"The Shaman," the blonde priest said, and bowed with practiced deference toward the hovering figure. He glanced back at Ren with an expectant look, the kind that told that just that was unacceptable, a bow was preferred. Ren barely registered the suggestion. He was looking at the hovering man.

The Shaman wore a robe of golden light that cast a dim warmth across the space immediately around him. His skin held a quality that Ren could not immediately name. He was in awe. The aged man looked like something that had moved beyond the category of human entirely, and not in the way cultivators did, or mages. Those paths expanded a person’s innate needs and channeled them into power. This man seemed to have arrived somewhere different, somewhere quieter, as though he had simply set those needs down one by one over a very long time until almost nothing remained that still bound him to ordinary life. Evo had become a legend on the level of spirit animals, and standing before him now, Ren understood why.

His eyes activated without conscious decision. Mana Sense and Mana Perception both opened at once, and what he saw made him go still. A brilliant density of mana contained within the old man, vast and deep and entirely controlled, none of it leaking, all of it precisely held. He had masked far more than his physical appearance the last time Ren had met him.

"So much power," Ren murmured, low but apparently not low enough. The blonde priest beside him turned with a look of flat disapproval. He said nothing, but the frown communicated the rest.

"It’s me," Ren called out, stopping short of his name with the priest standing right there.

Evo opened his eyes slowly. He had been in a light slumber before the door opened. Visitors were rare, and he turned away most of them, but he had quietly told those around him to watch for someone who looked as Ren did, not by name, only by the particular way he appeared. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

Evo was tall, taller than most people Ren had encountered in this world, taller even than Tuarine, who had been the tallest person in Tunish by a clear margin. If a person could be described simply as long, the word would fit him. His skin was dark and deeply wrinkled. White hair hung from his sagging scalp, and the pupils of his eyes had taken on a duller hue, not the eyes of a blind man, but of one who had long since learned to see differently.

He was hovering cross-legged when he woke. He moved toward Ren with a speed that was barely movement at all, his body not shifting so much as his position simply changing, crossing the short distance between them in something close to an instant, his large eyes sweeping across Ren’s face at close range. Then he drifted back.

"Leave us, high priest."

His voice was coarse but carried a genuine warmth underneath.

The priest went still. He looked at the shaman, then at Ren, and the confusion on his face was plain. Evo almost never asked him to leave when he received visitors, and on the rare occasions that he did, it was because someone of very high standing was present and preferred privacy. He studied Ren one more time, found nothing that explained the request, and complied anyway, bowing toward the shaman and making his way back through the passage without another word.

Evo drifted forward again, the same unhurried, bodyless movement, pulling himself closer as though the space between them had simply decided to be smaller.

"I had a feeling you would come when you did not make your way to Thorerk after I gave you the letter. Have you made up your mind? I cannot imagine otherwise. Tunish is not far, but it still takes days to reach the city."

"I have, Shaman. I have come for advice and information."

Evo pulled back slightly, as though surprised. He was not.

"What do you want to know?"

"The extent of the gods’ power. And how I can get out from under their watch."

"Despite the privileges they have given you? Most would call your situation a blessing."

"I am not most. I am the one who was actually summoned, not them. I can forge my own path without their involvement. I am tired of the awareness that they are watching me, that they know my every move."

"Not every move." Evo raised one finger. "Here, for instance. They cannot see or hear you in this place. Does that make the life of a temple head seem appealing to you?"

"Perhaps in another life."

"Perhaps. You could make a great shaman."

Ren raised an eyebrow at that, turning the words over briefly before deciding to let them pass without pulling on them.

"What have you decided?" Evo circled back, steady and patient.

"I am going to Thorerk. I will join the sect and learn there." The words came out plainly, though Ren had thought about them for a long time before saying them. His instinct toward sects was not warm. Back in his birth city there had been no shortage of men gathering followers around themselves, proclaiming truth and demanding loyalty and saying things that did not hold up well under scrutiny. He had kept his distance from all of them. But this was different. This was a man he trusted, an old and genuinely wise person who had looked at Ren’s situation and told him where to go. That counted for something.

"A most wise decision, young one." Evo’s voice settled into something unhurried and certain. "It may not be apparent to those who have never ventured beyond their birth towns, but power makes right in this world. Without it, you are nothing more than a piece on someone else’s board, subject to the will of whatever noble controls your region, and ultimately to the gods themselves. There is no real freedom under the gaze of those heavenly lords."

The words landed quietly and stayed. Ren stood with them for a moment, then bowed toward the old man, sensing that the conversation had reached its natural end, and turned back toward the passage.

The small swarm of lights drifted into place ahead of him as though they had been waiting, illuminating the narrow path and guiding him toward the door. When he reached the section of wall where the specks gathered and hovered, it split open. Bright light from the hall poured through immediately, sharp enough to make him look away while his eyes adjusted. He stepped back out into the great turning room with its golden gears and its kneeling worshippers and its vast, deliberate silence.

On to the next thing.