Coldness found Ulrich in the Sanctuary's underground library, surrounded by texts on ancient languages and forgotten mythologies. The library occupied a vast chamber carved from bedrock, its shelves stretching into shadows that normal torchlight couldn't penetrate. Only the Ministry members had access, and even then, certain sections remained restricted behind locked shelves.

  Ulrich had claimed a corner table and piled it with every volume relating to Hermes and the mystical language bearing his name.

  Ancient Hermes predated modern linguistic systems by millennia, a symbolic script that encoded meaning through resonance rather than simple translation. Each character carried layers of significance, spiritual weight that affected reality when properly invoked. Modern mystical practices used simplified derivatives, watered-down versions safe enough for common ritual work.

  But the original language, the pure form Hermes himself had created, remained dangerous. Speaking it incorrectly could summon unintended consequences. Writing it improperly could corrupt the surrounding space, intentionally or not.

  Ulrich traced his finger across a diagram showing the characters evolution, watching each complex symbol being simplified over epochs. The Silver Bough would be written in this original form, as he’d seen before. If he wanted to read it, he needed fluent literacy in this ancient language. Even after joining the Ministry, Ulrich barely had the time to learn Hermes properly. As for Ancient Hermes, its mystical use had since dwindle due to its innate trait.

  The mythology surrounding Hermes proved equally fascinating. Most texts portrayed him as a scholar-king from the Second Epoch, a mortal who had achieved something approaching divinity through accumulated knowledge. He'd systematized mystical practices, created the foundation for ritual magic, and summarized the fundamental truths about reality's structure into various principles. Unfortunately, the exact details of these principles are lost. Goddess, Ulrich wasn’t even certain that they existed.

  Ulrich spent hours cross-referencing texts, building a working vocabulary of Ancient Hermes characters. He wouldn't achieve fluency in a single day, but functional literacy might be possible. Enough to parse the Silver Bough's contents if the book wasn't too extensive.

  By evening, his eyes burned from reading in dim light. He'd filled three notebooks with character translations, pronunciation guides, and syntactic patterns. The knowledge felt precarious in his mind, like holding water in cupped hands.

  But it would have to suffice.

  Ulrich returned to his terraced house as twilight painted the streets in purple and gold. Inside, he locked the door and drew the curtains before retrieving the Completed Soul Core from its hiding place beneath loose floorboards.

  The core pulsed with captured essence, a perfect sphere roughly the size of a palm. Unlike the incomplete Aranid core, this one radiated stability. Knight Henrik's final gift, crystallized power that could accelerate one's advancement, which may or may not include various symptoms relating to spirituality affliction.

  But the reward justified the risk. A completed Soul Core could fill his Vital Rune by ten to twenty percent, an advancement that would otherwise require weeks of dangerous hunting.

  Ulrich sat cross-legged on his bedroom floor and let the Blessing of Night come naturally. Precisely why he'd waited until the sun fell before pulling this stunt. His senses expanded, allowing him to intuitively sense his surroundings beyond his five senses. There was nothing immediate, no supernatural presences drawn by the core's energy.

  He raised the sphere to his lips and swallowed, as he did with the past refined runes.

  The moment he did, reality fractured, splitting into overlapping fragments that existed simultaneously. Ulrich felt his body dissolving, consciousness spreading across multiple planes of existence like ink in water.

  Voices emerged from that very chaotic existence.

  "You look exhausted. Have you been sleeping at all?"

  Selena's voice, warm and concerned. But beneath lies something else. A deeper resonance that suggested age beyond her apparent years.

  "Six hundred years, and I still come here. Searching for something I can't name."

  Autumn Hall's voice, layered over Selena's until they became indistinguishable. The same person speaking across centuries, separated by time but united through some mystical connection.

  Ulrich tried to anchor himself, but possessed no body to anchor. He was consciousness without form, awareness without substance, mind existing in pure abstraction in the most conceptual sense.

  Scenes flashed through his perception, if he could even call it that.

  Earth. His previous life. A lecture hall where he discussed philosophy with students who would never remember his name. Zhou Mei, his little sister, laughing at something he'd said. Then that fateful day in the midst of winter.

  The images overlapped with his current existence.

  Belham's streets superimposed over Earth's cities. The Sanctuary's underground library merging with university archives. Selena's face flickered between present warmth and future grievances.

  "Everything is mind," a voice whispered from nowhere, warm and most comforting. "The All creates through thought alone. You are fragment and whole simultaneously."

  Ancient Gods? Entities? Leviathans? His own psyche fracturing under the Soul Core's assault?

  Ulrich couldn't distinguish source from echo, couldn't separate his thoughts from invasive presences riding the core's energy into his consciousness.

  "As Above, So Below. What happens in dreams manifests in reality. What you seek in the future shapes the present."

  The voices intensified, becoming a cacophony that threatened to shatter what remained of his identity. Ulrich felt himself fragmenting further, pieces of his psyche drifting toward different planes of existence.

  No.

  He focused on his Vital Rune, that completed core in his chest that existed regardless of which plane his consciousness occupied. The sensation provided an anchor, a reference point he could use to reassemble himself.

  The Vital Rune pulsed in response, drawing the scattered fragments back together. Lesser runes from the Soul Core flowed inward, filling the reservoir that advancement to Rank 2 had emptied. Energy accumulated in measured increments, each percentage point requiring tremendous concentration to integrate safely.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Five percent. Ten percent. Fifteen percent.

  The voices began to fade as Ulrich's identity reasserted itself. The overlapping scenes separated, returning to their proper timelines and contexts. Earth became memory. Belham became present. The dream remained a possible future.

  He gasped, finding himself back in his body on the bedroom floor. Sweat soaked his clothing, and his hands trembled violently. But he was intact, human, himself, as he had always been.

  The Vital Rune sat at approximately fifteen percent capacity. Not the full twenty percent he'd hoped for, but substantial progress nonetheless. Unfortunately, no new spells or talents had manifested. Just raw advancement toward the threshold where Rank 3 would become possible.

  Ulrich lay on the floor for long minutes, letting his racing heartbeat slow to normal rhythms. The danger had been real, yet the risk of losing himself was genuine. But he'd survived and gained the corresponding power.

  He wanted more.

  The thought came unbidden but undeniable. Completed Soul Cores offered the fastest path to advancement, accelerating progress that would otherwise require grueling grinding through dangerous encounters. If he could acquire three or four more, he might reach Rank 3 in months instead of years.

  But acquiring them meant descending into the Shadow Realm's depths, hunting creatures powerful enough to drop complete cores rather than fragments. Awakened Myriad ranked opponents, possibly even Myriad Kings like the skeleton that had crushed the Flesh Golem's core with casual contempt. As for Knight Henrik's core, it was a special case where the undead had intelligence. And Ulrich doubted he would be fortunate enough to encounter another like it.

  Financially: He'd need almost one thousand umbra shards worth of resources, if not more. The Ministry might provide another complete rune if his "special privileges" extended to Rank 3, but he couldn't rely on that assumption. Though he does plan to ask Rosaline for the details later.

  His thoughts came organized, like a syllabus being written in real time.

  Lesser runes: His Vital Rune needed to reach one hundred percent again, which meant killing hundreds of creatures or absorbing multiple Soul Cores. The latter option was faster but riskier.

  Knowledge: Lord William's formulas covered Rank 2 and Rank 3. He'd need to study them thoroughly, understanding the advancement process before attempting it.

  Timeline: Perhaps a month or two if he pushed aggressively. More than six if unlucky.

  The urgency surprised him. Only days ago, reaching Rank 2 had seemed like a distant goal. Now he was already planning for Rank 3, driven by some internal pressure he couldn't fully articulate. Was it ambition? Fear of falling behind? The sense that something waited in the future that would require greater power to confront?

  Ulrich didn't know. He only knew that waiting for someone to do something about it was no different from a pig waiting to be slaughtered. And he did not want to be that pig.

  He checked his pocket watch. 00:40. Past midnight by forty minutes.

  Ulrich crawled into bed without bothering to change clothes. His eyes closed, and the dream claimed him with familiar inevitability.

  Ulrich stood and checked his internal state. Still Rank 1 in the dream, unchanged despite absorbing the Soul Core in reality. So... the dream's power level didn't update in real-time, only reset at major thresholds like rank advancement?

  Interesting. And ultimately irrelevant to his current goal.

  Gu Lan's apartment occupied a mid-rise building in Donghai's commercial district. Ulrich had visited it before several times, enough to memorize the route perfectly. He navigated through familiar streets, nodding to shopkeepers who would forget him the moment the cycle reset.

  The apartment door was locked. Ulrich conjured an arrow and put a hole through the doorknob, then entered without ceremony and found the black book exactly where it should be, sitting on Gu Lan's cluttered desk amid stacks of paperwork and empty coffee cups.

  The Silver Bough.

  Silver lettering adorned its black leather cover, forming characters in Ancient Hermes that held meaning thanks to his morning's study. "Knowledge of Correspondence," the title translates roughly. "Reflections Between Spheres."

  Ulrich tucked the book under his arm and left, heading for a location he'd discovered years ago in the dream's geography. An abandoned valley on Donghai's outskirts, overgrown and isolated. Perfect for undisturbed study.

  The valley floor was carpeted with wild grass that rustled in the wind. Ulrich settled against a boulder and opened the Silver Bough carefully, mindful that Ancient Hermes text could affect reality through mere reading.

  The first page contained a warning in script that seemed to shift as he looked at it.

  "Beware of knowledge."

  Ulrich turned the page.

  The content began with cosmological diagrams showing nested spheres of existence. Physical realm, mental plane, spiritual dimension, divine kingdom. Each layer reflected the others in precise mathematical ratios, correspondence manifesting through geometric relationships.

  Then came the principles themselves, written in dense philosophical language that required intense concentration to parse.

  The Principle of Mentalism: All that exists originates from the Mind. The All, which some name the Original Creator, thinks reality into being. We are thoughts in the divine consciousness, fragments of the whole experiencing itself through countless perspectives. Matter is condensed thought. Energy is thought in motion. Reality is a mental construct made manifest.

  Ulrich's hands trembled as understanding clicked into place.

  His transmigration. The dream's future visions. The Shadow Realm's existence. All of it made sense if reality was fundamentally mental rather than physical. Consciousness could transfer between bodies because consciousness was the primary substance. Dreams could show futures because all time existed simultaneously in the mental plane. Shadow and surface were mirror reflections because correspondence governed all existence.

  The book continued.

  The Principle of Correspondence: As Above, So Below; As Below, So Above. What occurs in higher planes manifests in lower planes. Individual mirrors universal. Microcosm reflects macrocosm. Understanding one sphere grants insight into all spheres through correspondence. The pattern repeating across scales is not a coincidence but a fundamental law.

  Ulrich stared at the text, his entire body rigid with the weight of revelation.

  This explained everything.

  Selena and Autumn Hall share the same face across six hundred years. Correspondence between different time periods, the same pattern manifests repeatedly through reincarnation or echo.

  The Shadow Realm mirrors the surface world. As Above, So Below. What happened in one sphere affected the other through correspondence.

  His advancement visions show meaningful futures. And the mental plane reflects possibilities that would manifest physically.

  Even the Eternal Club's worship of forty-two made sense in this context. Numbers were patterns, and patterns governed correspondence between spheres. Whatever significance forty-two held, it must represent some fundamental ratio in reality's structure.

  Ulrich closed the book, unable to continue. His mind reeled from implications that cascaded through his understanding of existence. If Hermes was correct, if reality truly functioned according to these principles, then everything he'd experienced had been inevitable. Patterns repeating, correspondences manifesting, the mental manifesting the physical.

  He sat in the abandoned valley for hours, letting the knowledge settle into his psyche. The sun tracked across the sky, approaching evening's golden light.

  Finally, Ulrich stood. He needed to do one more thing before the right time disappeared.

  The street vendor sold masks near Donghai's central market. Ulrich purchased the same black and gold design he'd worn during his first meeting with Autumn Hall. Then he caught the ferry to Belham Island, standing at the railing as ruined land emerged from the sea of water.

  The graveyard looked exactly as it had before. The collapsed church, the overgrown graves, his tombstone with its Celtic inscription. Autumn Hall knelt before it, arranging white flowers with practiced care. The Chinese fox mask covered her face, and her elegant dress trailed through the grass without concern.

  Ulrich approached slowly, making his footsteps audible.

  She turned, rising gracefully. Behind the mask, her hazel eyes studied him with the kind of attention that suggested she was cataloging every detail of his movement.

  Then she spoke, and Ulrich's world tilted.

  "Who are you?"