“So, how’s it look?” Elena asked as she exited the bathroom, now fully changed into her new outfit—plain black pants with the legs tucked into brown knee-high boots, and an unbuttoned, light brown coat that draped down to her knees over a mist gray shirt—her right sleeve already rolled up to her preferred spot.

“You look like a proper adventurer now!” Irin replied with a grin, flashing her a thumbs-up.

“I said I was staying, not that I was becoming an adventurer,” she said, half-smiling.

“Well, that’s good enough, I guess. What’re your plans now?”

“Finishing that tour of yours.”

“You really refuse to let go of that, huh?”

“You’re the one who said you’d show me around,” she said with a shrug.

“Fine, but I’m not showing you everything in the Confluence—” he feigned a concession, turning away to hide his contentment.

As Elena followed, watching his back, she gave a small sigh of amusement.

“At least he seems to have lightened up again.”

They departed from the center of the Confluence and returned to the outer streets, away from the bureaucratic buildings and once more submerged within the regular lifestyle of the city’s inhabitants.

As implied by its name, the Adventurer’s Branch was only one of the Confluence’s many well-established organizations, being dedicated to those bearing the spirit of traversing worlds, desire to train in combat, and aspirations to climb beyond the Outer Realms. 

Among the other Branches, Irin showcased the Forager’s Branch, for those interested in the culinary aspects of all the worlds brought together by the Confluence, and the Academic’s Branch, tasked with educating aspiring souls in the arts of shaping. Despite its proclaimed purpose, however, Elena couldn’t help but notice that it was less of an academy and more of a practice ground. 

Circling the hosted facilities, she noted how most people there were simply running through drills of combat-oriented shaping, with the ‘instructors’ acting like sparring partners rather than actual teachers. On their way out, Elena suddenly split from Irin’s side, moving towards someone who seemed to be the one sole exception—a supposed potter.

They sat at a lone table at the center of a room with its door wide open, holding their arms out before them, palms facing one another, concentrating their flow of Possibility.

Silently, Elena watched as they conjured creation after creation, their attention focusing on each for seemingly only a minute at most.

Each item was minimally detailed, with the only differences between them usually being slight tweaks in their shapes.

“Forget shaping… Can this even be called ‘pottery?’”

She made a displeased face and turned away, returning to Irin as they crossed the building’s front yard.

“Did that guy’s shaping interest you?” 

“Not really. It was just… weird.”

“How so?”

“It’s just, you can’t even consider that pottery making, can you? He was just sitting there, manifesting piece after piece—”

“Well, people do come here to improve their shaping after all. Someone whose focus was the actual process probably wouldn’t even be here.”

Elena remained silent, slightly turning her head to observe the ‘students’ play-fighting in the yard, before returning her gaze to the road ahead—the building slowly disappearing from her peripheral vision.

They had traveled about a quarter of the Confluence’s circumference, now being walking to the side of the Central Hall. Looking inwards, the perfect symmetry of that layered cake was almost the exact same as how Elena had seen it from the front, only from this angle, it lacked the grandeur of the staircase and statues facing her.

More glaring, however, was the structure that had been previously obscured behind the Central Hall. Elena had partially ignored it before when it was mostly obstructed, but now, the factory-like edifice equally dominated the skyline, sticking out like a sore thumb. 

“What’s that over there?” she asked, directing Irin to follow her line of sight.

“Ah, that… It’s called the Shard Plant.”

She didn’t reply, awaiting further explanation, but Irin remained equally silent.

“But, what’s the need for a factory? It seems like the people here can get along just fine on shaping alone.”

“It’s not necessarily for the production of goods… It’s— It’ll be better if you see it for yourself.”

Rather than being one massive building, the Shard Plant was instead composed of compartmentalized sections, all connected by spanning walkways of various widths and heights. Most oddly, the buildings seemed to feature no smokestacks nor any sort of openings to filter out waste or byproducts of whatever went on inside.

Soon enough, they passed through a large, garage-like door, ascending a steel staircase to a catwalk that surveyed the building’s entire floor.

Winding conveyor belts covered a large portion of the expansive interior, being supervised by regularly stationed workers, most of whom were equipped with strange hammers or industrial tongs. Atop the belts, multicolored gem-like shards reflected the light from buzzing lamps up above.

As Elena watched, she began to feel a sense of unease creeping into her senses. It wasn’t one that came from another’s presence, like with the Seer. It came from the shards themselves. 

In hopes of dismissing that feeling, she turned to Irin, drawing up a new topic.

“It looks rather… old.”

“Old?”

“The Confluence has the capacity for advanced infrastructure. There’s not much of that here,” she noted, thinking back on the textbook images of the Industrial Revolution she had seen during her own education.

“We can’t really get away with that in here. The ‘advanced’ parts outside are usually created and run by individuals or smaller groups, drawing from their own worlds. The work in here is done by probably one of the most diverse groups in the Confluence, so it’s better that nobody is forced somewhere too foreign, y’know?”

“I see.”

As soon as the conversation halted, Elena’s unease returned.

“I’m not being observed. It’s just me and Irin up here, so…”

As Irin glanced over at Elena, his face tensed, before he asked, “Are you okay?”

She didn’t think she could address him yet, shifting her focus to the Possibility within the building. Most of it seemed to condense around the workers, especially their tools, but she soon found that every one of the shards also bore a shockingly dense concentration of Possibility.

“...I can hear them.”

“What?”

“The shards. They’re speaking to me.”

“Is this… like your conversation metaphor from earlier?”

“No. The shards are whispering—overlapped voices. I can’t make out everything, but there’s a few repeated words. ‘Wish…’ ‘Survive…’ ‘Fight…’ You can’t hear them?”

Irin shook his head, but to Elena’s surprise, he himself seemed to have been expecting her reaction.

“These… are called dream shards—remnant Possibility that sometimes materializes when a person with latent desire dies. Considering your attunement with Possibility, I suspected something like this might happen, but… I didn’t think they could be interpreted like that.”

She stuck a finger in her ear, as if trying to correct their pressure, continuing to observe the shards.

“They’re unrealized dreams. With Possibility being so tangible here, it only makes sense, but… why are they here in a processing plant?”

“It’s a selection process. Especially potent shards are sent to specialists that can mold them with their shaping. Weapons, armor, even day-to-day items and structures made with dream shards as a foundation are that much more durable. They even conduct Possibility better—”

“So what happens to the shards not selected?”

Elena’s expression now seemed frighteningly definite, her eyebrows slightly slanted and her gaze no longer distant.

Without really knowing what to say, Irin motioned her to follow him with his arm, leading back down the stairs and to an adjacent building.

Compared to the motion and noise of the previous area, this room felt eerily still, and as soon as Elena’s eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, she was greeted by countless piles of dream shards, many of which seemed to have been discolored and hushed compared to the vibrancy shown along the conveyor belts.

She wordlessly approached one of the piles, picking up a shard and fiddling with it between her fingers.

“Careful—! Direct contact with them can cause headaches and lightheadedness— Even people who just use tools to handle them have to work in timed rotations.”

“I’m fine. What happens after the unselected shards come here?”

“...They’ll eventually be taken away to be properly destroyed… See how their color is fading? Once they’re completely faded, they sink deeper into emptiness, turning into dream leeches…”

“What’s the criteria for selection?” Elena asked, looking at the shard in her hands. For a brief moment, she pushed a drop of Possibility through it, watching as its color ever so slightly returned.

“Potency… There’s people like you that can interpret the identity of these shards. Those that can be repurposed or contain sufficient Possibility are likely to be selected.”

“What about this one then?” she presented the shard she was holding to Irin. “It’s the dream of a nameless little girl. Her last wish was to be strong enough to kill a dream leech. Wouldn’t this make for a strong weapon core to fight them off?”

Irin’s eyes widened, his left hand grabbing onto his right arm to steady himself.

His voice shook, but he quickly steadied himself and matter-of-factly replied, “...she must have not been strong enough to give her shard weight…”

Elena placed the shard inside the pocket of her coat.

Seeing this, Irin approached one of the piles himself, kneeling down with his back towards Elena. He tried replicating what she had done, commanding the shaping he had awakened with “Let me hear them,” but he received no response—not from the shards nor from his system.

“Damn it…”

“This is wrong… That’s what you’re trying to tell me, right?”

He received no response.

“I want to say you’re right… I know in some world, you’re right, but— Unstable shards used as cores might lead to the loss of more lives—”

He paused.

“…but what right do we have to decide their worth…? Everything is measured in Possibility, but…” he trailed off, before exclaiming in frustration, “I don’t understand!”

“Are we all too complacent…?” he asked, his face contorting, still receiving no reply.

“Elena… what should we do…?”

Only, when he turned around, there was nobody there. 

Elena wasn’t there.

***

When Elena next opened her eyes, the sight that greeted her was the familiar ceiling above her own bed.

Almost emotionlessly, she mumbled, “Sorry, Irin. Looks like dreams are still just dreams…”