No stranger to illness, the hot haze of fever dreams was familiar to Domi. But the jarring transition from miserable delirium to full health and wide-eyed alertness? That was definitely new.

Between one breath and the next, his mind sprang free of the gauzy cocoon of his dreams and he jerked to a seated position.

"What?" he gasped, craning his head around in disoriented alarm.

A weird, springy floor beneath his body, radiating faint warmth.

Dingy tan walls of thickly-spun webbing.

The low, flat mushroom table, with its overturned amber bowl.

And Valens, face twisted in displeasure.

That last sent Domi cringing away, leaning back on his hands with a nervous smile. "Aedificanti," he greeted with all the meek politeness he could muster as he frantically searched his mind. Eternal Radiance, what had he done now?

Valens's glare skewered him like a little bug. "Congratulations. You successfully turned yourself into a blueberry."

For a long moment, Domi could only blink at the nonsensical statement. Had the Eyes finally devoured Valens's mind?

He stared at his aedificans. The older worldholder glared in return.

And then memory came trickling back, and the boy felt a chill sweep through his veins.

Eyes devour.

He lifted his arms, almost dreading what he'd find, and gaped at his vivid blue hands. "It worked."

Valens's eyes narrowed. "Indeed. Thanks for the warning, by the way."

Domi turned his hands over, staring in mixed horror and excitement. A thin slit, like a fish gill, gleamed silver-blue against sapphire skin where his wrist met his palm. He clenched his fingers and shivered as something stirred within.

He jerked his gaze up to Valens. The annoyed gold eyes felt way safer than whatever lurked inside Domi's arms. "We thought you'd stop us if we told you."

A muscle twitched in Valens's jaw as the older worldholder gritted his teeth. "You're right, I would have. This was ill-considered." He held up a hand as Domi opened his mouth to argue. "But Aix thinks it can be reversed if needed."

Panic spurted through him. "No! I don't want to reverse it!" This was the world's best chance, now. The Trellis had to come down.

"I said if needed." Valens shook his head and continued, exasperation thick in his voice. "What am I going to do with you?"

Domi grinned in relief and threw out an arm. "You can help me up. I want to see what I can do now."

Valens eyed his blue arm uneasily, but finally clasped his hand and pulled him to his feet. "I'm sure. Your brother is already at it." At Domi's questioning glance, he sighed. "He woke up a few minutes ago and is already proselytizing to the clivia, I'm sure."

Domi's eyes widened. "He can talk to them already?" If so, he wanted to try!

"Yes, I think so," Valens said, leading him to the ajar pod door. Promenia hummed as it gathered in a loose glowing golden ball in front of them.

Domi frowned as they began walking side by side. The tunnels weren't that dark.

"Aix decided it was best to make you both sleep through the last part of the transformation," Valens went on, squeezing tight against the tunnel wall and jerking Domi by the arm with him to avoid trailing white filaments as a clivia floated past. "Said the headache can be a bit much. But when your brother woke, he and Aix..." He guided Domi down the tunnel again, grimacing in the golden light of his promenia ball. "Well..."

"How are they?" Domi asked. If he'd felt so terrible, then Daedalus must have been very ill, too. And Aix had told Valens something about a bad headache? He nibbled his lip.

His aedificans snorted. "I'm pretty sure the Eyes swallowed their minds whole. That, or Aix has dragged your brother into some research project of his. Who knows?" He pointed through a gaping wide door a few pods down from Ausus's home. "Look," he said dryly.

Inside, Aix glanced up from the pair of pups zipping in eager circles around his head. "We're teaching them our names for colors and finding out what they call these other ones," he said.

Domi could only stare. Blue. Aix was blue. Blue as the pups flying around him. Blue as Daedalus, who stood at his side looking like someone had carved him from lapis lazuli. Domi's fingers rose to his own cheek, shivering when the same rough crystalline markings as the pearly blue ones curling under Daedalus's left eye greeted his fingers. It seemed even in this, they were identical.

"Other ones?" Valens asked, lip curling as Domi stared, open-mouthed, at his twin. "Do you mean other colors?"

Aix flapped a hand absently and, brows knitting, looked for all the world like he was trying to pass gas as he scrunched up his face. "See this?" he asked in a strained voice.

Domi stumbled back with a gasp, his hands rising to cover his mouth.

Valens's head whipped to him. "Alumna?" He frowned as, heart thundering in his chest, Domi stared and stared and stared. "What's wrong?"

He shook his head wordlessly, his whole body trembling as he drew a shaky breath and felt tears spill down his cheeks. "Eternal Radiance," he whispered.

Aix's face was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

"Give him a moment please, Aedificanti," Daedalus murmured, smiling gently as he stepped closer and rubbed Domi's shoulders. "It is a lot, but it is good."

A lot was right. Domi sobbed in awe, gazing around him hungrily as the whole pod exploded into a rich vibrancy. Everything was so much brighter and deeper than before. The new colors centered around Aix's face, but radiated outward from him.

And now that Domi knew what to look for, he saw that Valens's face had it too, only it was even more sublime, driving the breath from Domi's lungs. He could not move his body or blink, but just stared and cried up at his aedificans's confused and mildly alarmed multi-hued face until Valens guided him to sit down.

He couldn't stop looking. Were the Devouring Eyes really in the sky? His own eyes were the ones that wanted to gulp everything down as fast as possible.

"Are you sure he's alright?" Valens asked. "What's going on?" He frowned at Daedalus as Domi's twin knelt before him.

"He's seeing heat," Aix answered for the older twin, stepping over to join them. He smiled as Domi stared up at him, marveling at the glorious shades curling along the old man's temples and wavering at the inner edges of his eyes. "It takes a few minutes to adjust, but he can see in the dark now and also use heat to communicate with these little ones."

The old man nodded to the pups, which hovered in front of Domi like fretful blue dandelions. Their filaments brushed at the dampness on his cheeks. Unlike Aix, Daedalus, Valens, and the pod itself, the pair barely shined. Only the faintest deep red ripples rose from their filaments.

"Ask them what this color is in their tongue, Daedalus," Aix said, pulling a radish from his paenula pocket. "I just taught them our word for it."

Daedalus straightened, hands dropping from Domi's shoulders as he glanced up at the pups. "Do you remember the word 'purple'?" he asked, nodding as they pointed several filaments at him. "If so, tell us the name for the color the clivia way."

A series of low, irregular pulses rose from the pups, and around their filaments, the new hues flickered and blended.

Domi bit his lip. The colors were complex, way too nuanced for him to even make out what exactly he was seeing, let alone make sense of it. And yet...

The color of tasty spore towers and radishes outside of resin light and the veins of kale and--

Domi just stared with his jaw dropped.

His twin smiled. "We can do it too, Domi. Not the pulses, but look." He scrunched up his face, and color washed across his features and bled into the air in twisting, weaving patterns. See?

"It feels sort of like the Caeles," Domi murmured. He pulled himself shakily to his feet. He wasn't going to huddle against the wall when there was so much to see. Stumbling over to the center of the pod, he blinked up at the amber resin light nestled in the webbed ceiling, grinning in elation at the explosive colors ringing it like a halo.

"Like the Caeles?" Valens asked.

He nodded, peering down at his hands. Impossibly vibrant ripples of color shimmered over his wrists. Were the filaments inside warmer than the rest of him? "Yeah, like when you ask a question and just... know stuff. Not words exactly, but..." He shook his head, unsure how to explain.

He lifted his gaze as light flickered around him like dust motes. Flashed within him. The machine cells you carry erect pathways within your brain to permit you to use the thing you call the Caeles.

Domi turned in a full circle, looking for the window he must have missed, but didn't see the Eyes leering through any openings in the web walls. "H-how? Where..."

We collected the pattern for such a thing from your progenitor, the Eyes went on, and modified it to give your kind the gifts of Speech and Understanding.

Domi peeked at Valens, but the man's expression appeared curious, not disturbed. The motes settled down, falling like crimson dust on the oblivious man's shoulders and the webbed floor. The older worldholder didn't seem to sense a thing.

"The Blending changed the way our brains process language," Aix explained, winking as Domi watched a mote land on his nose. "The Eyes already found simple ways to speak to humans, but now we can communicate with heat-spores the way they and the clivia do. So far though, I find it easier to understand the pups and the Eyes than to speak to them."

Valens grimaced at the mention of the Eyes but only crossed his arms. "Why?"

The old man smiled wryly. "Have you ever tried to blush on command? Let alone do it in a rhythm?" He chuckled as Valens arched a brow. "You see my point."

"I guess," Valens said doubtfully.

Domi didn't blame him. Two minutes ago, none of this would have made much sense to him, either. The world had changed so much in the blink of an eye. "You really need to Blend," he said.

His aedificans sighed, rubbing his nose. "I probably will. But not yet. I don't want the fever to get in the way of anything tonight."

"Tonight?" Daedalus asked.

Valens and Aix exchanged glances. "Nothing you need to worry about, Alumna. Let the adults handle it."

Domi scowled. Any time adults said something like that, his worries multiplied tenfold. And if Valens and Aix thought he would stay out of the way like an obedient little kid while the adults tried to do something that Domi and Dae could manage with a mere thought, they had a surprise coming.

He clenched his fists at his sides, and the thing in his wrist stirred again. "Fine, Aedificanti," he said.