The midday sun beat down on Kael's small house, nestled on the outskirts of the farming village of Oakhaven. He was supposed to be doing chores—tending the small vegetable patch or mending the fence—but Kael, the seasoned warrior, could only manage a restless, low-level vigilance. He paced the worn wooden floor of his bedroom, his mind a steel trap of strategy and memory.
He was still wearing the soft, worn cotton clothes of a thirteen-year-old boy, a cruel contrast to the memory of his past life's dark, combat-scarred leather armor. The disparity between his mind—hardened by the deaths of friends and the final, futile clash with Xylos—and his physical form, which hadn't even finished puberty, was deeply disorienting. Every movement felt sluggish, every thought too heavy for his young brain to fully process without headache.
He had to move faster than anyone. In his past life, he only started training in the Aura path at age sixteen, a late start that he'd painfully clawed back through sheer effort, reaching Level 9 just before the final siege. This time, he had a three-year head start on his old self, but the enemy was not the regional monster raids. The enemy was The Ascendant, a being who nullified the apex of human power with a casual flick.
"Level 9 is the maximum for conventional Aura users," Kael muttered, running a hand over the faint, almost invisible freckles on his arm. "The human body, structured for this world's energy, hits a wall. The core solidifies, and you can't refine more energy without exploding."
He recalled the dusty, forbidden texts from his past life—texts often dismissed as the ravings of mad, failed masters. They proposed that the stagnation at Level 9 wasn't a biological limit, but a conceptual one. Humans tried to build a solid, perfect container (a sphere of brilliant white Aura) when what was needed was a void.
He sat on his bed and began to focus, trying to replicate the mental technique he had practiced briefly before his death—the Void Core formation.
His fledgling Aura, a tiny spark of light just below his ribs, was usually left alone to grow naturally. Kael now willed it to change. He didn't ask it to grow brighter; he asked it to spin faster, to compress its light into a point of absolute, non-reflective darkness.
The sensation was immediate and searing. It felt like trying to compress a handful of steam. His core protested violently. Pain, sharp and focused, radiated outwards. This wasn't the slow burn of heavy training; this was his body revolting against an unnatural change. Kael bit his lip until he tasted blood. This is why they failed. They tried to break the sphere. I have to build the void from the beginning.
After ten agonizing minutes, he relented, pulling back his focus. The tiny spark of Aura stabilized, but it hadn't changed form. He was left panting, a thin sheen of sweat covering his forehead.
"Slowly, Kael," he whispered to himself, the voice sounding childish, even in his own ears. "You have to build the foundation perfectly. This isn't about speed; it's about structure."
The Secret Sanctuary
The most pressing and immediate problem was finding a secret training space. Oakhaven was a small place. Everyone knew everyone. If the local Aura Master—a kind but strict Level 4 woman named Seraphina—saw him practicing the complex standard techniques, she'd praise him. If she caught him doing this—trying to twist his nascent power into a black hole—she'd call him a lunatic and shut him down. The technique had to be hidden.
Kael stood by the window and surveyed the landscape. Ten years had passed since the Great Merge, when the Upper Dimension had violently collided with their own. That event brought with it Magic, the alternative path to power marked by colored circles around the heart, and monsters of all shapes and sizes. The merge had scarred the landscape, leaving behind zones where reality was unstable.
Oakhaven was protected only by its relative unimportance, sitting near the edge of the human-controlled plains. To the north lay the heavily forested, relatively safe hunting grounds. To the west, however, was the Wastelands of K'tharr, a desolate, rocky expanse created by the merge. It was deemed too low-resource and too dangerous for human settlement, but also too unstable for organized monster occupation.
Kael's memory clicked into place. In his late teens, hunting for a rare herb, he had discovered something deep in the Wastelands: the remnants of an ancient, pre-Merge quarry, long forgotten. It was a labyrinth of deep, stable tunnels dug into the rock, far from any patrol path, human or monster. It was a perfect, soundproof sanctuary.
"The old K'tharr quarry," Kael murmured. "Two days' walk, but if I can get there and set up a basic hidden camp, I'll have the space I need for deep meditation."
The challenge was getting there without raising suspicion. A thirteen-year-old walking into the desolate, unstable Wastelands of K'tharr was a recipe for alarm, if not disaster.
"I'm going fishing by the Whispering River," he decided. That was a known, safe activity, easily explained, and in the opposite direction of the Wastelands. He would slip away from the river trail and head west, using his knowledge of ancient, forgotten paths to navigate the treacherous territory.
The Currency of Survival
Privacy was solved, at least theoretically. Now came the resource problem.
Aura training required absorbing raw energy. This energy was typically drawn from the atmosphere, a slow process, or, far more efficiently, from purified Monster Cores—crystallized nodes of energy found in defeated monsters.
To get to Level 9 in twenty years, using the normal atmospheric intake, was already challenging. To build the highly complex Void Core and push for Level 10, he needed fuel, and a lot of it. He needed high-grade cores, which meant big money.
He knew his family had little. His father's merchant business was barely holding up against the chaos of the merged world economies. They had a small silver savings, but nothing for the hundreds of high-quality cores Kael would require over the next two decades.
Think, Kael. What did we lose? What did we ignore?
He walked into the main living room, his eyes scanning the familiar, modest furnishings—the heavy wooden chairs, the simple earthenware, the faded tapestry hanging on the wall. The tapestry.
It was an antique, a large, intricate piece depicting scenes of the world before the merge. His mother kept it because it was a family heirloom, not because it held value. It was merely beautiful threadwork to them.
But Kael remembered something from his late-life studies into the history of the Merge. Many Magic users, who used the rival power path, had started hoarding ancient relics from the "Age of Man," believing they contained dormant, untapped energies unique to this world. They paid insane amounts for seemingly useless antiques.
He looked closer at the tapestry. Woven into the lower border was a pattern of tiny, stylized runes—Old Common Script, depicting a blessing of stability. Kael knew from his future memory that this specific runic pattern was highly sought after by a secretive cabal of Mages in the capital city, who used it as a focus for complex spatial Magic.
"It's worth a fortune to the right person," Kael whispered, a grim smile touching his lips. It was a betrayal of his family's trust, selling an heirloom, but it was necessary. The fate of the world outweighed sentiment.
The plan formed quickly:
1. Leave for the Wastelands tomorrow, under the guise of "fishing."
2. Stop at the nearby small town of Farbridge, where a few merchants still dared to operate a semi-legitimate trade exchange.
3. Sell the tapestry to the highest bidder in Farbridge—not to the cabal directly, that was too dangerous, but to a middle-man who dealt in high-end relics.
4. Use the silver to buy a low-level supply of Monster Cores to get him started, focusing on highly concentrated cores over quantity.
5. Proceed to the quarry.
The final piece of the puzzle was the tapestry itself. It was massive, far too large for a boy to carry. Kael knew his mother was particularly fond of it, usually keeping it draped over the back of the family's large sofa, but right now, it was packed away in an old trunk in the attic for seasonal cleaning.
He spent the next hour moving a ladder, climbing into the cramped, dark attic, and battling dust motes. He found the heavy, rolled-up tapestry inside a cedar chest. It was thick and smelled of lavender and mothballs. He carefully removed it, replaced it with an old blanket rolled to the same size, and secured the chest. He was a thief in his own home, stealing the future for the future.
The Departure
The next morning, Kael awoke before dawn. He felt a cold resolve, the same deadly clarity he used to feel before leading a charge against a monster horde. This was his first mission of the new life.
He tied the tapestry, now folded and secured in a sturdy, but slightly oversized, canvas sack. He packed minimal supplies—a canteen of water, a few biscuits, and a small, sharp knife.
His mother was already up, preparing a simple breakfast.
"Going out early, Kael?" she asked, not looking up from stirring the morning gruel.
"Yes, Mom," he replied, keeping his tone casual and slightly bored, the way a thirteen-year-old should sound. "The fish bite best right after dawn, especially by the Willow Bend. Might be gone for the whole day."
"Be careful, my little fighter," she said, finally turning to him. She walked over and affectionately ruffled his hair. Kael flinched almost imperceptibly—he hadn't been touched with such simple affection in years. "Don't go near the K'tharr side of the river. Remember what your father says about the unstable ground."
"I know, Mom. Willow Bend is safe," he assured her, forcing himself to relax. He hated lying to her, but he couldn't tell her the truth: I'm going to the most unstable, dangerous place in the region to start a path to power that will either save the world or kill me trying.
He accepted a handful of cooked rations and left quickly, before his resolve could waver.
The first part of the journey was easy. He followed the winding, familiar path towards the Whispering River. Once he was out of sight of the village, the warrior in him took over. The slump left his shoulders, and his gait became focused, efficient.
When he reached the bend in the road that marked the turn-off to the river, he didn't stop. He turned sharply west, pushing into the scrubland that marked the beginning of the Wastelands.
He didn't head straight into the desolate rock formations, but followed an almost invisible, overgrown deer trail parallel to the K'tharr boundary. Hours passed. The sun climbed, and Kael's young body began to protest. The exhaustion was crippling. Every step reminded him of the boundless stamina of his Level 9 body. Now, a simple four-hour march left him dizzy and gasping. He was forced to rest more often than he liked, but his will kept him moving.
He finally reached Farbridge just as the sun peaked. It was a miserable, half-abandoned town, surviving only as a dangerous waypoint for those desperate enough to trade near the Merge Zone.
He found the trading hall—a reinforced, dirt-floored warehouse. Inside, merchants haggled loudly, their voices echoing in the oppressive heat. He approached a dealer who sat separate from the rest: a thin, calculating man named Silas, known in Kael's future memory as a discreet broker of rare items, particularly those sought by Mages.
"I have something... old," Kael said, his voice cracking slightly. He hated the sound of his own weakness. "Something from before the Merge."
Silas raised an eyebrow, looking down his nose at the dusty, tired boy. "I only deal in artifacts of power, lad. Not moth-eaten heirlooms."
"This is a specific runic pattern," Kael insisted, placing the canvas sack on the table. He carefully unrolled just a small section of the tapestry, exposing the intricate, pre-Merge runes.
Silas's cynical expression instantly vanished, replaced by a hawk-like intensity. He snatched Kael's hand and pulled him into a dark corner, away from prying eyes.
"You realize what this is, child?" Silas hissed, his voice low and urgent.
"The Blessing of Stability pattern," Kael stated flatly. "I need silver. Enough for high-grade Monster Cores. No questions asked."
After a brutal hour of negotiation, where the thirty-three-year-old warrior in Kael battled the instinct to run, he got his price. Silas paid in heavy silver coins, which Kael quickly exchanged for a small, heavy leather pouch containing six purified Grade 4 Monster Cores—fist-sized, polished spheres of dense energy, harvested from dangerous, mid-level beasts. Six cores. Enough to jumpstart his training for the next few critical months.
"Go home, boy," Silas warned, watching Kael's serious, too-old eyes. "And never let anyone know you had this."
Kael didn't answer. He secured the pouch of cores deep inside his clothes, wrapped the silver coins he had left in a cloth, and quickly left the town, heading straight into the desolate, rock-strewn Wastelands.
The quarry was exactly where he remembered. A steep, hidden fissure led down into a maze of dark, airless tunnels. He wedged a boulder against the fissure entrance, effectively sealing himself inside, concealed from the world.
He found his preferred chamber—a small, dry, naturally smooth cave deep within the earth.
Alone, in the absolute darkness, Kael placed one of the precious Grade 4 Monster Cores on the ground. Its energy hummed faintly, a palpable source of power. He sat cross-legged, closing his eyes, and picked up the tiny, fragile spark of Aura in his core.
No more practice. The clock is ticking.
He took a deep breath, and with a fierce, burning focus, the Ninth-Level Master forced his thirteen-year-old body to begin the impossible, the agonizing, and the only way forward. He commanded his nascent energy to compress, to fold in upon itself, attempting to build a Void Core—a stable structure of infinite absorption—designed to hold Level 10 power.
His journey to revenge had begun.
The midday sun beat down on Kael's small house, nestled on the outskirts of the farming village of Oakhaven. He was supposed to be doing chores—tending the small vegetable patch or mending the fence—but Kael, the seasoned warrior, could only manage a restless, low-level vigilance. He paced the worn wooden floor of his bedroom, his mind a steel trap of strategy and memory.
He was still wearing the soft, worn cotton clothes of a thirteen-year-old boy, a cruel contrast to the memory of his past life's dark, combat-scarred leather armor. The disparity between his mind—hardened by the deaths of friends and the final, futile clash with Xylos—and his physical form, which hadn't even finished puberty, was deeply disorienting. Every movement felt sluggish, every thought too heavy for his young brain to fully process without headache.
He had to move faster than anyone. In his past life, he only started training in the Aura path at age sixteen, a late start that he'd painfully clawed back through sheer effort, reaching Level 9 just before the final siege. This time, he had a three-year head start on his old self, but the enemy was not the regional monster raids. The enemy was The Ascendant, a being who nullified the apex of human power with a casual flick.
"Level 9 is the maximum for conventional Aura users," Kael muttered, running a hand over the faint, almost invisible freckles on his arm. "The human body, structured for this world's energy, hits a wall. The core solidifies, and you can't refine more energy without exploding."
He recalled the dusty, forbidden texts from his past life—texts often dismissed as the ravings of mad, failed masters. They proposed that the stagnation at Level 9 wasn't a biological limit, but a conceptual one. Humans tried to build a solid, perfect container (a sphere of brilliant white Aura) when what was needed was a void.
He sat on his bed and began to focus, trying to replicate the mental technique he had practiced briefly before his death—the Void Core formation.
His fledgling Aura, a tiny spark of light just below his ribs, was usually left alone to grow naturally. Kael now willed it to change. He didn't ask it to grow brighter; he asked it to spin faster, to compress its light into a point of absolute, non-reflective darkness.
The sensation was immediate and searing. It felt like trying to compress a handful of steam. His core protested violently. Pain, sharp and focused, radiated outwards. This wasn't the slow burn of heavy training; this was his body revolting against an unnatural change. Kael bit his lip until he tasted blood. This is why they failed. They tried to break the sphere. I have to build the void from the beginning.
After ten agonizing minutes, he relented, pulling back his focus. The tiny spark of Aura stabilized, but it hadn't changed form. He was left panting, a thin sheen of sweat covering his forehead.
"Slowly, Kael," he whispered to himself, the voice sounding childish, even in his own ears. "You have to build the foundation perfectly. This isn't about speed; it's about structure."
The Secret Sanctuary
The most pressing and immediate problem was finding a secret training space. Oakhaven was a small place. Everyone knew everyone. If the local Aura Master—a kind but strict Level 4 woman named Seraphina—saw him practicing the complex standard techniques, she'd praise him. If she caught him doing this—trying to twist his nascent power into a black hole—she'd call him a lunatic and shut him down. The technique had to be hidden.
Kael stood by the window and surveyed the landscape. Ten years had passed since the Great Merge, when the Upper Dimension had violently collided with their own. That event brought with it Magic, the alternative path to power marked by colored circles around the heart, and monsters of all shapes and sizes. The merge had scarred the landscape, leaving behind zones where reality was unstable.
Oakhaven was protected only by its relative unimportance, sitting near the edge of the human-controlled plains. To the north lay the heavily forested, relatively safe hunting grounds. To the west, however, was the Wastelands of K'tharr, a desolate, rocky expanse created by the merge. It was deemed too low-resource and too dangerous for human settlement, but also too unstable for organized monster occupation.
Kael's memory clicked into place. In his late teens, hunting for a rare herb, he had discovered something deep in the Wastelands: the remnants of an ancient, pre-Merge quarry, long forgotten. It was a labyrinth of deep, stable tunnels dug into the rock, far from any patrol path, human or monster. It was a perfect, soundproof sanctuary.
"The old K'tharr quarry," Kael murmured. "Two days' walk, but if I can get there and set up a basic hidden camp, I'll have the space I need for deep meditation."
The challenge was getting there without raising suspicion. A thirteen-year-old walking into the desolate, unstable Wastelands of K'tharr was a recipe for alarm, if not disaster.
"I'm going fishing by the Whispering River," he decided. That was a known, safe activity, easily explained, and in the opposite direction of the Wastelands. He would slip away from the river trail and head west, using his knowledge of ancient, forgotten paths to navigate the treacherous territory.
The Currency of Survival
Privacy was solved, at least theoretically. Now came the resource problem.
Aura training required absorbing raw energy. This energy was typically drawn from the atmosphere, a slow process, or, far more efficiently, from purified Monster Cores—crystallized nodes of energy found in defeated monsters.
To get to Level 9 in twenty years, using the normal atmospheric intake, was already challenging. To build the highly complex Void Core and push for Level 10, he needed fuel, and a lot of it. He needed high-grade cores, which meant big money.
He knew his family had little. His father's merchant business was barely holding up against the chaos of the merged world economies. They had a small silver savings, but nothing for the hundreds of high-quality cores Kael would require over the next two decades.
Think, Kael. What did we lose? What did we ignore?
He walked into the main living room, his eyes scanning the familiar, modest furnishings—the heavy wooden chairs, the simple earthenware, the faded tapestry hanging on the wall. The tapestry.
It was an antique, a large, intricate piece depicting scenes of the world before the merge. His mother kept it because it was a family heirloom, not because it held value. It was merely beautiful threadwork to them.
But Kael remembered something from his late-life studies into the history of the Merge. Many Magic users, who used the rival power path, had started hoarding ancient relics from the "Age of Man," believing they contained dormant, untapped energies unique to this world. They paid insane amounts for seemingly useless antiques.
He looked closer at the tapestry. Woven into the lower border was a pattern of tiny, stylized runes—Old Common Script, depicting a blessing of stability. Kael knew from his future memory that this specific runic pattern was highly sought after by a secretive cabal of Mages in the capital city, who used it as a focus for complex spatial Magic.
"It's worth a fortune to the right person," Kael whispered, a grim smile touching his lips. It was a betrayal of his family's trust, selling an heirloom, but it was necessary. The fate of the world outweighed sentiment.
The plan formed quickly:
1. Leave for the Wastelands tomorrow, under the guise of "fishing."
2. Stop at the nearby small town of Farbridge, where a few merchants still dared to operate a semi-legitimate trade exchange.
3. Sell the tapestry to the highest bidder in Farbridge—not to the cabal directly, that was too dangerous, but to a middle-man who dealt in high-end relics.
4. Use the silver to buy a low-level supply of Monster Cores to get him started, focusing on highly concentrated cores over quantity.
5. Proceed to the quarry.
The final piece of the puzzle was the tapestry itself. It was massive, far too large for a boy to carry. Kael knew his mother was particularly fond of it, usually keeping it draped over the back of the family's large sofa, but right now, it was packed away in an old trunk in the attic for seasonal cleaning.
He spent the next hour moving a ladder, climbing into the cramped, dark attic, and battling dust motes. He found the heavy, rolled-up tapestry inside a cedar chest. It was thick and smelled of lavender and mothballs. He carefully removed it, replaced it with an old blanket rolled to the same size, and secured the chest. He was a thief in his own home, stealing the future for the future.
The Departure
The next morning, Kael awoke before dawn. He felt a cold resolve, the same deadly clarity he used to feel before leading a charge against a monster horde. This was his first mission of the new life.
He tied the tapestry, now folded and secured in a sturdy, but slightly oversized, canvas sack. He packed minimal supplies—a canteen of water, a few biscuits, and a small, sharp knife.
His mother was already up, preparing a simple breakfast.
"Going out early, Kael?" she asked, not looking up from stirring the morning gruel.
"Yes, Mom," he replied, keeping his tone casual and slightly bored, the way a thirteen-year-old should sound. "The fish bite best right after dawn, especially by the Willow Bend. Might be gone for the whole day."
"Be careful, my little fighter," she said, finally turning to him. She walked over and affectionately ruffled his hair. Kael flinched almost imperceptibly—he hadn't been touched with such simple affection in years. "Don't go near the K'tharr side of the river. Remember what your father says about the unstable ground."
"I know, Mom. Willow Bend is safe," he assured her, forcing himself to relax. He hated lying to her, but he couldn't tell her the truth: I'm going to the most unstable, dangerous place in the region to start a path to power that will either save the world or kill me trying.
He accepted a handful of cooked rations and left quickly, before his resolve could waver.
The first part of the journey was easy. He followed the winding, familiar path towards the Whispering River. Once he was out of sight of the village, the warrior in him took over. The slump left his shoulders, and his gait became focused, efficient.
When he reached the bend in the road that marked the turn-off to the river, he didn't stop. He turned sharply west, pushing into the scrubland that marked the beginning of the Wastelands.
He didn't head straight into the desolate rock formations, but followed an almost invisible, overgrown deer trail parallel to the K'tharr boundary. Hours passed. The sun climbed, and Kael's young body began to protest. The exhaustion was crippling. Every step reminded him of the boundless stamina of his Level 9 body. Now, a simple four-hour march left him dizzy and gasping. He was forced to rest more often than he liked, but his will kept him moving.
He finally reached Farbridge just as the sun peaked. It was a miserable, half-abandoned town, surviving only as a dangerous waypoint for those desperate enough to trade near the Merge Zone.
He found the trading hall—a reinforced, dirt-floored warehouse. Inside, merchants haggled loudly, their voices echoing in the oppressive heat. He approached a dealer who sat separate from the rest: a thin, calculating man named Silas, known in Kael's future memory as a discreet broker of rare items, particularly those sought by Mages.
"I have something... old," Kael said, his voice cracking slightly. He hated the sound of his own weakness. "Something from before the Merge."
Silas raised an eyebrow, looking down his nose at the dusty, tired boy. "I only deal in artifacts of power, lad. Not moth-eaten heirlooms."
"This is a specific runic pattern," Kael insisted, placing the canvas sack on the table. He carefully unrolled just a small section of the tapestry, exposing the intricate, pre-Merge runes.
Silas's cynical expression instantly vanished, replaced by a hawk-like intensity. He snatched Kael's hand and pulled him into a dark corner, away from prying eyes.
"You realize what this is, child?" Silas hissed, his voice low and urgent.
"The Blessing of Stability pattern," Kael stated flatly. "I need silver. Enough for high-grade Monster Cores. No questions asked."
After a brutal hour of negotiation, where the thirty-three-year-old warrior in Kael battled the instinct to run, he got his price. Silas paid in heavy silver coins, which Kael quickly exchanged for a small, heavy leather pouch containing six purified Grade 4 Monster Cores—fist-sized, polished spheres of dense energy, harvested from dangerous, mid-level beasts. Six cores. Enough to jumpstart his training for the next few critical months.
"Go home, boy," Silas warned, watching Kael's serious, too-old eyes. "And never let anyone know you had this."
Kael didn't answer. He secured the pouch of cores deep inside his clothes, wrapped the silver coins he had left in a cloth, and quickly left the town, heading straight into the desolate, rock-strewn Wastelands.
The quarry was exactly where he remembered. A steep, hidden fissure led down into a maze of dark, airless tunnels. He wedged a boulder against the fissure entrance, effectively sealing himself inside, concealed from the world.
He found his preferred chamber—a small, dry, naturally smooth cave deep within the earth.
Alone, in the absolute darkness, Kael placed one of the precious Grade 4 Monster Cores on the ground. Its energy hummed faintly, a palpable source of power. He sat cross-legged, closing his eyes, and picked up the tiny, fragile spark of Aura in his core.
No more practice. The clock is ticking.
He took a deep breath, and with a fierce, burning focus, the Ninth-Level Master forced his thirteen-year-old body to begin the impossible, the agonizing, and the only way forward. He commanded his nascent energy to compress, to fold in upon itself, attempting to build a Void Core—a stable structure of infinite absorption—designed to hold Level 10 power.