolved into a relentless pursuit. The more he read, the deeper he fell into the complexity of it all. Where others saw primitive markings, Kei saw systems—syntax, conditions, triggers.

To him, runes weren’t just magical graffiti—they were code. A language of command and structure that bent the laws of this world like programming scripts once did back on Earth. He spent every spare moment breaking them down, experimenting, reverse-engineering their logic until they started to respond the way he wanted.

By the time he applied his knowledge to the brick weapon, Kei had already developed a crude but functional Acceleration Rune rooted in Wind Force. It wasn’t elegant or particularly stable, but it didn’t need to be.

It worked.

And that was all that mattered.

When tied to his newly reforged Basic Projectile Mastery, the combination turned the stone weapon into a missile launcher. Not metaphorically. Literally.

So when a few meat-starved workers tried skipping the line or getting handsy again, they were immediately put in their place.

A brick flew across the canteen with a sharp snap, the force behind it far too unnatural to be thrown by hand. One man was knocked clean off his feet, crashing into a bench and going limp. He was still breathing—barely—but unconscious. The others who tried acting out weren’t so lucky either. Bruises, swelling, split lips—nothing lethal, but just violent enough to make an example.

And that was all it took.

Once they saw what a “frail” kid could do with a rock, the crowd fell in line. Literally. They stood up straight, hands behind backs, waiting for food like soldiers at inspection.

From that point on, there were no more problems.

Just the mouthwatering smell of goat meat, the quiet shuffle of boots on dirt, and a line of very well-behaved men—desperate to eat, but even more desperate not to get hit by Kei’s flying brick.

Inpu had been up front helping Kei serve portions and keep track of everyone who came to collect food and their repayments. It looked less like a free-for-all and more like a makeshift business, with Inpu handling the front end like a proper clerk.

Despite the earlier chaos, once people got their servings, no one had a single complaint. The food had been beyond their expectations—some even tried sneaking back for seconds, their pride nowhere in sight.

Of course, their actions didn’t go unnoticed. The kitchen workers and so-called cooks who had been feeding these men the same bland mush for years were not happy. They’d never seen the laborers enjoy food like this before, and it stung. Jealousy turned into a problem when the kitchen staff decided to inform the supervisors.

Kei was just handing out second portions when the same man who’d brought him to the site came stomping in, face twisted in irritation.

“What is going on in here?” he barked, demanding answers.

The crowd instantly went still, tension in the air like a pulled string. Kei glanced at the man but didn’t respond, still focused on scooping out meat.

Inpu, nervous but trying to play peacemaker, stepped forward. “Uh, sir, we were just giving our fellow workers some food. We had a bit extra, and they’ve been working really hard, so we thought we’d share a little.”

The man narrowed his eyes. “And who told you you could do that?”

Kei finally turned, stepping forward with a calm stare. “Who told us we couldn’t?” he shot back. “There’s nothing written anywhere that says we’re not allowed to help each other. The food comes out of our pockets. So what’s it to you if we decide to feed the people around us?”

He walked straight up to the man, meeting him eye to eye without an ounce of hesitation.

“You…” the man started, clearly irritated that Kei dared to talk back.

“Me what?” Kei interrupted, tone dry. “Are you that illiterate that you can’t—”

He didn’t get to finish.

The man’s fist shot forward, but Kei ducked beneath it, letting the blow sail past his head. He stepped into the man's space, hooked his leg behind the supervisor’s ankle, and swept.

The man hit the ground hard, a dull thud echoing through the canteen.

Kei didn’t flinch. He just brushed the dust off his sleeve and looked down. “Try that again, and you’ll wake up chewing dirt for breakfast.”

Silence followed. No one moved. The workers stared, wide-eyed.

The man scowled but didn’t dare retaliate. He got up slowly, dusting himself off, and walked out without another word.

As soon as the door shut, the tension eased.

Inpu let out a breath he’d been holding. “Khenu… are you trying to get thrown in a pit?”

Kei shrugged. “If feeding people is a crime, then yeah. Guess I’m guilty.”

He turned back toward the food line, waving the next guy over. “Now hurry up and grab a plate before it goes cold. We’re not running a charity here. You eat, you pay.”

And just like that, the line started moving again.

Even though the man had already left—storming off after being publicly humiliated by Kei in front of half the worksite—Kei hadn’t stopped watching him.

As the supervisor walked away, muttering under his breath and nursing his pride, faint, undetectable pulses radiated from his upper arm. Barely perceptible to the average person. In fact, invisible to anyone except one.

Kei.

What the man didn’t know was that, at some point during their earlier confrontation, Kei had drawn a set of minute, almost imperceptible rune strokes onto his uniform. A technique inspired by his Phantom Breeze, his presence-suppressing skill that relied on his attunement to the ambient flow of wind around him. These weren’t attack runes or traps. They were trackers. Anchors.

And they weren’t powered by brute force—they were tuned to whisper through the wind.

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The strokes released subtle ripples of air, pulses that moved with the wind like a current through a stream. They extended only within a limited radius, but within that boundary, Kei could feel the man’s location as clearly as a heartbeat in his palm. Not visually. Not through some magical map. Just a sense—like the wind itself was reporting back to him.

It was a technique still in its infancy, but one Kei was growing increasingly skilled at manipulating. After all, this world was built on Force—and runes were nothing more than language. And if there was one thing Kei excelled at, it was understanding languages. Whether they were code, wind, or arcane script didn’t really matter.

He didn’t let his focus show, but his eyes glinted faintly with calculation. With intent. That man—and others like him—held power over these workers. Over him. It was soft slavery wrapped in bureaucracy and coin, and Kei had no intention of letting it go unchecked for long. Not while he could do something about it. Not while he had even one advantage.

Sooner or later, he'd be ready to test just how far those runes could stretch.

But for now, the final servings of meat were gone, handed out fairly, and the last men returned to their posts with smiles and full stomachs. Kei made sure to save two plates—one for himself and one for Inpu.

“That was really impressive, Khenu,” Inpu said, setting down the stone tally he used to track food rations. “That man was like three times your size, but you handled him so easily. I thought he was going to break your face, and then boom—he was the one getting decked.”

Kei shrugged, sitting down next to him with a sigh. “It’s nothing. In a world like this, it’s probably best you learn to defend yourself. Otherwise, the moment someone decides you’re weak… that’s the moment you die. And don’t give me that 'balance between life and death' stuff either.”

Inpu laughed softly, though it was more hollow than amused. “Learning to defend myself? That’s a fever dream. I’m so weak, Kei. What could I possibly do? At best, it’d just entertain them—to see someone like me flail around trying to fight back. A weakling clinging to life. It’d be a joke.”

“You’re not as weak as you think,” Kei said, taking a bite of goat meat. “And you don’t fool me. Don’t pretend I haven’t noticed the way you’ve been organizing those stones you carry.”

Inpu stiffened, his fingers freezing mid-motion as he adjusted one of the palm-sized rocks in his lap.

“You said something about balance before,” Kei continued, his tone casual but eyes sharp. “But the way you’ve been arranging them—it’s not some symbolic zen garden thing. You’re forming strokes, aren’t you?”

Inpu let out a defeated breath. “Heh… I should’ve known you’d catch on.”

“So? What are you doing?”

Inpu didn’t answer right away. He just stared down at the stones, slowly rotating one between his fingers.

“This whole place is… off,” he finally said. “There’s barely any Aether here. Not just in the people—but in the land. The air. Everything feels... dry. Rotten. Like it’s been drained of life and left to stagnate.”

Kei glanced around the camp, thinking on it. He had noticed something too—how difficult it was to channel energy here. How sluggish the wind felt compared to other places.

“It’s like this whole worksite’s a dead zone,” Inpu went on, voice quieter now. “Aether doesn’t flow here. It lingers. Sours. Every night I try to cycle what little I can absorb from the environment, but it’s like trying to drink from a poisoned stream.”

“So, the runes…?”

“I’m not trying to master Balance Force,” Inpu clarified. “I don’t even know how. I was just... experimenting. Thought if I could replicate strokes that represent balance—harmony, stillness—I could create a sort of artificial zone. Stabilize the area. Maybe then it’d stop resisting when I try to cultivate.”

Kei nodded slowly, understanding. “So you’re trying to clear the gunk out of the system.”

“Exactly,” Inpu said, a flicker of hope in his tone. “If I can get it stable—just a small patch—I might be able to draw aether without it tainting me. That’s all I want. Not to be strong. Just to stop getting weaker.”

Kei leaned back against the wall and exhaled. “Alright, I don’t really get how that works, but if it means you can hold your own a little better, I’m all for it. Sounds like you’re more clever than you give yourself credit for.”

Inpu smiled weakly. “Still doesn’t help me throw a punch.”

Kei grinned. “That part I can help with. If you’re serious, I’ll teach you how to fight. You don’t have to be strong—you just need to know how to hit first.”

“And run fast.”

“That too.”

They both laughed, the tension bleeding out as their plates were finally cleared. Kei stretched his arms and stood.

“Well, rest up. We’ll need our energy tomorrow. Next on the hunting list—Rock Hens. I’m dying to try chicken and eggs,” he said, eyes practically gleaming.

Inpu gave him a skeptical look. “You’ve been dreaming about that since yesterday.”

“And I won’t stop till I taste it.”

After finishing their workday, Kei dragged Inpu back to his house… very much against his will. And just like that, Inpu met Silvie, Mia, and Kei M.

“Nice to meet you, but we have no more room for you if you want to live here,” Silvie said flatly.

Inpu laughed awkwardly, rubbing the back of his head. “O-Oh, I’m not moving in or anything…”

“He’s just here for training,” Kei Y clarified. “Turns out he’s got a knack for runes too—and sneaky with it. If I wasn’t working with him, I’d have never noticed what he was doing.”

“You’re training with us? Gonna help us hunt too?” Kei M chimed in, giving Inpu’s slim frame a once-over. No judgment in his voice, just honest curiosity. “It’d be nice having some backup. Khenu and I have been struggling with those goats—and the idiot already wants to go after Rock Hens. Hope you’re ready to die.”

Kei Y groaned as Kei M brought up death again before he could even warn them properly.

“Hi, I’m Mia,” she said brightly, waving. “What kind of runes were you doing?”

“Oh, just some Balance runes. I was trying to make aether more present at work,” Inpu replied, nodding politely.

“Ohhh, like a give-and-take kind of balance?” Mia’s eyes lit up. “That’s so cool! I wish I could train in Balance Force… maybe then I could turn my weak bones into something greater.”

She laughed lightly, but her tone carried a quiet sense of hope—like she wasn’t just joking, but dreaming.

“Huh, is that how you view Balance?” Inpu asked, head tilted in thought. “I’ve always seen it like a scale between two forces—nature compensating when there’s too much of one and not enough of another.”

“Not everyone’s understanding of Forces aligns,” Silvie added, resting her elbows on the table. “So it’s no surprise you two see Balance from different perspectives.”

“Yeah, I guess in the end, it probably leads to the same path anyway,” Mia said with a soft laugh.

While they spoke, Kei Y had already moved into the kitchen, working alongside Kei M to prepare dinner. Once everyone had eaten their fill, Kei Y finally addressed the real reason he’d dragged Inpu back with him.

“Hey, Inpu,” Kei said, setting his cup down. “Since you’ve been arranging those stones to form rune strokes at work, I was wondering… do you think you could replicate something like that here?”

Inpu blinked. “Here? In the house?” He looked around. “I guess that would be possible. I wouldn’t need heavy stones either—I could just draw the Balance strokes on the ground and walls. But there’s still the same issue as before: the aether. The stuff in this area is diluted, low-grade. The effects wouldn’t be anything special.”

Kei Y’s expression didn’t change. “What if,” he asked, tone level but loaded, “you had access to the purest aether in all of existence?”

Inpu laughed, thinking it was a joke. “That’d be nice, sure. But where would we even get something like that?”

At that moment, Kei Y and Silvie both looked at him—too still, too serious.

They weren’t joking.

The truth was, they knew revealing their secret—that they held within them a pristine form of aether untouched by corruption or dilution—would do more harm than good. Especially here, in a temporal dungeon buried within an Exalted dungeon. The wrong eyes seeing the truth could get them all killed. But they also knew… holding back too much could cost them their lives just the same.

So they said nothing. Not yet.

“Just get to work,” Kei Y said coolly. “Don’t worry about the source. Tonight we’re cultivating. And Mia—since you mentioned that whole give-and-take approach to Balance Force earlier, I’ve got an idea. Something that might actually help with your condition.”

His grin stretched slowly, unsettlingly.

It wasn’t a comforting grin. It was the grin of someone about to try something highly experimental, mildly dangerous, and completely untested.

Kei M didn’t even hesitate—he instinctively stepped in front of Mia like a human shield. “Khenu… what are you planning?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Experiments,” Kei said flatly. “And you,”—he turned to Inpu—“your whole approach to balance between forces? There’s a martial art out there that was practically designed with that philosophy in mind.”

He glanced to the side.

“Tai Chi,” Silvie said with a small nod. “I can teach him.”

Silvie had never boasted about it, but Kei Y knew the truth. She’d been trained from the time she could walk, drilled in nearly every martial art known to Earth. By the time she was seven, her skill was so absurdly advanced she could’ve claimed the title of Earth’s greatest martial artist.

And now, Inpu had just won the lottery—he wouldn’t find a better teacher in any world.

Silvie extended her hand, and with a breath, brought out her Spark. Like iron drawn to a magnet, the ambient aether immediately responded, rippling toward her in thin currents of light and pressure. The moment she stabilized her pull, the entire airspace shifted subtly—her Spark now acting as a beacon, ready to empower Inpu’s rune strokes with something far cleaner than the sickly ambient aether they usually endured, her pristine aether.

Kei Y followed suit—no grand display, no chant, just quiet intent. His own aether, impossibly pristine, began to hum through his bloodstream. He kept it restrained, low and stable, just enough to let Inpu work but not enough to tip off any onlookers or worse, greedy eyes.

With both their energies flowing in controlled harmony, Inpu knelt near the center of the room, beginning to etch Balance strokes across the ground with sharpened stone. His hand moved quickly, guided by instinct sharpened through silent obsession. This wasn’t just theory to him anymore—this was the beginning of a system. Aether flowed into the fresh strokes, and already the air inside the residence felt less… tainted. More stable. More present.

And even as all that was happening, Kei Y never lost track of the other thread he was monitoring.

Kei Y mentally prepared himself for what they were about to do, keeping his awareness sharp as he tracked the rune he had placed on the supervisor. Wind pulsed softly from the mark, a faint draft of breeze spreading through the area. It was subtle—barely noticeable to those around—but that was exactly the problem. The supervisor wasn’t alone. He was surrounded by others, and from what Kei could sense, they weren’t just bystanders. They were people he’d probably have to deal with too.

He's gathering.

Trouble was coming.

Kei Y’s shoulders tightened slightly as he took it in. There were too many unknowns—this wasn’t going to be a quiet night of training and cultivation. They were on the edge of something real now.

And someone else could feel it.

Kei M, standing to the side, suddenly pulsed with energy of his own—Sound Force resonating from his body in short rhythmic waves, like a heartbeat echoing through stone. His rope rock whipped through the air, extending and retracting on command, coiled in motion, ready to strike or defend.

“Heh… looks like we’re about to get into some fun trouble,” he said with a wide grin, eyes flicking to Kei Y. “Knew it was a good thing I met you.”

Kei Y didn’t reply. He was watching the rope.

The smooth precision, the fluid extension, the kinetic control—it was crude, but inspired. It gave him an idea. A design. A craft that could elevate what Kei M was doing with that rope into something far more dangerous, something he could refine, reinforce.

Not just a weapon.

A companion tool. A Force conduit. A war-born extension of Kei M’s own resonance.

His mind had already begun sketching the blueprint.