The runic equations around Hiral, Seena, and Yanily burned fiercely, but not as hot or bright as the clouds burning across the sky. As if he’d set a match on a fuse, the flames had sped off in all directions like a wave that consumed the entire world in their glow. Thanks to his Runes of Expansion, Vibration, and Rejection, the whole thing worked a lot like his sensory domain did. One that saw for thousands of miles.

  Genesis was… larger than he’d been able to visualize. Landscapes he could scarcely imagine dotted its surface. Places lost to the rains for so long, they might as well have been on another world. Even though he’d seen more of the planet’s secrets than just about anybody, with his time on the surface, it seemed like that was barely more than a small percentage of what the world had to offer. There would be so much to explore.

  And, as burning, tentacled-bodies fell from the sky, to bring a touch of renewal to wherever they touched down, there would be a few thousand less threats when he went. Still, as impressive as his little stunt was—and as much of the Enemy’s clouds were consumed—many of the powerful creatures managed to escape. Not through sheer strength, but more through blind luck.

  Hiral’s powerful runic working lay on the foundation of Yanily’s ability to sense the dirty storms, and lines of Connection. The blaze used those dirty storms as fuel for the fire, and like a normal wildfire, the flames would only spread through things it would burn. Because of how he’d structured the runic equations—and to prevent literally setting the whole world aflame—normal clouds weren’t targeted.

  This meant patches of dirty storms hiding within large sections of normal clouds remained untouched. There were also the S-Rank storms—like Stumpy’s—that managed to rebuff Hiral’s flames.

  All this was fine. Thousands of Enemies lay dead across the world. Hiral and the others would track down the others later. For now, Hiral’s working left the sky above most of Genesis free of clouds, the dirty storms where it passed entirely consumed.

  With a snap of his fingers—and an immense amount of solar energy, along with the authority of primal Edicts—he’d undone the magic the Enemy had blanketed the world with.

  “That’s… a lot of experience,” Seena said.

  “Not as much as you think,” Hiral said. “We’re getting the notifications, but for anything below A-Rank, the experience is heavily reduced.”

  “Yeah, but with how many we’re getting, it’s still a lot,” Seena countered.

  “I didn’t get them all,” Hiral said.

  “That’s fine,” Yanily said. “The rest can wait until after we get Left and Right back, and go tell everybody waiting for us what happened. It’s quite a story.”

  “It is,” Seena said, then looked over at Hiral. “What’s next. What do you need to do to bring them back?”

  “Something reckless,” Hiral admitted. “I’ve got to carve up my own soul.”

  “That does not come without risks,” Li’l Ur said.

  “It doesn’t,” Hiral admitted. “But I owe it to them to try. More than that, I owe it to them to succeed.”

  “Can you do it?” Seena said.

  “I will do it,” Hiral said. “That said, Ur is right. There’s some risk. It would be safer for you both to be a bit further away from me.”

  “Pretty sure we both said no to that already,” Seena said. “If you’re so sure you’ll succeed, we’ll be just fine standing right here. Besides…” Seena trailed off, looking up at the sky completely free of clouds. Above them, the night sky spread out like a tapestry of sparkling diamonds. In the distance, four moons of different colors hung above the horizon.

  “Besides,” she continued. “It’s never looked so bright before. So real. This is quite a view. I think we can spend a few minutes up here.”

  “And keep an eye on you,” Yanily said. “You tend to need somebody to catch you when you do something reckless.”

  “I guess I’ll be counting on you and your strong arms then,” Hiral said.

  “Enough flirting,” Seena deadpanned. “Do what you got to do.”

  “Thank you,” Hiral said to both of them—giving Seena’s hand a squeeze in his—then closed his eyes and dove into his PIM universe. While he’d just cleared out most of the world of the Enemy’s storms, this next part would need to happen entirely within himself. And it wouldn’t be any less complicated.

  Foundational Split was an absolute mess, with bare shreds of it left in places. Where the Urn had pulled Left and Right’s souls out had torn apart vast sections. The bigger problem, though, was Hiral’s Maker PIM. Or, more accurately, the apparent lack thereof.

  His Meridian Lines and tattoos had always been the framework for the two doubles. The Meridian Lines weren’t just the source of Right’s strength, they were literally Right. The same could be said for Left and the tattoos. With their bodies made of solar energy, the Maker PIM was the difference between the doubles, and Hiral’s solar energy clones.

  He needed the PIM to give them bodies. Otherwise, they’d be little more than weak sacs of solar energy that wouldn’t last. Hells, without the PIM, they may not even be themselves.

  Laseen had said the PIMs evolved, learned, grew. Part of the reason Left and Right had even been able to develop over the time since Hiral had gotten Foundational Split likely lay in that. They were PIMs personified. Given voice, shape, and minds of their own.

  The question was, what happened to his Maker PIM?

  Was it permanently lost when the Urn consumed Right and Left?

  The Rune-of-Eclipse-shaped PIM he was looking at right now definitely wasn’t his Maker PIM. And, to make matters worse, he’d never looked in at his PIM when he had doubles absorbed. Mainly because he couldn’t. With the wrong PIM in place, he couldn’t access his solar energy. So, what happened when he activated Foundational Split?

  Did it act like a drain, expelling his PIM from his system and out into the real world, allowing him to access the Builder PIM that worked for him? The theory had some merit, since Left and Right each got part of it. Right got the Meridian Lines, while Left got the tattoos. Right could only increase physical attributes, and Left could only increase the mental ones. Each got half of the system.

  Or, hrm, did they? They’d also started getting copies of some of his abilities. Even their own abilities. It hadn’t happened in the beginning, but in the later Ranks. Was there something there?

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  The problem was, if the Foundational Split ability did expel his own PIM, that meant it could be permanently gone. Luckily, there was one other possibility. One Hiral felt was a bit more likely. And, if he was correct, then he had a way to bring them back.

  Hopefully Foundational Split isn’t a complete write-off.

  Crossing his mental-fingers, Hiral dug deeper into that particular ability, Enduring Mind+ working overtime as he reviewed the runic strands of shredded equations. The first thing he noticed was the ability wasn’t like his other PIMP-given skills. It didn’t have quite the same methodical—artificial—symmetry he saw in other abilities like Eloquently Enraged+. Much like his PIM, the latter ability was focused on efficiency. It looked… man-made, was the best way to describe it.

  Like a tunnel built of bricks, compared to the natural cavern of Foundational Split.

  That could only mean one thing; the ability wasn’t one the PIMP created, just one it named. Hiral really had created it himself when he’d gotten the Rune of Separation, even if he didn’t realize he was doing it. Not that it explained where his old PIM went when he activated it or…

  Hiral’s eyes landed on a familiar symbol. One he wouldn’t have recognized before entering the Lost Refuge of the Lost. A complex rune that seemed to exist on multiple planes at the same time, despite only looking like it was half there.

  Yes!

  Despite being within his own PIM universe, his pulse quickened. This… this was what he was looking for. Hoping for.

  The Rune of Exchange.

  If that was there, then that meant the other half of it could be… yes, there. And with it, if I follow the equation down to… right, right, that makes sense. If it does that, then, this missing part must…

  Hiral worked his way through the remnants of the equations, mentally pulling on threads of it to line up sections that weren’t completely ruined. In other areas, he had to pull free-floating fragments within the ability down like fitting pieces into a puzzle. The more he worked, he more the understood.

  And the more he was sure the ability—as it was built before—was ruined. The Urn had literally and figuratively ripped the heart of it out.

  Left and Right’s souls had been part of this ability. Grown within it, and rewritten strands of it as they expanded. Just looking at it as Hiral worked, he could see how their lives and personalities had evolved. He could read Right’s love of pastries and his friends. Left’s quiet countenance and dry humor were an open book. Their shared protectiveness of Hiral.

  It was programmed into them.

  But, not like Laseen had done with the PIMP. These personality traits, they didn’t come from Foundational Split. No, they came from the doubles, and were recorded in the ability. Like Li’l Ur said, the soul was at least partially a record of somebody’s life, and theirs had spread into the ability.

  Interestingly, each of them had their own section in the ability. Maybe unsurprisingly, Left’s was on the left side of the ability, while Right’s dominated the other side. The Edicts of Dreaming and Impact even had their places in there.

  That’s it. That’s how I make this work.

  With the final piece of the solution in hand, Hiral looked hard at Foundational Split. His first ability, and his most important one. It was special, to say the least.

  He cut it in two with a clean line of Separation, pain lancing through his physical body much like it had when that construct had caught him what-felt-like-years ago. Within his PIM universe, thanks to Enduring Mind+, he resisted getting ejected out to suffer that pain.

  That would only last for so long though, so he threw out bands of Connection and Attraction. He’d altered abilities in the past, but this one was a different beast. Moving it in two different directions at the same time, equally and carefully, took all his concentration. For once, this wasn’t something he could just brute force with his S-Rank power. It was only even possible because of his level of power.

  He couldn’t recreate the ability as it was, so he would create a new one, using the framework of the old. Then he’d make it better.

  Foundational Split had been ingenious in that it had Exchanged his Maker PIM with his Builder PIM when he used the ability. He couldn’t see the Maker PIM now, but he was sure it was somewhere in there with him. Hidden below his Builder PIM. When he’d absorbed either Left or Right before, that had cancelled the ability, bringing the wrong PIM back on top, in turn cutting off his access to solar energy. Other than Foundational Split, of course, which did act like a valve between the two PIMs.

  That had always been a weakness. A risk.

  Hiral removed it. How? Eclipse. Except, this time, he didn’t call on its power. No, he called on its concept. One PIM over another, the presence of both. And to that combined PIM, he connected Foundational Split.

  Right and Left were part of him, and he made them a direct part of the shape of his PIM universe too. Each on one side of his soul, stitched directly there through the Edicts of Dreaming and Impact. He’d already used them to connect their PIMs to their souls, so it was almost child’s play to repeat the process with his own.

  Even as he did it, the threads of Foundational Split reached out ahead of his direction, like they knew exactly where they needed to connect to in his soul. Where the echoes of Left and Right lingered.

  Sparks of energy ran through the PIM universe as the first thread connected. Purple and red flames arced along the linked abilities, then ran in reverse, taking some of the meaning and power with them. More and more came in short order, until the entire universe was engulfed in a vibrant light show.

  Then, there in the shadow of it, a second universe resolved. To Hiral’s mind, it looked like him. His Meridian Lines and tattoos on a perfectly still, giant version of him stretching from one end of infinity to the other.

  As soon as he took it in, he reached out with the Edict of Connection, splicing it in place with his Builder PIM, connecting it too, to his soul. Just like that, it was all linked, and the two halves of Foundational Split flared with renewed energy. With renewed life.

  Without a second thought, Hiral exited his PIM universe back to the real world. At his sides, Seena and Yanily both looked at him like they’d felt something shift. In unison, their eyes widened. Though he still had the Rune of Eclipse on him, there were other shadows flickering in and out of existence across his body. His tattoos and Meridian Lines.

  For once, though, they weren’t interfering with his solar energy. They weren’t a Maker PIM anymore. They were just part of him.

  “Excuse me,” Hiral said, unlacing his fingers from Seena’s, then Rejecting fifty feet away from them. “Here we go.”

  Solar energy flowed through his channels with an ease like nothing before. He’d thought he’d reached a peak with his ability to split his solar energy into individual threads, but that was clearly only one of many steps he could take. Now, it not only went exactly where he wanted, but brought a sense of comfort and warmth with it. His channels had always worked, but they’d been arranged around his pre-existing PIM. That wasn’t the case anymore; they were part of it.

  That feeling only grew stronger as the energy he directed surged into Foundational Split.

  On both sides of his soul, the runic equations dictating what the ability would do flared with power and meaning, then pulled on sections of Hiral’s soul. Copied it, then merged it with the individuality each double had grown into. More solar energy than ever circled within the PIM universe, reaching down into Hiral’s Black Hole Solar Heart, and forging a connection there as well.

  Left and Right wouldn’t need him to regain their solar energy anymore. They would have their own Solar Hearts.

  Hiral could only smile at the freedom that would give them before the energy inside him demanded to move outside. He didn’t stop it, and the sky for a mile in every direction whumped. Below him, the ground shuddered, dirt and dust kicking up in an expanding circle despite the distance, while Seena and Yanily’s mounts had to flap their wings furiously to stay in place.

  By the time they got themselves steadied, their riders looked to find three Hiral’s standing in the air on planes of pink energy.

  Right had Meridian Lines across his entire body and the Auroran Conquerors on his hands, while Left had every tattoo, even without the pseudo-aspects. They were… whole.

  And, more importantly, as each one looked at him and smiled, they were back.

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