Tanya scrubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands, trying to banish the ghost-burn of swimming text. "What d'you mean?" she mumbled.

Ishita sat back on her heels, her eyes still huge. "It was—Tanya, it was visible. The words. They came out of you."

Mrs Eceer nodded slowly. "Projected, rather. Like mist rising off a pond."

Tanya glanced between them, the edges of her headache sharpening. "Nah. You're havin' me on."

"No, really," Ishita said, pitching forward, close enough that Tanya caught the slight tremble in her hands. "When you bent down like that—it looked like your brain was leaking into the air."

Tanya winced, hand instinctively reaching for her scalp. "Charmin'."

"It wasn't...solid," Ishita went on, fingers sketching restless shapes in the air like she could redraw it if she tried hard enough. "The words, they were sort of...drifting? Like smoke or steam but glowing at the edges. Gold, white, sometimes a bit blue."

Mrs Eceer adjusted her glasses with a small, precise movement. "It was quite beautiful," she said, voice low. "Very unsettling, but beautiful. Like seeing raw thought."

Tanya blinked hard, trying to feel something. No pressure shift, no ache different from the usual hammering in her skull. Nothing to mark her thoughts breaking loose and breathing into the room.

Frowning, she opened her interface with a sharp flick—and immediately, a notification slapped across her vision.

"Huh," she muttered. "I levelled it. Must've been hidden under all the words."

* * *

Level Up!

You have levelled up The Power of Intention to Level 5

* * *

Level Up!

You have levelled up The Power of Intention to Level 6

The Power of Intention has received a Minor Ability Boon

The Power of Intention

Level 6

Intention is the core of your tattoos. You can predict and share how intentions may affect your tattoo whilst in the design phase.

• • •

Congratulations!

You have levelled an Ability twice with one action.

You may choose to give this extra experience to your Tattoo Summoner Level, More than Meets the Eye Level or The Power of Intention Level.

• • •

She stared at the choice hanging in front of her, and the world faded away. It was just her and the Interface. No way was she adding more complexity to The Power of Intention right now—it already made her feel sick enough. That left her main level and More than Meets the Eye—the ability that actually brought her tattoos to life. It felt weird, honestly. Her shiny new Ability about designing had levelled faster than the one about doing tattoos. But when she thought about it, she supposed it made sense. She hadn't inked that many tattoos yet. Design breakthroughs, though—those had been coming thick and fast, like crashing through undergrowth without stopping to think. Having the time to experiment and reflect seemed to make a big difference.

She tapped her choice: More than Meets the Eye. The confirmation clicked, and a subtle surge rolled through her body. It wasn't enough to level, but it settled in her muscles and mind, a seed of something bigger.

Phantom Brand had boosted More than Meets the Eye before too, but that had been more about choosing the right design. This time, she could feel it pulling toward technique—toward the understanding of how magic threaded through ink and skin.

"Tattoos are more than just designs." Her mentor's voice echoed inside her head, crisp and smug and unmistakably French.

She rolled her eyes to herself. Tanya turned, pushing off the workbench with a new sharpness in her movement.

Ishita and Mrs Eceer were mid-discussion, quiet and intense. Tanya stopped, looking between them as they considered options.

Ishita traced the henna design with her finger. "The plus side is, the concentration's eating up stat points instead of vitality. That gives me more I can do in one fight; otherwise, with my Vitality gone, I'm spent."

Mrs. Eceer nodded thoughtfully. "It adds versatility, but it feels very different. Tanya uses Vitality for her Summoning, I use Concentration for mine. They feel like entirely… different things." She waved her hands around, struggling to word it.

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Ishita frowned, her fingers still lingering on the design. "Do you think they're like different types of Classes entirely?"

Mrs. Eceer sighed. "Maybe. I don't know."

Ishita's gaze flicked to the claw design, her thoughts visibly racing. "That's a pro of the other one. We already know it'll fit well because it's what it's made for. I'm already behind the power curve. The extra synergy from the claws is guaranteed. "

Mrs. Eceer's lips tightened, and she sighed. Tanya could tell from the snippiness in her voice that they'd gone over this whilst she was zoned out already. "None of this is guaranteed—you shouldn't convince yourself it is."

Ishita's jaw tensed. "At least I'm trying to be positive about all of this."

"It's not positive, and no one is asking you to pretend that it is," Mrs Eceer snapped.

"It's go time," Tanya said awkwardly. The other two turned towards her, startled out of their debate. "The info wasn't super easy to digest, but it gave me a few ideas. Felt kinda like...potential options. Which probably means there's more to Summon-making than just the original stencil." She gave a little shrug. "Anyways, that's neither here nor there. I'd show you with the Ability, but me head's already banging, so I'll just recount if that's alright."

Ishita nodded quickly, perching herself at the edge of the tattoo chair again, just like before. Mrs Eceer moved in beside her, arms folded, the faint glow of thoughtfulness sharpening her expression. The tension between them had already dissipated. No one was annoyed, really, just exhausted and scared.

Tanya leaned back against the workbench, focusing on the hum of something new building just under her skin. She picked up the claw design, trying to nurture her excitement, or at least sound peppy enough that Ishita felt better. "This one said damage reduction, claw-strength-weapon-stuff, and channelin' your pain into an enemy. Wait, one second."

She grabbed a pen, yanked the lid off with her teeth, and scrawled the intention along the bottom edge of the paper, the ink catching slightly on the grain.

Synergises well with her class and build.

"Here, that's what I had in mind when I did it."

Ishita took the design, holding it tenderly. "May I?" she asked, already reaching for the pen.

Tanya passed it to her, and Ishita wrote out the potential Abilities in tight, careful bullet points. Mrs Eceer leaned in over her shoulder, adjusting her glasses with the slow precision of someone cataloguing every word. Ishita capped the pen again and placed it neatly beside her. Tanya caught the way her fingers lingered for a second longer than needed.

"Okay, next," Tanya said, shaking off the weight building in the room. She snagged the next design—the hyper-realistic hand—and once again scribbled the intentions underneath, her handwriting growing a little rougher.

Dexterity and strength equal to the rest of her body.

Sensation and pain befitting a real hand.

Growth—both in aesthetics and function—until it was indistinguishable from the real thing.

"Bam. This one mentions synchronisin' to your Attributes an' stuff, plus you feeling sensation and pain, then also aesthetics."

"About what I expected," Ishita said.

"Oh yeah, also the last Intention seems to have the most impact—sorta like a lasting statement," Tanya said. She grabbed the last design, her hand already aching from the awkward angle. The pen dragged slightly as she wrote, her scrawl getting messier by the line. "Finally…"

She shoved the page toward Ishita and caught the way Ishita's face softened when she looked at it. Like someone seeing a memory they weren't ready for. Tanya kept her mouth moving to stop Ishita from sinking too deep into her head. "This one mentions healing using Concentration—"

Ishita's head snapped up, eyes suddenly bright. "I love that."

Tanya pressed on, voice steady. "It then also said 'bout pacts increasin' power and, uhhhh, general healin' I think. Oh, also, one of its downsides was slow progress."

Ishita grimaced, the expression quick and genuine. "I suppose that makes sense. It's either slow or double-edged."

Mrs Eceer perched beside Ishita to look better. "I haven't heard much about people contributing to their power set with things from others, but it seems clear that The System rewards cohesiveness. Just something to keep in mind."

Ishita's eyebrows pulled together, her gaze flickering restlessly between the claw and the henna design. Tanya could almost hear the frantic shuffle of her thoughts.

"That's true," Ishita said at last, the words tight with disappointment.

"Hey, remember, you don't have to choose between these," Tanya said, letting her voice drop low, steady. "I can make somethin' new."

Ishita nodded, slow at first, then with more certainty. She looked up, an idea sparking behind her eyes. "Have you tried making the actual stat block?"

Tanya's mouth opened with a pop, then shut. She turned automatically toward Mrs Eceer, looking for a cue: was that madness or brilliance?

Mrs Eceer's face stayed flat, unreadable.

"What do you think?" Tanya pressed.

"I think…" Mrs Eceer started, then cut herself off.

Tanya caught it now—the emotionlessness wasn't calm. The idea had caught her off guard too.

Mrs Eceer scratched her chin, a rare show of uncertainty. "It could work with enough knowledge of The System, but if you are too kind or don't balance it right—there's an incredible number of ways of it going wrong. We don't know if it would punish that."

Tanya became very aware that The System could hear them at all times, and a shiver ran down her spine. She stared up at the ceiling. It wasn't up specifically—it wasn't like it was in heaven or something—but she didn't have anywhere else to look.

"More intentions so it can be more specific?" Ishita offered, voice tentative.

Tanya shook her head, feeling the words come with a certainty she hadn't realised she'd built up. "That seems to dilute them. Sort of like it has the same amount of magic, so it needs to make ideas smaller to fit 'em in."

Ishita spoke each word slowly, like she was shaping them carefully in her mouth, weighing them as they came. "If The System rewards us for how we decide to use our Abilities, then isn't me deciding for your Ability counterintuitive?"

Tanya's mouth opened—then shut again without a sound.

"She might have a point," Mrs Eceer said, her voice even.

Well, fuck.

Tanya scrunched her face up, feeling like her brain had been punted sideways. She didn't like the idea of leaving something so important to the dice roll of instinct. But The System wasn't human. It didn't care about fear or nerves or wanting a guarantee. Maybe Ishita's gut mattered more than any plan Tanya could sketch out.

Ishita's fingers twisted nervously in the fabric of her sleeve, her knuckles white. "If there's any chance of it working better if you decide, then I prefer that," she said, voice trembling at the edges. Her eyes locked onto Tanya's with something raw, something almost pleading.

For a second, Tanya just stared at her, caught between a dozen bad ideas and one brutal truth: Trusting someone else with your future was terrifying. Trusting yourself with someone else's was worse.

She pushed off the workbench with a grunt, grabbing fresh sheets of design paper from the stack. "Alright then," Tanya said, rolling her shoulders like she could shake off the tension. "If it works, it's genius. If it doesn't, it's educational."

That earned her the tiniest snort from Ishita, and Mrs Eceer's mouth quirked in something almost approaching approval.

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