The wind howled through the towering cliffs, carrying the scent of damp earth and the distant whisper of crashing waves. Kael walked alone, his boots pressing into the loose gravel of the wilderness path. His limbs ached from hours of exertion, but he welcomed the pain.
Pain was real. Failure was worse.
The weight of his unawakened status had begun to settle in his chest like a sickness. His family had given him silent glances at dinner, as if his mere presence was a shadow cast over their name. A shame they did not expect, but one they now had to bear.
"You trained all these years, yet in the end, it meant nothing."
He gritted his teeth, pushing the thought away. It had only been a week since the Awakening ceremony, but he already felt as if he were sinking—drowning in the expectations he could no longer fulfill.
Tonight, like every night since, he walked without direction, letting his thoughts take him far from the estate. There was something about the wilderness, the raw and untamed land beyond the city, that made him feel… unburdened.
Perhaps if he walked far enough, he could leave his failure behind.
Kael had wandered farther than usual. He realized this when the ground beneath him changed, shifting from familiar dirt paths to uneven stone. Large, jagged formations jutted from the ground like broken fangs, some partially collapsed, others overgrown with moss and time.
This place was old. Too old.
A ruined structure lay ahead, half-buried beneath tangled roots and fallen debris. It wasn't something he had ever seen before, nor had it been recorded on any maps. The city's archives spoke of old war remnants, places where the land had swallowed the past, but this…
This was something else.
A faint glow caught his eye.
A shimmer beneath the rubble.
His pulse quickened. Kael wasn't sure why, but he felt compelled to move closer. His feet carried him forward before his mind had even decided.
He crouched, pushing aside crumbled stone and twisted metal. Beneath it, he saw something smooth—polished, untouched by time.
A gem.
No, not a gem.
A core.
It was encased in something—half-buried, half-exposed—as if it had been sealed away and forgotten. Its surface pulsed faintly, a quiet, rhythmic light, almost like… a heartbeat.
Kael swallowed. Why was this here?
And more importantly—why had no one found it before?
He hesitated. Something deep within him, some primal instinct, screamed at him to leave.
But his hands moved on their own.
He reached out.
The moment his fingers brushed the surface, the world shattered.
A wave of heat erupted beneath his skin, flooding his veins with a force unlike anything he had ever known. The air itself seemed to distort, the ground trembling beneath him.
Kael gasped, his body locking up as his vision fractured—images, memories that were not his own flashing through his mind.
A battlefield of fire and ruin.
A dying figure clutching something close to their chest.
A core, pulsing with desperate light.
A final whisper.
Then—darkness.
And silence.
Kael's body jerked back to reality, collapsing onto the cold stone. His breath came in ragged gasps, his heart pounding like a war drum.
The core was gone.
Not broken. Not stolen.
Gone.
And something inside him felt… different.
He clenched his fists. His body felt the same. No sudden burst of power. No grand Awakening.
But deep within his chest, buried beneath layers of flesh and bone—something had changed.
Kael forced himself to his feet, his mind racing. He didn't understand what had just happened, but he knew one thing for certain—
No one could know.
Not until he knew exactly what had been placed inside him.
And so, with trembling hands and a mind full of questions, he turned back toward home.
Tonight, he had found something hidden.
Or perhaps, it had found him.