The training chamber occupied a natural cave deep within the monastery's heart, its rough walls left uncarved except for shallow niches that held oil lamps. No furniture cluttered the space—just worn stone cushions arranged in a circle around a depression in the floor that might once have held water.

"Comfortable," Cinder observed, settling onto one of the cushions with obvious reluctance. The stone was cold enough that she could feel it through her travel clothes, and the cushion provided about as much padding as a folded handkerchief.

"Comfort encourages mental laziness," Isra replied, taking her own position across the circle. "What you're attempting requires complete focus. Distraction is your enemy."

Ember tested her cushion and found it every bit as unforgiving as Cinder had suggested. "How exactly does sitting on rocks help us develop psychic abilities?"

"By forcing you to look inward instead of outward," Endymion said, settling beside Isra with the fluid grace of someone who'd spent decades practicing uncomfortable positions. "Your shared consciousness operates automatically because you've never needed to think about it. Learning conscious control means first learning to recognize what you're already doing."

Spark had claimed a position near the cave's entrance, apparently deciding that whatever was about to happen didn't require his direct participation. The salamander stretched out on the stone floor with his chin resting on his foreclaws, watching the proceedings with the air of a theater critic evaluating an amateur production.

"Close your eyes," Rinzai instructed from his position at the circle's far side. "Focus on your breathing. Not the act of breathing itself, but the sensation of air moving through your lungs."

Pyra squeezed her eyes shut and sucked in a deep breath, holding it for a moment before exhaling dramatically. After a moment's silence, she cracked an eyelid. "Like this?"

"Less trying, more allowing," the unnamed fourth Mnemosyne said gently. Unlike his colleagues, he'd remained standing, apparently content to observe rather than participate directly. "You cannot force awareness any more than you can force sleep."

"That's not helpful," Pyra muttered, though she kept her eyes closed. "What am I supposed to be looking for?"

"The spaces between thoughts," Endymion replied. "Your awareness of yourself, separate from the selves around you."

Ember tried to follow the instructions, but her mind refused to cooperate. Instead of finding peaceful gaps between thoughts, she discovered an endless stream of concerns, observations, and half-formed plans.

The stone cushion really was uncomfortable. Spark's breathing had developed a slight wheeze that probably meant he was getting a cold. They should have brought warmer clothes for mountain travel. Had they remembered to tell Henrik they'd be away for several days?

"Empty your minds," Isra said as if in response to the chaotic flurry of Ember's thoughts. "Allow yourselves to be still."

"Staying completely still for long stretches doesn't really play to our strengths," Cinder murmured.

"Precisely why you need to learn," Rinzai replied, unruffled. "To understand yourselves as singularities, you must understand the many from within the one. You cannot do that while distracted by external stimulation. Find stillness. It is the only way."

Ember took another deep breath, though this time it emerged more as a sigh. She could sense her sisters-selves around her—they breathed as one, inhaled and exhaled in almost complete unison.

Cinder shifted, the fabric of her clothing rubbing audibly against the stone. Someone's foot scraped on the floor. Ember cracked an eyelid.

Isra's eyes snapped open, meeting Ember's gaze with a disapproving glare. "Focus."

With a silent nod of apology, Ember closed her eyes and tried again. This time, she tried counting her breaths, hoping that by giving her mind something to do, it would stop spinning in dizzying circles.

One, two, three. She sent her breath to join Cinder's, Pyra's, Kindle's, and Ash's. The thought brought echoes of their emotions—Cinder's irritation, Pyra's confusion, Kindle's curiosity, Ash's focus.

Four, five, six. She released that awareness, and with it, their emotions. It left behind a strange absence, as if a layer of warmth had been pulled away. She missed their presence immediately.

Seven, eight, nine.

She found it. A gap, a brief but absolute stillness. In it, her thoughts ceased, her breaths deepened, and for a single, perfect moment, she felt... nothing. The sense of connection she shared with the others was still there, but distant, quiet, subsumed within the tranquil emptiness.

"Good." Endymion's voice drew Ember back to her surroundings. Her eyes fluttered open, and she found him watching her with an approving expression. "We can work with that."

Endymion's fingers rested against Ember's temples, his eyes closed and his brow furrowed with a look of intense concentration. The contact should have been cold and unwelcome, but instead, a gentle warmth seemed to flow from him, threading along the pathways of her mind with an almost tangible presence.

To her right, Ash sat with Rinzai, their eyes closed, faces still. On Ember's other side, Isra focused on Cinder, a look of quiet concentration in her silver gaze. Pyra and Kindle worked with the unnamed Mnemosyne across from them.

"I want you to focus on that emptiness we found earlier," Endymion instructed. "It's not about retreating to that place, but recognizing it as something you inhabit without awareness most of the time."

Eyes closed, Ember let her mind drift inward. There, just as he'd said, she felt an all-encompassing yet nebulous sense of absence. It wasn't the terrifying blankness she'd felt when the Mnemosynes had probed the group, but rather an open, waiting space where thoughts and impressions gathered.

"Good." Endymion's voice was soft, encouraging. "Now, I want you to picture one of your sisters."

Ember hesitated, uncertainty flitting across her awareness. "Who?"

"Choose. Visualize."

In her mind's eye, Ember saw Pyra. The bright, eager expression that always seemed ready to face whatever the world might throw at her. The lopsided grin that made everything a bit less serious and a bit more fun. How even though they bickered occasionally, her presence made everything easier by its mere existence.

"I have her."

"Try reaching out to her. Just as you did the emptiness."

Ember imagined a line from her core out to Pyra. It was thin and insubstantial, like a thread spun from gossamer strands of her thoughts. She pushed with her mind, following that line, trying to make contact with Pyra's essence.

"Gotcha!" Pyra's mindvoice whispered through Ember's awareness with all its characteristic enthusiasm.

Ember's eyes opened and she stared at Pyra. "You heard me?"

Pyra's grin grew wider. "Well, I don't know if there was actually any 'hearing' involved, but yeah, I'm pretty sure I felt you poke me."

Endymion nodded, satisfaction settling onto his features. "Good. The first step is understanding how your minds interact beyond the subconscious awareness you've always possessed. Once you can communicate like this at will, we can move on to honing and directing your psychic potential."

Isra gave Cinder's shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Let's practice that for a while. Try to reach out and make contact without external cues. One of you focus on reaching, the other on receiving. Try to recognize the contact without any physical signals."

The exercise proved easier than expected, and with the Mnemosynes' encouragement, they stretched further, testing their newfound abilities in more complex ways. One would speak without words, her message mirrored instantly in her sisters-selves' minds. They began to blur thoughts and words together, responding to questions halfway through, anticipating intentions, and even answering questions before they were asked aloud.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"Deeper," the unnamed Mnemosyne said, his voice cutting through the quiet murmur of mental conversation. "You're reaching out, spreading thoughts from mind to mind, but you're only communicating, not sharing."

"Aren't they basically the same thing?" Pyra asked. "I mean, even our normal conversations are sort of half mental at this point. That's still sharing, isn't it?"

The Mnemosyne shook his head, wisps of white hair catching the light. "You're skimming the surface. Psychic communication is more than a transfer of concepts. It's a meeting of minds. You touch essence. Tap potential. Sharing, true sharing, requires the merging of perspectives."

"So, what? Telepathic ventriloquism?" Pyra's eyes widened in sudden interest. "Wait, can we do that?"

"Pyra, please," Kindle murmured, a touch of rebuke in her tone. "We're serious here."

"Okay, okay!" Pyra's hand rose to rub the back of her head sheepishly. "Just a thought."

"No, it's relevant," Endymion said. He stood and began to pace the small room, the hem of his gray robe trailing over the stone with the faintest whisper of fabric. "Telepathy has many forms. Simple communication, as you have experienced. Then there's empathy, the sharing of emotions, and sympathetic cognition, which goes a step further by including thoughts as well as feelings."

"But neither actually transfers control of any kind," Isra finished. "You cannot command or compel another without a deeper connection. A bridge, an avenue of control. Such links can be forged in many ways, through bonds, compulsion, or a willing exchange, but they all share one thing: they transcend the limitations of the individual and tap into the flow of being, becoming more than the sum of their parts."

Rinzai opened his eyes. "Without this link, there can be no union. No synergy of spirit. No resonance."

The session continued for another hour, with each of them taking turns as both sender and receiver. They practiced projecting simple emotions—contentment, curiosity, amusement—and gradually worked up to more complex combinations. By the end, they could maintain a five-way telepathic conversation while keeping their individual mental activities separate and distinct.

"That's enough for now," Endymion finally said, satisfaction clear in his smile. "You've made good progress. I think we can safely say you've grasped the basics of telepathic sharing. Tomorrow, we'll delve more deeply into this concept of psychic links and what we mean when we speak of bridging."

With that, the Mnemosynes ushered them from the cave, leaving them to return to their quarters. After another simple meal, they retired early; they felt drained.

The training chamber felt different on their third morning—not physically changed, but charged with the weight of what they were about to attempt. The oil lamps cast the same steady light, the stone cushions remained as unforgiving as ever, and Spark still sprawled across the floor, apparently content to simply watch.

"Harmonic Integration is not resurrection," Endymion said, settling onto his cushion with the fluid grace of long practice. "What you've experienced before—the death and reconstitution cycle—operates on entirely different principles."

"Different how?" Cinder asked. She shifted, trying to find a more comfortable way to sit, then gave up with a resigned sigh. No posture could truly make stone comfortable, after all.

"Death forces integration through trauma," Isra replied, taking her position across the circle. "The shock of losing a vessel causes automatic redistribution as a survival mechanism. Harmonic Integration achieves the same result through conscious choice and careful control."

"Which sounds much more pleasant than dying," Pyra observed. "What's the catch?"

"The catch," Rinzai said, his silvery eyes fixing her with an appraising stare, "is that conscious integration requires maintaining awareness throughout the process. Instead of the merciful unconsciousness of death, you'll experience every moment of personality dissolution and redistribution."

"Also much more pleasant," Pyra muttered.

Ash shifted on her cushion, attempting to find a position that didn't leave her tailbone numb. "What does that actually feel like?"

"Like being scattered across multiple mirrors while remaining aware of each reflection," the unnamed Mnemosyne said softly. "Your consciousness expands to fill vessels it wasn't designed for, while simultaneously losing the familiar boundaries of individual identity."

"Right," Kindle said with forced cheer. "So basically psychological torture, but voluntary."

"The alternative is continuing to rely on death as your only method of integration," Endymion pointed out. "Which carries risks we've discussed—the possibility of permanent separation if something goes wrong during resurrection, the accumulated psychological stress of repeated trauma, the unpredictability of forced redistribution."

Ember studied the faces of her sister-selves, seeing the same mix of hesitation and resolve she felt. Yesterday's breakthrough had left them more mentally connected than ever before, but also more aware of how much they still didn't understand about their own nature.

"Who volunteers for the first attempt?" she asked, though she suspected she already knew the answer.

"Me," Ash said without hesitation. "I've died twice already, so I'm most familiar with the dissolution experience. And philosophically, I'm comfortable with temporary non-existence."

"Comfortable might be overstating it," Cinder said dryly. "But you're definitely the least likely to panic midway through the process."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence." Ash arranged herself in the meditation position they'd practiced the day before, hands resting loosely in her lap. "What do I need to do?"

"Begin by establishing full telepathic contact with your sister-selves," Rinzai instructed. "Not the selective sharing you practiced yesterday, but complete openness. No barriers, no private thoughts, no individual boundaries."

The process had become easier overnight. Ash dropped her mental defenses, allowing her consciousness to flow freely toward the others. Within moments, Ember found herself experiencing Ash's calm determination, her philosophical acceptance of what was about to happen, and underneath it all, a thread of genuine curiosity about the nature of consciousness itself.

"Now," Endymion said, his voice seeming to come from inside their shared mental space rather than through their ears, "instead of maintaining your individual focus, allow yourself to disperse. Let your sense of self expand beyond the boundaries of your physical form."

"How?" Ash asked, though her voice sounded distant even to herself.

"Stop trying to be Ash," Isra said simply. "Just be."

What followed was unlike anything they'd experienced before. Where death had been a sharp discontinuity—one moment present, the next scattered—Harmonic Integration unfolded like a deliberate dissolution. Ash's awareness didn't vanish; it chose to release its grip on physical form.

Her body began to shimmer, edges blurring as her consciousness made the conscious decision to abandon material housing. Unlike the violent dispersal of death, this felt like stepping out of clothes that had become too confining.

"I can feel myself letting go," Ash murmured, her voice already growing ethereal as her physical form started to fade. "It's not frightening. More like... expanding."

Ember watched in fascination as Ash's body dissolved into wisps of smoke and flame, but the process felt controlled, deliberate. There was none of the panic or struggle for existence they'd experienced during their prior deaths.

The Mnemosynes observed without comment. Their scrutiny wasn't unkind; it held a sense of patient expectation, as if waiting for something inevitable to take its course.

The moment Ash's physical form dispersed completely, her consciousness flowed into the remaining four like a tide they'd invited. Ember felt the familiar sensation of personality redistribution, but gentler than the violent reshuffling that followed death. Ash's analytical nature settled into the corners of her mind with the consideration of a polite houseguest.

Kindle, too, reacted with an involuntary grunt, and Ember could feel Cinder's sharp inhale.

"Yup, there we go." Pyra's voice took on the deep cadence Ash affected when lost in thought. "I think I know how many atoms there are in my big toe. Thanks, Ash."

"What you're sensing is the resonance we spoke of," Isra said, her gaze locked on Pyra's face. "Your shared mental architecture recognizes itself, resulting in this cross-pollination of thoughts."

"Let the resonance stabilize," Rinzai instructed. "It should settle within minutes."

True to his prediction, the sensations calmed within moments. Ember's awareness of the redistributed aspect of Ash receded to the background hum of her consciousness, leaving her with only a vague sense of analytical rumination.

The enhanced power levels were familiar—four vessels containing essence normally distributed across five always resulted in stronger abilities. But the mental integration felt deeper, more complete. Where death-forced redistribution created the sense of carrying emergency cargo, this felt like Ash's consciousness had been carefully unpacked and organized within their minds.

"That was an excellent first attempt," Endymion said, breaking the contemplative stillness that had fallen over the cave. "How do you feel?"

"Pretty great, actually," Pyra answered first. "I've gotten used to the power boost, but this time it's like Ash left me a nice little 'user guide' for how to understand the world around me."

Cinder rubbed her forehead tiredly. "And on the other end of the spectrum, I'm getting the usual headache from Ash's analysis-brain."

Ember looked around the room, seeing the others reacting much as she herself felt—reassured and energized, even with the bittersweet pang of Ash's absence. Even Spark seemed content, blinking sleepily.

"So," Kindle said, breaking the thoughtful silence, "all we need to do now is repeat this process three more times, and we'll all be unified in one body?"

The Mnemosynes exchanged glances.

"It's best to proceed slowly," Endymion said. "Harmonic Integration, as you've just experienced, is an ordeal that requires significant mental fortitude. For now, focus on mastering the basics before attempting multiple sequential integrations."

Ember understood the cautious approach, but part of her wondered if they were overestimating the difficulty. The first integration hadn't been as daunting as she'd feared. With practice, they might gain proficiency quickly.

But she couldn't argue the need for caution, either. These were uncharted waters, and the consequences of overextending themselves could be severe.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.