Darkness trembled.
Then, from the deep silence, a voice spoke — ancient, patient, and vast enough to fill worlds.
[Aspirant. The trial is complete.]
The void surrounding Jayden rippled like ink disturbed by a breath. He floated weightless in a sea of silver-blue runes. Each glimmered faintly, humming in rhythm with his heartbeat. For a moment, he didn't dare to move. The water realm — the endless pressure, the fear, the leviathan's eye — had vanished. Now there was only the Codex.
[Performance: Excellent. You faced annihilation and chose defiance. The current yields to will, and yours did not break.]
[You have conquered your elemental trial. Status: Unlocked.]
Light pierced him.
He gasped as warmth and pressure surged through every vein, flooding his limbs like molten metal. His bones sang; his blood became a chorus of currents. Symbols wove across his skin — blue fractal runes that crawled up his arms and into his eyes.
He saw them — the patterns — reflecting in the dark sea below him: a wheel of shifting sigils forming inside his irises, each turning with liquid grace. Water. Lightning. Flame. Stone. The sigils rotated, merging, reshaping. His vision expanded until he could see the flow of the elements around him — the rhythm of existence itself.
[Compatibility achieved. Your essence has been rewritten by the Eye of Creation.]*
[Body, mind, and soul — restructured for total elemental harmony.]
Jayden screamed. His body arched as energy tore through him. Muscles condensed, bones hardened, his senses sharpened until he could hear his own heartbeat like thunder. The pain was endless, yet alive — not destruction, but transformation. When it ended, he knelt in the glow, trembling, reborn.
A final line of runes spiraled into being before him.
[Awarding Relic: Moonshine Blade.]
[Twin short blades, born of lunar tides. Adaptive resonance to elemental flow confirmed.]
Two crescent-shaped blades drifted down through the light, their edges humming with gentle, watery glow. Jayden caught them instinctively, and they fit his hands as though they'd been waiting for him since the dawn of time.
Then the voice deepened, almost reverent.
[Legacy granted: The Eye of Creation — a fragment of the Lost Primordial.]
[Only those with unwavering will in the face of overwhelming danger, who suffer and endure may bear its sight. You have been weighed and not found wanting.]
The light around him fractured into waves.
He fell.
---
He landed in the ruins of his home. The storm was still raging — though weaker now, its fury fading as if the heavens themselves had witnessed his rebirth and grown wary. His clothes clung to his skin, steaming faintly from residual energy.
Lightning tore open the night once more. The man with the twin-bolt sigil stood upon the shattered dock, smirking as if nothing had changed.
"Still alive?" the man said, his voice cruelly amused. "Should've stayed under, rat."
Jayden rose slowly. Water slid from his shoulders and coiled at his feet like obedient serpents. The patterns in his eyes ignited — the glow of the Eye of Creation painting the storm in eerie sapphire hues.
"Try again," he whispered.
The lightning user sneered and raised his arm. Bolts exploded outward — crackling spears of white-blue fury that split the air. Jayden's body moved before thought; the world slowed to the rhythm of flowing water. Each motion felt guided by an ancient instinct. He twisted, sidestepped, the current of energy parting just before it struck.
Then he lunged. The Moonshine Blades flashed, arcs of mirrored light slashing through the rain. One met lightning head-on — and sang. The storm dimmed. Sparks scattered like falling stars.
The man staggered back, disbelief crossing his face.
"What—what are you?"
Jayden's expression was cold, distant, eyes glowing like the heart of a storm. "A survivor."
He turned the blades once more, and the rain obeyed him — forming a spiraling wave that flung the man into the canal. Electricity met water; the explosion ripped through the air, shattering the remnants of the shack.
Silence followed.
Only the rain fell.
Jayden stood amid the wreckage, chest heaving. For the first time, he didn't feel small. The currents around him whispered, recognizing him as one of their own. He looked up at the broken sky — lightning flashing far, far away — and let out a shaky breath.
[Codex Update: Status — Unlocked. Rank — brute.]
[Elemental Synergy — Achieved.]
The runes shimmered faintly before fading into the air.
Jayden tightened his grip on the twin blades. Beneath the stormlight, his eyes glowed brighter — not as a gift of destiny, but as proof of what suffering could forge.
He had survived.
And survival, for him, was only the beginning.