Cedar Genyju was taken under the mentoring of Sorl, who had a wild choice for an outfit in Cedar's opinion. He wore a fedora, blue sunglasses, and a bunch of necklaces.
"So, what do you think, Genyju-boy?" Sorl asked.
The two of them were standing in a library owned by Sorl. The shelves were filled to the brim with books from different times and places within The Hideout. From fiction to historical novels, it had everything.
"I've never seen anything like it..." Cedar said, his jaw feeling like it could fall to the ground.
The place itself smelled like wet newspaper, but that was to be expected. The entire thing was built underground, safe from burglars.
"Yeah? Well, I've collected them from all over The Hideout. Feel free to read some of them if you wish. I doubt with those eyes you'd struggle much as you stand, so we don't need to rush to train." Sorl noted.
Cedar nodded slowly, scanning the rows of books again. One of them caught his eye. It was older than the others, its cover half-torn, the title nearly faded out. The letters that remained spelled a single word that made his heart skip.
Gods.
Before Cedar could reach out, Sorl's voice broke the silence.
"What do you think of your clan?"
Cedar froze, his hand still hovering near the book. "My clan?" he repeated quietly.
"Yes," Sorl said, leaning back.
"The Genyju family. You carry their name. You must have an opinion."
Cedar's eyes narrowed.
"I'm not a fan of them. They use people for profit, and..."
His fist clenched.
"The clan killed someone precious to me."
Sorl smiled faintly, like that was the answer he expected.
"Go on then. Take it out and see what your eyes make of it."
Cedar pulled the book free and blew the dust off the cover. The moment he opened it, the air around them seemed to thicken.
The pages were written in an old dialect, yet somehow, he could read them perfectly. He turned each page carefully, the writings describing gods as beings who shaped and destroyed worlds as if it were routine.
"Interesting, isn't it?" Sorl asked. "Makes you wonder what kind of balance this world actually runs on."
Cedar didn't respond. His Junigenme eyes had already activated on their own.
But when he blinked, blood dripped from the corner of his eyes.
'Did I activate my eyes...?' Cedar asked himself.
Cedar wiped his eyes clean from the blood with the sleeve of his coat. When he looked back at the book, the letters didn't make any sense.
"What's going on?"
Sorl stood up right after Cedar asked that, with a yawn.
"I think that's enough for today, wouldn't you say so?"
Cedar's grip tightened, holding the book. He had gotten more questions than answers.
There were myths and legends about gods, but Cedar hadn't seen them with his own eyes. He wasn't sure about Angel, his older brother, but there was no way he'd come in contact with them.
With that, another question rose. Why was he able to read it with his eyes?
Sorl tapped on Cedar's shoulder, jolting him out of the overthinking state he was in.
"I need to lock up, and I'll show you to your room before heading to bed."
Cedar nodded slowly, trying to put the questions aside for now.
"Alright."
That night, Cedar lay in bed, but sleep refused to come.
The air in the underground quarters felt heavy, and the faint scent of old paper still clung to his clothes. When he closed his eyes, he saw the letters from the book burning bright behind his eyelids, shifting into patterns that didn't belong to this world.
He turned in his bed, restless. The silence was thick, interrupted only by the occasional drip of water echoing from somewhere deep in the tunnels.
'Why could I read it? Why did my eyes react like that?'
He covered his face with his hands, feeling a faint tremor in his fingertips.
The darkness behind his closed eyes pulsed softly, like a living thing. For a second, he could've sworn he heard a whisper.
"...Cedar..."
His eyes shot open, his heartbeat quickening. The room was empty.
'That book... it wasn't normal.'
He sat up and glanced at the small lamp on the desk beside his bed. Its faint light glimmered against the wall, forming a shadow that looked almost like the outline of a person.
Cedar forced himself to lie back down, but his mind wouldn't stop. He kept seeing the word Gods again and again, each time feeling like it was staring back.
When morning finally came, he hadn't slept at all.
Sorl was already outside, sipping black tea from a small cup. Sunlight spilled across the trees, lighting up the clearing in front of the library.
Cedar stood beside him, enjoying the fresh air.
"Morning," Sorl said, raising his cup without looking away from the horizon.
"Morning," Cedar muttered, rubbing his tired eyes.
"Rough night?"
"You could say that."
Sorl chuckled.
"I figured. The books have that effect sometimes."
Cedar frowned, unsure whether Sorl meant that literally or as a joke.
"By the way..." Sorl broke the silence between them as his tea reached its end.
"What are the limits of your Junigenme eyes? The eyes that advance through dimensions and evolve with insane powers."
It was an odd question to ask, almost the first thing in the morning, with the prior thing being about whether Cedar liked black tea or not.
"I can only go up to the fourth dimension, and even that causes my eyes to excessively bleed."
"I see... How about your Seikodo, Naiko, and Shintai?"
"I have no need for them. The eyes are more powerful than any technique I could ever use."
Sorl almost dropped his cup. Before answering, he stood up and stretched his back, looking into the distant forest.
"Well, what about your Kensei?"
Cedar hesitated for a second. Not because he couldn't use it, but because he wasn't used to just throwing out his Kensei.
But he did it nonetheless.
The huge rock that stood near them was suddenly surrounded by matte black energy,
The density around the rock suddenly increased, and it didn't take long for it to crush in on itself, the rock crumbling.
Sorl's sunglasses fell to his nose as he watched it unfold before his eyes.
"My Junigenme eyes outshine my Kensei in every way, so I rely on them."
Sorl glanced at Cedar, but once he saw that Cedar was serious, he scratched his chin.
"Balance ties this universe together, you know that, right?"
"Why're you telling me this?"
"If you only rely on your powerful eyes, you're deemed to fail. Your friend, Yamikuro, right? He also carries a power he can't rely on, that's balance."
Cedar understood the point Sorl was making, but he had already spent years practicing his eyes.
But before Cedar could say anything, Sorl spoke.
"But that's what we're here for, aren't we? To train for an entire month, I admit that I'm not much help for your Junigenme eyes, but Kensei is another thing."
With that in mind, Cedar practiced his Kensei under Sorl's mentoring. For the first week, Sorl tried to understand what Cedar's Kensei even was.
The week passed slowly. Sorl assigned him physical and mental training.
He made him lift boulders, control falling debris, and alter the density of simple objects.
When Cedar used his Kensei, the area around him darkened slightly, as if his power pulled light into itself.
"Focus on the pressure," Sorl told him. "Your Kensei doesn't destroy, but bends and crushes. Understand the weight of that."
However, after the two of them read more books, with Sorl keeping a close eye on everything Cedar's Kensei did, they finally figured it out.
"Genyju-boy. I've figured out what your Kensei represents." Sorl started, holding a cup of black tea in his right hand.
"Really?"
Sorl nodded.
"It's the Black Matter, the thing that makes up roughly 85% of the universe. Although it's supposed to be invisible, with your Kensei, it appears black."
"...The Black Matter?" Cedar adjusted his glasses.
Sorl didn't explain it any further, but instead laughed.
"A concept such as that, and you weren't taking advantage of it? With enough training, you could be unstoppable, just promise me you won't break bad."
Cedar didn't see him doing anything that'd go against the law; the furthest he'd go was to take down his own clan, but they were awful people anyway. To Cedar, it was weird that Sorl even mentioned that.
"I don't see why I would."
"I'm just messing with you, Genyja-boy. But in any case, I can now properly train you."
The days that followed blurred together. Sorl napped often, leaving Cedar to practice on his own. Sometimes, Sorl would read until he fell asleep mid-page.
Other times, he'd wake up just to watch Cedar bend space again and again, studying how the energy moved, while sipping on his black tea.
Cedar was hard at work. He completed the tasks given by Sorl, such as moving a rock or slowing down falling objects.
The first two weeks had nothing to do with his Junigenme eyes. Sorl claimed he couldn't help Cedar with training his eyes. However, once the third week arrived, Sorl seemed to have changed his mind.
"Now that you've had a fair understanding of your Kensei, I think it's time to push you into using the fifth dimension with your eyes."
Cedar's eyes widened.
"I thought you said..."
"I know I said I didn't know about Junigenme's eyes, but I've come in contact with people from your clan. I know how to push the users into evolving their eyes, but it comes with a cost."
"A cost?"
"Your eyes will hurt even more than they already have with the fourth dimension, and your vision will be completely corrupted, considering you'll see everything in the fifth dimension."
"I know that already."
"So what do you say?" Sorl asked.
"Teach me, I don't care about the cost."
By the final week, Cedar had grown stronger. His Kensei had evolved, and his understanding of it deepened. But even more than power, what changed was his curiosity.
Every night, he stayed awake reading books about gods, about creation, about the balance of worlds. His eyes faintly glowed under the lamplight, bleeding occasionally, but he didn't stop.
And as the days went by, Sorl started to wonder if Cedar was truly training for strength, or if he was slowly being drawn toward something far beyond his understanding.