"A-Ah! No! Get away, what are you?!"
She shrieked, crawling backward like a cornered animal, tearing her already bleeding hands against the stone as she fled.
Kael said nothing. He did wonder though why she reacted like that.
His eyes remained fixed ahead, cold and unblinking, like dark, endless wells.
If he could have seen his own eyes though, maybe he might have reacted the same way, or maybe he would have exuded the same chilling calm.
His usually blue irises, pupils, and even the whites of his eyes had fused into a single, abyssal black.
A void-like sphere now sat in each socket, swirling slowly in a silent, counterclockwise motion, unnatural, unsettling, as if the eyes themselves were portals to something that defied existence.
They had consumed her courage in a single glance.
But he didn't know about the changes happening to him.
He stepped forward again, his footfall echoing in the narrow passage. His grey robes fluttering lightly in a non-existent breeze.
No one else dared approach him afterwards.
In fact, the people who spotted him steered clear, even though they didn't know why, but there was a certain air around that commanded fear and terror.
He walked on, unbothered, the echoes of humans around already fading behind him like a whisper in the wind.
'For some reason, I feel like I'm falling, once again, into that bottomless dark abyss in my consciousness, but I don't think that's such a bad thing this time.'
There was a feeling in his chest he could not describe, like he understood what was happening to him, and at the same time, he did not.
'If I had to put a tag to it, it kind of feels like awakening a dormant part of yourself buried deep in your soul.' He thought.
Kael kept walking, further and further, until the shacks and tattered buildings gave way to silence and stone.
Eventually, he reached the farthest edge of the basin, an empty, forgotten stretch of land, uninhabited and untouched.
Here, the wind was still. No cries. No whispers. No presence. Just emptiness.
He stopped.
For a long while, he did nothing.
No movement.
No thought.
He just stood there, as though even his body had lost purpose.
Then, slowly, he closed his eyes.
'Is something influencing my conscience? No, that's not it, I can feel the changes, like something had been missing this whole time, and now I'm becoming complete.
It's an odd feeling. But it feels so good, so intoxicating, like a drug flowing through my blood, something is empowering me, changing me. The core?'
The air around him grew eerily silent.
There was no air around him, like a vacuum.
In that silence, without distraction, he turned inward.
He could feel it, the core. Subtle, quiet, but unmistakably there.
A steady presence in the pit of his being, pulsing in ways that defied logic.
Baddum...Baddum...Baddum...
It pulsed rhythmically, like a second heart in his solar plexus.
Alien.
Cold.
Still.
But now... something else.
His brow twitched.
There, on the edge of his perception, he felt it.
Dream energy.
All around him, like a soft mist laced into the very air.
It clung to the terrain, seeped into stone, and hummed beneath his feet. He hadn't noticed it before, not truly.
But now, it was clear.
Taking a slow breath, Kael focused on the strange, silent core inside him. His very own unique core.
"Draw it in," he thought."Push it away."
Nothing.
Again, he concentrated harder this time. His will sharpened, like a hand reaching in the dark for something just beyond his grasp.
And then—
Baddum...
A pulse echoed from deep within him.
He didn't see it, but he felt it, like a tremor through his bones. A wave pushing outward. Subtle, suppressive.
Stillness returned.
Kael clenched his jaw, pressing further. His mind locked onto the connection, that string he had touched. The core responded, thudding again beneath his skin.
Baddum!
Another pulse.
This time, the world around him responded in kind.
The dream energy around him, ethereal, hazy, it quivered.
And then, it dispersed.
A ripple moved outward in a slow, widening radius. Like a pond rejecting oil, the dream energy peeled back, unraveling in silent streams.
The ripple produced shimmering curtains, waves, or arcs of color across the landscape on his feet and the air around his body.
Like an aurora borealis, the shimmering waves spread outwards.
Kael remained still, eyes closed, unaware of the spectacle unfolding around him.
His breathing deepened.
"More."
He pushed again, threading his will into the core, demanding it. Drawing from it.
BADDUM!!!
This pulse was stronger. Deeper. As though the earth beneath him responded in kind. The air grew heavier. The atmosphere warped, not violently, but deliberately.
The very fabric of dream energy continued to disband around him, a widening circle of clarity in a sea of haze.
The longer he held on, the clearer the space became, free of that ever-present dream essence.
Kael didn't stop.
He couldn't.
There was more. He knew it.
He kept pushing, willing the core to expand further. Reach deeper. And it did, rippling through him, through the air, through the world.
RRRRRIP!
A loud, clear, aggressive tear echoed in the fabric of reality.
The world noticed.
At first, it was subtle, a stillness that swept across the land like the moment before a storm breaks.
The air fell silent. The few lifeforms there were stopped their chittering. The wind held its breath.
And then, it began.
The air thickened, humming with pressure and anticipation.
It shimmered, like heat rising from sun-scorched sand, but colder, sharper.
Every particle seemed to vibrate, tuned now to a new frequency.
A singular bolt of lightning crackled soundlessly in the sky, and wind spun in place, directionless, seeking command.
Then came the change in reality itself.
It was as though the world's fabric had been tugged, pulled taut, and then twisted.
Space seemed to bend around Kael, the source of the pulse, light warped, colors bled into each other, and shadows trembled without movement.
Time itself stuttered, blinking forward and backward in the span of a heartbeat.
And at the center of it all, something new was born.
Not divine. Not monstrous.
Just… other.
A force that did not belong, yet now was.
The world watched.
And it remembered.
Dark clouds gathered above, around Ravethorne.
And then, as if weeping, in a silent wail, rain started pouring down, and the shimmering lights dispersed.
Kael opened his eyes, and seeing the scene around him, he wondered, 'Is this a manifestation of my power?'