Ten minutes turned out to be harder than it sounded.

Not because the core resonance was difficult to find anymore. He could find it reliably now, that specific quiet fact at the bottom of the stone, the same way you can find a familiar door in a dark room once you’ve walked the path enough times. Finding it was fine.

Finding it was almost easy, which was the part that had fooled him into thinking the ten minute requirement would be straightforward.

The issue was staying there.

His awareness, which had gotten considerably stronger over the past few weeks but had not gotten any less opinionated about where it wanted to go, kept sliding off the core and onto other things. A sound outside.

The particular creak of the building settling in the morning cold. His own breathing, which became distracting the moment he became aware of it in the wrong way.

Each time it slipped he’d find the core again without much trouble, but finding it again meant he’d lost it, which meant the ten minutes restarted, which meant he was on his fourth or fifth attempt every morning before Dian called time.

"You’re gripping it," Dian said, on the third morning of this.

"I’m not gripping anything, my hands are in my lap."

"Not with your hands." He tapped the side of his own head once. "Your awareness. When you find the core you tighten around it because you’re afraid of losing it, and that tightening is exactly what pushes you off. You are trying to hold water by squeezing it."

Xuan considered this. "So hold it loosely."

"Hold it the way you hold your own heartbeat. You are aware of it. You are not clutching it. It simply is, and you simply know that it is, and neither of you is making a large effort about it."

That was actually useful. Annoyingly useful, because it meant the previous three mornings had been avoidable, but useful nonetheless.

He tried it the next morning and made it four minutes before his awareness drifted, which was the longest unbroken stretch he’d managed and felt noticeably different from the attempts before it. Less effortful. More like resting in something than maintaining something.

Six minutes the morning after that.

Then eight, which he lost at the very end because someone in the courtyard dropped something heavy and his awareness swung toward it before he could stop it, which was the most frustrating eight minutes of his recent life. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

"You’ll learn to filter sudden noise," Dian said, without sympathy. "It’s the same principle as narrowing your awareness. The interruption only lands if you let it."

"It was a loud drop."

"Everything is loud to someone not prepared for it. Prepared people are not surprised by sound. They expect it, because sound is constant and surprise only happens when you forget that."

Xuan had nothing to say to that, so he said nothing and tried again the next morning and made it ten minutes and twelve seconds, which he knew because Dian had a small timing device that he produced from somewhere in his robes and consulted without fanfare.

"Done," Dian said.

Xuan opened his eyes. His awareness was still resting loosely on the core resonance of the stone, the way Dian had described, present without clutching. He let it go gradually and sat there for a moment feeling the slight mental fatigue that came after focused resonance work, not painful, just the particular tiredness of having held something carefully for a long time.

"So what’s the next part," Xuan said.

Dian put the timing device away. "Now you learn to match it."

He produced a second stone from somewhere, slightly larger than the first, and set it on the table next to the original. They looked more or less identical to the naked eye, smooth and grey and unremarkable.

"This one is different," Xuan said, his awareness touching it briefly.

"Correct. Different mineral composition. Different core resonance." Dian pushed it slightly closer to Xuan. "You have spent two weeks learning the frequency of one stone. Now you learn to find the frequency of something unfamiliar quickly, and once found, to reproduce it. Not just listen to it. Match it. Your projection must carry the same frequency as the target’s core."

Xuan looked at the new stone. "And when it does."

"When it does, you’ll know. The stone will tell you."

He spent that morning’s session doing nothing but sitting with the new stone, finding its layers, working down through them at what felt like a reasonable pace now that he understood the process.

The core of this one was different from the first, higher somehow, more brittle feeling in a way he couldn’t describe precisely but that felt distinct once he found it. He held it for a few minutes, getting familiar with it, then let it go.

"Found it," he said.

"Good. Tomorrow you match it."

Matching it, as it turned out, meant something specific. Not just projecting a frequency, but producing internally the exact resonance of the stone and sending that outward, which required him to hold the stone’s core frequency in his awareness simultaneously with the act of projecting, two things at once again, but different from the earlier version of that problem.

Less about tracking a projection across distance and more about keeping a very specific quality intact while it traveled.

The first few attempts produced nothing from the stone. He could tell the frequency was close but not exact, arriving slightly off, like a key that almost fit a lock.

"You’re approximating," Dian said. "Resonance doesn’t approximate. It either matches or it doesn’t."

"How do I know when it matches if nothing happens until it does."

"You feel the difference before it arrives. In here." He touched his own sternum briefly. "When your projection carries the correct frequency you will feel a sympathy between yourself and the target, a recognition. Like two instruments agreeing on a note."

Xuan tried again with that in mind, holding the stone’s core resonance, building his projection around it rather than sending the projection toward the frequency, and about halfway through the attempt he felt something he hadn’t felt before.

A faint pull, almost, somewhere in his chest, a small sense of agreement between the thing he was building and the thing sitting on the table.

He released it.

The stone moved.

Not far. Maybe two inches across the table surface, a short skid that left a faint mark in the wood. But it moved in a way that was completely different from how the coins had moved weeks ago. That had been force, blunt and simple. This was something else. This was the stone responding to something it recognized.

Both of them looked at it.

Xuan waited for Dian to say again.

"Hm," Dian said instead, which was different enough from the usual that Xuan paid attention.

"Good hm or observational hm," Xuan said.

"Informational hm." Dian leaned forward and looked at the stone, not picking it up this time. "You matched it. Imprecisely, and briefly, but you matched it. Most people require considerably longer to produce their first resonant match." He leaned back. "Don’t let that go to your head. Matching a pebble at arm’s length is a long way from anything useful."

"I know."

"I’m not sure you do, but we’ll proceed as if you do." He stood. "Same exercise tomorrow. Again and again until the match is immediate, the way finding the core has become immediate. Precision before distance. Distance before application."

"What’s application."

Dian looked at him with the expression that meant the answer existed but wasn’t being handed over yet. "You’ll understand application when the time comes. For now, again tomorrow."

He left Xuan with the two stones and the mark on the table and the particular feeling of having done something correctly for the first time in a while.

That evening, outside in the usual spot, the strange quality at the edge of his awareness appeared again.

Same direction, roughly north, same deliberate quietness to it. But closer than the previous two times. Not dramatically closer, not close enough that he could get anything resembling a real read on it, but the distance had changed and he was certain enough of that to be certain of it.

He sat very still and kept his awareness loose, not searching, just present in that direction, and waited.

It stayed for longer this time. Five minutes, maybe, before it faded or moved or withdrew, the same as before.

He went inside and told Dian.

Dian listened to him without interruption, which was normal. At the end he asked the same question as last time. "Direction."

"North again. But closer than before."

A pause. Shorter this time. "Same instruction. Don’t extend toward it."

"You still think it’s nothing," Xuan said, with the same flatness he’d used last time.

Dian looked at him for a moment with an expression that was doing a reasonable impression of neutrality. "I think it bears monitoring," he said. "Which is what we are doing."

He went to his room shortly after, which he sometimes did early and which meant nothing on its own.

Xuan sat at the table with his tea and the two stones and the mark on the wood from where the larger one had skidded, and thought about the difference between nothing and something that bore monitoring, and how those two things were not even close to the same thing.

He picked up the smaller stone, found its core resonance in about four seconds without meaning to, held it loosely, let it go.

Whatever was to the north, it was getting closer. Slowly, but steadily, the way all things in his life recently seemed to move.

He went to bed and slept fine, mostly because he was tired, and being tired was democratic that way.