The two paths were different, but they led to the same outcome, power, and usually there were two ways to step on the road of either Miracle or Damnation, and that was to kill something stronger than you in order to seize their lifeforce or to wait until a certain number of years for your Lumina to awaken naturally.
For most humans, the time of awakening was at sixteen, but Elias had heard rumors of children from Royal Houses and those with strange constitutions who awakened their Lumina much earlier than sixteen.
When the Passenger began demanding death, Elias killed. First, it was small animals, livestock, and critters he hunted through the sewers at night, but soon the Passenger's appetite grew, and the lives of these creatures no longer fed its hunger, and Elias had to move on to bigger prey. There was a time when Elias thought he would be able to survive by killing weak animals, but the Passenger demanded something far more than this.
Elias could clearly trace every single decision he had made that had led him to this point, one where he became not just a killer of the ordinary, but the supernatural. He had no choice but to kill those who had touched Lumina, who were all wielders of Miracles and Damnation, because that was the only thing the Passenger desired after a while. Mortals would not serve.
As a result, Elias had expected that he should have been able to awaken his Lumina, after all, he had been killing Siphons for six years, but he had never felt the flicker of Miracle or Damnation in his veins.
At first, he believed it might be because he was mainly killing humans, who usually awakened with the Power of Miracles, and since Elias believed he was cursed and that Damnation was his birthright, he needed to kill beasts, which were more prone to awaken to Damnation than Miracles.
But then he had a chance to leave the walls of the city on multiple occasions, where he hunted Low-order beasts whose Lumina was flavored towards Damnation, but he had no luck.
Lumina seemed to flee from him as if he were a leper forbidden to set foot in the palace of kings and the hovels of beggars.
The Passenger had given him a great gift and also a greater curse. Without being able to touch Lumina, Elias was counting down to his inevitable demise. Mere mortals were not meant to last in this world, at least, not without the backing of a powerful organization behind them.
Elias knew that his only hope lay in his upcoming birthday, which was rapidly drawing nearer, with barely eight hours left.
As far as Elias could tell, anyone who did not touch the Weave after they became eighteen never had any chance to do so, and their stories never lasted for long, extreme weather, hunger, beast floods, diseases, and common incidents that became a source of uncommon hazards for mortal flesh and so much more meant that such poor members of society were rapidly pruned off from the gene pool.
There were late bloomers like him who touched Lumina at the extremely late age of eighteen, but they were rare.
No one valued a mortal who could not tread on the Path of Miracle or Damnation after their eighteenth birthday; they were only seen as walking sacs of meat whose vitality was too low to even be used as fuel for the lowest Siphon.
Time was running short, and Elias had taken the risk to hunt in order to make sure he was fully prepared for the most important coming-of-age event in his life; he either touched Lumina and became a Siphon or died not long after.
He knew that he was resourceful and more talented than any mortal had any right to be due to the presence of the Passenger and his weird mindset, but Elias had seen fragments of the horrors of this world, and it was not one that he could survive without access to Miracles or Damnation.
Society afforded a degree of protection to those who were under the age of eighteen, but if he failed to become more than a mortal, from then onward, his fate lay in his hands, and he became fair game to anyone.
With a wet slicing sound, his blade cut through the last muscles and cartilage connecting the head of Josef to his torso, and finally, he had succeeded in separating the man into six pieces.
He took time to admire his handwork, as the aches and pains in his muscles rapidly dissipated. Another quirk of having a high regenerative factor.
It was a grim sight, but Elias was not focused on the body parts. The moment life left the eyes of his prey, they were nothing but meat bags; however, it did not mean he had to disrespect the flesh they had worn in life.
Killing a Siphon was never an easy task; their bodies had been repeatedly reinforced by the mysterious power of Lumina, as they gained more Miracles by fighting, killing, and absorbing the life force from those they killed to further their growth.
To Elias, this world was a gigantic poison pot where poisonous insects were raised, and if you were not strong enough to feed on others for your growth, you would become food; it was simply survival of the fittest taken to an extreme.
Josef followed the path of Miracles, and he was a Rank 1 Fury Forge, the second stage of a Siphon.
From Elias's investigation, the man was just reaching the second stage of a Siphon barely three days ago. In time, he would have grown to become a Rank 9 Fury Forge, where he would have to gain access to Lumina Threads, which were a necessary component for him to ascend to the next stage as a Mist-Phantom. At this level of power, Elias would have to look at him from afar because he would become something that Elias would not be able to even comprehend.
At the level of a Mist Phantom, a Siphon would begin harnessing powers that made them disregard the laws of nature, summoning winds and rain, transforming their bodies, and even teleportation; nothing was off the table. How could Elias fight against something like that?
There must be higher levels than those of Mist-Phantom; the Ruler of the City was rumored to be at a stage called Void Sentinel, but all of these were distant matters that he may never be able to touch if he did not have access to Lumina in the first place.
A Fury Forge was just the second stage of power as a Siphon, and this stage divided the weak from the strong.
So, Elias had to take great risks and suffered great pains, planning for months and preparing for even longer, just for the chance to kill such a single Fury Forge who had barely settled into his rank, and he would have failed if he made any mistake.
The path of transformation for a mortal was rather simple. When one was awakened to Lumina, following the path of Miracles or Damnation, they became a Wisp, and from gathering lifeforce, they would be able to grow from a Rank 1 Wisp all the way to a Rank 9 Wisp.
At the peak of this level, there was a chance to become a Fury Forge, yet few had the resources and the willpower to push through the barrier separating a Wisp from a Fury Forge.
If Elias succeeds in his awakening to the Lumina, he would become a Wisp, the first stage of a Siphon, and with further growth, he might become a Fury Forge.