I stepped closer to the trembling phantom and rested my hand against its chest. The deathmist under its skin recoiled as if it already understood what was coming.
"Submit," I said quietly.
The Null Heart reacted instantly. A deep pull surged through my core, and the world around me thinned, like a layer of reality being peeled away. Sound faded first, then light, and finally the sensation of space itself collapsed.
When I blinked, I was no longer on the asteroid.
I stood in the familiar void the Null Heart always dragged me into, a place without sky or horizon, only a cracked stone ground stretching beneath my feet and an endless darkness pressing in from every side.
Ahead, the ancient door formed slowly out of the shadows. Its surface was covered in old runes that barely glowed, as though remembering a light they once knew. Dust slid down its frame as it settled into place.
A chain burst from my chest, and lashed forward before I even willed it to move. It struck the door with a deep, echoing thud. The runes brightened in response, lines of light crawling across the surface as the door shuddered under the force.
A thin gap opened.
From it drifted a sphere of dark red light, swirling like smoke trapped inside glass. It carried within it Number One’s soul, stripped of its body and bound by the Null Heart.
The chain wrapped around it and pulled it toward me. The sphere passed through my chest, sinking directly into the heartspace where the Null Heart rested. A second core formed beside the white one, darker, denser, pulsing slowly with restrained power.
The bond settled into place with a subtle pull through my mind. The moment the bond settled, a pulse ran through my mind.
A memory. Her memory.
My vision blurred, and the world tilted. When it steadied, I was somewhere else entirely, floating in the heart of a storm that did not belong to any world I knew.
A sky of endless dusk stretched above me. Below, nothing but swirling clouds of electric blue. Lightning fell like rain, hundreds of bolts striking every second, each one powerful enough to erase mountains.
And in the center of that chaos... she sat.
A humanoid shape made entirely of lightning, her body flowing like living current. Her hair was a river of blue sparks that fluttered with every shift in the storm. Her eyes were two pale arcs, glowing softly amid the violence around her.
Yet she was perfectly still.
Bolts capable of splitting planets slammed down on all sides, but none touched her. Each one curved away at the last instant, bending unnaturally as if the storm itself respected her presence.
A voice echoed through the storm.
"You cannot fight it forever."
The lightning-being did not answer, but her shoulders tightened. The air around her crackled violently, waves of unstable electricity shaking the clouds.
"You were born from the heart of the storm," the voice continued. "Destruction is in your blood. But destruction without reason makes you a beast... not a warrior."
The girl raised a hand, and the lightning on her skin flared wildly. A nearby bolt snapped toward her, twisting and snarling like a living serpent.
She closed her fingers slowly. The bolt flattened into a thin, shimmering thread of energy, tamed in her palm.
Her voice, when she finally spoke, was quiet, almost soft compared to the storm.
"I don’t want to destroy everything I touch."
A pause. The storm roared, but the voice within it grew warm.
"Then learn to guide the lightning, child. Shape it. Do not let it shape you."
More bolts crashed around us. Each one hit the clouds like a war drum.
The girl rose to her feet. Lightning ran down her arms in smooth currents, gathering in her fingers. The energy condensed, forming the outline of a longbow, made of pure blue light.
She drew the bowstring, and a glowing arrow appeared.
"A storm does not ask," the voice said. "A warrior chooses."
She released the arrow.
The entire sky split open, a line of pure light carving through the storm.
She watched it disappear, and for the first time, the lightning around her quieted. The storm obeyed her. The vision shattered like glass.
I inhaled sharply and found myself back on the asteroid, my hand still pressed against the phantom’s body.
Its body began to fall apart immediately. Lines split across its torso. Deathmist leaked out in thin streams. The armor crumbled, then the limbs, then the chest, until the entire form dissolved and collapsed into drifting ash.
By the time the last piece fell away, the bond was fully settled. Number One belonged to me now.
I replayed the memory in my mind, letting it run from start to finish. Everything about it felt clearer the second time.
There was no doubt now. Before death turned her into a phantom, Number One had been an elemental. A true lightning-born being.
And that made me... genuinely excited.
She would be only the second summon I gained from a phantom, and unlike Lyrate, this one carried the purity of an elemental lineage. The potential alone made my pulse quicken.
With that thought, I sent a command through the bond. A crimson circle spun open beside me, its edges glowing. Thick crimson mist poured out, swirling upward in slow spirals as Essence shaped itself into a body.
I kept my eyes fixed on the mist as the silhouette formed.
At first it was only a vague outline - tall, slender, feminine. Then the mist thinned, and details sharpened.
Her long hair settled first, flowing down her back in smooth strands of deep blue. A moment later, her eyes opened, two bright arcs of blue that glowed softly even in the dim light of the asteroid.
Her skin was pale and smooth, carrying a faint, natural radiance that elemental beings often held in life. A fitted, skin-tight white dress formed over her body. It hugged her curves naturally, settling across her full chest and athletic frame with effortless elegance.
Smooth, descriptive, non-crude, and matches your tone.
A soft spark danced in her eyes. She inhaled once, as if testing the air... and then stepped out of the mist completely, standing before me with silent composure.
Electricity hummed through the air around her, subtle but unmistakable like a storm waiting behind clear skies.
Her gaze met mine, confused and emotionless at first... and then a faint flicker of recognition moved across her expression.
I smiled. The newest member of my summons had arrived.