The breath left his body, and I heard him whisper before he perished, "Your eyes..."
Then nothing. Orath’s soul was gone.
I felt the weight in my arms had changed. What had been a broken, breathing thing, clinging to the last threads of life, became simply meat. Rex’s body went slack. His head lolled back. His eyes, still open, still staring at something only he could see, began to film over.
This was a better death than he deserved.
I stopped walking for a moment and looked at the stairs stretched ahead of me, the last words of Orath still ringing in my head. There were so many revelations dropped at once that I had to take a moment to gather everything in my head and make sense of it all.
The Caelith brought the light of the stars to the earth, and he claimed them all, the Sovereign of the Stars.
Was that the name of my enemy? The one who would tear an entire continent apart just for a chance to become something more than a Sovereign?
It felt extremely arrogant of me to think of a Sovereign as my enemy, but all I knew was that as long as the loop was still in effect, I would not want to be my enemy.
I don’t care how old or powerful the Sovereign of the Stars was; if his end goal was to destroy my continent, then he was my enemy, and I was going to rip his head off.
The Hollow Avatar had told me that the Caeliths were meant to roam the void, and somehow, all thirty-one of them were drawn to this world, and they brought with them the light of the stars. I did not know what that meant yet, or what could draw them to this world.
The Narghul Sorcerer I had killed said that the Achons were gone, and from what I understood from the words of the Hollow Avatar, the Achons were the ones who created the Caeliths. The Demon Slayer Title and other celestial abilities I had gained recently came from them.
It could no longer contact the Stone Oracle, which I was beginning to think was the equivalent of the Hollow Avatar’s system. With everything that was happening, from my loop to the breaking of the system, the Hollow Avatar had said the Order of the Heavens was broken.
Your eyes...
I looked down at Rex’s face, and despite how withered he became in death, I could still see the man underneath, and the greed that may have brought him to this point. A boy who’d been bred for a lock and died believing it was a door to godhood.
From the words of Rex at the end, I observed that he may have been aware of the Harvest, but he thought he might be gaining some benefits; after all, was he not a secret member of the Conclave? The entire Aldran family, one of the most prestigious families on the continent, was a member of this conspiracy, and at this point, I did not know whether I should hate them or pity them.
Rex’s family had been slaughtered for generations to create a bloodline resonance with the Caelith, and if I am not wrong, the Aldran family was not the only family that had suffered this fate.
This thing was big, and like me, I think many people had fallen into this conspiracy without asking for it. I may be judging Rex too harshly.
I laid him down gently on the step, and his body settled against the cold metal, his arm falling across his chest, his head turning to the side as if he were sleeping.
I did not close his eyes. In this place, I did not think he would want his eyes closed, even in death.
"I’ll finish it. For what it’s worth."
I stood up and began to walk up the stairs as it proceeded upward. The higher I climbed, the more connected I began to feel with the pyramid. There was a resonance deep within me, behind my soul in the hollow place, and it was this connection that drew me upward.
The pyramid knew me. I could not shake it. The stone listened, and what it heard it recognised, and I did not want to think too hard about what that meant, that a prison built to hold the worst things the heavens ever made watched me climbing its stairs and thought kin.
So, to keep from thinking about it, I opened my screen to fully understand everything I had gained since I became an Adept.
I started with the title because that has been on my mind all this time, and I don’t know what I could find in the Caelith, and every tool needed to be accessed.
∞
[ Storm Bearer ]
[ Title — Legendary ]
Effect (while equipped):
- Lightning and storm disciplines are amplified.
- The bearer is a storm-source. Ambient atmospheric charge is drawn inward and refined into Lightning Essence.
- Lightning from a Tier above cannot harm the bearer; against a wielder more than one tier above him, the protection only blunts it
- Under sustained output, the surrounding weather answers: charge, cloud, and wind gather to the bearer.
Origin: Survival of a Storm-Law Heavenly Tribulation.
I stopped on the second line and read it three times. Now, here is the thing that is important about the Adept Tier, and I was lucky to know this much. Our liquid Anima Depth does not grow as easily as an Acolyte’s, since a drop of our Anima is equal to a tenth of the entirety of an Acolyte’s essence, and I have not counted every drop of Anima inside my depth, but I know it was a lot.
Here is where Essence came into play. Everything in life has Essence, from fire to smoke, even life and death had Essence, and as an Acolyte, when I wielded my spells, I could sometimes touch on the power of this Essence, but the primary fuel for my spells was my Anima.
For Adepts, it was different; they had incredibly dense Anima, but they could also draw upon the essence of the element that they controlled. This meant that their spells could hit that much harder as they were borrowing the power of the world to aid their spells.
Essence could also enrich the Anima Depth of an Adept, increasing its growth and depth, and was one of the primary ways that Adepts grew their power. Although with access to the Ascendant Earth Gates where I could acquire Anima, I was not too interested in this part, but the first part... the bearer is a Storm-Source.
In plain terms, this title would make me a fountain of Lightning Essence, and as if that were not enough, I would be able to draw ambient Storm Essence from the surroundings.