Sun's question had been sitting with him since the church.
The seven high gods governed seven laws and every authority in the tower traced back to one of them, that was the official framework, the curriculum Kael had delivered across five months of weekly lessons with his hands too steady and his voice too controlled.
But time existed.
Space existed.
Souls existed, Solus had just told him that, the soul was the purest expression of who you were, the system merged with it, it was a real and specific thing with weight and function.
None of those were derivatives of the seven paths.
Which meant either the seven gods governed more than they admitted, or something else governed those concepts entirely, something the official curriculum had no entry for.
Sun filed the question without an answer and followed Frank up the steps of the Rankers Association.
The building was wide rather than tall, pale stone polished to a near reflective finish, every line measured, every corner precise. It did not try to intimidate. It did not need to. The controlled authority of its design communicated itself without effort, the architecture of an institution that had existed long enough to stop announcing itself.
Sun noted the symbol above the entrance.
An ouroboros.
A serpent coiled into a perfect circle, biting its own tail, the line unbroken, the loop continuous, no beginning and no end distinguishable from each other.
He looked at it for a moment.
An infinite loop, he thought, as a symbol for an organization built around progression and advancement. Every ranker climbing toward something, reaching it, and finding the next thing waiting. The snake eating itself endlessly and calling it forward motion.
He filed this observation alongside the God of Desire's emptiness symbol and decided that the people designing symbols for institutions in this tower had a more honest relationship with what they were building than the institutions themselves would probably prefer.
Frank pushed open the heavy double doors and they went inside.
The receptionist at the front desk looked up with a practiced smile.
"Welcome. Registering your son today?"
"Yes," Frank said. "His name is Sun."
The receptionist nodded and began writing. "And your son's name?"
Frank paused. "Sun."
The receptionist looked up. "Yes, I understand he is your son. What is his name?"
"Sun," Frank said again, now with the expression of a man watching a situation develop that he could not quite stop.
Sun stepped forward. "I am Sun."
The receptionist looked between them with the specific expression of someone beginning to suspect they were being tested.
Sun looked at her steadily. "S. U. N."
A pause.
Then understanding arrived on her face, followed immediately by the particular embarrassment of someone who had made an incorrect assumption and been made aware of it by a five year old spelling their own name.
"I am so sorry," she said, and meant it. "I assumed, I do not know why I assumed, please forgive me."
"It is fine," Sun said, which was the most diplomatic thing he said in the chapter.
They filled out the registration form without further incident.
The evaluation room was smaller than the lobby, quieter, the kind of space designed to make people focus. A woman was waiting for them when they entered, standing with the relaxed competence of someone who had done this particular task many times and found it genuinely interesting rather than routine.
"I am Song," she said. "I will be evaluating your authority grade today."
She produced an orb from its stand on the desk, smooth and faintly luminous, the kind of object that looked simple until it did not.
"This orb has one purpose," she said, "to peer through the essence of an authority and grade it. There are five grades. Awakened, Special, Golden, Sacred, Divine." She set it on the table between them. "Place your hand on it. You will feel a slight probing sensation. Try not to resist."
Sun placed his hand on the orb.
He felt it immediately, something reaching inward with the polite insistence of an instrument doing exactly what it was designed to do, moving through the layers of his soul toward the authority sitting underneath everything else.
He let it reach what it was looking for.
The authority itself. Pathokinesis. The ability to use dark emotions, manipulate them, augment the body or a weapon depending on mastery. Graded by the energy powering it, which from the orb's perspective was essence, standard, measurable, within the existing framework.
Not the other energy.
Not the one that had arrived the day the seed woke up, the energy that felt nothing like essence, that made essence feel hollow and incomplete by comparison, the energy that carried the specific quality of something that had existed before the framework it was being compared against. Sun had been gathering it slowly since chapter thirteen, learning its texture, testing its limits, finding that it was harder to control than essence but responded to imagination and will in ways essence never had.
He had called it essence of creation in his own thinking, for lack of a better name, and he had not mentioned it to anyone.
The orb read his authority.
It did not read the energy behind it.
Golden, Song said, with the satisfied tone of someone whose instrument had produced a clear result. "That is a strong grade for a first authority."
Sun thought, they are not wrong about the authority itself. They are simply measuring the visible part of the system and not the foundation underneath it.
He said nothing about this.
"Now," Song said, settling back slightly with the ease of someone moving from measurement to explanation, "we need to discuss the seven curses."
She opened a book on the desk between them and turned it toward him.
Law of Desire, God of Desire. All beings shall desire, and no desire shall ever be final.
Law of Light, God of Light. All that is illuminated shall fear what lies beyond it.
Law of Progress, God of Progress. All manifestation requires effort, pain, and struggle.
Law of Knowledge, God of Knowledge. All things may be known, but never fully understood.
Law of Shadows, God of Shadows. All beings shall perceive themselves, yet fail to accept what they see.
Law of Thought, God of Imagination. Thought shall be both creation and opposition.
Law of Corruption, God of Corruption. All beings shall become their own shackle in the pursuit of perfection.
Song looked at the page, then back at Sun, with the expression of someone who had read these many times and had long since formed opinions about them.
"The high gods are certainly committed to a specific register," she said. "Very dramatic. Very them." She tapped the page. "Since the formal language might be unclear I will give you my interpretation."
Sun looked at her.
She was not afraid to joke about the high gods. She had her own reading of their words and was offering it to a five year old as a genuine intellectual contribution rather than the official version. He noted this with something that was not quite respect but was adjacent to it, the specific regard he had for people who thought for themselves in systems designed to prevent it.
"The God of Desire's curse," Song said, "means that desire never ends. You reach something and immediately want the next thing. There is no final arrival. That is the curse."
Sun thought, he gave mortals the thing he cannot have, the endless wanting of something he cannot experience himself.
"The God of Light's curse means that light creates dependency. The more you live in light the more you fear its absence. Which means the more the God of Light gives you the more you need him."
Sun thought, the curse and the solution are the same being. He made himself necessary.
"The God of Progress means that nothing comes without cost. Effort, pain, struggle. You want something, you have to bleed for it. That is the law."
Sun thought, connected directly to the desire curse, you want forever and you have to suffer for every step toward it.
"The God of Knowledge means you can learn anything but understanding it is a different matter entirely. You can know every fact about a person and not understand them at all. You can know every rule of a system and not understand why it works." Song paused. "I think about that one a lot actually."
Sun thought, it explains the church, people who know the doctrine and defer to whoever claims to understand it.
"The God of Shadows one I find harder to explain cleanly," Song admitted. "Something about how we see ourselves but refuse to accept what we see. Like the shadow shows you the truth about your shape and you look away from it anyway."
Sun thought, the shadow is a reflection. The God of Shadows gave mortals self awareness and then cursed the awareness to be unusable.
"The God of Imagination's curse is that your own thoughts work against you as often as they work for you. The same mind that solves the problem creates the problem. Creativity and self destruction from the same source."
Sun thought, a being of pure thought who cannot possess reality, giving mortals thoughts that are both their greatest tool and their most reliable enemy.
"And the God of Corruption," Song said, with the slight pause of someone approaching something they find genuinely interesting, "his curse is that you yourself are the thing standing between you and what you could become. Your own patterns. Your own assumptions. Your own mastery becoming the wall you cannot see past." She closed the book. "I do not fully understand that one either but I think about it more than the others."
Sun thought about Kael watching him for five months while being completely blind to what his own research was revealing about himself. He thought about the God of Light building a tower to avoid perceiving his own reflection. He thought about himself waiting and waiting and waiting until waiting became the thing that killed his parents.
He thought, every curse is a self portrait. The gods cursed mortals with their own wounds.
He said nothing.
Song stood, signaling the end of the session with the practiced efficiency of someone whose time was genuinely full.
"One last thing," she said, looking at him with the direct assessment of someone who had evaluated many authorities and knew the difference between what an orb measured and what was actually in the room. "To the world you are awakened now. Not a five year old."
She held his gaze for a moment.
"Good luck."
Sun looked at her. "Goodbye."
He walked out into the lobby where Frank was waiting with the expression of a man who had been sitting quietly for twenty minutes and was very curious about what had happened.
"So?" Frank said.
"Golden grade," Sun said.
Frank's eyebrows went up. "That is not bad."
"No," Sun agreed.
They walked out of the building together into the street, the ouroboros above the entrance catching the afternoon light as they descended the steps.
Sun looked at it once more.
A serpent eating itself in a perfect circle, calling it a loop, calling it continuation, calling it the symbol of an organization built to measure how far people had climbed.
He thought about what Song had said about the God of Corruption's curse.
You yourself are the thing standing between you and what you could become.
He filed it alongside the question about time and space and souls, alongside the trust he had put in his pocket after the pinky promise, alongside the bet slip that was still there from chapter fourteen.
The tower had one hundred floors.
He had a great deal of work to do.
[A/N : hi guys I hope the story at least gained your interest please don't forget to add to your collection]