The hall had fallen silent.
And then… Jaswant's turn came.
He stepped forward — unaware that the eyes of Aram, Mira, Ramona, Kian, and Asher all turned to him.
The air around him already felt different — denser, like a storm waiting for its cue.
His fingers brushed the Obelisk.
The runes flickered, glitched, and then — every color burst at once.
Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Light, Shadow, Sound, Blood, Time, Void — all elements resonated together.
The Obelisk screamed.
The entire floor cracked open with a radiant blue flame that defied all known logic.
"Impossible…" whispered Kael.
"No mortal can harmonize every resonance."
But Jaswant did not pull away.
The pendant on his neck shattered, the light spiraling upward like a divine flare.
The Obelisk split from crown to base, releasing a pulse that rippled across the entire city.
Outside, clouds spun violently above the hall — forming a symbol no one could read, but everyone felt.
"Element: Unidentified."
"Classification: Undefined."
"Designation: Undefined."
The flame hovered above his chest — blue, gold, and white — alive, sentient, whispering in a language older than creation.
Selene's eyes widened. Mira clutched her ears as her Sound Element resonated with it.
Kian, the Void wielder, whispered to himself, "That energy… it's older than the Void."
And in that moment, as Jaswant collapsed, the entire Obelisk shattered into light — a thousand shards floating midair before fading into nothing.
Silence followed.
And destiny began to stir once more.
---
The following day, the city buzzed with rumors.
The "boy who broke the Obelisk" became a whispered legend overnight.
Yet inside the Hall of Resonance, the atmosphere was tense.
Council members gathered around the fragments of the destroyed crystal, their faces grim.
"The Obelisk showed signs of damage even before his turn," said Arch-Seer Varel.
"The rare awakenings — Blood, Void and Time Manuplation elements — already strained its core."
"When the next candidate touched it, it simply… collapsed."
Kael remained silent, arms folded, eyes fixed on the fractured remnants.
"So you're saying the readings — the multi-element surge, the light, the voice — were all… errors?" asked one of the investigators.
"Glitches," another confirmed. "Reflections of unstable resonance fields.
The system confused them for elemental responses."
The report concluded:
"Cadet Jaswant's awakening was a false manifestation caused by Obelisk malfunction.
True element: unmanifested."
---
Kael refused to leave it at that.
Later...
He summoned Jaswant privately to a smaller chamber — the Secondary Resonance Hall, where a smaller crystal waited in pristine condition.
"Let's try again," Kael said softly.
Jaswant hesitated, still shaken. "What if it happens again?"
"Then we'll know it's real." Kael said calmly.
He reached out.
The crystal pulsed once… then went still. No light. No sound. No reaction.
The silence felt heavier than failure.
From outside the hall, whispers echoed from the trainees watching Jaswant's awakening on a large screen.
"He's… unawakened."
"How can someone show all elements one day and none the next?"
"Maybe the Obelisk wasn't the only thing broken."
Kael's jaw tightened. "That's enough. End the session."
---
As Jaswant lowered his trembling hand and turned away, something faint shimmered at his fingertips — a speck of green light, pulsing like a heartbeat.
It blinked once… twice… then vanished.
No one noticed. No one, except Kael.
He stared at the resonance monitor — a single, faint reading appeared at the bottom corner of the display.
Detected Element: Wood type (Unstable Trace)
Power Output: 0.000001%
Kael's eyes narrowed.
He replayed the data, zoomed in on the waveform — and there it was, hidden beneath the Wood resonance, a spectral echo that did not belong to any known element.
Something older.
Something alive.
"That wasn't Wood," Kael murmured to himself.
"That was… something trying to hide."
---
Outside the hall, Jaswant walked alone beneath the storm-darkened sky, feeling hollow and unseen.
He thought he had lost everything — his chance, his pride, his purpose.
Overnight, Jaswant had become the talk of all Lincoln City —
not as a hero, not as an Awakener, but as an Unawakener —
the boy who had done the impossible: split the sacred Obelisk in two during his first awakening,
and yet, in the second attempt, failed to awaken even a single element.
By midday, the news had spread like wildfire.
Everyone now knew the name Jaswant — the Unawakener of the century.
Even those who had never seen his face spoke his name as if it were carved into their memory.
Whenever he walked down the street, whispers followed him like shadows.
"Isn't that the Unawakener… Jaswant? The one who couldn't awaken any element?"
"Poor boy. Who knows what kind of future awaits him now?"
"Such a cruel fate — his life fell apart before it even began."
Hearing those murmurs, Jaswant could only stare ahead, stunned.
He never imagined his failure would spread so quickly,
or that people would wear his shame like gossip on their lips.
But now, he no longer wished to explain or defend himself.
Believing the lie was easier than carrying the unbearable weight of truth.
By evening, when he reached home, his mother, Revati, was waiting at the door.
Her face was lined with worry, her eyes searching for hope in his.
But Jaswant couldn't meet her gaze. He simply walked past her in silence.
Revati wanted to stop him — to say something, anything —
but his broken expression silenced her.
And as Jaswant lowered his eyes, lost in despair,
tears quietly welled up in Revati's eyes too.
The entire house was wrapped in tension that day.
Revati and Jaswant's father hadn't eaten properly, both weighed down by worry and disappointment.
But across the table, Mandira and Vihan seemed to be celebrating.
It was as if they were happier about Jaswant's failure than about Vihan's awakening itself.
Mandira was so overjoyed by her son's success that she didn't even bother to offer Jaswant a shred of false sympathy.
Mother and son sat at the dining table, cheerfully enjoying their favorite dishes — their laughter echoing through the silence of the house.
Meanwhile, Jaswant and his parents hadn't stepped out of their room all evening.
Mandira didn't try to call them out, nor did she make any effort to comfort them.
She ignored their absence completely, as if nothing had happened, and busied herself attending to Vihan — the pride of the household that night.
For the next two days, the atmosphere in the house remained heavy and tense.
But slowly, things began to return to their usual rhythm — at least on the surface.
Jaswant, however, still barely left his room.
He would come out only once a day — long after everyone had gone to sleep.
But his mother, Revati, would always stay awake, waiting for him in the quiet of the night.
The moment he stepped out, she would wrap him in a gentle embrace and feed him with her own hands, her eyes filled with silent love and worry.
Jaswant tried to keep his distance, to avoid her tenderness —
but in the end, her love always broke through his walls,
and he could do nothing but surrender to it.
Meanwhile, away from Jaswant's silence, the other candidates across Lincoln City were growing stronger with their awakened elements.
At the Kael Estate — Orry Kael was training hard to control his Lightning Element.
Bolts of electricity danced wildly around him as he tried to focus. But the moment his concentration wavered, chaos followed.
A sudden crack of thunder echoed through the hall as lightning exploded outward, tearing through everything nearby. Dust and debris filled the air, as if a storm had been born inside the training ground itself.
The deafening sound jolted Mr. Morgan Kael awake from his sleep. He stepped out, drawn by the familiar hum of energy — but strangely, his thoughts went not to his son, but to Jaswant.
Watching Orry train from the balcony, he murmured under his breath, almost unknowingly —
"Jaswant… what are you really?
The more I try to understand you, the more ordinary you seem —
and yet, no one that ordinary should feel so extraordinary.
Your power may not have revealed itself… but I know it's there, hidden from us all.
And I, Morgan Kael, will uncover the truth behind it."
With that, he turned his gaze back to Orry's training.
Just then, Orry unleashed a lightning strike toward a wooden dummy standing in front of him.
But before the bolt could land, the lightning twisted wildly, losing control —
and in a flash, it turned back toward him.
For a moment, fear froze him in place.
He saw the strike racing toward him, faster than he could react —
but before it could hit, another bolt of lightning shot in from the corner, intercepting it midair and neutralizing the attack.
Orry stumbled back, his heart pounding, relief washing over him.
He took a deep breath, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
But Mr. Morgan, standing nearby, wasn't impressed.
His sharp eyes had caught every mistake.
He stepped forward, his voice calm but firm, pointing out each flaw in Orry's movements.
"Two days of training," he said, "and your strikes still lack precision.
You rely too much on raw power — not enough on control."
Hearing that, Orry's face fell. His confidence drained away.
He muttered under his breath, frustration burning in his chest —
"God… two whole days of training, and still so many mistakes.
How did I not notice them before?"
And as thunder rumbled faintly outside, Orry clenched his fists in determination.