Gilded Ashes-Chapter 313: Reach Back

Kenzo smiled.

The kind of smile that announced an answer you probably won’t like.

"The part of you that you never show."

Raizen turned them over. Tried to understand them the way he understood engineering - structurally, mechanically, each piece fitting into the next. But they didn’t work that way. They were abstract where he needed them to be concrete.

"I don’t follow" he mumbled.

Kenzo didn’t look disappointed. If anything, he looked like he’d expected that.

"Everyone carries something inside them that they don’t express" Kenzo said. "Not a secret. Not a memory. Something deeper. The way you are when nobody’s watching. The instinct beneath your instinct. The thing that moves before your thoughts catch up." He tapped his chest close to his heart. "That’s what a beast is made of. It’s not your personality. It’s not your fighting style. It’s the shape of the part of you that exists before words."

Raizen frowned. How he could reach something thatacted before his thoughts even reached?

Atman spoke from his position against the trunk. His voice was quiet, but it reached Raizen’s ears. As if he was about to say something he didn’t really like.

"And that’s how Chasmis eyes works, too." Atman continued, pointing to his eye. "The abilities it gives you – they aren’t random. They’re based on who you are – behind all the acts, all the masks you wear, behind anything you try to hide"

After a small silence, he added:

"...And the same is with the imperfection – it gives you what you fear most."

Then he cleared his throat, remembering why he was actually here and what he actually needed to say.

"Think of it differently" he said. "When you’re in danger - real danger, where thinking is too slow - what moves first?"

Raizen looked at him. He couldn’t understand where Atman was taking this.

"Not your body" Atman continued. "Not your mind. Something else. Something that decides before you do. Imagine the beast as that, just given form."

Saffi’s arms were crossed, but her fingers were pressing into her sleeves - the way they did when she was absorbing something and trying to organize it. "So it’s subconscious" she said. "An externalized expression of -"

"Don’t intellectualize it" Kenzo cut in. Not rude, but firm. "That’s the trap. Everyone tries to think their way to it, and it doesn’t work. You can’t reason it into existence. You can’t design it. You can’t plan what it looks like or what it does."

He looked at Saffi directly. "It shows up as what it is. Not what you want it to be."

Saffi’s mouth closed. She didn’t look offended - just rethinking. Adjusting.

"The gap between those two things" he said, "is where most people get stuck. I got, too."

"What do you mean "I got, too", Kenzo?" Raizen bent his brow.

"I can’t summon my beast. No matter how much I try, no matter how much Eon I dump into it... It just won’t come to light!" Kenzo answered. "And it’s not something I’m really ashamed of, either."

Atman nudged Kenzo with his elbow. "It’s because this guy literally has nothing to hide!"

Then he uncrossed his arms. He held his right hand out to the side - palm down, fingers relaxed. Smoke gathered at his wrist. Not the combat tendrils from earlier. Something different. It looked softer, like you could jump inside and it’ll be soft, like a pillow. It pooled in his palm like dark water, swirled once, and then rose - forming a shape. Small. The size of a cat. It solidified for just a moment - long enough for Raizen to catch the outline of something sleek and low to the ground, with four short legs, small paws, a tail and a head that turned toward Atman. It looked almost like a cat, if cats were two times cuter.

"If I’m too honest, it means that your true self is a scaredy-cat, huh, Atman?" Kenzo returned the nudge.

Then Atman closed his hand, and the creature was gone. He didn’t answer Kenzo.

"That took me three weeks" Atman said. "Three weeks of standing in a field, reaching for something I couldn’t describe, getting nothing back. And when it finally came -" He looked at his closed fist. "It was nothing like what I expected."

He didn’t elaborate. Didn’t say what he’d expected or what he’d gotten instead.

Kenzo nodded. "That’s the thing. You don’t get to choose. It’s not a design project. You don’t sketch it out and build it to spec."

"It’s not like you get to customize yourself before birth" Atman failed to contnain a laugh.

Kenzo turned back to Raizen. "Obviously, the first time is the hardest. Not because the process is complicated - it isn’t. It’s actually stupidly simple. You reach for it, and it comes."

"Then why is it hard?"

"Because you have to reach for something you can’t see, can’t name, and can’t be sure is there" Kenzo scratched the top of his head. "Most people spend days. Weeks, sometimes. They stand there, channeling Eon, trying to force something into shape, and nothing happens. Because they’re reaching for the wrong thing. They’re reaching for what they think they are. Not what they actually are."

He let that land.

"Everyone should be able to do it" Kenzo said. "Every person who can channel Eon. The ability isn’t rare. The willingness to let it out - that’s the hard part."

He stepped back. Gave Raizen space.

"No pressure" he said. And then, contradicting that entirely: "But I think you’re going to surprise yourself."

Atman said nothing. Just watched. His arms were folded to his chest again, but something in his posture had straightened - an attentiveness that said he was taking this more seriously than his casual lean suggested.

Saffi stepped back too. Giving room. Her eyes were on Raizen - not analytical, not assessing either.

Raizen stood at the edge of the platform.

He thought about what Kenzo said. The distance between who you think you are and who you actually are. He felt it before - in moments where his body moved without permission, where his instincts made choices his brain hadn’t approved. The moment he’d grabbed Saffi’s arm on the branch. The moment he’d jumped through the fog. The moments in fights where his hands did things he only understood afterward.

Something lived in those moments. Something fast, sure and completely unconcerned with his opinion of it.

The forest spread out before him – green, deep and alive, layers of canopy descending into mist, trunks disappearing downward into the soft grey nothing he’d crawled through last night. The air was cool. The drizzle had stopped. Pale shafts of sunlight cut through the leaves above and landed on the wet wood around his feet, turning puddles into mirrors.

He breathed.

Not the controlled breathing of a technique, like Kori taught him. Just breathing. In and out. Letting his chest rise and fall. Letting the thoughts run - the espionage, the lotuses, the staff, Eiden’s dark hand, the black blur, the golden ashes - letting them pass through without holding any of them.

Reaching.

Not outward. Not toward the Eon. Toward something underneath. Something that had been there his whole life, moving in the spaces between his conscious decisions, acting before he could name it.

The part of him that he never showed.

He raised his hand.

Stretched it forward. Palm open. Fingers spread.

And he felt something reach back.