Gilded Ashes-Chapter 312: Extension

"So" Kenzo said. "Are you ready?"

Raizen looked at him. "Ready for what?"

The grin widened.

"For trying to create a beast."

Raizen’s heart kicked.

Not from fear, and not from adrenaline either. From something more honest and simpler - the raw, uncomplicated excitement of a kid who’d been promised something really cool and was about to receive it.

A beast.

His own beast.

...Or at least, the opportunity to try.

He’d seen them everywhere since arriving in Ukai. On the training platforms, beside students who summoned them as casually as breathing... Heck, even in the streets! Some were helping with transporting heavy luggages, other smaller ones were just on their owners’s shoulders. It didn’t matter – normal civilians had them, too - wolves, birds, serpents, and beings that didn’t have names in any language Raizen knew. Extensions of their creators, moving with the same instincts, reacting to the same impulses. He watched students spar with them, watched them shatter and reform, watched the bond between summoner and construct operate in real time like a second nervous system.

And he’d wanted one. Badly. Since the first day. Since the first time he’d watched a student raise a hand and pull something living out of nothing. For a split second, he imagined himself going back in Neoshima with an Eon beast by his side. I mean, how cool would that be?

He almost chuckled when he imagined Esen’s reaction – either trying to pet it "the most possible outcome), or trying to get as far from it as it could. He imagined Kori scratching her head at the house entrance every time he came home with something like a big panther or an anaconda. Maybe he was skilled enough to even modify and customize his own beast!

...That would open up a totally different realm of possibility. He could probably mount wings on his beast, whatever it was... That basically meant flying!

Raizen was thinking all these whilst looking at the students training with their beasts. While watching, he felt something he couldn’t name. Not spite, exactly. Something closer to envy. The deep, specific envy of seeing something you were meant to do and knowing you hadn’t done it yet.

Kenzo had promised him – even if it was probably only a passing comment, almost offhand. Raizen remembered it anyways, and not mentioned it again, like checking whether a gift was still coming would somehow jinx it

But now Kenzo was grinning at him with both hands on their shoulders, and the word "beast" was still echoing in both of their minds, and Raizen felt something in his chest that he hadn’t felt in a while.

Pure, unguarded excitement.

"Follow me" Kenzo said. He squeezed their shoulders once and let go, turning toward the far end of the platform. "Atman - you coming?"

Atman had been watching the exchange with his arms folded and the expression of someone who’d been expecting this. He pushed himself off the railing with one shoulder.

"Wouldn’t miss it for the world."

Kenzo led them past the main training area, past the students running drills, past the instructors calling corrections. A few students glanced at them as they passed - at Kenzo specifically, still carrying the residual fame of his Nyx performance. One of them started to approach, but Atman gave the kid a look that could have frozen water, and the student suddenly remembered he had somewhere else to be.

Saffi fell into pace beside Raizen. She hadn’t said anything since Kenzo’s announcement, but Raizen could tell she was processing. Her eyes were doing the thing they did when she was working through something - slightly unfocused, looking at everything and nothing, her brain running at a speed her body couldn’t match.

"You’re excited" she said quietly. It wasn’t a question.

"Oh, yeah" Raizen couldn’t hold back a cheeky grin. He didn’t bother hiding it either.

Saffi glanced at him. Something crossed her face - not quite a smile, but something adjacent to one. The kind of expression that acknowledged someone else’s happiness without claiming it for herself.

The platform narrowed as they moved toward its western edge. The trunks here were older, thicker, and the canopy above was denser - blocking most of the drizzle and casting everything in a green-filtered half-light. The sounds of the Academy faded behind them, replaced by the softer noises of the forest. Dripping water. Creaking wood. The occasional rustle of something moving in the branches above.

Kenzo stopped at the very edge. The platform ended in a low railing, and beyond it - open air, trunks, and the layered green depths of Ukai’s lower canopy. It was quiet here. Private. Far enough from the other students that whatever happened next wouldn’t become a spectacle.

"Here, right?" Kenzo turned towards Atman. "This is the place you told me about?"

Atman didn’t answer, he just nodded.

Kenzo turned to face the two. His posture had shifted - the easy, joking energy from the Nyx aftermath was slightly gone. The version of Kenzo that appeared when he was teaching someone came to the surface.

Atman leaned against a trunk nearby, arms still folded. Watching.

"Alright" Kenzo said. "Beasts."

He looked at Raizen. Then at Saffi.

"What do you think they are?"

Raizen blinked. "Eon constructs. Summoned entities that -"

"No."

The word was gentle but instant. Kenzo shook his head.

"That’s the textbook answer. The one Kori probably made you read. And it’s not wrong - technically. But it’s the kind of not-wrongness that misses the point entirely." He paused. Chose his words. "An Eon beast is not just a construct. It’s not just a tool you build and deploy. It’s not a weapon you shape to a purpose."

He held up his hand. Turned it over slowly, examining it.

"It’s an extension of you."

Saffi’s head tilted, listening closely.

"Think about your arm" Kenzo said. "You don’t shout to your arm to move. You don’t issue it instructions. You just... Move it, right? The intention and the action are the same thing. There’s no gap between deciding and doing." He lowered his hand. "A beast works the same way. It’s not something you control. It’s something you are. A piece of yourself that lives outside your body."

Raizen frowned. "A piece of what, exactly?"

Kenzo smiled.

The kind of smile that announced an answer you probably won’t like.