I stepped through the whirlpool and the world changed.
In the cold, interminable darkness. Now I found myself in a chamber far too vast to be inside, and yet somehow it felt like a room. The air vibrated subtly, heavy with unseen energy, and the floor beneath my boots shimmered softly with light, like runes written in a language older than stars.
Before me floated three giant doors, each suspended an inch above the floor, humming a gentle vibration.
They had three colours in total: green,orange and red.
Each one was called out in gold above the archway, letters that flowed and curled like they breathed.
Names that felt like dungeons.
I didn't know what they were, but I felt it. These doors weren't decorative. They were doors of challenges.
Real ones.
To my left, a bookshelf floated, its metal and crystal frame twisting like vines of diseased metal and crystal. Books; some weighty, others unbelievable floated in and out of the shelves as if tended by invisible hands. Scrolls rotated slowly in the air, filled with symbols unknown to me.
There was a shelf at the front of it, of smooth, black wood and carvings representing celestial bodies and lunar cycles. On it, sat a solitary item:
An armband.
Silver and sleek and unadorned. But as I got closer, I sensed a hum of resonance as if it already carried my name.
Syrelle, always quiet, stood behind me. When I turned around, she motioned for me to halt with her hand.
She didn't say a word.
But a soft ring-like formation of light began to form in the space before her extended hand lines flowing, tightening, and unfolding like a living plan. A wondrous construction, delicate and perfect, silently and gesturally created.
Then it came alive.
A light pale, clean white washed over me like moonlight poured into my veins.
I inhaled sharply.
For the first time in years, I felt… whole.
The pain, the spiritual cracks I'd hidden even from myself were gone. As if someone had inserted their hands into my chest and fixed the shattered core I didn't even realize was shattered.
And then it arrived.
Something ignited inside me.
A small ball, deep down in the middle of my chest, not my heart, but somewhere deeper. My core.
It thumped once.
Again.
And I knew.
My soul had stirred.
I wasn't just Lucifer any longer.
I wasn't even just the assassin.
I was now… different.
"You have made your first energy core," Skirk finally said, her words crisp, layered, regal. "It is still fragile. But it is yours."
I gaped at her, I lost my words, stunned.
"You are now an Early Initiate Magus," she continued, letting her hand drop. "The first of many steps."
I knelt down, not from pain; there was no pain but from the suffocating weight of what I had within me.
Magic! Power and potential.
The chains were gone.
"You'll stay here a while," she said to me. "Watch the shelf. Master the basics. When you're done, choose a door. They all lead to a dungeon of some level. Green for beginners, orange for challengers, red for… the broken.This is the first level. After you ascend into the weaver realm the second level will unlock."
I swallowed hard. She wasn't joking.
"Do I return before the seasons change?" I asked.
She shook her head. "Time works differently here. One year in your world equals twenty years here. You can stay, train, learn, and develop; and return home before the years have passed."
I looked at the armband.
"Touch it. It is bound to you now. It will allow you to return here whenever you want though only you can enter."
I extended, shaking fingers, and grasped it up. The instant I pressed it to my wrist, a flash of silver pulsed against the flesh then vanished
Linked, sealed and mine.
"Why are you doing this for me?" I demanded. "What do you get out of it?"
"Because you're asking," she said, not looking back. "Because you need it."
Syrelle stepped away, already moving toward the emptiness at the room's far end. Her footsteps rang into an awful silence that seemed infinite.
"I don't rescue people for medals," she said to me. "I rescue those that are worth rescuing."
And then she ceased.
"And I don't repeat myself, Lucifer. Remember what I told you. I was the one who pulled you out of hopelessness. That is not negotiable."
I nodded barely. I didn't understand everything.
But I understood that she did not lie.
With one last flip of her wrist, her body seemed to quiver like smoke on the wind and vanished.
I was left alone
Countless doors before me.A library of lost knowledge behind me. And a core inside me burning softly like the start of a new dawn.
I clenched my fist.
"I'll begin here."