The walk from the village garrison training arena to the northern edge of the settlement was quiet, the gravel crunching softly beneath our boots. Lysander was still eagerly rubbing his right wrist, his brow furrowed in a deep, comical expression of pure concentration as he tried to figure out exactly how I had disarmed him with a single, fluid flick of a light piece of timber.
"I'm telling you, Astraeus, you've been eating something different," Lysander muttered, adjusting his practice blade over his shoulder. "You moved like smoke. My sword felt like a mountain of lead when you stepped inside my guard."
"You're just throwing too much weight into your shoulders, Lysander," I replied casually, keeping my voice even.
Before we could turn the training choreography over any further in our conversation, we arrived at the village elder's cottage.
Tucked beneath the low, sweeping branches of a massive weeping willow, the elder's home was an ancient, stone-walled structure covered in thick layers of climbing green ivy. The heavy oak front door was already propped wide open, allowing the rich, earthy aroma of brewing herbal tea and dried pipe tobacco to drift out into the cosmic morning air.
Sitting on a rustic rocking chair on the front porch was Elder Thandor. His long, silver-white beard cascaded down to his chest, and his deeply lined face carried the heavy, quiet wisdom of a man who had guided the outer frontier families through decades of harsh winters.
"Ah, the vanguard of our little border village," Elder Thandor greeted us, his voice a low, raspy rumble as he set his pipe down on a wooden side table. His cloudy eyes scanned over the pair of us, lingering on my sweat-soaked canvas tunic and raw palms. "I could hear the wooden blades clacking all the way from the garrison clearing. You boys are wound as tight as crossbow strings."
"Tomorrow is the big day, Elder," Lysander said, dropping his wooden weapon onto the grass and bowing his head with genuine reverence. "We came to collect the transit passes for the regional altar."
Elder Thandor let out a soft, wheezing chuckle, reaching into the deep pocket of his woollen robes. He pulled out two small, polished bronze tokens etched with the intricate, interlocking geometric runes of the global network layout.
"The regional Awakening Ceremony is an unyielding, absolute crossroad," Thandor said, his expression slowly turning solemn as he handed each of us a token. The metal felt ice-cold against my fingertips. "Once you stand before the altar tomorrow, the global system will unseal your latent mana veins and broadcast your true Talent Ranks to the world. It will give you your attributes, your paths, and your designated weapon affinities. The laws of Aethelon are absolute; whatever the interface reveals tomorrow is the destiny you must carry."
I stared down at the bronze token in my palm, a cold chill settling deep beneath my ribs as the gnarled metal bit into my skin.
Elder Thandor believed the system was an unalterable script written by the gods. The Sovereign Families believed the interface was an absolute tool used to sort commoner peasants into easily managed frontline brackets. In my past life, I had believed them too. But as my fingers tightened around the token, my mind flashed back to the suffocating vacuum of the forest, the burning heat of the vortex, and the heavy presence that had spoken directly into my soul.
Was that surreal dream state just a hallucination born from the trauma of my execution? Or had the catastrophic implosion of the Cosmic Pool genuinely fractured the standard rules, embedding something foreign deep within my unawakened frame? I didn't have the answers yet. But tomorrow morning, when I finally stepped up to the altar, the global interface would read my soul—and I would finally find out exactly what I had become.