Ughhh...
Ethan woke up after his long slumber, this time without the terrifying sight of the silver eye. A wave of profound relief washed over him. The darkness behind his eyelids was just that—darkness.
"That damn eye..." he muttered to himself, the memory rushing back the moment he was fully conscious. He remembered the entire awakening, right up to the realistic dream. "So terrifying."
He sat up, his body feeling surprisingly normal, the deep-seated cold finally gone. He looked around his room within the tower. "Oh, Master sent me back to my room, .... how long has it been already?"
His first order of business was the eye: he had to check what he was tormented for. The very thing that had almost led him to his frozen death. Taking a steadying breath, he focused a little, reaching inward.
Immediately, he felt the connection with the eye. It was there, a silent presence nestled within his soul.
"Hmmnnn... it no longer feels as heavy as it did," he observed, a flicker of surprise cutting through his apprehension. "Maybe it's because the cold is gone."
During the agonizing process of the connection being formed, he had been able to blink the eye, to flicker it with immense effort. But he had been unable to open it fully. Now, the sensation was different. Right now, he felt he could open the silver eye without any problems.
But his will to open the eye was shaky.
Fear, cold and sharp, rooted him in place. The memory of the dream—the massive, woven silver eye and its terrifying suction—was too vivid, too real. He was scared of his own soul body.
"From all the types of soul bodies I looked up..... I don't think any of them involved a silver eye," he reasoned, trying to ground his anxiety in logic. "Maybe blue eyes, but none were silver." The uniqueness of it felt less like a blessing and more like a curse. "This is too much."
He ruffled his hair in frustration, the gesture one of pure helplessness. Needing answers, he swung his legs off the bed and retrieved the book on soul bodies he had borrowed from the tower's library. He flipped through the pages, past the basics of soul energy and its origins, to the section detailing recorded types.
His search only deepened the mystery. He found two mentions of soul bodies that involved eyes, and they were ranked pretty high, their abilities fearsome and profound. But none of them mentioned a single eye. And none, in any record, described a color of silver.
A grim determination settled over him.
"To hell with this..." he spoke aloud, the words were meant to fuel his own courage. "It's still my soul body at the end of the day...."
He was still scared. And he had no idea what would happen if he opened it.
"Okay... here it goes...."
Ethan mustered up his courage again, pushing past the lingering fear. He took a final, steadying breath and slowly opened the soul eye.
Immediately, his vision expanded.
But not in the way he expected. It wasn't an elemental view like the elemental eye. This was... different.
"What's this...." he whispered, utterly motionless.
The world was being deconstructed before him. His vision processed every bit of data his eye observed in real-time. Nothing could escape it. He wasn't just seeing the air in the room; he was seeing its density, its flow patterns, the minute particles drifting within it. He saw the ambient energy in the room, its density and fluctuations quantified and interpreted for him without conscious effort. It was a flood of pure, raw data, seamlessly organized and fed directly into his understanding.
Driven by a sudden impulse, he started channeling his illusion energy while keeping his soul eye open. A shimmering purple hue bloomed around his hand. But to the silver eye, it was so much more. Unconsciously, he focused his vision, and his view expanded further.
The complex, shifting patterns within the illusion energy revealed themselves again. They were the same continuously shifting runes he had seen before, but something was different this time. As he stayed in that view, his eye worked tirelessly. It tracked each rune, analyzing the trajectories and the minute energy signatures. At the two-minute mark, a breakthrough flashed in his mind.
His eye had discovered a pattern.
For every primary rune that shifted to a new position, a secondary, complementary rune made an identical, mirrored movement. It was a continuous, repeating cycle he had never noticed before.
Ethan didn't fully understand what this meant for his illusion energy, but the analyzing ability of his soul eye was shocking. His soul eye was continuously analyzing data, filtering it, and sending the refined conclusions directly to his brain. It felt like a supercomputer built into his very soul.
Closing the soul eye, he took a deep breath. The normal world felt strangely simple and empty. The implications of his soul eye were vast and terrifying. He didn't truly understand its full function yet.
First, he needed to see his master.
He was sure Mystic Kaelen had a lot of questions. A flicker of skepticism arose about how much to reveal, but he quickly dismissed it. His master had never forced his secrets, and showing such distrust would be a profound disrespect to the man who had strolled into the Nether realm like it was his backyard just to fetch soul crystals for him.
After a quick shower, he returned to his room to find Harry waiting with a tray. The aroma was rich and inviting.
"Hmnnnn.... Harry, that smells so good...."
Harry smiled, a genuine expression of pleasure. Life in the Elemental Tower had been on an upward slide for him since he'd been assigned to Ethan. He now received priority from the other servants, all because of his connection to the young master.
He knew Ethan didn't have to be nice for something as simple as cooking, but Ethan always was—a fact that still shocked him. His attempt to befriend Alan had quickly reminded him of the typical pride and aloofness of Ascendants, making Ethan's demeanor all the more unique.
"Young master Ethan, I made this specially for your recovery," Harry said with a smile.
Ethan didn't mind the attention; he was hungry. "This is perfect, Harry. It's just what I needed. Thank you."
Harry's smile widened at the gratitude. "It's nothing, this is my job. Young master Ethan, I was told to inform you when you woke up that the Tower master requests your presence on the 6th floor."
Ethan nodded. He hurried back into his room, got dressed, and gobbled up the meal quickly. Without further delay, he took the stairs to the 6th floor...
He stood before the door, raised his hand, and knocked, waiting for his master's response.