In the familiar, dimly lit room that radiated comfort, luxury, and warmth—everything a normal person might desire—a fifteen-year-old boy sat alone on a chaise longue armchair, his semi-long, regal black hair dripping water onto his bare shoulders. His double-pleated black pants clung to his skin, soaked through from the ice bath he had just left behind. His already pale skin, turning colorless from the blood loss and exhaustion, his skin slick with droplets, bore a map of old scars and fresh black-and-blue bruises.
His handsome face remained stoic, betraying no pain, only the stillness of someone lost in thought, a faint contemplative frown etched into his features.
"How… did I do it?"
The words slipped out, calm.
Thalen felt today's fight was different; he was able to stand his ground against Marcus, who was enhancing his body with his wind elemental power.
Thalen knew Marcus hadn't used half of his full power, but still, it was a fight that felt rewarding.
He was able to see the intent behind Marcus's attacks and react before they even came at him. More importantly, the peace he hadn't felt in years hit him calmly and steadily, rapturing him whole.
However, he was a little frustrated because he didn't know how he was able to see the intent.
It felt like he was entranced in a trance-like state and could sense Marcus's movements before they even began.
During the fight, his mind was in a jumble, and he was only able to stand because of the clarity he had gained from his outburst. Standing alone, however, ate away at his mental power, as the strain on him was enormous.
So he failed in understanding how he had done it,
He forced himself to relive the fight. A bloody, brutal clash.
Thalen's wet hair fell across his pale face like the strands of a worn-out addict. Through them, hazel eyes flecked with green, his quiet eyes carrying a stubborn weight.
The fire that he had lost triggered again and was raging to rise once more, to go into that trance-like state.
But he had failed…, failed to grasp anything.
Exhaustion soured up, and his thoughts slipped away.
His breaths came shallow, ragged, his heartbeat faltering with each pulse. What little color remained in his face drained, leaving him pale as a corpse. Then, silence—his chest stilled, his hazel eyes dulled, and the last thread of life is about to snap, but then…
A shimmer stirred out of his broken body, and a silver, translucent barrier arced into existence around him.
Light erupted from him, blackish-green, pulsing with hues of multiple colors, the light wrapping him in a cocoon. His chest jerked. Air rushed into his lungs. Breath returned, slow and rhythmic.
His heartbeat thundered again, no longer weak but resurgent, pulsing with vitality.
The light did not stop at restoring his breath. It poured through his wounds, stitching flesh, sealing cuts, and forcing bones back into place. His mangled face smoothed, features realigning as though sculpted anew.
The radiance swelled.
Then came….
agony,
GHASTLY AGONY,
Thalen's hair withered and fell away. Nails crumbled into dust. His blood boiling, his flesh, his bones twisting until they snap, skin tearing, flesh rending apart as though unmade by unseen hands.
Thalen wanted to scream, his mind unable to process the horrific pain; he couldn't hear or see, from the loss of his senses, but the intensity of anguish and despair hit him without missing a beat.
He is overwhelmed, he is suffocating in torment that feels endless.
His body, tearing, breaking, and burning into nothingness.
Thalen's mouth contorted, a strangled cry ripping from him.
His consciousness threatened to slip away to nothingness, but the strange and surreal light held his consciousness firmly.
The clarity that slipped away from him because of the horrifying intensity of anguish returned, and clarity now struck him like a curse. Every nerve blazed, every fiber screamed.
He pleaded, begged, roared for the torment to end.
"Ahhhhhh!"
The barrier contained his agony. To any who might see this, Thalen would only seem like a boy resting in peaceful slumber, his chest rising as though untouched by pain.
No eye could pierce the silver veil, and no sense could grasp the storm inside. Even the wild energy surging within—force enough to chill the air, all over the world, was smothered, hidden away.
Within the barrier,
Screams filled the whole until Thalen's body utterly shattered, completely disintegrated, and only two bizarre essences remained.
One was the source of the strange light, blackish-green, pulsing with hues of multiple colors, and the other was colorless.
The strange, colored essence radiated pureness and a godly presence, each color of the essence radiating something different, but they all contained pure forms of the divine.
While the colorless essence radiated a sense of presence and being, but in front of the godly presence, it was pitifully weak,
It was Thalen's soul; Thalen was nothing more than a regular mortal, and his soul is utterly negligible and insignificant in front of the godly presence filled with multiple forms divine.
Usually, being in the presence of such a divine presence should have been enough to make Thalen's soul vanish into nothingness, but for some strange reason, the divine presence floating around his soul softly,
His soul is connected to the divine presence by a tentacle-like existence.
As seconds passed, bits of his soul were crumbling away.
From the tentacle, a blackish green form of divinity softly seeped into his soul, restoring what it had lost.
Seconds passed, and more tentacles shot out from the divine presence.
Each tentacle poured a distinct hue of divinity into his soul, every color a different divine form.
The divine pulses seeped softly into Thalen's soul, but his essence recoiled—unyielding to anything foreign, even divinity itself. His soul pushed back against the gentle tide, yet the tentacles bound him with a grip that was tender but inescapable.
Then came the storm.
A multitude of colors clashed violently within him, and only the blackish-green stood as a fragile fulcrum of harmony. But the dark red and dark blue flared with insatiable hunger, surging to seize his soul for their own.
The collision of divinities erupted, engendering waves of force that hammered against the silver barrier encasing him. It shuddered, trembling under the onslaught, yet held fast—unyielding, concealing this surreal upheaval from every soul and even the world itself.
Inside his soul, colors writhed like living flames. The dark red and dark blue surged forward, devouring every other shade. Even the blackish green, pulsing faintly at the center, trembled under their hunger. Then, as the two lunged to smother it, the blackish green flared—blinding, radiant, unstoppable. Like a heartbeat bursting outward, it dragged the stolen hues back into being, forcing them from the grip of red and blue. The two devourers flickered, their brilliance faltering, as if on the verge of collapse—yet they endured, dim but unyielding.
The struggle raged on, endless and consuming.
And then—harmony.
The pulses of divinity sank into him, drawn deeper and deeper. Then His soul stirred…
Ignited—shimmering, alive, a shifting tapestry of countless hues, each color weaving into the next like an eternal dawn.
And then—his body began to form.
Shards of light gathered, weaving bone and sinew, sculpting flesh anew. The colors flared violently, each shade burning with radiant intensity. The blackish green color pulsed harder than ever, binding the chaos into order, shaping the formless into form.
Piece by piece, a body emerged.
When the process neared completion, the colors blazed one last time. For an instant, Thalen looked like a divine statue, carved in perfection—skin flawless, form radiant, every line of him touched by otherworldly grace. His very presence seemed sanctified, as though he were a vessel of heaven itself.
Then, as suddenly as they had come, the colors receded. They sank deep within, vanishing into his soul.
Thalen's soul returned to its normal colorless state.
After the brutal struggle, no mortal could survive. What remained was not a broken boy, but a youth reborn. His body was untouched, whole, unscarred—flesh soft, blood vibrant, features strikingly handsome. A mortal shell, and yet… something beyond mortal slumbered within.