Ren left Lord Matsunaga’s residence two days later with more money than he had ever possessed, a full stomach, and another problem he had no idea how to solve.
The problem was not Lord Akiyama.
That particular disaster belonged to Lord Matsunaga, Kagemori, Tadakatsu, Saburo, and every unfortunate soldier who would eventually be dragged into whatever came next.
Ren had made his position on political conspiracies very clear: he wanted nothing to do with them, although whether the world intended to respect that decision remained uncertain.
The problem that followed him down the road was much smaller, much quieter, and considerably more difficult to ignore.
Two impressions continued returning to him no matter how often he tried to focus on something else: cold stone and running water.
Ren adjusted the bundle across his shoulder as he walked and thought back to Saburo’s writing brush.
He had been holding it when those sensations appeared, and at the time they had seemed like little more than fragments of intuition.
Yet those fragments had eventually pointed Kagemori toward the ruined temple near Mount Kuro, where the air had been cold, broken stone had covered the grounds, and a stream had flowed directly behind the abandoned buildings.
The impressions had been accurate, and that was what bothered him.
His pendulum gave yes-or-no answers, while his sticks pointed toward directions and his cards produced symbols that could be interpreted according to their positions.
Those methods made sense, at least within the increasingly strange definition of sense Ren had developed over the past several months.
Cold stone and water were different because he had not asked for them, had not deliberately chosen a method, and had not even realized he was performing divination until afterward.
Ren slowed as he replayed the moment.
He had closed his eyes and concentrated on the brush until his awareness of the room faded, then impressions had appeared without words or deliberate thought.
They had not felt like ordinary intuition.
They had felt more like something half remembered from sleep.
“A dream,” Ren murmured.
He stopped in the middle of the road, and a merchant several dozen steps behind him gave him a suspicious look before moving around him.
Ren stepped aside with a quiet sigh.
Talking to himself on an empty road was one thing, but doing it while strangers were nearby was apparently a reliable way to make people wonder whether he had lost his mind.
Dreams had been appearing ever since he drank the Seer potion.
Most of them had been vague enough that Ren dismissed them upon waking: water, distant roads, faces without names, pieces of red cloth, and doors standing open in places he did not recognize.
Sometimes later events seemed suspiciously similar, but Ren had never taken those coincidences seriously.
If he dreamed about rain and rain happened three days later, that hardly proved he had predicted anything.
Saburo’s case was harder to dismiss.
Ren looked toward the road ahead and considered the problem for several minutes.
He had originally planned to continue walking until evening, but if he intended to test sleep-based divination, exhausting himself on the road probably wasn’t the best beginning.
The next village would do.
The village turned out to be large enough to have something resembling a roadside inn, although calling it an inn was generous.
It consisted of a main room, a kitchen, several small sleeping spaces, and a middle-aged woman who looked personally offended by the existence of travelers.
Ren liked it immediately.
The woman looked him over from behind a low counter before speaking.
“You want food, or are you only looking for somewhere to sleep?”
“Both, preferably,” Ren replied as he reached into his pouch.
When he placed several coins on the counter, the woman’s expression improved so quickly that Ren almost laughed.
“Then you’re welcome,” she said, and the suspicion in her voice disappeared as though it had never existed.
Money remained one of the most reliable forms of divination Ren had encountered.
It predicted changes in people’s attitudes with remarkable consistency.
The woman introduced herself as Hana and gave him a small room near the rear of the building.
Ren set down his belongings and began unpacking his tools across the floor: his pendulum, his sticks, his cards, his notebook, and the wooden cup the old shopkeeper had given him.
He stared at them for a moment before recognizing the first problem.
Saburo’s brush was no longer with him.
If the experience at Mount Kuro had really been some form of dream divination, then a personal belonging had probably strengthened the connection.
At least, that was Ren’s current theory.
To test it properly, he needed an object belonging to someone whose location he could later verify.
His eyes drifted toward the doorway, and after a moment he thought of Hana.
When Ren returned to the main room, she was arranging bowls behind the counter.
She glanced over her shoulder as he approached, and the suspicion immediately returned.
“You need something else already?”
“Possibly.”
“That sounds expensive.”
“It isn’t.”
Hana’s eyes narrowed, but curiosity slowly replaced annoyance.
“Travelers who tell me something isn’t expensive usually want something stranger than money.”
Ren considered that and nodded.
“That’s fair.”
She crossed her arms.
“What do you want?”
“Do you have a family member nearby?”
Her expression changed at once.
“Why are you asking?”
“I need to know where someone is.”
Ren stopped as soon as he heard himself.
Hana stared.
He rubbed his forehead.
“That sounded much worse than I intended.”
“It sounded like you’re searching for someone’s child.”
“I’m a fortune teller.”
Her suspicion turned into disappointment.
“That’s somehow worse.”
Ren sighed.
Apparently his reputation had not reached this village yet, and for once he almost wished it had.
“I want to test a divination method,” he explained.
“I need an object belonging to someone whose location you already know, but I need you not to tell me where that person is.
Then tomorrow I can see whether the result was correct.”
Hana studied him for several seconds before leaning against the counter.
“You want to guess where someone is.”
“Essentially.”
“I have a son.
He’s sixteen and spends most afternoons finding increasingly creative ways to avoid work.”
“Perfect.”
Hana raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t think that’s something a mother usually likes hearing.”
“For my purposes, it is.”
She shook her head and disappeared into the back room.
When she returned, she was holding a small wooden comb.
“He uses this, although usually only when I remind him.”
Ren accepted it carefully.
“That’s good enough.”
Hana pointed a finger at him while amusement crept into her expression.
“If you tell me he’s secretly possessed by a fox spirit, I’m charging you extra.”
Ren froze for half a second.
Hana noticed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Ren said as he looked down at the comb.
“Probably nothing.”
She stared after him as he returned to his room, but Ren decided against explaining why jokes about fox spirits no longer sounded entirely ridiculous.
The first attempt failed for the very simple reason that Ren could not sleep.
He lay on his mat with the wooden comb resting beside his head, having decided against holding it through the night because waking with the thing embedded in his cheek would be humiliating.
His question was equally simple: Where is Hana’s son?
Ren repeated it silently several times, closed his eyes, and waited.
Nothing happened.
He opened them again, stared at the ceiling, then shut them once more and tried concentrating harder.
Still nothing.
After several minutes, he wondered whether he was concentrating too hard.
That led to an attempt to relax, which led to him thinking about whether he was relaxing properly, which then made relaxation effectively impossible.
Ten minutes later, Ren sat upright.
“This is stupid.”
The comb offered no argument.
Ren lay back down and stopped trying.
Eventually, ordinary exhaustion succeeded where deliberate effort had failed, and sleep finally came.
He woke before dawn and spent several confused seconds wondering why a wooden comb was beside his head.
Then the experiment returned to him, followed immediately by the certainty that he had dreamed something.
Ren sat up and reached for his notebook.
Smoke was the first thing he remembered.
He wrote it down quickly before the image could disappear.
Something wooden had also been there, perhaps beams or a roof, although the shape was already fading.
He added wooden structure beneath the first line.
Then he remembered sound.
Birds, perhaps, but not quite.
Chickens.
Yes, definitely chickens.
He wrote that down too.
There had also been something red, moving in the wind.
Cloth, most likely.
Red cloth.
Finally, there had been warmth, although Ren wasn’t sure whether that belonged to the dream or simply came from the blanket around him.
He hesitated before adding it with a question mark.
Ren stared at the notes.
Smoke.
Wood.
Chickens.
Red cloth.
Warmth.
“That could describe half the village.”
Still, it was more than nothing.
Hana was already awake by the time Ren reached the main room.
She was preparing rice near the fire, and one glance at his face was enough to make her laugh.
“You look terrible.”
“I was working.”
“You were sleeping.”
“Apparently those aren’t mutually exclusive anymore.”
She raised an eyebrow as she stirred the pot.
“So, where is my son?”
Ren sat near the doorway.
“I don’t know exactly.”
Hana laughed again.
“Excellent fortune telling.”
“I dreamed of smoke, a wooden building, chickens, and red cloth.
There was also warmth, but that might have been my blanket.”
Her amusement faded slightly.
“Did you see him?”
“No.”
“Did you see the place clearly?”
“Not really.”
Hana slowly placed the spoon down.
“He’s staying with my sister.
She lives near the charcoal burners at the north edge of the village.”
Ren’s attention sharpened.
“Does she keep chickens?”
“Far too many.”
“Is there red cloth around her house?”
Hana frowned for a moment, and then realization crossed her face.
“She dyed cloth yesterday.
My sister hangs it behind the house to dry.”
Ren stood immediately.
“I want to see it.”
Hana stared at him.
“You don’t believe me?”
“I do.
That’s why I want to see it.”
She shook her head.
“You really are strange.”
“So I’ve been told.”
The house matched.
Not perfectly, and certainly not like a painting copied directly from the dream, but the important details were there.
Smoke from the charcoal burners drifted through the trees, several chickens wandered around the yard, and strips of red-dyed cloth hung behind the house.
Hana’s son was asleep inside.
Ren stood beside the road and stared at the scene with the comb still in his hand.
The dream had worked.
That realization produced an emotion dangerously close to excitement.
This was different from the cards.
A card gave him a concept such as Danger, Journey, or Hidden, and then he had to determine how that concept fit the situation.
The dream had given him fragments of an actual environment.
Smoke.
Chickens.
Red cloth.
Sensory information.
Ren looked down at the comb.
“If I can improve this…”
He left the thought unfinished because the possibilities were already obvious.
His second experiment was considerably less impressive.
Ren remained at Hana’s inn for another night and paid for the room again, which made her noticeably more enthusiastic about his experiments.
“What are you testing tonight?” she asked while wiping one of the bowls.
“The future.”
Hana stopped and looked at him.
“That’s more impressive than finding my lazy son.”
“If it works.”
“What are you asking?”
Ren hesitated before answering.
“What will happen to me tomorrow?”
Hana stared at him for several seconds.
“That’s your question?”
“Yes.”
“It seems rather broad.”
Ren slowly turned toward her.
Hana smiled.
“What?
I listened yesterday.”
She was right, which was annoying.
The question was broad, but Ren wanted to see what happened when he deliberately left it that way.
Experimentation required failed attempts as much as successful ones.
Probably.
That night, Ren used no anchor.
He simply repeated the question before sleeping.
What will happen to me tomorrow?
The dream was brief.
Mud.
Something snapping.
Laughter.
Ren woke before sunrise with the uncomfortable feeling that his own subconscious had insulted him.
He wrote the fragments down immediately and spent several minutes staring at them.
That sounds terrible.”
It wasn’t.
Around midday, Ren stepped aside to let a cart pass, placed his foot directly into a patch of mud, and tore the strap of his sandal.
Three children nearby laughed so hard that one of them nearly fell over.
Ren stood ankle-deep in mud and stared at them.
The children laughed harder.
He looked up at the sky.
“Really?”
Nothing answered.
Later, while repairing the sandal, Ren opened his notebook and compared the dream with what had happened.
Mud, something breaking, and laughter had all been completely correct.
They had also been completely useless.
Ren crossed out the question What will happen to me tomorrow?
and wrote beneath it:
Too broad.
Produces technically accurate nonsense.
That made him feel slightly better.
He hadn’t failed.
The question had.
Over the next week, Ren continued traveling and tested dream divination whenever he found somewhere reasonably safe to sleep.
He quickly discovered that it possessed advantages none of his other methods could match, but those advantages came with equally irritating limitations.
Dreams could provide detail.
Not precise detail, but actual sensations.
A pendulum might tell him danger existed, while a dream could show him rain, fire, blood, a face, a road, the smell of smoke, or the sound of something approaching.
That made dream divination potentially much richer than his other techniques.
Unfortunately, dreams were also difficult to control.
Ren could not simply close his eyes in the middle of the afternoon and demand a useful vision.
Sleep had to happen naturally, which made the method almost useless for urgent situations.
Even if he could fall asleep at command, being defenseless in the public wasn’t a very good idea in this era.
The amount of information gained was unpredictable too.
Sometimes he remembered several images after waking, while other times all he retained was a single object or sensation.
One night, after asking whether there was danger on the road ahead, Ren dreamed only of rope.
Nothing else.
He spent the following morning wondering what the image meant.
A hanging?
A trap?
Someone tied up?
A bridge?
The cards gave him Journey, Threat, and Delay, while the pendulum confirmed that danger did exist somewhere ahead.
His sticks indicated the route he was already following.
Ren continued cautiously.
Several hours later, he noticed a thin rope stretched low across the road.
He stopped immediately.
The rope disappeared into bushes on either side, and a moment later he saw movement among the trees.
Bandits.
Ren never discovered how many were waiting.
He had no intention of remaining long enough to count.
He backed away and took another route.
That evening, he added two observations to his notebook.
Dreams may show important details directly.
Below it, he wrote:
Important does not mean obvious.
The rope had warned him about an ambush, but without the pendulum and cards confirming danger, he might easily have dismissed the image as meaningless.
That led to another discovery.
Dream divination became much more useful when paired with other methods.
The third problem was interpretation.
That lesson arrived in the form of a butcher.
Ren had stopped in a village near a crossroads and learned that a merchant caravan intended to travel south the following morning.
Since traveling near a group was usually safer than traveling alone, he considered joining them for part of the route.
Before sleeping, Ren asked:
Is there anyone in tomorrow’s caravan I should be cautious of?
The dream came quickly.
He saw a man’s hand.
Blood ran across the palm, and a knife rested nearby.
Ren woke with his heart pounding.
That seemed clear.
Perhaps too clear.
He tested it with the pendulum.
“Will someone in the caravan pose a danger to me?”
The answer was no.
Ren frowned and repeated the question, but the result remained the same.
Then he used his cards.
Person.
Blood.
Work.
Ren stared at the three cards.
“What?”
The next morning, the caravan assembled near the road.
There were two merchants, several guards, a family traveling south, an elderly priest, and a broad man carrying several bundles that looked suspiciously like wrapped blades.
Ren immediately became cautious.
The broad man noticed him staring.
“What are you looking at?”
“Nothing.”
“You’ve been watching my hands.”
“No, I haven’t.”
The man lifted them anyway.
His palms were scarred.
Ren’s suspicion deepened.
An hour later, the caravan stopped for a short rest, and the broad man opened one of his bundles.
Inside were cuts of meat.
Ren stared.
The man looked toward him.
“I’m a butcher.”
Of course he was.
The bloody hand from the dream had belonged to someone whose work involved cutting animals.
The knife had been a tool.
Person — Blood — Work.
Everything made perfect sense.
Ren felt personally betrayed by his own interpretation.
The butcher narrowed his eyes as he chewed a piece of dried meat.
“You all right?”
“Yes.”
“You look disappointed.”
“I thought you might murder me.”
The butcher stopped chewing.
Ren considered his words.
“That sounded better in my head.”
The man stared for several seconds before bursting into laughter so loudly that several of the guards looked over.
“You a fortune teller?”
“Unfortunately.”
“You dreamed about blood?”
Ren blinked.
“Yes.”
The butcher lifted one scarred hand.
“Usually do.”
Ren covered his face.
That evening, his notebook gained another entry.
Dream images may be literal.
Interpretation may not be.
He underlined may twice.
Despite the frustrations, Ren became increasingly fascinated.
Dream divination was the first method that felt less like asking questions and more like receiving revelations.
With a pendulum, Ren controlled the structure because everything had to become yes or no.
With sticks, he chose a direction and interpreted the result accordingly.
With cards, he created symbols and decided how they related to one another.
Dreams didn’t care about any of that.
They gave him whatever they gave him.
Sometimes the result was useful, sometimes it was meaningless, and sometimes it only became useful after another technique provided context.
Ren began developing a routine.
Before sleeping, he wrote down the question.
If the question involved a person, he used a personal belonging whenever one was available.
After waking, he wrote every detail he could remember immediately.
More importantly, he stopped writing interpretations.
That rule became surprisingly valuable.
Instead of writing dangerous man, he wrote male hand, blood, knife.
Instead of writing something hidden, he wrote dark room, closed door, no light.
Interpretation came afterward.
Ren gradually realized that he had been unconsciously altering memories to fit whatever explanation occurred to him first.
A dream showed blood, and he remembered danger.
A dream showed darkness, and he remembered secrecy.
Writing only what he actually experienced reduced that problem.
Ren was pleased with himself.
Perhaps a little too pleased.
About ten days after leaving Lord Matsunaga’s residence, Ren reached a small temple that accepted travelers in exchange for work.
He stayed there for three nights, helped carry water and sweep the grounds, and discovered that the monks were quiet, the food was simple, and nobody asked him to predict anything.
It was almost paradise.
Ren used the time to review his notes.
Dozens of entries covered the pages now, almost turning it to a book.
Pendulum results.
Stick directions.
Card combinations.
Dream fragments.
He spread several pages across the floor and began comparing them.
A pattern was emerging.
Not a perfect one, but enough to distinguish the strengths of each technique.
Pendulum divination was the easiest method to control, but its greatest weakness was the question itself.
Poor wording created misleading answers.
Stick divination was quite reliable for location and direction, although almost useless for complicated circumstances.
Cards could describe relationships, motives, and situations, but they demanded interpretation.
Dream divination offered the richest information and the most direct sensory detail.
It was also the least obedient.
Ren rested his chin on one hand as he stared at his tools.
“If only I could combine them properly.”
Then he stopped.
Why couldn’t he?
He had already done exactly that without formally deciding to.
The rope dream had been confirmed by cards and pendulum.
Saburo’s location had begun with dreamlike impressions and ended with the sticks pointing toward the correct direction.
Maybe the methods weren’t supposed to replace one another.
Perhaps each answered a different part of the same problem.
Ren decided to test that idea the following night.
His question was simple enough:
What should I be aware of on tomorrow’s journey?
The dream showed a bridge, heavy rain, and a figure standing beneath a tree.
Ren woke and immediately recorded the details before reaching for his pendulum.
“Is the bridge related to danger?”
No.
“Is the rain related to danger?”
Yes.
“Is the person beneath the tree dangerous?”
No.
Interesting.
He used the sticks next, and the result pointed south along his intended route.
Finally, Ren used the cards.
Journey.
Delay.
Opportunity.
The next day, rain began before noon.
It was heavy enough that the road became difficult, and Ren eventually reached a bridge where several travelers had stopped to shelter nearby.
The structure itself was completely intact.
The rain was the problem.
A merchant stood beneath a large tree beside his wagon and eventually offered Ren space under the canvas.
During the delay, the man told him about a village farther south where travelers could find cheap lodging.
Journey.
Delay.
Opportunity.
The dream had shown the scene, the pendulum had identified which part mattered, and the cards had described the larger circumstances.
Ren was delighted.
For nearly an hour.
Then he realized he had performed four separate divinations to discover that rain would delay him and lead to a useful conversation.
His excitement diminished slightly.
Still, it worked.
That night, Ren wrote a more organized summary in his notebook.
Dream Divination
Advantages:
Can reveal scenes instead of simple answers.
Can provide information I did not know to ask for.
Personal belongings seem to strengthen connections.
Useful for locations, future circumstances, and hidden context.
Combines well with other divination methods.
Disadvantages:
Requires sleep.
Difficult to control.
Symbolism may be unclear.
Images can be accurate and still useless.
Interpretation remains dangerous.
Ren stared at the final line for a while.
Interpretation.
Again.
Every technique eventually returned to the same problem.
The pendulum required him to interpret the question precisely.
Cards required him to interpret symbols.
Dreams required him to interpret images.
Even Spirit Vision demanded that he understand emotions correctly rather than simply seeing them.
Perhaps there was no method that simply delivered truth in a form requiring no thought at all.
That was irritating. This story is hosted at g.com.
Ren closed the notebook, but his attention drifted toward the empty glass bottle wrapped carefully at the bottom of his belongings.
He had not touched it in weeks.
Ren took it out.
The bottle caught the faint light from the lamp.
It was still far too fine for something he should have possessed when he first arrived in this world.
It was empty now, but Ren remembered what had once been inside.
The dark potion, the taste and the pain.
The feeling of his body and mind nearly tearing themselves apart.
The impossible grey fog, the palace, the twenty-two chairs.
And the warning.
Do not allow It to awaken.
Ren stared at the bottle.
He had spent months asking questions about farmers, merchants, missing people, roads, weather, travel, danger, and ordinary human problems.
Yet he had rarely used divination on the one mystery that mattered most to him.
The potion.
At first, that had been because he barely understood his abilities.
Later, because he was afraid.
Perhaps he still was.
But he was better now.
Not perfect.
Better.
And dream divination might reveal something his other methods could not.
Ren’s thumb moved slowly across the glass.
“What are you?”
The bottle naturally remained silent.
Ren glanced toward the sleeping mat and hesitated.
The sensible choice would be to wait.
He should practice dream divination longer, improve his control, and learn more about the supernatural world before attempting something connected to the potion.
Ren knew that.
He also knew he wasn’t going to wait.
Curiosity had always been one of humanity’s more reliable methods of finding trouble.
He prepared far more carefully than usual.
The empty bottle rested beside his sleeping mat while Ren opened his notebook and considered possible questions.
Where did the Seer potion come from?
Too broad.
Who created the potion?
Possibly impossible.
What is inside me?
Ren stared at that sentence.
Something about it made his skin crawl.
He crossed it out.
After several minutes, he settled on something else.
What should I know about the Seer potion I consumed?
Better.
Broad enough to allow useful information.
Specific enough to identify the subject.
Probably.
Ren used his pendulum first.
“Is it dangerous for me to perform dream divination about the Seer potion tonight?”
The pendulum moved.
Yes.
Ren stared at it.
That was inconvenient.
He adjusted the question.
“Will performing this divination cause immediate physical harm?” No.
“Will performing it place me in mortal danger tonight?” No.
Ren frowned.
Dangerous, but neither immediately harmful nor likely to kill him.
That covered an irritating number of possibilities.
He drew three cards.
Hidden.
Danger.
Unknown.
Ren stared at the spread.
“This is a terrible idea.”
The cards did not disagree.
He looked toward the bottle and seriously considered stopping.
Every method he had tested warned him that something unpleasant surrounded the question.
But danger could simply mean that the information itself was disturbing.
Perhaps the subject was dangerous because the potion was supernatural, or perhaps the interpretation would be difficult.
More importantly, the potion was already inside him.
Ignorance did not remove whatever danger came with it.
That was how Ren justified continuing.
He wasn’t entirely convinced by his own argument.
Ren lay down with the empty bottle beside his head.
He closed his eyes and repeated the question silently.
What should I know about the Seer potion I consumed?
Once.
Twice.
Again.
His breathing slowed, and the temple gradually disappeared from his awareness.
Sleep came.
Then something happened.
Ren woke screaming.
He was sitting upright before he even understood that he had awakened, and his heart hammered violently enough that for several seconds he thought something was wrong with it.
Cold sweat covered his back.
He looked around wildly.
Darkness.
Wooden walls.
Temple.
Japan.
Ren pressed one hand against his chest.
“Breathe.”
He inhaled slowly.
His lungs worked.
Nothing hurt.
His hands were normal.
The empty bottle lay beside him exactly where he had left it.
Ren swallowed.
The dream.
He had dreamed something.
Something terrible.
He reached for the notebook immediately, but his fingers trembled badly enough that he nearly dropped the brush.
“Write it down.”
He stared at the blank page.
Nothing came.
Ren frowned.
There had been something.
Fog?
Perhaps.
He wrote Fog, then stopped.
Was there actually fog?
He didn’t know.
Something large?
Something distant?
There had been fear.
Not an image.
Only fear.
He almost wrote it, then hesitated.
Fear wasn’t part of the revelation.
It was simply what remained after waking.
Ren crossed out the word.
He closed his eyes and tried again.
There had been sound.
Perhaps voices.
No.
Whispers?
Something had spoken.
He felt certain of that.
Almost certain.
“What did you say?”
The room remained silent.
Ren pressed both hands against his temples.
The harder he tried to remember, the farther the dream seemed to move away.
He had awakened seconds ago.
Dreams faded, but not this quickly.
Normally he could recover fragments.
Smoke.
Chickens.
Blood.
Rain.
A rope.
And with more and more Dream Divination being done, he could remember everything more and more clearly.
Maybe it was him getting familiar with it, or perhaps the potion gave me enhanced memories too.
But this was different.
There was almost nothing.
Only the knowledge that something had happened and the instinctive certainty that he had not wanted to see it.
Ren looked down at the notebook.
The page was nearly empty.
Then another sensation moved through his thoughts.
Four.
Ren froze.
Four what?
People?
Objects?
Sounds?
He didn’t know.
The idea vanished almost immediately.
“Four.”
He wrote the number.
Then stared at it.
Why four?
His hand tightened around the brush.
Something had been there.
Four…
Voices?
Murmurs?
Ren’s stomach turned.
He could not remember.
The word murmurs felt strangely familiar, but he could not tell whether it belonged to the dream or whether his mind was inventing something to fill the empty space.
That frightened him enough that he refused to write it down.
Ren put the brush aside and remained sitting against the wall.
For nearly an hour, he stayed awake.
Eventually, he reached for the pendulum.
“Was the dream connected to the potion?” Yes.
Ren swallowed and asked another question.
“Did I receive useful information?”
The pendulum trembled.
It moved slightly.
Then stopped.
No answer.
Ren stared.
He did not ask again.
Eventually exhaustion began pulling at him, but he refused to sleep.
Instead, he sat against the wall with the bottle several steps away and tried to understand what had happened.
For the first time since beginning his experiments, Ren had encountered the opposite of every previous problem.
The butcher dream had been remembered but misinterpreted.
The mud dream had been accurate but useless.
The rope had been cryptic but valuable.
Saburo’s location had been incomplete but sufficient.
This time, Ren knew he had received something.
Yet whatever revelation had reached him was already gone.
He couldn’t interpret it badly.
He couldn’t interpret it correctly.
He couldn’t even write it down.
Ren looked toward the notebook.
Only one uncertain number sat on the page.
Four.
He stared at it until his eyes began to hurt.
Then he closed the notebook.
“Not ready.”
The explanation felt reasonable.
Comforting, even.
That had to be what happened.
The question had been too ambitious, the connection was strange, and his dream divination was not developed enough to handle whatever he had touched.
Perhaps when he gained more experience, he would be able to remember.
Ren accepted that explanation because the alternatives were considerably worse.
He picked up the empty bottle and carefully wrapped it again.
His hands had mostly stopped shaking.
Tomorrow, he would return to ordinary questions.
Roads.
Weather.
People.
Things he could verify.
He would practice and improve, and eventually, when he was better prepared, he would try again.
Ren lay back against the wall, although he did not close his eyes.
Outside, the temple remained quiet.
Nothing moved among the trees, and nothing disturbed the darkness beyond the wooden walls.
Nothing watched him.
Nothing whispered.
At least, nothing he could hear.
Ren remained awake until sunrise.
By then, even the certainty that there had been four of something had begun to fade.
Only the number remained in his notebook, and although Ren could no longer remember why he had written it, he found that he couldn’t bring himself to cross it out.