The deep ocean pressed down upon him, not like water, but like the solid, crushing weight of a living world.
At thirteen hundred meters beneath the surface, light did not exist. It was a concept from another life. Here, there was only the absolute, enveloping cold and gradients of perfect darkness. In this void, Zander floated motionless, suspended. His body was a still point in the black, surrounded by the faint, invisible ripples of his own power. His eyes were closed, his mind locked into a stillness so profound it bordered on the stillness of death itself.
For the past month, in the hidden grottos beneath Nereis City, he had reforged every fiber of his being. He had endured the agony of remaking himself—from skin to bone, from organ to blood—and yet he knew this wasn't the end. It was merely the prelude to the next, final step.
Sensei's words, etched into his memory, rang through his mind like a mantra:
"When the vessel is perfected, it must be filled. Absorb the Force until your body trembles beneath it, until the very atoms of you begin to sing. Only then will you truly be Tempered."
He inhaled slowly, a practiced, internal action. There was no air. His lungs, trained to endure the vacuum, remained steady against the suffocating pressure and the profound, tomb-like silence.
And then—he let go.
It was a mental unclenching, a sigh of the soul that released every barrier he had built.
The sea around him, seemingly inert, stirred.
A low hum, a vibration deeper than sound, began to pulse through the water. Zander's essence expanded outward, a net of invisible will. It did not push; it pulled. The ocean's latent energy answered. A silent vortex began to form, not of water, but of power. Microscopic motes of energy, the life-force of the deep, spiraled toward him from every direction—the Force that lived within the crushing pressure, within the ancient minerals of the seabed, within the strange, resilient creatures of the abyss.
He guided it with absolute, unwavering precision.
At first, it was gentle. It came in soft, silken threads, colder than the water, weaving through his limbs, tracing his nerves. Then, as his pull strengthened, the influx became sharper, denser, heavier. The pressure of the sea was suddenly compounded by the density of the Force itself. It was no longer a thread; it was a torrent of liquid stone, a river of molten lead pouring into him from all sides. His veins pulsed, not with blood, but with a new, burning light that felt like molten silver.
Every inhale was an influx of impossible power. Every exhale was a desperate, shuddering struggle to contain it.
Zander clenched his jaw, his teeth grinding as the first tremors began deep beneath his skin. His muscles, already forged to their peak, ached and tore as they stretched, screaming in protest as they tried to hold the energy that flooded him. He ignored the pain. He pushed more, forcing the power deeper, driving it into his marrow and tissue, feeling it vibrate like a deafening, subsonic sound through every cell of his being.
His control was razor-fine. One moment of doubt, one slip in his focus, and his body would simply rupture—a catastrophic implosion, his form instantly atomized by the very power he was inviting in.
The Force burned through him like lightning through a thin metal rod, a white-hot, agonizing current threatening to tear him apart from the inside out. But instead of resisting, he adjusted. He yielded. He shaped the torrent, smoothed its raw edges, and began the agonizing process of blending it into himself.
Then came the senses.
The first to awaken was sight. Even with his eyes closed, he could suddenly see. The absolute darkness was torn away, replaced by a vivid, blinding tapestry of energy. He saw not "faint outlines," but the very structure of the deep: the cold thermal currents flowing like ghostly rivers, the faint, pulsing life-force of microorganisms, the grinding of tectonic plates miles below. He saw the world the way a storm sees the wind: invisible, yet undeniable.
Next came sound. The ocean's tomb-like silence exploded into a layered, complex symphony. A thrum at first, then a deafening cascade of frequency. He could hear the low-frequency songs of distant whales, the chitinous scrape of crustaceans on rocks a thousand meters away, and even the quiet, steady hum of the Nereis City biodome, miles above, its reactor a steady heartbeat in the black.
Then, smell and taste. The Force wasn't scent, yet his mind interpreted it as such. He could taste the iron tang from a shipwreck rotting on a distant ledge, trace the faint metallic sweetness of energy particles colliding, and sense the alien, chemical signature of Aethros, hidden in the darkness nearby.
He was everywhere.
He was everything.
The deeper the Force entered, the more his body responded. This was no longer absorption; it was integration. His skin began to shimmer, a luminous, pearlescent sheen spreading across his body as if his very flesh was learning to breathe light. Each muscle tightened, not in resistance, but in perfect, harmonic unity. His entire being was aligning, retuning itself to a new, powerful rhythm.
And then—something shifted.
A foreign ripple moved through the water. It was not from the currents above. It was not from him. It was from nearby.
Aethros.
The great beast, a shadow within the shadow, stirred in the darkness, his eyes glowing like faint amber coals. The raw, overwhelming Force emanating from Zander had reached him, called to him. Instinctively, Aethros responded. He didn't think. He didn't understand. He simply acted.
A low growl, a vibration that shook the water, reverberated through the abyss. And with it, something primal awakened.
From Aethros's massive, scaled body, a new kind of energy unfurled—raw, untamed, ancient. It wasn't refined or precise like Zander's; it pulsed with heartbeat, hunger, and a deep, terrestrial instinct. It swirled toward Zander, wrapping around his silver light in thick spirals of amber and shadow—the Primal Force.
Zander felt it instantly. It wasn't overwhelming; it was grounding. Where his Force was cold, sharp, and precise—like lightning and metal—this new current was warm, living, like volcanic heat and blood. His mind, which had threatened to fracture and dissipate into the "everything," was suddenly anchored. The cold intellect now had a heart. The instinct gave the power focus.
It balanced him, completing a circuit he hadn't known was missing.
Two rhythms—one man, one beast—synchronized.
Two pulses—intellect and instinct—merged.
For a brief, impossible instant, they were a single consciousness.
Zander opened his eyes.
His pupils, no longer human, shimmered with a faint golden ring, a new light that glowed brightly in the abyss.
The Force inside him reached its absolute peak. It no longer flowed into him. It flowed with him. It was him. The line between energy and flesh blurred, wavered, and then erased itself until there was no distinction left.
And then—
The world shuddered.
The surrounding water exploded outward in a silent, perfectly concentric shockwave, a visible wave of pure, colorless force. It sent ripples of displaced pressure tearing through the deep. At the ocean floor, tons of sand and sediment lifted in churning, spiraling clouds, rising like inverted storms. For miles in every direction, marine life scattered in terror, sensing that something ancient and immense had awakened.
Zander hovered at the epicenter of it all, encased in a blinding chrysalis of light. Inside, he was motionless—eyes wide, body taut, his veins a luminous roadmap of glowing silver and gold. He felt the Force racing through his arteries, singing through his bones, echoing in his mind like an ecstatic, agonizing choir.
He saw it—the Force—not as an abstract concept, but as a living, infinite field. Each wave of energy that touched him whispered fragments of memory: the memory of a star's birth, the fall of ancient rain, the first breath of the first creature to swim in these depths.
He felt his skin tighten, every pore exhaling light. His muscles no longer screamed; they harmonized. The impossible pressure of the ocean didn't weigh on him anymore.
It lifted him.
In that moment, Zander understood. The baptism was not about strength. It was about unity. His body and the Force were no longer separate things. He was no longer a man using the Force. He was a harmonic expression of the Force, as inseparable as sound and vibration.
As the last ripples of power settled, Zander felt the storm within him begin to soften. The light that had seared his skin now moved gently, like quiet rivers through his body. He drifted in the deep stillness, eyes half-open, surrounded by the faint, pulsing shimmer of his own energy.
But then, the aftershock came.
His body convulsed, a deep, shuddering spasm that began in his core and rolled outward. It was not from pain, but from release. For a moment, he felt as though his entire being was exhaling everything it no longer needed. From his pores, faint threads of black mist began to drift—sluggish at first, then thick, coiling outward like toxic ink dissolving into the water.
Impurities. The residue of the old him.
Each wisp carried traces of dead cells, latent toxins from the serum, and the spiritual residue accumulated from years of battle, exhaustion, and human imperfection. The ocean currents pulled them away gently, erasing the ghost of his old self. Zander watched the shadows vanish into the vast dark, feeling lighter, purer, freer. He was hollowed out, but not empty. He was scoured clean.
The pressure that once weighed upon him now felt natural, almost intimate. His heartbeats steadied, strong and measured. He was no longer resisting the Force. He was Force.
He turned his palm upward. For the first time, when he summoned his power, the energy didn't flare or fight. It responded like breath. The water around his hand rippled, and as he closed his fist, it compressed into a sphere of solid, shimmering pressure. He could sense the subtle bending of reality itself.
He smiled faintly. There was no pride. No arrogance. Just quiet awe.
Zander drifted upward through the water, passing through the fields of light he himself had created. As he did, memories flickered within him—of the endless nights of pain, the reforging, the serum that had awakened something feral within. It all made sense. The serum hadn't been a poison; it had been a key, unlocking the primal so Aethros could connect. Every suffering, every fragment, every choice—all had led to this perfect convergence.
He was not only man, not only machine, not only Force. He was the bridge between all three.
And then—a voice. Soft. Wordless. It was more instinct than sound, a cascade of feeling and raw observation.
...You changed.
Zander froze. His gaze turned toward the shadow nearby. Aethros loomed in the gloom, eyes glowing like twin embers. The Primal Force still radiated faintly from him, golden motes pulsing in a deep forge. Zander hadn't heard the voice with his ears. He had felt it, a thought moving through the Force itself, intimate and resonant.
He answered without words, projecting a quiet stream of silver gratitude and calm. Thank you.
Aethros tilted his massive head, water flowing around his horns. The great beast's amber gaze softened, and the faint pulse of his Force brushed against Zander once more—testing, tasting, recognizing. The link wasn't stable. It flickered like a weak signal between dimensions, but it was there. A thread connecting instinct to thought, beast to man.
Zander closed his eyes again, focusing inward. He traced the paths of energy within his new body. They were luminous, clear, harmonized. His meridians, once strained, now pulsed in perfect rhythm, like arteries of living light. His organs glowed faintly: his heart, a steady, glowing furnace; his lungs, silent filters of light; his brain, a cool, quiet nebula of interconnected stars.
He felt no explosion of triumph. Only profound stillness.
Power, in its truest form, wasn't loud. It was quiet.
The ocean seemed to agree. All around him, the currents had calmed. Schools of deepwater fish, their forms pale and strange, drifted closer, unafraid. Even the bioluminescent plankton that once fled his presence now gathered near, circling him in slow, hypnotic spirals of light.
Aethros released a low, resonant rumble—not aggressive, not territorial. It was approval.
Zander opened his eyes, the golden light flickering in their depths. His gaze met Aethros's. For a long moment, neither moved. Two beings—one born of will, one born of instinct—studying the reflection of themselves in the other.
The telepathic whisper returned, faint but clearer, rough like gravel under thunder. Your scent has changed.
Zander almost chuckled, though his mouth never moved. Yours hasn't.
That earned a low, rumbling noise—something between amusement and curiosity.
Then silence again. The deep returned to its ancient rhythm.
Zander turned his gaze upward, toward the unreachable, nonexistent shimmer of the surface, miles above. The journey back would come soon. But for now, he remained where he was—suspended between the abyss and the heavens, his body renewed, his mind redefined, and his soul tempered.
He flexed his hands one final time, feeling the weight of his new strength settle into place. It wasn't wild. It wasn't unstable.
It was his.
The Force no longer pressed upon him from the outside. It flowed through him, breathed with him, lived as him.
When he finally willed himself to move, the water did not resist. It did not swirl or splash.
It parted.
And far above, in the quiet, moonlit dome of Nereis City, faint ripples broke the surface of an isolated training pool—soft, concentric waves expanding outward in perfect, impossible symmetry. A quiet sign that somewhere far below, in the crushing dark, a new master had been born.