Ren woke to the sound of rain.
For several seconds, he didn’t know where he was.
He stared at the ceiling above him.
Old wooden beams crossed one another overhead, warped by years of rain and neglect.
Several sections of the roof were missing entirely, allowing the gray morning sky to show through.
Water dripped steadily from one of the beams and landed on the stone floor with a soft, repetitive sound.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Ren blinked, then tried to move.
Pain immediately reminded him that he was alive.
“Ah.” He stopped halfway through sitting up.
His entire body hurt.
Not one particular injury — everything.
His ribs ached whenever he breathed too deeply.
His left shoulder felt stiff and swollen.
There was a dull pain running along his back, another around his jaw, and his legs felt as though they had been replaced with someone else’s.
For a while, Ren simply lay there and stared at the ceiling.
Then the memories returned.
The village.
The ronin.
The forest.
The two companions.
The rain.
The aura.
The knife.
Ren’s eyes slowly widened.
He was alive.
That realization should have felt more important.
Instead, it was strangely anticlimactic.
He slowly pushed himself upright.
Pain shot through his shoulder.
Ren sucked in a breath and waited for it to fade.
His clothes were torn in several places.
There were dried stains around his shoulder and along his side.
Some of them were his blood.
Some probably weren’t.
He looked down at himself.
No sword wound.
No broken bone that he could identify.
His shoulder had several shallow cuts, and there was a long scrape along his side.
His ribs were badly bruised, judging by how much they hurt whenever he breathed, but he could still move them.
His face hurt.
His head hurt.
His entire body hurt.
But nothing felt immediately fatal.
Ren slowly touched his shoulder.
It bled a little.
He frowned.
Infection.
The thought came naturally.
That was a problem.
A rather large one.
In another world, he would have cleaned the wound properly.
He would have gone to a hospital.
Someone would have checked whether anything was broken and probably given him medicine.
Here, he had neither a hospital nor medicine.
He barely knew where he was.
So Ren did what people in this world seemed to do with most problems.
He endured it.
He carefully washed the wounds with the cleanest water he could find and wrapped his shoulder in a strip torn from an old piece of cloth.
It wasn’t ideal.
It was barely adequate.
But it was something.
Ren stood.
His legs shook.
He waited.
They held.
“Good enough.”
He stepped outside.
The forest was gone — or rather, it was somewhere behind him.
Ren turned slowly.
The shrine stood on the edge of a dirt road that disappeared between several hills.
The trees behind the shrine were thick enough that he couldn’t see very far into them.
He had absolutely no idea where he was.
Ren stared at the road, then at the forest, then back at the road.
“…I have no idea where the village is.” That was unfortunate.
He had no intention of going back anyway.
Not immediately.
The ronin and his companions were dead.
If anyone had survived the fight, there was a possibility someone would eventually come looking for him.
Ren didn’t know who the ronin had been running from.
He didn’t know who those three men had been.
He didn’t know whether the village had anything to do with them.
And, more importantly, he had no idea how far away he was.
He had gotten lost.
Completely.
So there wasn’t much point worrying about returning.
Ren started walking.
The village he found was small — smaller than the previous one.
There were perhaps a few dozen houses, a handful of shops, a communal well, and several fields stretching beyond the settlement.
Nobody stopped him.
Nobody asked too many questions.
A battered young man appearing at the edge of a village apparently wasn’t unusual enough to warrant much curiosity.
Ren was grateful.
He found work almost immediately.
Nothing impressive — carrying water, moving sacks, sweeping, helping repair a fence.
Doing whatever small jobs people didn’t want to do themselves.
His payment was usually food.
Sometimes rice.
Sometimes vegetables.
Once, someone gave him a piece of dried fish.
Ren nearly cried.
Not because it was particularly delicious.
Just because there was enough of it.
For several days, that became his life.
Work.
Eat.
Sleep.
Recover.
His injuries slowly improved.
The swelling in his shoulder went down.
The bruising around his ribs faded from unbearable to merely painful.
The cuts stopped bleeding as frequently.
One of them began looking red around the edges, which concerned him, but there was little he could do beyond keeping it clean.
He considered asking someone for medicine.
Then he looked at the village.
There wasn’t much — people had herbs, some salves, nothing he trusted enough to put into an open wound.
So he waited.
Fortunately, his body seemed determined to cooperate.
By the fourth day, he could lift things with his injured arm.
By the fifth, he could work normally.
By the sixth, he could run without immediately regretting every decision that had brought him into this world.
But his mind was still stuck on one thing.
The aura.
More specifically — whatever had happened during the fight.
Ren remembered it constantly.
The ronin standing over him.
The sword coming down.
The strange sensation.
Then suddenly, the world had changed.
He had seen something beneath the man’s body — colors, layers, a strange black patch around the man’s abdomen.
He hadn’t known what it was.
He still didn’t.
But it had been real.
And it had saved his life.
Ren wanted to see it again.
Unfortunately, wanting something didn’t mean knowing how to do it.
He sat beneath a tree outside the village.
He closed his eyes.
Concentrated.
Nothing happened.
He opened them.
Trees.
Grass.
A few people working in the fields.
Normal.
Ren frowned.
He tried again.
Nothing.
He concentrated harder.
Still nothing.
He tried remembering the fight, the ronin’s sword, the black aura.
Nothing.
He remembered the feeling of seeing beneath the man’s body.
For an instant — something flickered.
Ren’s eyes widened.
The world seemed to become slightly translucent.
There was a faint pale layer around the farmer working twenty meters away.
White.
Then it vanished.
Ren blinked.
“Wait.” He tried again.
Nothing.
“Come on.” Nothing.
Ren spent nearly an hour sitting beneath the tree, accomplishing absolutely nothing.
He went back the next morning.
Nothing.
The morning after that — something.
For less than a second, the world changed.
White.
A faint layer covering the body of a woman walking past.
Then it disappeared.
Ren’s head began to hurt.
He pressed his fingers against his temple.
“Ow.” The headache wasn’t terrible.
Not yet.
It faded after a few minutes.
Ren frowned.
Interesting.
He tried again.
Nothing.
Again — a flicker.
Again — nothing.
He began experimenting.
Concentration didn’t seem to be enough.
Memory didn’t seem to be enough.
Trying to force the ability seemed to make it less likely to appear.
Eventually, Ren discovered something: there was a sensation, very faint, like reaching for something inside himself.
It wasn’t spiritual energy in the way he imagined magic should feel.
It was closer to shifting his attention.
Except it wasn’t his normal attention.
It was deeper.
When he found that sensation, what he wanted appeared.
When he lost it, the world returned to normal.
Ren began practicing.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Then ten.
He managed almost a minute and a half before the headache returned.
He shut it down.
The pain faded.
Ren stared at the ground.
“Two minutes.” That seemed to be his current limit.
Sometimes slightly less.
Sometimes slightly more.
After around two or three minutes, the headache became too intense to ignore — it felt as if someone were pressing against the inside of his skull.
Not unbearable.
But close enough that he didn’t want to test what happened if he continued.
So Ren stopped.
He had discovered another problem.
Activation.
He couldn’t always turn Spirit Vision on when he wanted.
Sometimes it appeared immediately.
Sometimes he could spend ten minutes concentrating without accomplishing anything.
That wasn’t useful.
If he needed it during a fight, he couldn’t simply stand there and hope his brain cooperated.
He needed something consistent.
A trigger.
Something small.
Something he could do without attracting attention.
Ren looked down at his hands and moved his fingers one at a time.
Thumb.
Index.
Middle.
Ring.
Pinky.
He considered tapping his forehead — too obvious.
Closing one eye — too strange.
Holding his breath — terrible idea.
Rubbing his right ring finger—
Ren paused.
It was inconspicuous.
People did things like that all the time.
He tried it.
Nothing.
Again.
Nothing.
He rubbed the finger and concentrated.
Nothing.
Ren sighed.
“This is stupid.” He tried again.
Rub.
Concentrate.
Nothing.
Rub.
Concentrate.
Nothing.
Then — the world changed.
White.
Ren froze.
He immediately shut it down.
His heart was beating faster.
He rubbed his finger again.
Activated Spirit Vision.
Nothing.
He tried again.
Nothing.
Again.
The world changed.
White.
Ren smiled.
It wasn’t guaranteed.
Not yet.
But there was a connection.
He repeated the process.
Rub.
Activate.
Deactivate.
Rub.
Activate.
Deactivate.
Eventually, his body began to recognize the movement.
The trigger wasn’t magical.
It wasn’t a command.
It was simply a habit — a physical action he could associate with the ability.
After several days of practice, Ren could activate Spirit Vision far more reliably.
Not perfectly.
But reliably enough.
That was good enough.
The next problem was understanding what he was seeing.
Ren began exploring the village.
He didn’t have anywhere else to go.
He didn’t know the road back.
He didn’t know how far the previous village was.
And, if he was being honest, he wasn’t sure he wanted to find it.
This place was quiet.
Nobody knew him.
Nobody knew what had happened.
That suited him.
So he explored.
The first thing he learned was that healthy people were mostly white.
Not glowing white.
Not bright enough to blind him.
Just a pale layer covering the body, almost like moonlight.
The underlying colors were still there, but they were faint, balanced, difficult to distinguish unless he deliberately looked.
The first time he noticed a difference was with a farmer.
Ren had activated Spirit Vision while standing near the village gate.
The farmer walked past carrying two heavy buckets.
His body was mostly white.
But the red around his legs was darker, especially on the left.
Ren watched him walk.
There was a slight unevenness in his step — not enough for most people to notice, but enough.
Ren waited until the man was gone, then turned Spirit Vision off.
The next day, he saw the same farmer again.
Same leg.
Same slight limp.
Ren began to suspect the colors represented something physical.
He tested the idea.
A woman who had spent the morning carrying water had darker red around her arms and shoulders.
A man who had been working beneath the sun all afternoon had a similar change.
Exhaustion.
That made sense.
Ren began paying closer attention.
Purple appeared around the head.
Blue appeared around the throat.
Green centered around the heart while yellow corresponded to the digestive system.
Orange appeared around the body’s excretory systems and other places involved in waste disposal.
Red appeared throughout the limbs and muscular regions involved in movement.
The colors weren’t perfectly separated.
They overlapped.
They blended.
But there was a pattern.
The body was divided into regions, and Spirit Vision could see the state of those regions.
Ren became fascinated.
It was like being given a map of the human body without being given the legend.
He had to create the legend himself.
A healthy person was white — that much seemed clear.
If a particular color became darker or thinner, something was wrong.
Sometimes the difference was obvious.
Sometimes it was barely noticeable.
Ren started testing his observations against reality.
A young man complained that his legs were exhausted after working in the fields.
Ren checked — dark red around both legs.
Correct.
An old woman complained about stomach pain.
Ren checked — the yellow around her abdomen was uneven and darker in one area.
Correct.
A man who had barely slept for two nights complained of feeling dizzy.
The purple around his head was noticeably duller.
Correct.
Ren began to gain confidence.
He wasn’t diagnosing diseases.
Not exactly.
He didn’t know enough.
But he could recognize that something was wrong.
That alone was incredibly useful.
It also explained something about the fight.
The ronin.
The black aura.
Ren remembered it.
He had no idea what black meant.
But he suspected it wasn’t healthy.
Very far from healthy.
Ren sat beside the well one afternoon and watched people pass.
He activated Spirit Vision.
A child ran past.
Bright white.
Healthy.
A young man carrying firewood — white, slightly darker red around the shoulders.
Normal exertion.
An elderly woman — white, though the colors were uneven.
Age, perhaps.
A farmer who had spent all morning working — darker red.
Another man who had spent the previous evening drinking — the colors around his digestive system were strange.
Ren frowned.
That seemed useful.
Very useful.
He wondered whether he could eventually learn enough to identify specific illnesses.
Perhaps.
But there was something else.
Something he didn’t understand.
Ren noticed it when two men began arguing.
At first, he didn’t activate Spirit Vision.
He didn’t need to.
Their voices were enough.
“You said you’d pay me yesterday!”
“I told you I didn’t have the money!”
“You always say that!”
The argument became louder.
Ren rubbed his right ring finger.
The world changed.
He stared.
The colors had shifted.
The overall white turned slightly red.
Ren blinked.
He looked at the man’s face.
Anger.
He looked back at the aura.
The colors had changed again — not dramatically, but enough.
Ren’s eyes widened.
The man shouted.
The colors intensified.
Then the other man responded, and his own aura changed.
Ren stared.
The two were angry — that much was obvious.
But Spirit Vision wasn’t merely showing him their physical condition.
It was reacting to their emotions.
Ren shut the ability down, then rubbed his finger and activated it again.
The argument had ended.
The colors were returning to normal.
Ren frowned.
He waited.
The two men separated.
Their breathing slowed.
Their expressions relaxed.
The colors followed.
Ren stared at them.
“That’s…” He didn’t finish the sentence.
He didn’t know what to call it.
He had always thought Spirit Vision showed him what was physically happening beneath someone’s skin.
But apparently, it could also show something else.
Something connected to their mind.
Or emotions.
Or both.
Ren immediately thought of the woman from the previous village.
The farmer.
The merchant.
The ronin.
He remembered how their expressions had changed.
How their voices had changed.
How their bodies had reacted to fear and anger.
Maybe his ordinary observations hadn’t been the only thing he was sensing.
Maybe Spirit Vision had been capable of reading something beneath those reactions.
Ren sat there for a long time.
He began experimenting — not recklessly.
He didn’t stare at everyone.
He simply watched people from a distance.
Someone laughed; the colors shifted.
Someone became nervous; they shifted again.
Someone received good news; a subtle change.
Someone was embarrassed; another change.
Ren couldn’t identify what every color meant.
That was the problem.
He knew physical colors, mostly — white meant equilibrium, darkness and thinning meant some kind of problem.
But emotional changes didn’t seem to follow the same rules.
The colors moved differently.
They were less stable.
More complicated.
Ren activated Spirit Vision again.
A woman was speaking with a friend.
She appeared calm.
Then another person approached, and her expression changed.
So did the colors.
The purple near her head darkened slightly.
The green reduced.
The white surrounding her body seemed thinner in places.
Ren frowned.
Was she afraid?
Embarrassed?
Angry?
He couldn’t tell.
He could see that something had changed.
He couldn’t interpret it.
That frustrated him.
He had finally gained the ability to see.
And now he had discovered that seeing wasn’t the same thing as understanding.
Ren smiled despite himself.
“Of course.” That was exactly what being a Seer had turned out to be.
Every answer produced another question.
He deactivated Spirit Vision.
The headache was beginning.
He rubbed his temples.
His limit had improved.
A few days ago, he could barely use it for two minutes.
Now he could maintain it for a little longer — two minutes, sometimes two and a half.
The improvement was slow.
But it was there.
Potion digestion.
That was probably what the system meant.
Ren didn’t know how long digestion would take.
He didn’t know what would happen when it finished.
He didn’t know what would happen afterward.
For now, he was simply learning.
That was enough.
One evening, Ren sat outside the village and watched the sunset.
He activated Spirit Vision.
The world changed.
The people around him became layered in color.
The trees seemed different too — not alive in the same way people were, but there was something.
Faint.
Subtle.
Ren couldn’t explain it.
He focused on a nearby tree.
White.
No — not white.
Something else.
He couldn’t identify it.
He shifted his attention toward himself.
That was difficult.
Seeing his own aura was harder than seeing someone else’s.
After all, a mirror was very hard to find in this day and age.
He could glimpse it — mostly white, several faint colors, nothing obviously wrong.
Ren smiled.
“At least I know I’m not dying.” He turned Spirit Vision off.
Then he rubbed his finger again.
He hesitated.
He had reached his limit earlier.
His head still hurt.
But he wanted to test something.
Could he activate it again?
Ren rubbed his right ring finger.
Spirit Vision activated.
The effect was immediate.
His head exploded with pain.
Ren gasped.
He shut it down.
His danger intuition flared.
Not a vague warning.
Not the subtle sensation he had become accustomed to.
A violent alarm.
Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
Ren froze.
His intuition screamed at him to stop.
He didn’t know why.
There was no enemy.
Nobody was attacking him.
Nothing appeared physically dangerous.
Yet every instinct inside him demanded that he shut Spirit Vision down.
So he did.
Immediately.
The pain slowly receded.
Ren sat there breathing hard.
“What was that?” He looked around.
Nothing.
The village was peaceful.
The road was empty.
The sunset continued.
Nothing had changed.
Except him.
Ren stared at his right ring finger.
He didn’t try again.
Whatever had happened, his instincts had told him that continuing would be dangerous.
He trusted that warning.
He had learned that lesson in the forest.
Danger Intuition didn’t always explain itself.
It didn’t have to.
It simply warned him.
Sometimes, that was enough.
Ren leaned back against the wall of the shrine where he had been resting.
His head still hurt.
He closed his eyes and thought about everything he had learned.
Spirit Vision wasn’t just another way of seeing.
It revealed things ordinary senses couldn’t.
Physical condition.
Possibly emotions.
Perhaps other things too.
He didn’t know.
The more he learned, the more questions appeared.
That was fine.
He had time.
Hopefully.
Ren opened his eyes.
The village stretched quietly before him.
People were returning home.
Children were running through the streets.
Smoke rose from cooking fires.
Someone laughed.
Someone shouted.
Someone complained.
It was ordinary.
And yet Ren now knew that beneath all of it was another layer.
One he could sometimes see.
A hidden world beneath the visible one.
He had spent the previous week thinking that a Seer was someone who predicted the future.
Then he had decided a Seer was someone who understood people.
Now he was beginning to realize that both ideas had been incomplete.
Seeing the future might be one part.
Understanding people might be another.
But there were things beneath both — things hidden beneath flesh, things hidden beneath expression, things hidden beneath what ordinary eyes could perceive.
Ren had finally gained the ability to look beneath the surface.
He just didn’t understand everything he was seeing.
Not yet.
His gaze drifted toward his right hand.
The ring finger.
His trigger.
He rubbed it once.
Nothing happened.
Ren smiled.
“Tomorrow.” He had learned enough for one day.
Tomorrow, he would figure out the emotions.
Or at least try.
For now, he needed sleep.
Ren leaned his head against the wooden wall.
His body was still sore.
His shoulder still hurt.
His wounds were healing.
His stomach was full.
And for the first time since arriving in this world, he had something resembling a direction.
Not a destination.
Not a prophecy.
Just a direction.
Learn.
Observe.
Survive.
Ren closed his eyes.
Somewhere deep inside him, the Seer’s potion continued to digest.
And somewhere behind his ordinary sight, there was a world waiting to be understood.