The golden dawn that Solan saw from the clearing was a lie.
As he stepped further away from the Sentinel's corpse, the silver trees didn't thin out; they grew closer together, their metallic leaves vibrating with a low, dissonant hum. This was the Inner Circle of the Silver Woods—a place where the laws of physics began to warp under the weight of ancient star-fall.
Solan collapsed against a purple-barked tree, his chest heaving. The Yellow Star Fragment he had absorbed from the Sentinel was fighting him. Inside his soul, the Crimson Void was like a starving wolf trying to tear apart a golden cage.
[WARNING: STELLAR INCOMPATIBILITY] [CRIMSON VOID IS REJECTING THE LIGHT OF THE LEO-SENTINEL] [INTERNAL DAMAGE IMMINENT]
"Gah!" Solan clutched his stomach, coughing up a mixture of blood and glowing yellow sparks.
The power he had "eaten" was too pure, too anchored to the Twelve Constellations. His body, now a vessel for the Forbidden 13th, was treating the captured energy like a virus.
Click-clack. Click-clack.
The Shadow Husks were back, but they weren't attacking. They were circling him at a distance, waiting for the "Stellar Indigestion" to kill him.
"You... want to watch me explode?" Solan hissed, his eyes flashing between orange and blood-red.
He looked at the Ring of the Faded Star. The grey stone was cracked. The burst of power he used to kill the Sentinel had damaged the suppressor. If he didn't stabilize his energy now, the flare of his awakening would act like a beacon for every knight in the kingdom.
He closed his eyes, forced his mind into the darkness of his own subconscious. He saw the Obsidian Orb, now fractured and leaking crimson plasma.
If I can't absorb the light, Solan thought desperately, I'll crush it.
He didn't try to merge with the yellow fragment. Instead, he commanded the Crimson Void to grind it. He envisioned the red plasma as a set of cosmic teeth, chewing the golden energy into raw, characterless mana.
It was an agonizing process. It felt like swallowing broken glass. But slowly, the yellow sparks in his veins turned red. The "Leo" signature was erased, leaving only pure, cold power.
[LAW OF DEVOURING: EVOLUTION] [NEW SUB-SKILL UNLOCKED: ESSENCE REFINEMENT]
Solan opened his eyes. The pain was gone, replaced by a cold, sharp clarity. He stood up, his movements fluid and predatory. He didn't need the ring to hide anymore; he had learned to wrap the Void around his own heartbeat.
A Shadow Husk, emboldened by his long silence, lunged from a branch above.
Solan didn't even draw his blade. He simply reached out and caught the creature by its smoky throat. With a slight squeeze of his fingers, a pulse of crimson energy shattered the Husk into nothingness.
"No more running," Solan whispered to the darkness.
He looked at the map the old Librarian had etched into his mind. Ahead lay the "Valley of Fallen Blades"—a graveyard of ancient warriors who died during the first war of the constellations.
The Academy could wait. Before Solan entered a city of thousands, he needed to find a weapon that wouldn't shatter when he truly let go.