“Don't see why not. There's a Remnant inside you right now, or at least all the ingredients to make one when you die. Plenty of room inside your spirit, so I'll just squeeze in there.” He pushed into Lindon's chest, but bounced off the madra running through Lindon's skin. “Excuse me, you have to move aside. Just for a minute. Don't worry, it shouldn't hurt. Me. I don't know what it will feel like to you.”

Orthos pushed past Lindon on the way to the Spirit Well. “There are some sacred artists who take in the power of natural spirits as part of their Path. It is safe.”

“See! Perfectly safe, he says.” Dross tried to push into Lindon's head this time, but slid off.

Lindon wanted to see what Dross would become, but he was still uncomfortable with the idea of letting a self-aware construct inside his soul. “Is this the only option we have?”

“Don't worry,” Orthos said. “If the tiny spirit tries some mischief, I will burn him out of your body.”

Now Lindon had more worries, but his curiosity won out.

Lindon extended a hand to Dross. “I'll still my madra as much as I can until you're inside.”

Dross whooped in excitement and zipped into his palm almost before Lindon had withdrawn his spirit.

It felt like something swimming up his left arm, and Lindon instinctively recoiled. He focused his spiritual sense on his own body, and in the blue-white loops that normally represented his spirit, now a purple ball slid around his madra channels and settled into the center of his pure core.

“Wow,” Dross said in his head. “Roomy in here. Were you born with two extra-large cores? I'm sorry, that sounds rude. But do feel free to answer.”

Since Lindon had used the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel to advance, it still had an influence on his cores even when he wasn't actively practicing it. His madra recovery was slow, but he had much more madra than he would have otherwise. And a good thing, too; his Iron body and his techniques took a lot of power. If Eithan was any indication, his cores would only get deeper as he advanced, until he had a truly ridiculous amount of madra.

But he suppressed the Purification Wheel as much as he could, with Dross inside. It was inconvenient, but Eithan's warning still made him hesitant to let the technique's existence leak.

Orthos eyed him. “Seems like it worked.”

“It’s messy in here,” Dross sent to him. “You’re so…squishy.”

Lindon walked over to the pool, scooping up some shining blue water in a cracked teacup. He drank it and cycled it straight to the construct, who instantly let out an excited whoop.

“It's working! My memories have so many connections I didn't see before; this must be what having a brain feels like! Only, you know, less...mushy.”

Lindon had cycled all the power to Dross, leaving none for his own channels or core.

He spoke aloud, because he wasn't sure if thinking the words would get through to the construct. “How is it? You need more?”

“I’ll chew on this for the rest of the day,” Dross said. “At that rate, maybe…two more weeks? Three? Compared to fifty years, it's like a drop of water in the ocean, isn't it?”

“Three weeks? Do we even have that long?” Lindon gave an aching glance at the Spirit Well; he wanted to take as much time in this room as he could, and didn't want to waste a minute of it on Dross' advancement. Yerin would kill him if she knew he'd found an inexhaustible source of power without her, and would kill him twice as hard if he didn't take advantage of every second.

A weary voice spoke up from the corner of the room. “If nothing else accelerates the decay in the pocket world's structure, we have at least a month.” Ziel spoke from his position leaning against the wall, eyes shut. “Could be longer.”

Lindon didn't have any reason to believe a Truegold's word about the structure of a pocket world, but he spoke with the utter confidence of an expert, so Lindon thanked him.

“There you have it,” Dross said, relaxing himself into a more comfortable position within Lindon's core.

And so Lindon settled in. He was looking forward to seeing Dross’ transformation, but he couldn’t deny a little bitterness about having to share the power of the Spirit Well. How much would this delay his advancement? A week? A month?

Lindon reached Highgold on the Path of Black Flame in two days.

Surrounded by burning trash, he was cycling fire and destruction aura as usual, regretting that he couldn't use the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel with Dross sitting in his soul. Without warning, his madra started running back from the rest of his body into his core like he'd opened a plug and it was starting to drain out.

“Hey, would you look at that!” Dross said, from his vantage inside Lindon's pure core. “Are you trying out a new cycling technique?”

Lindon couldn't open his eyes, struggling as he was to focus on his madra, but he heard Orthos rise to his feet nearby. Suddenly, madra poured into him from outside, guiding his power and easing the burden on his spirit.

All of his madra pushed together, squeezing to occupy the same space, and it seemed to shrink together. After several minutes passed, he had only a third of the madra he'd started with, but it was more dense and potent. If his madra before had been water, now it felt like syrup.

When it finished, all of his Blackflame madra concentrated into a thick drop at the center of his core, a pulse of uncontrolled power rippled out from him and activated the aura. Fires flared up all around the cycling room, consuming their fuel in an instant, creating a cloud of smoke.

Lindon let his new Highgold madra run through his veins. At last, he was on the same level as Yerin.

She had years of practice and experience he didn't have, but finally, they were standing on the same ground.

“Highgold,” Orthos announced. “It is the role of a Highgold to think more deeply on the purpose and nature of your Path. At this stage, sacred artists that have bonded Remnants often begin to inherit insights from their predecessors.”

“There's no need for insight before Underlord,” Ziel said. He stopped in the doorway on his way down the hall, as though he were a construct that had simply run out of power. Green horns were cast in shadow—his Goldsign was so condensed as to look completely real. “Highgold only indicates a certain density of madra. You could go from Lowgold to the peak of Truegold with two pills.”

“Shortcuts are for the weak,” Orthos said. “You walk a Path one step at a time, and this is the step of a Highgold.”

Ziel raised two fingers as though holding something very small. “I used to have those pills. They were this big. They smelled like fresh berries and summer leaves...”

He cast his glance down at the floor and dragged himself down the hallway.

“Really brings down the mood, doesn't he?” Dross observed.

Not Lindon's. After reaching Highgold, his smile was iron-plated. He didn’t care what the stage meant, just that he had taken another step.

And there was plenty of water left in the blue well.

Orthos and Ziel carved every meal from the corpse of the Diamondscale Sea Drake, but one bite of the cooked meat had knocked Lindon out for six hours. It nourished his body even more than the Silverfang Carp had, but it was at the brink of what his body could tolerate. After eating it, his Iron body had consumed so much madra that it delayed his training, even with the Spirit Well’s help.