The summer sun burned above the city park and the cathedral's spires. Luxury cars lined the curb. Inside, stained glass threw clean colours over polished grey stone. Roses and lilies filled the air with sweetness.
Inside rows and rows of guests, sitting, patiently waiting for the start of the ceremony. The kind of people who signed checks that moved countries, humbly sat and looked towards the altar.
Charles Vanlies stood there, palms a little damp, heart light. He watched the doors, trying to catch the moment they open with grandeur.
A second later, there she was, his bride, moving in silk and lace, veiled, accompanied by her father, both entering the cathedral and passing the crowd. Finally surrounded by gazes, the father, whose face creased with pride and time, calmly nodded towards Charles and took his seat.
Charles lifted the veil, his heart skipping a beat, the smile he'd fallen for right there. Her father walked beside her, face creased with pride and time.
"How beautiful," someone whispered.
Charles glanced over the crowd - friends, business partners, rivals pretending to be happy. He felt the weight of all those eyes and, oddly, a small sting in his chest.
Why am I uneasy?
The priest lifted his book. "Bride, groom, you may say your vows."
The oak doors groaned open once again.
A man walked in.
"Thomas?" Charles blurted before he could stop himself.
Thomas looked wrong. Clothes torn. Skin pale. Eyes fever - bright. He moved fast, jaw clenched, gaze locked on Charles.
"Thomas, what…" Charles started at the same time looking for his security.
Thomas reached the front, hands shaking, scanning faces as if confirming something. His lips trembled. When he spoke, the words barely made it out. "I'm sorry, Charles. They've got my family. I had no choice."
Before the first gasp traveled the room, he ripped open his jacket. Wires. Blocks. A vest.
The cathedral inhaled as one.
"No!" Charles lunged, but Thomas was already moving. Thumb. Switch.
White light devoured everything. A howl of force tore the room apart. Stone, glass, wood - gone. Pain, an unimaginable agony, flared, then vanished.
Silence.
-
Dark. Not sleep - just no edges, no body, no time. Charles drifted. Thoughts came and went like faint lights under deep water.
Faces. Laughter at a rehearsal dinner. The trembling hand that had slipped into his last night and squeezed. The father's proud smile.
Thomas's eyes. "I had no choice."
Then even those sank away. Hours, days, years - meaningless. A flicker grew in the distance. A thin blue thread in endless black.
He reached - or thought he did. The thread pulled him.
He slipped through something like a veil and stepped - without legs - into a place that wasn't a place. Space gleamed in colors that didn't belong to any one sky. There was no up or down, but he found he could stand on light itself. His form was smoke held together by will.
"What is this?" he tried to say. No sound. Still, his thought echoed.
A star zipped past. On impulse, he grabbed it.
A memory - no, a concept - unfolded in his mind.
Sword Talent (White): Basic affinity and comprehension for sword arts.
"Swordsmanship?" His pulse - if he had one - spiked. He looked around. Stars drifted everywhere: white most of all, then blue, green, purple, orange, red, and rarely, gold. Seven hues. Seven grades.
He chased them, catching orbs, tasting knowledge each time - fire, frost, movement, memory, muscle, spell-craft, numbers. He wasn't breathing but he felt breathless.
A single star burned like the sun in his palm: Mythic Immortal Root (Gold). A body and mind for cultivation beyond compare. Swift comprehension, keen qi sense, irresistible progress.
A chill ran through him. "This… this is a path to a different world."
Immortals. Beasts. Magic. Gods. Power deciding law.
"If there's another life… let it be there," Charles thought, his mind still fresh with memories of what the people had done to him. The betrayal, the agony, the loss of his future wife...
He experimented. He pressed two white Sword orbs together. They resisted. He pushed - not with muscles, but with something inside, a pressure of thought. Sweat that didn't exist beaded on a brow he didn't have.
The orbs fused.
Still white, but denser.
"More."
He added a third. One long grind of will later, the orb shifted - blue now. A clean step upward, he assumed.
He grinned. He tried a new approach: creation. He pictured a saber, weight and arc, the edge's hunger. He held the vision until it shook. Failure. Again. Again. Thousand times, ten thousand more. On the twenty three thousand - and - something try, a thin light clicked together in his hands.
Saber Talent (White).
"Finally."
He kept going. Create, combine, rest when his thoughts weakened, then create more. White stars spilled from his hands. Some turned blue. A few - after stubborn, exhausting merges - climbed higher. He worked without hunger, without sleep, only the grind of mental spirit and the satisfaction when something clicked.
"Gold isn't the ceiling," he muttered. "There has to be something beyond."
The realm answered as if to confirm his theory.
A sound like a blade cutting wind. He looked up.
A rainbow comet crossed the void - not seven colours side by side, but one living spectrum, blending and separating. It breathed power. It didn't veer. It didn't slow.
His body moved before his mind. He shot after it, grabbed with both hands.
Nothing. His grip slid from light.
"I don't believe I can't catch you."
He threw everything he had at it - will, stubbornness, the part of him that had clawed his way up from a childhood where nobody held doors open. The rainbow burned through his palms into the core of him. Pain - real, blinding. He held on.
"Stop."
The star stuttered.
"Stop!"
It slowed. Slowed more. He dragged it, inch by inch, until it hung still in his palm. Colours coiled and uncoiled within it. He reached with his mind.
The name slammed into him.
Weaver of Fate (Rainbow).
Perception of destiny's threads. The ability to touch them. To braid, to cut, to re - route. Limited by vision, by cost, by the pushback of the world.
Knowledge flooded him, a tidal wave. He choked on it and laughed anyway. "Fate and destiny… worthy of the rainbow."
"Can I fuse…" An idea popped up in his head.
The orb shot into his chest and vanished. The rainbow bled through his smoke - form in faint veins, then settled.
"So that's the rule," he realised. "I can store talents here. Fuse later, when I have a real body."
He looked out over the star sea. It unfolded forever.
"Then I'll be ready," Not yet sure for what.
He worked. Time meant nothing, so he used it all. He learned to tease specific concepts from the drift. To birth talents by holding an idea - and paying the mental cost. Movement. Memory. Calculation. Constitution. Elements. Weapon paths. He tried to find another rainbow and failed, but he didn't stop looking.
Somewhere in that endless work, something touched back. A faint pressure brushed the edge of his awareness, like a hand feeling for him in a crowd.
He froze. Listened.
The pressure returned - insistent now. A pull that wasn't from this realm. Like a hook in the thread that still bound him to… somewhere else.
A voice - not words, but intent - blew through him like a mountain wind.
Come.
He glanced at the stored lights within him, at the rainbow pulse deep in his core. He set his will. "Let's check it out and see..."
The star sea bent. The pull became a current. He let it take him.
And the light - blue and gold and all the colours between - rushed up to meet him.