GREY'S POINT OF VIEW:
I was inside a white room, somewhat like a mental asylum, pacing around. I have been like this for about an hour and a half. Waiting for the fateful moment I dreaded the most.
The moment my life would change for better or for worse.
Eventually, I chose a corner and sat down, resting my back on the walls, my legs crossed. Pulling out a family portrait from the pocket of my Lock Academy uniform, I looked at it, regret filling my heart.
The family in the portrait consisted of five members: a father, a mother, and three siblings.
The father had unnatural jade-green eyes, making it hard to look away from them, and pale blond hair. The mother had hair similar to her husband's, but unlike his unnatural jade eyes, she had regular blue ones. The youngest of the siblings, the daughter, was eleven years old at the time the picture was taken. She had pale blond hair and inherited her mother's blue eyes.
The other two siblings were both male, and both were thirteen years old at the time. One was me, the other my twin brother. We both had jet-black hair, unlike the mother or the father. I had grey eyes. My twin had black ones.
It was obvious that we were adopted.
This family portrait was taken two years ago. One year before my twin brother disappeared, taken by the Akashic Records on the day of our birthday. Today was that day, the ninth of June, the day of the Mass Teleportation.
[Chosen!] A slightly robotic female voice echoed in the white room. [Today, the ninth of June, all your lives will change. For better or for worse.] the voice said.
I didn't look up from the portrait. The voice continued.
[Your mission is to return back to civilization alive. Well, if you want to die, that's an option too. For returning, we provided you with trophies stored in the black and golden ring. You can turn them into trophies with ether.]
I looked at the black ring I wore on my right thumb. It was etched with gold, like a serpentine dragon wrapped around it.
[You are also provided with enough food and water to last a year or so. Well then, come back alive.]
With that, the room was silent again.
Time passed like a blur, and suddenly I was staring into a rift in the fabric of reality. Before I could observe it, it swallowed me whole, and my vision was drowned in darkness.
***
Darkness.
Complete, utter darkness.
I was floating, drowning in a sea of reflectionless absence of anything.
It was peaceful. I felt like I was both infinite and insignificant at the same time. I was a tiny cell in a vast universe. Still, nothing existed apart from me.
Time passed. I didn't know if it was a mere moment or a millennium. But the vast absence was drowned in golden light. Only for the light to be swolled by a vast veil of mist, the color of various shades of grey, veiling me from the light, like a protective mother.
In the vast veil of mist, a white sun, glowing grey runes etched, with careful deliberation over the white sun.
I felt attracted to the white sun and floated up to it, swimming through the vast veil of grey mist. Until I reached the white sun. Hovering in front of the grey runes. Extending my hand, I gently caressed the grey runes, my fingers tracing them.
Instantly, I regained myself, and agony erupted, coursing through my body like a swarm of fire ants. The pain was especially agonizing along my spine and the back of my neck. I fell to my knees, the pain becoming unbearable. It felt as if someone was etching runes along my spine.
Which was kind of true since the pain I felt was from the art runes, the same runes on the white sun were being etched along my spine.
I let out a primal agonized scream that echoed through the mist.
At the same time, knowledge flooded my mind. Unclear but undeniably there.
Finally, the pain was gone.
[Chosen Grey! Welcome to the Akashic Records.]
[The Seal of Art has been broken.]
Just like that, the mist dissolved, and the world was filled with color.
I was kneeling on cold, white, clean snow, trying to process the information that flooded my mind when the runes were being etched along my spine. The information was unclear from the pain, but once the pain subsided, it became as clear as day. Almost as if I knew it since my birth.
Well, all was clear except for two things. An attribute, and the flaw.
Once the seal of art was broken, I awakened one art ability and two innate abilities. The innate ability was that if I'm standing in mist, my body would be augmented and made stronger, and the same goes for my weapons. This ability, I came up with a name for, pretty quickly and decided on [Mist Clad].
The other innate ability was also easy to name: [Mist sense] because it allowed me to sense any actions through clouds of mist.
Pretty useless, since there weren't that many places you would find mist that would be able to find clouds of mist. But paired with the art ability, they could be very useful. Since my art ability allowed me to summon a cloud of mist.
Something that urked me, though, was the mist itself. The mist was described in the art description as Nothing. To be exact, the art description was along the lines of: You are a creature born from Nothing, the origin of Everything.
'How could Nothing be the origin of something?'