The humanoid monster staggered, clutching its chest. Its face twisted with desperation.
"No!" it howled, voice like grinding stone. "You cannot take what is mine!"
But the Stone had already chosen. Its light reached toward Adrian, abandoning the flesh that had housed it.
Adrian raised his hand. Threads of white-grey energy unspooled from his palm, coiling through the air like chains of light.
They pierced into the monster's chest, hooked around the glowing stone, and pulling it out.
The monster screamed. Its veins burst with light, its body convulsing, but the Stone obeyed the call.
It tore free and shot into Adrian's chest.
Adrian gasped. The world disappeared.
Inside him, he saw the Source he had always known, a vast cosmic river of endless light, flowing without end. But the moment the Stone touched it, the river trembled, collapsed inward, folding upon itself like stars imploding.
From infinite expanse to single point, it shrank… and shrank… until only a small, perfect seed hovered within him, pulsing with primordial light.
Adrian didn't understand what had happened. He didn't even know how he had invoked this form.
But he felt calm. And right now, calm or not, he wanted the monster dead.
The monster lunged, reaching for the Stone that was no longer its own. Adrian merely shifted, stepping through its blow as if inevitability itself bent around him.
Its arm was already severed before it realized he had moved.
It screamed, staggering back. "What are you?"
Adrian raised his palm skyward.
The Abyss itself cracked. The transparent domain around the abyss shattered like glass, and the real sky tore open.
From far away, the defenders at the outpost gasped, their eyes lifted skyward as they saw an impossible sight unfold. A colossal palm of pure white-grey mist formed in the heavens.
Commander Lyanna Frost stumbled backward from her observation deck. "Dear gods..."
And then it slammed downward.
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The humanoid shrieked, frozen in place. The gravity it had once commanded betrayed it, locking its body in invisible chains.
Its scream tore through the air as Adrian lowered his hand.
The palm descended.
Impact.
The blow annihilated half the Abyss. The earth split apart in chasms, spires toppled, fissures spewed mist like geysers.
Kael reacted instantly, blinking everyone to safety at the edge. From their refuge, they stared at the battlefield… and at Adrian.
There, Adrian stood alone, his Source form burning like an immortal flame.
Kael's throat tightened. This aura, this presence… it wasn't S-rank.
Not even close. This felt like standing before the Sentinel himself.
"No…" he realized with a chill. "Even Sentinel's aura has never felt like this."
At the outpost, every Defender who witnessed it collapsed to their knees, trembling. They would be written into history as the first to behold the birth of Adrian Blackwood's Source form.
...
Adrian looked down at himself. This form… it was too much.
He could feel it draining him, devouring his reserves faster than anything he'd ever experienced. Twenty seconds at best, that was all he could sustain.
As he willed the form to end, the Seed within him stirred. All of the Source energy pulled back, collapsing inward like a star dying in reverse.
His human form returned. From the outside, it looked as though glass fragments broke away piece by piece, shattering to reveal flesh and bone beneath.
He stood human once more, but everything had changed. He pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the strange new weight there.
In that form, He hadn't even felt human in those moments. Not alive. Not mortal. He had felt blank, like he was the source itself.
The thought chilled him, even as it thrilled him.
Inside him, the Source no longer stretched as a cosmic river, but curled into an impossible seed.
Now it was compressed, absolute, hidden in that single point.
He didn't have much time to think about this now. He blinked back to the others, his first thought not of power, but his mother.
Elara lay pale but breathing. His hands moved instinctively, casting Breath of Life. Emerald smoke flowed across the group, spilling into lungs and veins.
This time it was different. Powered by his liquefied mana for the first time, the smoke healed faster, deeper, stronger than ever before.
Elara's wound sealed in an instant. Scars vanished completely. Everyone's bodies rejuvenated, youth restored, exhaustion purged, strength renewed.
Thomas embraced Elara tightly, both of them shaking with relief. "I thought I'd lost you," he whispered against her hair.
"You can't get rid of me that easily," Elara managed, her voice still weak but warming with humor.
Ironwood stepped forward, eyes wide with something between awe and fear. "That form… what was that?"
Adrian shook his head, his voice quiet and uncertain. "I don't know." It was the truth, and that bothered him more than he'd admit.
Kael stepped closer, his usual composure cracked. His eyes burned with something no one had ever seen in him before, reverence.
Even stripped of that form, Adrian's mere presence pressed against them like gravity itself. The air felt heavier around him.
Before, if Adrian was second to Sentinel, this moment felt like he was an equal to the Sentinel himself. The realization hit them all at once.
Kael went down on one knee. The strongest S-rank defender bowed his head, not in duty or politeness, but in reverence.
"Your presence is not merely of an S-rank," Kael said, his voice carrying like judgment across the broken landscape. "You stand equal to Lord Sentinel himself."
Thomas and Ironwood stiffened, the words hitting them. Neither moved to contradict Kael's assessment.
Elara covered her mouth, eyes trembling with tears of pride and terror. Her son had become something beyond her understanding.