After Rea left the room, an unnervingly heavy silence settled in.

  Perhaps it was the release of tension, but a lethargy like wet cotton began to pull my body and mind down toward the floor. I felt a primal urge to wake my blurred senses.

  I reached into my pouch. I felt the soft, microscopic texture at my fingertips.

  I took a pinch of Solet and scattered it into the air.

  The particles of light, as if finely ground stardust, began to dance and spread in rhythm with my breathing.

  At that moment, the anxiety that had been swaying my heart subsided as if it had all been a lie.

  Within my mind, the lines of sense that had been fragmented and broken began to connect—first into dotted lines, and then into thin, continuous threads.

  It was a comforting continuity; a sense of absolute wholeness as if my severed self and the world were finally becoming one.

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  Then, it happened.

  In a corner of the room where the particles of Solet had settled, my eyes fell upon a withered plant in a pot. A flower bud, tightly shut and trapped within its hardened shell.

  The moment the shimmering powder touched it, a miracle occurred.

  It was as if the plant had met the warmth of the gentlest season and the most radiant sunlight all at once.

  Pop—

  The tightly closed bud let out a silent gasp and burst into full bloom.

  It wasn't forced open. It was a natural, yet overwhelming efflorescence, driven by the plant's own irrepressible surge of vitality.

  I witnessed this incredible sight with my own eyes.

  This was the "power to bend the will of the world" that Dr. O had spoken of. This was the true ability of the Solet given to me.

  At that moment, something that had been crouching deep within me began to stir.

  All the parts of myself that had been floating vaguely and inaccurately in the darkness of Ebony finally began to take on a clear shape.

  I was no longer just a boy who had overflowed and drifted here. I was someone who knew where my roots were, and what I had to do. A calm yet unyielding energy flowed through my veins, and the reflection of a true man’s gaze appeared in the mirror before me.

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