"No. Stop. Wait," Aster says, raising both hands like he's surrendering to the metaphysical police. "Before we touch anything, before I pick up some sentient bible verse that buries into my spinal column—I need you to answer one thing."
Musa blinks. "Okay…"
"What. The. Hell. Is Scripture!?"
His voice echoes down the chamber like it has been fired from a siege engine.
Musa stares at him.
Aster keeps going.
"Because so far everyone has either smiled vaguely, spoken in spiritual riddles, or assured me I'd 'understand when the time came,' which is the kind of phrase cult leaders and expensive therapists use right before ruining your month. I have been patient. I have nodded through the nonsense. I have tolerated phrases like soul resonance and karmic liquidity. But if one more person tells me to trust the process without explaining the process, I'm going to start biting people."
There is a pause.
Then Musa sighs softly, like a man preparing to explain computers to a medieval peasant.
"Okay. You want the simplified version?"
"Please. Before I develop an allergy to mysticism."
Musa gestures toward Aster's chest. "I'm assuming you've noticed by now that your body isn't just flesh anymore."
"That sentence alone has done psychic damage."
"The basics of Cultivation revolve around Gates along your spine that absorb Aether from the environment. Your Core Palace stores it." Musa pauses, clearly simplifying aggressively. "That part you should have figured out by now."
"Right. Magic plumbing. Moving on."
"Scriptures sit on top of that system." Musa pauses briefly, searching for wording Aster won't immediately weaponise. "Think of it as a type of biological execution system running the hardware of your vessel."
Aster blinks.
"…You're telling me cultivation runs on occult software."
"Essentially."
There is a long silence.
Then Aster nods slowly.
"That is unfortunately the clearest explanation anyone has given me."
Musa continues before Aster can spiral.
"Scriptures tell the Vessel how to use that energy, think of it as a type of runic architecture installed into the Vessel. It determines how your body routes Aether during combat. Movement timing. Execution flow. Reflex synchronisation. The overall logic your Vessel follows when using techniques."
Aster frowns. "So not just instructions. More like… installed instinct?"
"Exactly." Musa nods. "A combat style encoded so deeply into the Astral Plane that it can be burned into the blueprint of your soul. It imprints your spirit with the person who first wrote it. The way they moved. Thought. Breathed. You don't just learn the technique—you let it carve itself into you."
That lands somewhere between fascinating and medically alarming.
"But that's not all a scripture is. The Astral Plane records patterns," Musa says. "Movement. Behaviour. Repetition. If something happens often enough, deeply enough, the Plane starts treating it like executable law called runic scripts, think DNA in code form."
"The first cultivators discovered this by accident. They copied beasts. Watched how they moved, how they hunted, how they used their Typings. Then they repeated those patterns until the Astral Plane began treating them as executable structures. Eventually people realised they could inherit those structures instead of relearning everything from scratch."
Aster looks at the scroll with fresh suspicion. "That sounds like a fantastic way to accidentally become part insect."
"It was at first," Musa says. "A lot of them died."
"Good. Glad to know the tradition of catastrophic experimentation goes all the way back."
"The earliest Scriptures were crude," Musa continues. "Closer to full behavioural overwrites than training systems. If you inherited one, you inherited everything attached to it—combat habits, reflexes, instincts, sometimes even emotional residues. The Vessel didn't separate the technique from the person who built it."
Aster grimaces. "So old cultivation was basically identity theft with martial arts branding."
"More or less."
Musa starts walking again, and Aster follows as the weapon shelves gradually give way to scrolls.
Then more scrolls.
Then an amount of scrolls that feels not so much excessive as morally objectionable.
They are everywhere.
Stacked in shelves, hovering in sealed alcoves, chained to hooks, suspended in tanks of glowing fluid, wrapped in old paper talismans, pulsing beneath glass. One scroll near the ceiling rotates slowly as if considering whether to descend and commit a murder. Another gives a low, wet shudder that Aster decides not to acknowledge for the sake of his own emotional stability.
Musa continues. "Node architecture changed everything."
Aster tears his gaze away from a scroll that appears to be breathing. "I'm sorry, are we doing the explanation while standing in what looks like a software graveyard built by schizophrenia?"
Musa ignores him. "Nodes are stable anchor points built into a Scripture. Places where additional runic functions can be embedded without destabilising the whole architecture."
Aster squints slightly. "So… attachment slots."
Musa visibly resists psychic damage.
"…More sophisticated than that."
"But emotionally similar."
A reluctant pause.
"Ok, yes."
Musa gestures toward the endless shelves again.
"Before Nodes, adding a new function to a Scripture was like hammering fresh code directly into the foundation of a building while people were still living inside it. Every addition destabilised something."
"Node architecture changed cultivation because it created separation between the core Scripture and the embedded functions running through it."
He traces a slow spiral in the air with one finger.
"Think of a Scripture as the main framework. The behavioural architecture. The operating system if you will. But if that was all a scripture is, it would be like running Windows without any executable software. That's where glyphs come in. Glyphs are smaller runic functions installed into the Scripture. Like separate programs."
"So Scripture is the operating system," he says. "Nodes are attachment points."
"And Glyphs," Musa says, with the strained patience of a saint being forced to teach IT support, "is something you can worry about later."
"But for now think of it as a type of downloadable programming."
Aster's eyes light up. "Like an app?"
Musa closes his own for a brief, pained second.
"Like programs," he corrects. "A Glyph performs a specific action or behaviour. Something focused, like rotational acceleration. Or force redirection."
"But still apps."
"Emotionally, yes."
"Glyphs get installed into these Node-Points. And because they're separated… they can adapt organically instead of overwriting the entire system," Musa finishes.
Aster nods slowly now, finally following.
"Oh."
Musa nods, seeing the understanding land.
"The old systems treated every new technique like replacing the whole body." He gestures toward the shelves again. "Modern cultivation is modular. You inherit a stable foundation first. Then you evolve it over time through selective integration."
Aster blinks.
"…You people invented spiritual software updates."
"We invented survivable evolution."
"But the important part is that Glyphs don't remain external forever. The more a Glyph gets used through the same Scripture, the more the architecture restructures itself around it, evolving through natural adaptation and through eventual glyph assimilation."
Aster slows slightly. "You're telling me the combat style learns."
"Yes."
For the first time since entering the Depository, the system almost sounds sane.
"So where do people get these things?"
"Everywhere." Musa gestures toward the shelves stretching into darkness. "Some Scriptures were built intentionally. Others formed naturally through repeated use over generations. Beast patterns. Martial schools. Ancient cultivators refining execution paths over centuries."
"And Glyphs?"
"Monster mutations. Environmental adaptations. Distorted Astral phenomena. Human-created runes." Musa shrugs. "Anything stable enough to become repeatable will eventually become runic logic that can be harvested and used."
That sentence feels deeply dangerous.
Like evolution discovered coding.
Aster looks around again.
The deeper chambers of the Depository feel less like a library now and more like a software graveyard built by schizophrenic martial artists.
"The important thing is that no two mature Scriptures remain identical forever." He gestures toward the endless shelves surrounding them. "People start with inherited structures, but over time they evolve differently depending on what Glyphs they absorb, what combat styles they favour, what their Vessel adapts toward."
Aster looks around slowly.
"So eventually your fighting style becomes… biologically personalised software."
"Exactly, which is why there are more scriptures than stars. Some passed down from masters who spent their lives refining the perfect stance. Others left by madmen who believed pain was a language the body could sing. Some are beautiful. Some are cursed. Some literally don't work unless you believe in imaginary numbers."
Aster looks around at the impossible vault of suspended combat theology and feels, for the first time, like the madness has rules.
Aster nods. "Ok, that's the clearest anyone has explained anything since I got here. I hate that it came from the man who told me I have a storage stomach."
"You're welcome."
"And the dangers?"
"Compatibility," Musa says at once.
Of course.
Aster sighs. "There it is. Terms and conditions."
"Some Scriptures don't fit certain Vessels well. Some Glyphs strain the body. Some combinations destabilise each other. And Spirit Typing makes you unusually receptive. That's useful, but it also means if you choose badly, the wrong Scripture can sink deeper into you than it should."
"How badly are we talking?"
Musa gives him a level look. "Best case, it doesn't imprint properly and you fail the integration. Worst case, it rewires your Vessel and starts adapting toward a pattern it can't sustain. Bad instincts. Behavioural bleed. Psychological stress. Identity distortion. In extreme cases, yes, people break."
Aster glances around at the shelves with renewed mistrust.
"Cool," he says. "So it's less 'martial training' and more 'carefully curated soul malware.'"
"That's not entirely unfair."
He doesn't let Aster ask anything else after that. He disappears into the deeper shelves and begins sorting through scrolls with the air of a man selecting wine for a dinner party hosted by homicidal archivists.
Aster crosses his arms, watching as Musa sorts through the madness. He picks up a scroll, sniffs it—why?—reads a line, then mutters something like, "No, too stabby," or "Fungal themes—pass." At one point he recoils from a tome that hisses at him and immediately shoves it behind a glowing panel labelled "Probation."
"Is this normal?" Aster asks.
"For Scriptures?" Musa calls back. "Completely."
That is somehow the worst answer available.
"How do we make sure I don't imprint the wrong one?" Aster asks.
Musa glances over a stack of lacquered bamboo cylinders. "Depends on your Mental Fortitude. If it's above the prerequisite, most Scriptures won't overpower you on first contact."
Aster blinks. "Prerequisite?"
Musa frowns. "What's your MF?"
He calls up his scan. "One-twenty-five."
Musa straightens and gives a low whistle. "That's high for a first-timer."
Aster doesn't know whether to be pleased or alarmed.
"Most beginners get stuck with Lesser-F trash," Musa says. "'Breath of the Mildly Irritated Crane.' 'Stick Hit Rabbit.' That sort of thing. Safe. Bland. Functionally edible cardboard in martial form. But with one-twenty-five? You can take something with actual personality."
"Oh good," Aster mutters. "Exactly what I want. A combat style with personality."
Eventually Musa returns carrying two scrolls.
He sets them down side by side on a stone table with far more reverence than Aster likes to see directed at anything capable of changing his personality.
"These are the best matches I could find," Musa says. "Compatible with your Typing. Compatible with each other. Strange enough that I think you'll either do very well with them or die in a way that becomes educational for future students."
Aster stares at him.
Musa smiles. "Mostly the first one."
That does not help.
Aster leans over the first scroll.
It is old. Frayed at the edges, the binding worn smooth by generations of handling. But the moment his fingers hover near it, something tugs at them, just a pressure with opinions.
"Point Burst Staff," Musa says. "Written by Herphon. Spirit Type. Tournament prodigy. Tactical obsessive. Built most of the style while stranded on one of the lower Archipelago islands surrounded by sentient stone golems and hallucinogenic gas."
Aster looks up. "I'm sorry?"
"He used to let the golems hunt him while he trained under the influence," Musa says, deadpan. "Claimed it improved reaction time."
"Of course he did."
"The style is built around concentrated burst force," Musa continues, tapping the scroll. "Precision detonations. You strike through joints, pressure points, weak lines in structure. Every impact lands like a small explosion exactly where it hurts most."
Aster arches a brow. "Sounds violent."
"He wrote poetry about cartilage," Musa adds.
Aster recoils. "We're moving on."
Musa taps the second scroll.
This one pulses erratically. The calligraphy dances, flickering in and out of his peripheral vision like it doesn't want to be caught thinking.
"Infinite Chain Link Squall," Musa says. "Written by Anasi Yaw. Spirit-Type. Partial empath. By her own account, she could hear the voices of every man she'd ever killed and designed this style to drown them out."
Aster blinks. "That's... comforting."
"She built it to never stop moving," Musa continues. "You're everywhere at once—sweeps, lashes, pierces, binds. Fluid, unrelenting, deceptive. You turn the battlefield into a problem with too many moving parts so your enemy can't react because they never know what's coming."
Musa taps both scrolls.
"Point Burst gives you structure. Precision. Timing. It teaches you when to strike. Squall is the opposite. It's pressure, disruption, disorder. One pins the world down. The other tears it open."
Aster looks between them.
At the edges of his vision, faint diagrams are beginning to bloom across the paper—stances, movement lines, half-formed intuitions. He can't read them, exactly. But his body recognises the promise in them all the same.
"So if I take both?"
"You start with the staff," Musa says. "It'll teach you discipline. Force control. Timing. Once your Vessel's adapted to that, you begin the chain. Eventually, if you survive long enough and build your Vessel correctly, you'll be able to run both. Alternate first. Simultaneity later. And after that…"
"Fusion," Aster says.
Musa grins. "Exactly."
Aster stares at the two scrolls.
One pulses like a heartbeat.
The other like a nervous breakdown.
He hates how badly he wants them.
Which, in fairness, is usually how his worst decisions introduce themselves.
"…I'm going to regret this, aren't I?"
"Almost certainly," Musa says.
Aster lets out a breath, still staring at the scrolls.
"Right," he mutters. "Perfect. Let's ruin my life properly, then."