The sun was rising over the horizon when Noah opened his eyes.
His chakra, which had remained in a state of latent transformation throughout the night, finished settling with one final pulse that ran through his meridians like a cramp.
He sat up slowly. The sea breeze ruffled his white hair and the wings, which he unfurled for a moment to stretch them before folding them back against his back. With a gesture of his hand he opened a portal and stepped through it.
The deep cave greeted him with its purple glow and dense air. Noah raised his hand and the Staff of Sonum appeared in his palm. The golden metal shone under the light of the crystals, and the rings tinkled softly.
He struck the lower end of the staff against the stone floor.
Suddenly a golden light erupted from the point of impact and raced across the cave walls like lightning. Noah's eyes lit up with an intense celestial blue, and around him the air began to move.
The elemental energy particles and the spiritual power that saturated the entire island began to converge toward him. It was as if a colossal magnet had been activated at the center of the cave: the ownerless spiritual power floating in the air, the particles of fire, water, earth, and air that saturated the island's atmosphere—everything was drawn to a single point. Toward Noah.
A swirling multicolored funnel of energy formed around him, a whirlwind of red, blue, green, and white lights rushing into his body. His pores opened, absorbing the torrent of elemental power with insatiable hunger. His flesh, his bones, his organs, his blood—every cell of his body began to charge with elemental particles at an exponential rate. The Staff of Sonum in his hand acted as a catalyst, amplifying the process, channeling the surrounding energy into him without limit.
Noah closed his eyes and let himself be carried away.
Two months later, he opened his eyes again.
His eyes shone with a celestial blue so intense that it lit the cave walls like twin beacons. The purple glow of the crystals had vanished completely, and the grotto was plunged into a darkness broken only by the light radiating from his gaze.
CRACK.
A fissure snaked across the wall.
CRACK. CRACK.
The ground trembled. Stalactites began to break free from the ceiling, crashing to the floor in explosions of dust and shards. The cave was collapsing around him, but Noah felt no urgency. With a measured gesture he opened a portal and stepped through it, appearing in the sky far above the island.
What he saw from there made him raise an eyebrow.
The three islands formed from the remains of the lion turtles were crumbling. Walls of stone and bone cracked; cliffs sheared away in colossal avalanches that raised clouds of dust and foam as they plunged into the sea. The last vestiges of the lion turtles, which had stood for millennia, slowly sank beneath the waves.
The reason was simple: the spiritual power and the elemental power that had sustained those structures had disappeared—completely absorbed by Noah during his two months of seclusion. Without that energy, the shells were nothing more than empty husks.
Noah watched the collapse with a neutral expression and called out in his mind.
"Vantian, show me my progress."
A translucent screen appeared before his eyes, projected directly onto his visual cortex.
Spiritual Energy: 214.32
Elementalization — Final Stage: 80%
· Fire: 20%
· Water: 20%
· Air: 20%
· Earth: 20%
"It seems there's no longer any reason to remain in this place."
With a movement of the staff he opened a rift in space. It was no ordinary portal: the edges of the fissure glowed with a blue-and-white radiance, and from within emanated an ethereal light that did not belong to the material world.
The sky on the other side was a canopy of stars that shone with intensity, and an aurora of shifting colors danced slowly overhead. The ground beneath his feet was a grass of celestial blue that swayed without wind, as if every blade possessed a life of its own. Floating mountains—islands of rock suspended in the air—rose around him, connected by waterfalls that flowed upward instead of down.
"So this is the Spirit World," Noah murmured, his eyes sweeping the landscape with surprise.
Then he looked at his own body.
He was wearing a white laboratory coat that fell to his knees. But it was not the clothing that caught his attention. He raised a hand before his face and examined it: it was larger, longer, with marked knuckles and veins faintly visible beneath the skin. His body had grown. It was no longer that of a nine-year-old child, but that of an adult.
"Huh?"
He approached a nearby pond. When he leaned over it, the face that looked back at him from the reflection seemed strangely familiar. It was the face of his past life.
But as he watched, the reflection began to change. The features softened, the jaw rounded, the hair turned white as snow. Within seconds the adult face was replaced by that of his current life: a nine-year-old boy with white hair and two feathered wings—one golden, the other black—spread behind his back.
"Interesting."
The Spirit World reflected one's perception of oneself, or perhaps the essence of one's being. Noah was not certain which was the case, nor did he care overmuch. He had other priorities at the moment.
He unfurled his wings and held the Staff of Sonum before him, using it as a compass. The staff vibrated softly in his hand and tugged him in a specific direction. Noah rose into the air and followed the path it indicated, soaring over forests of trees with crystal leaves, rivers that flowed toward the sky, and meadows where spirits in the shape of animals lifted their heads to watch him pass.
At last he reached his destination.
A floating temple high above the suspended mountains. It was a structure of white stone and slender columns, surrounded by a halo of golden light.
Noah walked to the altar at the center of the temple. It was a circular slab of black stone, engraved with the symbols of the four elements and covered by a thin layer of luminescent moss. Noah gripped the staff with both hands and drove its lower end into the stone.
BOOM!
An explosion of spiritual power shook the temple. The columns trembled, the statues cracked, and an invisible shockwave expanded in every direction, making the aurora in the sky writhe like a serpent.
The energy of the Spirit World began to flow toward the altar like an uncontrolled torrent. It was a current of white and golden light that converged on the staff, which began to tremble violently in Noah's hands. The metal rings tinkled with a deafening sound, and the grip grew hot enough nearly to burn. But Noah did not let go.
Barely an instant later, all that energy flowed from the weapon into his body.
"Aaargh!!"
The power raced through every corner of his being. His muscles tensed like steel cables as they withstood the enormous pressure. It was as if an entire ocean were trying to force itself into a bottle, and the bottle was his body.
Strange runes began to appear across his skin. Blue lines shaped like arrows spread over his arms, his legs, his chest, and his back. Others climbed his neck until they covered part of his face and head, forming luminous tattoos that pulsed with the rhythm of his heart.