At the same dawn that saw Torsten and his new allies depart from Stoneford, Alph stood alone in the pre-dawn chill of Oakhaven's training ground. The air was thin and sharp, each breath a blade of cold in his lungs. A fresh dusting of snow overnight clung to the dark pines, muffling the world in a profound silence.
He held no weapon. He sought no physical exertion. Instead, he settled onto the frozen earth, crossing his legs and resting his hands on his knees, palms upturned. It was a posture Elara had described to him, a meditative form the Scribes of their family used not just to calm the mind, but to sharpen it into a tool as precise and cold as the runes they commanded.
He closed his eyes.
First, he let the world outside fall away. The distant scent of hearth smoke, the whisper of wind through the high branches, the biting cold on his skin—he acknowledged each sensation and released it, letting the edges of his perception draw inward.
Next, he faced the storm within. The gnawing worry for Torsten's journey, the simmering anger at the men in the woods, the dizzying weight of his own hidden past—he did not fight the thoughts, but observed them as a man watches clouds pass, letting them drift and dissolve into a quiet, grey nothingness.
Silence. The world, both inside and out, vanished. All that remained were two fundamental, rhythmic truths: the steady, muffled drum of his own heart, and the faint, resonant hum of the crystalline mana core deep within his chest.
Now, he began the work. He synced his breath to the pulsing rhythm of his core. With a slow, deliberate inhale, he visualized coaxing the energy from its source. It was not a warm vapor, but a mist of pure cold, tendrils of silver-blue light peeling away from the crystalline structure. The energy flowed outward, a cool, clean current filling the primary pathways of his torso. In his mind's eye, the core dimmed slightly, its light sacrificed to the flow.
On the exhale, he reversed the tide. He guided the shimmering mist back toward its origin, a river of cold completing its circuit. The mana did not simply return; it plunged through the crystal lattice of the core, the structure itself acting as a filter. He could feel the energy being scrubbed clean, its resonant hum becoming sharper, more pure. The core pulsed, its light flaring brighter than before as the purified mana settled back into its depths.
He maintained the cycle. Inhale, the ebb. Exhale, the flow. A slow, powerful rhythm took hold, a second, more profound heartbeat established within him. With each cycle, the circulation grew stronger, the flow cleaner, and his connection to the power within him solidified from a faint hum into an undeniable, resonant chord.
As the rhythm of the Arcane Breath found its perfect, stable cadence, a change occurred. The distinct sensations of his heartbeat and the humming core began to blur, their two separate notes merging into one.
The boundary between his physical self and his consciousness dissolved. The anchor was gone. His awareness, no longer tethered to a body sitting in the snow, sank inward.
He arrived in a familiar, quiet dark. It was the starless, all-encompassing expanse from his Awakening.
A profound sense of bewilderment rippled through his formless consciousness. This shouldn't be possible. The lawyer in his soul sifted through the evidence. Both Elara and Hemlock had been clear: this place, this choice, was a singular event. It was the doorway one passed through during an Awakening, or when a Professional stood upon the precipice of a new Tier, ready to advance.
He was certain he had not reached that threshold. One day of practice, a single morning of controlled meditation—it was progress, yes, but it could not possibly be enough to warrant an advancement. This violated the established rules of this world's power structure. It was an anomaly.
Then, against the endless black, they appeared. Four points of light, distant and silent. They were the same stars from before. His path, the brilliant, silver-blue beacon of the Frost-Rune Scribe, pulsed with a cold, clean fire that felt like an extension of his own being. But the other three—the dim green of the Druid, the sharp white of the Hunter, the inquisitive gold of the Mage—were different now.
The chasm that had separated him from them, the vast, unbridgeable gulf that had formed after his choice, had narrowed. It was still there, a great void he could not cross, but its edge felt closer. The light from the Hunter and Mage stars, once faint echoes, now burned with a new proximity, a tangible potential that had not existed before.
His focus drifted beyond the four familiar lights, out into the infinite black where countless other, dormant stars lay sleeping. It was there he saw it. One of the dark motes, previously indistinguishable from the void, now held a faint, deep red glow, like the last ember of a dying campfire.
A nascent curiosity pulled at him. His consciousness stretched, reaching toward this new, unexpected light. As he drew near, the knowledge of its path bloomed in his mind, not with the radiant clarity of the others, but as a guttural, instinctual understanding. Fighter. Its requirements were simple, brutal things: a body honed by relentless physical training, a spirit that embraced the blunt reality of close-quarters combat, and an unyielding will to endure.
It was then that he heard it. A sound that did not belong in the silent expanse of his own mind. A sharp, clear gasp, drawn in by lungs that were not his own. It was a sound of pure, undiluted shock, ancient and vast and utterly majestic.
His consciousness recoiled, snapping back from the Fighter star. He scanned the featureless void, searching for the source of the sound. There was nothing. No light, no shape, no presence other than his own and the five distant, burning stars. The expanse was as empty and silent as it had always been.
The lawyer in his soul offered a swift, logical verdict: an auditory hallucination. A phantom echo created by a mind pushed to its absolute limits, a brain trying to make sense of an impossible reality. It was a sound born of his own bewilderment. He was about to accept this conclusion, to dismiss the moment as a strange but meaningless anomaly.
Then the voice came again. It was not a gasp this time, but a sound that was both a whisper and a roar, a voice that seemed to resonate from the very fabric of the void itself. It was ancient, powerful, and laced with a profound, earth-shaking confusion.
"You... Can you hear me?"
A jolt of pure, primal fear shot through Alph's consciousness. This was no hallucination. This was contact. His first instinct was to sever the connection, to flee the void and return to the familiar cold of the training ground. But the lawyer in him, the part forged in hostile courtrooms and high-stakes interrogations, refused to yield ground. It was a voice. It asked a question. To show fear was to show weakness.
He gathered his scattered wits and pushed back against the fear, wrapping himself in a cloak of false bravado. He focused his intent, not into words, but into a direct, projected thought aimed at the empty void around him. Who is this? Who is speaking?
The voice answered, and the very fabric of the starless expanse seemed to shudder with its response. The confusion was gone, replaced by a booming, incredulous elation that held within it the faint, sorrowful echo of ages spent in isolation.
"Finally. Someone. I have called out to every soul that has passed through this place, and for millennia, none have heard. Only silence." The voice pulsed with a desperate, ancient curiosity. "And now, you are here."
The sheer, crushing weight of that statement sent a tremor through Alph's being. Millennia. Countless souls, countless Awakenings, countless advancements—all passing through this space in utter silence, deaf to a voice that had never stopped calling. The implication was staggering. It meant his presence here, his ability to hear this entity, was not just an anomaly. It was a singular event in the known history of this world.
The fear returned, colder this time, but his resolve hardened alongside it. He was a lawyer facing a witness of cosmic proportions. He needed answers, not awe.
He focused his consciousness again, shaping his thoughts with deliberate care, his tone firm but imbued with a deep, formal respect for the ancient power he was addressing.
I hear you. But I do not understand. Who are you? And what is this place? Please, explain.
A direct answer did not come. The voice seemed to retract, the booming elation folding into a low, contemplative hum that resonated through the void. It was the sound of a mind unused to dialogue, falling back into the familiar pattern of solitary thought. "A Frost-Rune Scribe... an old bloodline, a powerful one. Is that it? Is the nature of the soul's path the key?"
The voice answered its own question with a dismissive rumble. "No. That cannot be right. I have witnessed Scribes of this same line, masters of their craft, Tier 3 and beyond, pass through this space. Their souls shone like winter moons, yet they were deaf. They heard nothing."
A new note entered the voice, a sharp, analytical curiosity. "So why this one? This Tier 0 brat, barely a flickering candle flame in the dark... What is different about you?"
The word brat struck Alph like a physical blow. A hot flush of shame, followed by a sharp spike of anger, surged through his consciousness. How dare this... this voice, this thing, dismiss him so casually after he had just bridged a gap of millennia?
But the emotional flare was extinguished as quickly as it ignited, doused by the cold, hard logic of his lawyer's mind. The entity was right. Compared to the ancient power he conversed with, or the Tier 3 masters it had seen, what was he? A novice. An infant in the world of power. The insult was not an insult; it was a simple, brutally honest assessment.
The self-directed musings of the voice ceased. It addressed Alph again, its tone now sharp with a focused, almost scientific inquiry. "To ignite one star is to choose one path, to walk one road. Advancement comes from building upon that single foundation, connecting a superior star to your chosen one to form a constellation within your soul. It is a singular process."
The voice seemed to lean in, the void itself pressing closer. "Yet you... you stand at the first step, your Scribe star barely lit, and already the chasm to the others shrinks. The Fighter awakens. The Hunter and Mage draw near. It is as if you mean to build multiple constellations in one sky, within the same Tier. It should not be possible. How?"
The question hung in the void, and Alph had no answer for it. He, too, had believed his choice was final. The narrowing of the chasm, the slow awakening of the Fighter star—these were violations of the very rules he had just begun to understand.
His own confusion mirrored the voice's. He let go of his false bravado, his Projected thoughts now carrying only a genuine, unvarnished honesty.
I do not know. I ask again: Who are you? What is this place? How can any of this be happening?