The chamber was quiet. Not silent, exactly—there was a subtle hum in the air, a presence—but it was the kind of quiet that pressed against the skin, that filled the lungs with pressure rather than sound.
Neil stood over the shallow, circular dent at the center of the floor. The faint ring of symbols that encircled it had grown no brighter since he'd first stepped into the room, but the power beneath it still called to him. Like a heartbeat far below the earth, like a deep tide waiting to rise.
He knelt beside the circle and ran his fingers across its surface. Smooth. Cold. But alive with something deeper—an echo of potential. He could feel it pulsing in his fingertips.
Without hesitation, he stepped into the ring and stood directly on the dent. A faint ripple passed through his feet, up his spine. A connection, tenuous, searching. He waited. Closed his eyes. Tried to draw it into him.
Nothing.
Or… almost nothing. The energy responded, but sluggishly. It was like trying to drink through a straw pressed to the surface of a frozen lake. Something trickled in, but barely. He frowned and stepped back, crouching down again.
Maybe it needed direct contact. Not through boots or clothing. Skin to surface.
He pressed his hand flat against the center of the dent.
This time, there was a difference.
The connection tightened. A faint thread of energy began to move—not fast, not overwhelming, but clear. Measurable. He could feel it winding into his palm, up his arm. It was slow, but it was steady.
Uncomfortable, though. The posture twisted his body slightly, one arm supporting him on the cold floor while the other maintained pressure on the circle. His shoulder began to ache within minutes. But he endured.
As the minutes passed—maybe hours, time had already begun to blur—Neil found his thoughts drifting. The chamber remained still. The statues along the wall watched in their mute silence. The energy dust, thinner now than it had been, still swirled lazily around the edges of the room but no longer felt urgent.
He exhaled. Shifted his weight.
Then he sat down.
Cross-legged, back straight, he placed both hands on the circle and focused.
The energy responded. Not as quickly as with direct hand contact, but more comfortably now, his body at ease. Still, it wasn't fast. It flowed like a slow-moving stream rather than the storm he'd felt in the canyon entrance. But something in it… something deeper, older, more refined.
He wasn't absorbing just dust anymore. This energy felt anchored. Structured.
Time slipped.
---
Neil didn't know how long he stayed like that—whether it was minutes or days—but somewhere in the stillness, the world began to bend.
Not physically. Not at first. It was in his perception.
A drifting.
At first he thought he was just losing focus, that fatigue was playing tricks on him. But then he opened his eyes—and saw himself.
Sitting there. Perfectly still. Hands pressed to the floor, face calm.
But he wasn't in his body.
He hovered just above, as though suspended in a dream, a ghost watching its own flesh.
Panic surged through him, but it was muted. Distant. Like a bell ringing underwater.
He drifted further.
The chamber opened before him in strange dimensions. He could move now—not with legs, not with motion, but with thought. He floated toward one of the statues, hovered beside it. Looked into its stone eyes. Then turned and glided toward the sealed entrance through which he'd come.
He was seeing everything. Not with eyes, but with some deeper sense. A projection. A tethered awareness.
It felt like vertigo and nausea twisted together. A sickening dizziness bloomed in his gut.
Neil wanted to scream.
Instead, he vomited—violently. His body convulsed, though from this strange perspective, it looked slow, dreamlike. Then the tether snapped.
Darkness. Cold stone.
---
He woke with a gasp.
His throat burned, his head throbbed, and a thin trail of blood marked the side of his mouth. He blinked at the ceiling of the chamber, disoriented, weak.
What the hell just happened?
But even as he lay there, breathing hard, he felt it.
Something had changed.
Not physically—he was bruised, sure, but not fundamentally altered in body. It was deeper. More subtle. Like an additional layer had formed over his awareness. Or peeled away. He wasn't sure which.
He sensed things now.
Not just the dust in the air, not just the energy in the stone. He could feel the structures of the place—walls, floors, the statues themselves. Not through touch. Through… presence.
And more than that—beyond the chamber, far beyond its walls, he could sense the canyon. The upper levels. Even the dying embers of the dust that had once saturated the entrance.
He had awakened something. Crossed a boundary.
"...Soul Genesis?" he muttered aloud, voice hoarse.
There was no answer. Only the whisper of the chamber.
He didn't know how long he'd been unconscious. Hours? A day?
But it didn't matter. There was more.
He crawled—still dizzy—back to the center dent. And without even thinking, he placed both hands on it again.
This time, the energy rushed into him.
---
It was like a dam had broken.
He could feel it—like his Core had widened, or like he'd opened a valve that allowed so much more to pass through than before. The energy filled him, hot and heady. Not just power. Clarity. Thought sharpened, senses extended.
He felt like a starving man handed a banquet.
And he didn't stop.
The dust around him began to vanish. Rapidly. Faster than it had any right to. It flowed into him like smoke into a vacuum, and he welcomed it all.
It was too easy now.
Too fast.
But he didn't care.
He needed this.
He deserved it.
The thought echoed in his head with dangerous simplicity. Like a child with sugar for the first time. Like an addict getting his first uncut hit.
And still, he absorbed.
---
Time passed. Days, maybe. There was no sun in the tomb, no light to mark its passing. Only the thinning of the energy and the hunger inside him.
But then something changed.
Neil paused.
He felt it—beneath him. Not through the floor, not through his hands, but deeper.
Far below the chamber.
Something vast. Something cold.
Liquid.
Energy not as dust, not as floating remnants. Not the ambient leftovers of forgotten systems.
This was condensed.
It was the difference between breathing water vapor and holding a cup of it. And then comparing that cup to a lake.
The dust had been subtle. Light. Passive.
But this… this was dense. Weighty. It pressed at the edges of his senses like a tide against a dam. It wasn't just energy—it was energy given form.
His thoughts sharpened.
He focused downward, extended the tendrils of his will. Not his hand. Not his body. Something deeper. The projection he'd experienced before was now voluntary, controlled.
He reached.
Touched it.
And when he did, he understood.
This wasn't just a resource.
It was power.
Ancient. Unspent. Waiting.
It had been sealed, untouched, for gods knew how long. And now it was within his grasp.
A tremor passed through his frame as he pulled.
Not physically. But inward.
The liquid moved. Just a little.
But it moved.
And Neil smiled.