The summer sun burned above the city park and the cathedral's spires. Luxury cars lined the curb. Inside, stained glass threw clean colours over polished grey stone. Roses and lilies filled the air with sweetness.
Inside, rows and rows of guests sat patiently, waiting for the start of the ceremony. The kind of people who signed checks that moved countries, humbly sat and looked towards the altar.
Charles Vanlies stood there, palms a little damp, heart light. He watched the doors, trying to catch the moment they open with grandeur.
A second later, there she was, his bride, moving in silk and lace, veiled, accompanied by her father, both entering the cathedral and passing the crowd.
Finally surrounded by gazes, the father, whose face creased with pride and time, calmly nodded towards Charles and took his seat.
Charles lifted the veil, his heart skipping a beat, the smile he'd fallen for right there.
"How beautiful," someone whispered.
Charles glanced over the crowd - friends, business partners, rivals pretending to be happy. He felt the weight of all those eyes and, oddly, a small sting in his chest.
"Why am I uneasy?" he asked himself, with the back of his head feeling two empty spots, prepared for his brothers, who were now nowhere to be found.
The priest lifted his book. "Bride, groom, you may say your vows."
Charles' lips parted, but before he could say anything, the oak doors groaned open once again.
A man walked in, sluggish, messy.
"Thomas?" Charles blurted before he could stop himself.
Thomas looked wrong. Clothes torn. Skin pale. Eyes fever - bright. He moved fast, jaw clenched, gaze locked on Charles.
"Thomas, what…" Charles started at the same time looking for his security.
Thomas reached the front, hands shaking, scanning faces as if confirming something. His lips trembled. When he spoke, the words barely made it out. "I'm sorry, Charles. They've got my family. I had no choice."
"What are you talking about, Tom? Let's discuss it."
"There is no more time for discussion, Mr. Vanlies..." the man sighed, "They don't have enough time... My wife, kids..."
"Tell me who is responsible, I will make it right, you have my word."
Thomas with each step drew closer and closer to the couple at the altar, his voice trembling, "You already know who. How could you not!"
Before the first gasp traveled the room, he ripped open his jacket. Wires. Blocks. A vest.
The cathedral inhaled as one.
"No!" Charles lunged, but Thomas was already moving, "Sorry, Mr. Vanlies."
Thumb. Switch. Boom!
White light devoured everyone's vision. A howl of force tore the room apart. Stone, glass, wood - gone. Pain, an unimaginable agony, flared, then vanished in the next moment, replaced by silence.
-
Dark. No sleep - no directions, no body, no time or space. Charles drifted. Thoughts came and went like faint lights under deep water, sounds muzzled by unknown noise.
Faces. Laughter at a rehearsal dinner. The trembling hand that had slipped into his last night and squeezed. The father's proud smile at his deathbed several months ago.
Thomas's eyes filled with fear, helplessness and anger. "I had no choice."
Then even those sank away. Hours, days, years - all meaningless. A flicker grew in the distance. A thin blue thread made its way in endless black.
He reached - or thought he did. The thread responded, pulled him with unimaginable force.
He slipped through something like a veil and stepped - without legs - into a place that wasn't a place. Space that wasn't a space, it gleamed in colours that didn't belong to the usual sky Charles remembered. There was no up or down, but he found he could stand on light itself. His form was a wisp of smoke held together by sheer will.
"What is this?" he tried to say. No sound. Still, his thought echoed.
A star zipped past and on impulse, he grabbed it.
A memory - no, a concept - unfolded in his mind, as if he always knew it.
Sword Talent (White): Basic affinity and comprehension for sword arts.
"Swordsmanship?" His pulse - if he had one - spiked. He looked around, stars drifted everywhere: white most of all, then blue, green, purple, orange, red, and rarely, gold. Seven hues - seven grades in total.
He chased them, catching orbs left and right, tasting knowledge each time - fire, frost, movement, memories, constitution, spell-craft. He wasn't breathing but he felt breathless just like after an exhausting workout.
A single star burned like the sun in his palm: Mythic Immortal Root (Gold).
"A body and mind for cultivation beyond compare. Swift comprehension, keen qi sense, irresistible progress..." Charles mused in his mind.
A chill of excitement ran through him, "This… this is something new. A path to a different world!"
Images out of fantasy stories emerged immediately: dragons, elves, superheroes with unimaginable abilities, legends of Gods, Immortals and everything he had ever heard about only in fictional dreams.
"Power deciding law, might breaking all tricks and lies. If there's another life… let it be there," Charles thought, his mind still fresh with memories of what the people had done to him.
The betrayal, the agony, the loss of his future wife... Regret. If only he had the power to stop Thomas, to stop the fire from engulfing him and the chapel. To punish his vile brothers, to make them listen, submit... But these wishes were useless now.
He continued to experiment. He pressed two white Sword orbs together. They resisted at first. He pushed - not with muscles, but with something inside him, a pressure of thought. Sweat that didn't exist beaded on the brows he didn't have.
Finally after a while the orbs fused. Still white, but much denser.
"Let's do more."
He added a third. One long grind of will later, the orb shifted - blue now. A clean step upward, he felt it.
Charles grinned. Then immediately he tried a new approach, "What if now instead of existing ones, I try something different..."
He pictured a saber, weight and arc, the edge's hunger. A samurai, he once saw during his trip to Japan, masterfully wielding it. He held the vision until it shook.
Failure. Again and again. Thousand times, ten thousand more. On the twenty three thousand - and - something try, a thin light clicked together in his hands.
Saber Talent (White).
"Finally."
He kept going. Create, combine, rest when his thoughts weakened, then create more. White stars spilled from his hands. Some turned blue. A few - after stubborn, exhausting merges - climbed higher.
He worked without hunger, without sleep, only the grind of mental spirit and the satisfaction when something clicked.
"Gold isn't the ceiling," he muttered. "There has to be something beyond, I can just tell, there is room for more..."
The realm answered as if to confirm his theory. A sound like a blade cutting wind and he looked up.
A rainbow comet crossed the void - not seven colours side by side, but one living spectrum, blending and separating, reminding Charles of a dragon's tail. Exuding power. It didn't veer, it didn't slow.
His body moved before his mind. He shot after it, grabbed with both hands.
Nothing. His grip slid from light.
"I don't believe I can't catch you, submit!" Charles shouted.
He threw everything he had at it - will, stubbornness, the part of him that had clawed his way up, still fresh with memories of those demonic, spiteful siblings. The rainbow burned through his palms into the core of him. Pain - real, blinding. He held on.
"Stop."
The star stuttered.
"Stop!"
It gradually slowed down. He dragged it, inch by inch, until it hung still in his palm. Colours coiled and uncoiled within it. He reached with his mind.
The name slammed into him like a hammer.
Weaver of Fate (Rainbow): Perception of destiny's threads. The ability to touch them. To braid, to cut, to re - route. Limited by vision, by cost, by the pushback of the world.
Knowledge flooded him, a tidal wave. He choked on it and laughed anyway. "Ha-ha-ha! Fate and destiny… worthy of the rainbow grade."
After an initial wave of excitement an idea popped up in his head, "What if I try to store it…"
The orb shot into his chest and vanished. The rainbow bled through his smoke - form in faint veins, then settled.
"So that's the rule," he realised. "I can store talents here then fuse later, when I have a real body. How convenient."
He looked out over the star sea. It unfolded forever.
"Then I'll be ready," Not yet sure for what, with no plan on how to return or travel to another world but with ironclad determination to do so.
He worked. Time meant nothing in here, so he used it all. He learned to tease specific concepts from the drift. To birth talents by holding an idea - and paying the mental cost.
Movement. Memory. Calculation. Constitution. Elements. Weapon paths. He tried to find another rainbow and failed, but he didn't stop looking.
Somewhere in that endless work, something responded. A faint pressure brushed the edge of his consciousness, like a hand feeling for him in a crowd.
He froze and carefully listened.
The pressure returned - insistent now. A pull that wasn't from this area. Like a hook in the thread that still bound him to… somewhere else.
A voice - not with words, but intent - blew through him like a mountain wind.
"Come."
He glanced at the stored lights within him, at the rainbow pulse deep in his core. He set his will. "Let's check it out and see..."
The star sea bent. The pull became a current. He let it take him.
And the light - blue and gold and all the colours between - rushed up to meet him.