Then the light hugged him.
Not from outside the barrier but through it, inward, into Ren's body, rays moving against the direction of everything that had been attacking him.
More potent than anything Orion had managed to extract from the white crystal across the entire time he had possessed it, even using seven corrupted crystals as the base of the extraction.
Not because there was more energy available now.
Because the person using it had a relationship with what was inside that crystal that Orion had never had and that no level of technical mastery would have replicated.
The essence responded differently to different hands.
It had always responded differently to different hands. Orion had possessed it the way a person possesses a door key they found on the ground and never understood belonged to someone specific.
A trait his black crystal never had…
Ren felt both energies turning in the vortex he had been accumulating.
