I am a scientist, not a philosopher, and I offer the following explanation in the spirit of a hypothesis to be tested rather than a doctrine to be accepted. I invite refutation. I require only that the refutation be grounded in evidence of equal or greater rigor than what I have presented here.
My explanation is this.
The Vitae rift is, as the Rootwarden tradition has long held, a connection to a dimension of pure restorative energy. What this study suggests is that "restorative" must be understood in a broader sense than it has previously been applied. The rift does not restore a practitioner to her previous condition. It restores her to a condition that is, in some meaningful sense, more complete than her previous condition — as though extended proximity to the rift removes a limitation the practitioner did not know she was operating under.
The ley lines converge on the rift. Every line on the continent leads back to it. A practitioner who draws from a ley line in Goldmere is drawing from a tributary of a system that originates at the Vitae. When that practitioner spends six months at the origin point of the system from which she draws, she is not merely refreshed. She is recalibrated. Her connection to the network is established at its source rather than at one of its thousand tributaries, and that connection — once established at the source — remains stronger because it is more fundamental.
In simpler terms: all the ley lines run from the rift outward. A practitioner who spends sufficient time at the rift learns to read from the beginning of the text rather than from a copy of a copy of a translation. The difference is not merely one of clarity. It is one of comprehension.
This explanation is not complete. It does not account for the four practitioners who partially reverted, nor does it explain the more extreme subjective reports. I offer it as the best account I can construct from the data I have, with the full expectation that future scholarship will improve upon it.
