I exhaled heavily, each breath dragging against the weight in my chest. My body ached, my mind buzzed, and the faint, rhythmic hum of the newly formed White Star in my core reverberated like a quiet drumbeat.
That had been too close.
'That was dangerous,' I thought, shaking my head. The irony didn't escape me. I had just formed my White Star—a monumental achievement by any measure—and it had to happen in the middle of a fight against a White-ranker.
Not exactly ideal timing, unless you had a particular fondness for gambling with your life.
Still, I couldn't deny the results. By pushing myself to the absolute limit, by taking on Arkell headfirst without relying on Seraphina's intervention, I had forced a breakthrough. That level of desperation, that razor's edge between survival and obliteration, had stripped away the fog in my understanding of light mana. In its place, clarity. An epiphany.
And now, I had both the Black Star and the White Star.
