When the ceremony began, Azriel stepped into the circle prepared for him just like every other child. Yet, unlike the rest, his circle shone with a stark, mesmerizing brilliance. While the other children had been given inferior mana cores, his bore the unmistakable pulse of an S-rank core raw, steady, and dangerously abundant. The higher the rank, the greater the chance of success; for the son of the Patriarch, no expense could be spared.
The other children required hunters to guide the first threads of mana into their bodies, to teach them how to breathe it, circulate it, survive it. Azriel lowered himself to the ground, crossing his legs within the sigils, palms resting on the glowing runes. No hunter stepped forward. None dared.
All eyes elders, hunters, aspirants, and the distant, glacial gaze of Edward Stark fixed on a single figure.
Azriel Stark.
He closed his eyes. Crimson vanished beneath his lids, and the hall seemed to hold its breath. He began to draw mana with a surgeon's precision, threading it inward, circling and folding it upon itself with the ease of a master. He didn't absorb mana; he commanded it his SSS-rank technique honed by years of practice no child should possess.
Then it happened.
A pressure descended—heavy, vertiginous, wrong. It did not come from Edward. It poured from Azriel himself. Veterans stiffened; children whimpered; the air thickened until lungs rebelled.
Azriel remained calm. He had endured worse.
And then his breath caught.
A sting of heat lanced behind his eyes; blood welled at the corners and slipped down his cheeks in thin, bright lines. Within the darkness of his closed lids, his irises convulsed blossoming into a tri-black pattern, three interlocking sigils etched in void, turning once like a slow, inexorable gear. He did not see it. No one did. But the hall felt it—something vast rolling over reality's skin.
A voice not loud, but inevitable thundered in his mind, as if the cosmos itself leaned close to whisper:
"You amuse me, mortal. From this moment on, you will not wield mana. You will wield… Chaos."
The words branded themselves into his soul. His veins burned; blood now slipped from his ears; his bones hummed as if struck by a tuning fork the size of a world. The pressure swelled—immense, ancient, predatory—then vanished so completely the silence rang.
The hall gasped as one. Hunters wiped sweat from their brows. The Patriarch's eyes narrowed a fraction.
Azriel opened his eyes.
For a single blink, the same tri-black sigil ghosted across his crimson irises ink in water, there and gone. If anyone saw, they mistook it for trick light. Azriel himself felt only the echo of a lock turning far below the floors of his being.
He rose without a word and turned away from the circle.
"Azriel."
He stopped.
High on the throne, Edward Stark regarded him through a wreath of smoke, blue eyes as clear and pitiless as glacial glass. "Meet me in the council room. One hour."
Azriel inclined his head once. He left the hall. His maid fell into step, guiding him through shadowed corridors back to his chambers.
There, in the hush, the world felt smaller. The new thing in him did not. Chaos coiled like a patient storm, older than mana, older than prayer, older than the names men give to fear.
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Azriel sat silently in his chamber, the heavy curtains drawn, the world outside muffled into nothing. His crimson eyes reflected the flicker of a lone candle, but his thoughts were far from the flame.
Every child of this world awakened a system during their ceremony. A gift and a curse from fate itself. It was said—no one truly fails. Even the weakest awakened with some fragment of mana, some path to walk. The only ones who "failed" were those abandoned by destiny itself. And failure meant death.
For centuries, this had been the law of the world. Mana is the foundation of existence. Without it, a human could not survive. But as Azriel stretched out his hand and called forth his system, he already knew—his existence was no longer bound by mana.
The reason was simple.
His body rejected mana.
No—more terrifying than that, it purified it. Every drop of mana that dared enter him was consumed, broken apart, and reborn as something far more sinister. Something few even believed existed.
Chaos.
He had seen it before—long ago, in a memory that wasn't supposed to exist. In the final war against the Demon King, when his own life had been torn away, Chaos had touched him. Back then, it was fleeting, a wound, a scar left behind. But now, it was his very essence. Even his core… was not mana, but Chaos.
Azriel closed his eyes and whispered, "System."
And before him, faint letters of light unfolded into the air:
---
[Status Screen]
Name: Azriel Stark
Age: 14
Rank: E
Core: Chaos
Attributes
Strength: 20
Agility: 15
Intelligence: ???
Chaos Energy: 10
Special Ability: [Sanreon]
Locked…
Locked…
Locked…
Available Ability:
Trace – Slows down the world for the user. Everything moves as if in slow motion.
Cost: 2 Chaos per minute.