With the passing of months, my journey gradually ceased to feel like one.
It became my new normal.
Wakefulness.
Flight.
Observation.
[Awareness].
[Cultivation].
[Insight]s.
Exhaustion.
Sleep.
The same [Cycle], over and over again.
Not that it was repetitive... or ineffective, as my exhaustion resistance [Cultivation] proved otherwise.
At first, I had struggled to remain awake for more than several days before exhaustion inevitably overpowered my [Will] by making maintaining my [Clarity] too energy-intensive an [Exertion] to sustain.
But eventually, those several days of pushing myself until both my body and mind collapsed became indubitably longer, stretching to what felt like a week.
Like that, before I knew it, exhaustion became just another variable for me to optimize the [Cultivation] of against every other.
My thoughts no longer dulled as abruptly.
My reactions remained reliable for longer.
Even when fatigue inevitably accumulated, my [Clarity] now sustained a mind that, mere months ago, would have already been wandering aimlessly.
Unexpectedly, though obvious in hindsight, another variable that became even less of a concern as weeks of endless flying passed...
Were my fundamental flight capabilities.
The countless hours I spent in uninterrupted flight, constantly making microscopic adjustments to optimize my movement through the air...
It all gradually reshaped both my flight technique and endurance until maintaining a steadily higher pace became almost effortless.
This was reflected in the gradual changes the Crimson Hollow Sector underwent as I travelled ever onward.
The waterways narrowed.
The puddles became rarer.
Entire stretches of crimson moss gave way to bare metal once more.
The ubiquitous crimson glow I had unknowingly became used to slowly diminished.
Ostensibly, I was moving farther and farther away from the Crimson Hollow Realm Rift.
Nevertheless, life remained abundant, as even a shallow stream of crimson water proved sufficient to sustain an entire ecosystem incomparable to the barren one of the rust wastes.
Arguably, that reduced abundance was also the only factor I could determine to have contributed to what was truly a flourishing Civilization.
During those months, I passed dozens of settlements.
Some were similar to the settlements deeper into the Crimson Hollow Sector, clusters of elevated platforms.
But others...
Others rivaled several floors of Red Sand Rift City in size.
And those only became more and more frequent as I ventured into this in-between of non-overabundance.
As always, though, I never descended.
I was content with observing from afar.
Studying architecture.
Quantifying traffic.
Analyzing defensive structures.
Assessing the increasingly refined roads.
Taking in the mesmerizing sight of horizon-stretching fields of swaying crimson grains carefully engineered around irrigation channels carrying trickles of crimson water.
Every settlement his [Insight]s to provide on how Civilization both adapted to and warped the environment.
For all that Civilization appeared to be thriving in this in-between, however, the dangers hadn't diminished at all due to crimson water having become less abundant.
If anything, against my initial expectations, the exact opposite had occurred.
Because when abundance faded, competition for resources replaced it.
And that, Stavros' map and itinerary showed it to be an even greater threat than what I would have otherwise thought.
Wherever he instructed me to gain altitude, I watched entire sections of ground collapse, unveiling gaping maws filled with thousands of teeth that swallowed unsuspecting prey.
Wherever he warned me to remain close to the ground, I witnessed the appalling sight of hundreds of buzzing predators hunting overhead, scouting every crevice I could have hidden in had I been unaware.
Several times, I was even forced to slow down, stop entirely, or fly barely beneath the ceiling to remain outside the perception of colossal aerial lifeforms that looked capable of swallowing and digesting me within seconds if my [Secrecy] failed.
Still, every danger I passed became another experience my Path and various [Cultivation]s fed upon.
Especially my [Awareness] [Cultivation].
In the end, following weeks of experiencing the horror that was the competition for resources...
My navigation through referencing hundreds of landmarks led me toward what initially appeared to be just another section of ceiling sparsely covered in crimson moss, but was clearly the area Stavros' map told me was where my passage upwards was located.
I spent an entire day scrutinizing it with extensive sensory [Will] enhancements before finally identifying an unremarkable fracture indistinguishable from hundreds of others.
Except when I entered it to assess its viability...
I recognized the subtle signs of artificial passages.
This was the passage I had been searching for.
Compared to the Crimson Falls, though, it obviously felt a bit lacking.
No grand opening.
No obvious route upward.
And as I started progressing upward, the passages I found rapidly narrowed until I had to fold my wings to squeeze through, strongly suggesting that this route was a route only accessible to beings my size.
There was no conceivable way a giant could have crawled through spaces that increasingly resembled the pipes I had once inhabited within Volow's tower.
The climb itself also swiftly turned miserable.
Walls leaned at impossible angles.
Entire passages had collapsed into heaps of fractured metal.
Others ended beneath mountains of debris, forcing me to backtrack repeatedly.
The few corridors I found twisted every way...
My progress slowed to a crawl, days blended into weeks, and weeks into what felt like well over a month.
And the higher I climbed, the stranger the surrounding structures became.
Rooms filled with machinery whose purpose I could not determine.
Collapsed halls were lined with thousands of identical compartments whose use eluded me.
Metal frameworks extended upward and downward in incomprehensible ways that defied my [Will]-enhanced [Awareness].
I even stumbled upon entire preserved facilities, most certainly only because nobody ought to have found them yet or had any interest in scavenging them.
Relics of the past lingered everywhere, though they had all long since been plunged into silence.
Occasionally, I disturbed creatures that had somehow made those forgotten places their home.
None proved particularly memorable, all of them being roughly my size at most, but isolated as they were, their Paths forward had been stunted, if not outright crippled.
Eventually, the air itself changed.
Cooler.
Drier.
Staler.
The architecture shifted once more.
The pipes widened into tunnels, and those tunnels gradually merged ancient metallic infrastructure with... not metallic ones.
If what I was seeing could even qualify as infrastructure.
After getting lost an innumerable number of times, I had finally reached the underground of the Darkened Spires Sector.
Before long, just as Stavros had warned me, a first crawler ambushed me.
It burst from a crack in the wall, propelled by far too many limbs, and lunged directly for my wings.
I dispatched it in seconds with a well-placed thrust to what I supposed qualified as its thorax.
The second dropped from the ceiling.
The third hid beneath loose debris and jumped pointlessly when I flew several meters overhead.
Individually, they posed little threat.
Collectively, they taught me not to trust any surface.
From that point onward, every step, every landing, every crevasse, every wall, every part of the ceiling...
I carefully examined everything with my [Awareness] before approaching, unwilling to be punished for something as foolish as complacency.
Eventually, after one final climb through a fractured shaft warped into something barely recognizable, I emerged into the Darkened Spires Sector proper.
At first glance, it resembled something I had only ever seen depicted in books.
A forest.
Except the trees were straight spires without branches or leaves.
Thousands upon thousands of towering pillars stretched toward the ceiling.
Some narrow.
Some broader than entire buildings.
Every one of them was assembled from rusted metal, fragmented debris, and the same dark biological substance that permeated the underground.
Many leaned unstably.
Many intertwined messily.
Some had grown until they touched the ceiling itself.
Not that grown was the appropriate term, when the entire Darkened Spires Sector had been constructed by the native lifeforms of the Darkened Spires Realm rather than grown.
Though... maybe grown remained an adequate designation?
I wouldn't know.
And I wasn't that interested.
In any event, in the hours after I resumed flying, I rarely saw the inhabitants directly.
Only fleeting silhouettes retreating behind colossal structures.
Occasional scraping echoes moving through the labyrinth.
Even when my eyes and [Awareness] found nothing, instinct repeatedly warned me that something was observing my passage from somewhere among the spires.
Several times, figures emerged briefly before disappearing again.
They never approached me, and neither did I approach them.
One day, I stumbled upon fellow travelers.
They appeared to have been travelling as a caravan, and had become trapped between several collapsed spires.
It was there that, for the first time, I directly observed the local creatures clearly as they circled closer and closer toward what must have appeared to them as defenseless prey, crawling from spire to spire around the stranded group.
I watched.
Determined by the insistent stares of multiple people wearing massive plated suits that I had no business intervening.
And continued flying.
Their fate became another unknown among countless others.
Weeks became months once again.
Every waking moment, my [Awareness] remained extended to its limits.
Searching.
Mapping.
Comparing.
Every unusual vibration.
Every subtle airflow.
Every faint movement hidden within or beneath the spires.
Without interruption.
Without pause.
Even while sleeping, my [Awareness] remained partially alert, always giving me a sense of the changes occurring in my direct surroundings
I relied upon it so extensively that when I went through my pre-sleep communion, only to discover my [Awareness] Aspect's Tier 2 advancement having already begun without me noticing...
I was not particularly surprised.
Though a bit arguable, it was pretty much a repeat of my [Secrecy] Aspect synthesis [Cultivation].
Whether measured by the sheer amount of time I inadvertently dedicated to my [Awareness] [Cultivation] or by my growing [Comprehension] of how to best leverage all that the [Awareness] Aspect itself offered, both had advanced so far that a Tier advancement felt... almost predictable, if not logical.
Be that as it may, with my [Awareness] compromised, continuing my journey was foolish, so I settled down and used the interruption to observe the local fauna more carefully while comprehending and perceiving as much as I could about my first Aspect advancement disorder since achieving true communion.
Aspect Advanced: [Awareness] (Tier 1) ➞ [Awareness] (Tier 2)
A day or so later, my [Awareness] Aspect finished advancing, and when I resumed my journey, the differences were immediately obvious.
My [Awareness] reached farther.
Was sharper.
Was clearer.
And every one of my senses fed into it more seamlessly than before.
Information that previously required deliberate [Focus] on my part now came to me without effort, and before long, the world surrounding me unfolded with a completeness I had only experienced through [Will] enhancements before.
Except now it was my new normal.
Not that, weeks later, despite all the wonders my newly advanced [Awareness] afforded me, I didn't find myself lost.
Because I wasn't lost.
Not truly, anyway.
I always knew where I was.
I simply... no longer knew where Stavros' passage upward was supposed to be.
According to the itinerary, it lay somewhere inside what he had simply labeled as the violet sickness area.
A remarkably unhelpful designation, and in hindsight, one accompanied by an equally unhelpful oral description.
For days, I expanded my search for where that area ought to be.
Each suspicious fracture.
Each collapsed spire bearing even a hint of what I thought resembled violet.
Each unusually shaped cluster of pillars.
Nothing.
If a similar situation had happened while I was anywhere else, I would have already darted towards the nearest settlement or traveller to request directions.
Unfortunately... I had not encountered another sign of civilization, or even life, in weeks.
Which was slightly strange in itself.
But not that strange in this already strange Sector.
So I continued searching.
I expanded my search radius yet again.
I backtracked.
I repeated the process.
Until one day...
I found it.
Or rather...
Upon sighting it, I knew it couldn't have been anything else.
The description simply fit too well.
The endless forest of narrow spires abruptly gave way to squat metallic monoliths broader than multiple buildings put together side by side.
Most importantly, though...
None of them reached the ceiling.
Not even close.
Instead, they all stooped extremely close to the ground, barely leaving it further than a dozen meters, leaving an unnaturally—for the Darkened Spires Sector—empty expanse overhead.
Even without Stavros' description, it was immediately evident that something about this place was fundamentally different.
From there, locating the ascent passage proved significantly easier, and within the hour, I began climbing through the Strata that would finally take me to the level where the Everwell Sector was located.
Within hours, however, the first symptoms of what gave the area its name started showing, and my climb became progressively more unpleasant as a strange heat slowly spread throughout my body.
Strange, because it was not the dry, suffocating heat of the Red Sand Realm.
It was heat that seemed to originate from within, rather than without.
Days later, despite my doing my best to keep this strange heat at bay by either expelling it or [Will]ing it away...
It wasn't enough, and the sickness worsened.
Initially, I simply found concentrating slightly more difficult.
Soon afterward came nausea.
Then dizziness.
Then the unsettling sensation that my entire body was slowly coming apart from the inside.
Nonetheless, my [Will] kept me moving.
My [Clarity] kept me thinking.
My [Harmony] and newly formed [Purity] Aspects kept me functional.
None addressed the underlying problem, though.
Meanwhile, as I continued to rise through the Strata, the structures surrounding me gradually changed.
Immense facilities remained strangely intact despite their impossible age.
Massive chambers housed incomprehensible machines whose countless components had long since collapsed into heaps of strangely shaped metal.
Yet, despite how similar it looked to the countless other such machines I stumbled upon over the course of my journey through two Stratas...
Something shockingly still flowed through them.
Faint currents of violet radiance drifted between shattered conduits and fractured frameworks before dispersing into the surrounding air.
Occasionally, entire sections briefly awakened.
A gear turned.
A distant pulse echoed.
A fractured mechanism attempted one final movement millennia after it should have fallen silent.
Eventually, the air grew hotter still.
The violet radiance intensified.
Until finally, without incident whatsoever beyond my inability to heal myself of the violet sickness, I emerged into what initially appeared to be another familiar stretch of rust wastes.
Except... it obviously wasn't.
The endless metallic plains remained.
The corroded structures remained.
The colossal ruins remained.
But... everything shimmered beneath a faint violet glow radiating from the distant horizon.
For there, far beyond the distance any horizon had the right to stretch, the Violet Radiance Realm Rift illuminated the entire Sector named after it, bathing it in its deadly radiance.
Even separated by such impossible distances that it appeared little larger than a dot of light, merely staring at it for several seconds filled my vision with dark spots.
According to Stavros, the Violet Radiance Realm contained little besides energy itself.
Perhaps, long ago, that energy had powered the very Stratas that made up the Nexus Realm.
Now... it merely poisoned everything around it, to the extent that this Sector was even more desolate than the Red Sand Sector.
Once I resumed my journey, it didn't take me long to confirm that.
No settlements.
No roads.
No travelers.
Only ruins.
There was no life to speak of, solely Essence Entities manifested and composed entirely of crackling violet radiance that wandered seemingly aimlessly across the landscape.
Most ignored me.
Those that didn't...
Proved surprisingly fragile.
Their bodies simply unraveled once sufficient force disturbed whatever unstable equilibrium held them together.
Though, at least, they possessed the merit of inflicting me with such overwhelming doses of that strange heat that nearly every encounter with one forced me to stop and recover afterward.
Accounting for those repeated exposures...
The passive attrition of merely existing within the Sector...
And the continual expenditure required to keep myself functioning...
Only one outcome awaited me, and I foresaw it days before it transpired.
My violet radiance sickness worsened.
The strange heat suffused through my whole body.
My muscles weakened.
My thoughts occasionally scattered despite [Clarity].
Sometimes, my very Essence felt strangely unstable...
Or maybe it was my physical vessel that was?
During my moments of [Clarity], it genuinely felt as though every component comprising my body wished to separate from every other.
Before long, every halt became less about resting.
Less about exhaustion.
Less even about thought.
Instead, it became an exercise in keeping myself together.
Fortuitously...
Holding my body and mind together under sustained [Exertion]s was, and had always been, a core [Cultivation] method inherent to my Path.
Only this time, the difference was that this holding on took on much more disturbingly literal characteristics than usual.
Every muscle.
Every organ.
Every drop of fluid.
It all felt as though every part of my body wanted to dissolve into Solaena goo.
So I held it together.
Again.
Again.
And again.
Whenever my thoughts faltered, my body deteriorated even faster.
And the reverse also proved true.
The more my body unraveled, the more difficult forming coherent thoughts became.
Initially, I interpreted that as my mind holding my body together through sheer [Will], and the sickness getting to my brain.
But the longer I persisted...
The more evident another version of the [Truth] became.
Throughout my months of undergoing exhaustion resistance [Cultivation], I had always believed my mind to be the rampart exhaustion crashed against, with my body existing merely as an extension of my Essence and a necessity to host my mind.
Why wouldn't I, when my body was nothing more than the physical vessel of my Essence?
But now that I was observing such evident signs of interdependence beyond the straightforward brain-mind relationship I had always adhered to...
Could my body as a whole somehow serve as a sort of... spiritual foundation? Sustaining my mind just as much as my mind sustained it?
This sort of peculiar [Insight], one I would never have developed through the prism of my previous perspective on mind, body, and Essence because it directly contradicted my [Comprehension]...
I knew not to let it slip away.
So, even if it cost me some travelling efficiency, I gained altitude and then let myself glide onward while I followed where that curious line of [Insight] led.
What if... my mind was not merely supporting my body?
What if my body had quietly been supporting my mind all along?
What if neither stood above the other, despite all apparent proof of the contrary?
What if they... upheld one another?
As the violet sickness steadily worsened, forcing every fragment of my being toward collapse, which in turn compelled me to more and more frequently [Will] my body together, my [Insight]s kept deepening.
There existed Essence Entities possessing either only a body or a mind.
I had even read how certain combinations of Aspects eventually allowed one to abandon their physical vessel altogether, transforming into some manner of [Anima] construct.
Those were the reasons I had never truly dwelled on the mind-body relationship before.
But now that I thought about it, couldn't this mind-body relationship be seen from another angle?
An angle such as a mind-body... [Harmony]?
My mind crawled to a stop.
Was that... what it had been about?
Mind-body [Harmony]?
And it had been but a single shift of perspective away all this time?
Thinking back, I had only ever sought further [Harmony] [Insight]s either within the most chaotic and contradictory depths of my thoughts, or within the biological bounds of my body...
Never on... the straightforward [Harmony] between my mind and body.
Why?
My mind without a body to animate simply could not be, after all, just as my body without my mind to breathe [Purpose] into it was... senseless.
Or rather...
Contradictory.
That was it.
Each completed the other.
Not through domination.
Not through sacrifice.
But through fundamental mutual support.
Through... [Harmony].
As that [Insight] condensed into a tangible yet still indistinct [Comprehension], flourishing into something greater, my thoughts delved yet further.
This couldn't simply be about [Harmony].
There was something beyond...
The sensation vanished before I could grasp it, eluding me with such absoluteness that I couldn't even begin to remember what I had glimpsed, leaving only [Guided] to perhaps have preserved it somewhere beyond my [Awareness].
My [Insight] regarding the [Harmony] between mind and body, however...
Remained.
And my Essence surged to embrace and manifest it into being...
Which shortly caused my [Harmony] to waver as it pushed against the boundaries of its concept.
My [Harmony] Aspect wavered as it pressed against the boundaries of its own concept.
Except...
This was arguably the worst possible timing for it to happen.
As my newfound [Harmony] between my mind and body destabilized alongside my [Harmony] Aspect initiating its Tier 1 advancement, the efficiency with which I expelled the strange heat and repaired the damage it left behind plummeted.
From merely being uncomfortably close to breaking even... I crossed into unsustainable territory.
Providentially, it was only a Tier 1 advancement of a fundamental Aspect, so I knew it couldn't take long.
Hence, I started dipping into my energy to sustain my body through my [Will], with [Guided] taking over to achieve optimal efficiency.
Aspect Advanced: [Harmony] (Tier 0) ➞ [Harmony] (Tier 1)
A few hours later, the advancement concluded without causing Essence-wide ripples, and from fighting a losing battle, my whole being rose to fight back against the invading strange heat.
This time, however, things were different from before.
For this time, my whole being was a harmonious whole, and I wouldn't allow a sliver of its [Purity] to be lost.