Dante's faceless head tilted, carrying a soft, prismatic cascade of light with the whisper of movement.
His voice rippled with restrained emotion.
"Friend. This does not have to be the end."
Burning Storm's weakened gaze locked onto the radiant figure hovering before him, a dying star facing a newborn sun.
"Will..."
Each breath rattled from his chest like thunder, making the very air tremble around him.
"...you... spare me?"
The luminous void where Dante's face should be creased in what might have been compassion had features existed there.
"Of course! Of course, my friend, I will spare you by all means. Togeth—"
Burning Storm's voice sliced through the promise.
"I'm still gonna stop you from taking over the Central Plains..."
Dante froze mid-sentence, the aura surrounding him crumbling like a fallen empire. The illuminating light from the mirrors dimmed, as if the room itself held its breath.
Then his voice emerged—hollow as an abandoned grave.
"I see you have made up your mind."
He lifted his sword with the slow inevitability of nightfall.
"If you so much desire death. Then you can have it."
Burning Storm suddenly exhaled. Infernal heat erupted from the massive nostrils of his bull head, flames dancing like vengeful spirits in the space between them. His eyes ignited—twin furnaces blazing with defiance—as if welcoming the embrace of oblivion itself if it meant this final strike would not be in vain.
For years since ascending to Paragon, a question had gnawed at Burning Storm's consciousness.
Why was the chasm between Paragon and Luminary so vast?
The obvious answer had always hung before him: a Paragon's soul core was immense, requiring eons to saturate with essence.
Worse still, the cores of lesser beings offered mere droplets in an ocean of need. Only Maelstrom cores could provide substance, yet these were precious rarities. Even in Lithia, where such cores had recently become available, he lacked both time and freedom to select ideal souls.
Yet despite this apparent truth staring him in the face, Raizel had persisted, digging beneath surface answers, hunting for deeper understanding.
How truly insurmountable was this gap?
Was it merely about distance to be traveled?
Or perhaps—the nature of one's very core itself?
Breaking through from Paragon had felt like hurling himself against an adamantine wall—each strike, each effort, absorbed without so much as a hairline fracture to show for it.
This unyielding barrier had redirected his quest toward uncovering the mysteries of his True Name.
In that crucible of frustration, Burning Storm had unearthed something profound about True Names—a revelation that spawned an even more fundamental question:
True Name, Talent, Soul Core.
Which of these three pillars truly formed the keystone of a Drifter's power?
For centuries, his conviction had rested on the primacy of the soul core—that foundation of all things, first to form in a Drifter's nascent existence, maturing only when they conquered a rift and claimed its essence.
But as the ancient texts about True Names unfolded their secrets beneath his scrutiny, he recognized the magnitude of his misunderstanding.
This epiphany had driven him across the breadth of the Central Plains and beyond, to the furthest corners of the world. Beneath his formidable exterior lurked a wanderer—a nomad without hearth or home, whose footsteps had traced continents in pursuit of truth.
Such relentless wandering had granted him insights surpassing nearly all scholars in the Central Plains—perhaps with the exception of Reimgard. Yet even Burning Storm recognized that across the wider world, seers and sages existed who had delved deeper into the essence of True Names, understanding how they anchored a being's fundamental power.
And just as the oldest wisdom proclaimed, Raizel had discovered that True Names were not merely labels but tethers—anchors cast into the primordial source of one's soul.
The soul source—a genesis stretching back to the dawn of creation. Ancient scrolls whispered of millennia past when the world existed as nothing but a vast ocean of soul essence, formless and flowing, until cosmic forces rent it asunder into twelve distinct wellsprings of power.
Through his journeys across the mist-shrouded monasteries of the Eastern Continent, Raizel had unraveled a truth long guarded by its mystics: True Names were the cosmic cords binding souls to their primordial fountainheads. The deeper one's communion with their True Name, the more profound their mastery of their innate talent became.
For talent itself was merely the manifestation—the visible shimmer on water—of the connection between soul and source.
When a core first coalesced within a Drifter, the anchor was forged; when that core matured through triumph over a rift, the anchor plunged deep into the wellspring of power.
In the traditions of the Eastern Continent, novice Drifters were taught first to meditate upon their True Names, to taste the syllables that defined their existence. The elders believed potency resided in this understanding.
But all of Central Plains had miscalculated the true path.
Since this revelation, Paragon Raizel had devoted himself to a singular pursuit—grasping the essence concealed within his True Name.
Burning Storm. What cryptic forces lay behind this anchor, and to which of the twelve sources was his soul eternally tethered?
What hidden thread connected his name and his talent: Velocity Sovereign?
Initially, the relationship eluded him—these seemed disparate gifts with no common foundation. But as his introspection deepened, as he peeled back layers of his abilities and the very fabric of his Essence Manifestation, an undeniable pattern emerged that should have been transparent from the beginning.
Motion.
Raizel's Walker ability permitted him to harvest energy from movement itself—subtle at first, a mere trickle of power. Yet with each step taken, each distance crossed, he grew stronger.
Upon ascending to Master, this ability had amplified exponentially. Now he could siphon the very kinetic essence from others around him—absorbing the flutter of a nearby wing, the rush of a swinging blade, the hurried breath of an opponent.
He could accumulate momentum without physical exertion, stockpiling it like a miser hoards gold. He could sharpen motion itself until it became a cutting edge that cleaved through matter as if it were mist.
Yet his True Name had seemed a contradictory emblem of fire and tempest—elements that raged and thrashed with seemingly no connection to his Velocity-based talents. This discordance had blinded him to the elegant truth.
A storm is not merely wind and flame. It is motion incarnate. Every thunderhead that roils across the sky, every ember that whirls in a firestorm, every gust that reshapes the earth—these are not static entities but expressions of momentum given will.
The Burning Storm represented the ultimate metaphor for volatile, unrelenting, and chaotic motion. Not passive or gentle, but violent. Defiant. Alive.
His Essence Manifestation was his will crystallized into form. Conceptually, his will and essence were indistinguishable—two names for the same primal force.
But what, then, did a Luminary truly wield?
If a Paragon's power stemmed from understanding that their Essence Manifestation was shaped by the interplay between True Name and Talent—as his Burning Storm and Velocity Sovereign unified through Motion—they still perceived this connection as something external. Something to study, to adapt, to express.
What, then, was a Luminary?
The Radiant rank.
What transcendental insight marked this threshold?
With every desperate movement, with every thunderous exchange that shook the very foundations around them, the question burned deeper in Paragon Raizel's heart.
Now, with death's shadow looming over him, the desperation clenched his core with unprecedented urgency.
He was desperate—more than ever before—to answer that final question.