As he stood beneath the endless expanse of shimmering stars and jade-infused currents, the Inverted Tree towered before him—colossal, serpentine, far away. Animated by something, he could only qualify as divinity. The air hummed with streams of Essence, the very breath of the world whispered through those threads that were invisible to him minutes ago. Its eyes, even brighter than the stars, locked with his. Its gaze was profound and unreadable, beyond mortal comprehension.


    A string of Essence, thin yet unbreakable, connected his mark to the holy creature. The sensation was unlike anything he had felt before—Only now he felt that there was a god in this world. The pulse of life itself rippled through his veins, filling him with awe and terror.


    ???? ????????????


    A wail echoed not in his ears but within his soul—vast, resonant, and ancient. Not only did it shake him to his very core, but the world as well. Every single light string vibrated in unison, following an eldritch frequency. It was not words but raw intent, something so primal he could figure it out instantly. This was language—the Tree as spoken.


    He wanted to speak, reply, answers for this foreign message he couldn''t possibly comprehend. But any words or ideas he tried to formulate dissolved in the vast expanse separating him and the enormity of the behemoth. The sounds he heard were beyond communication, beyond reason. Yet, he sensed something beneath its godlike complexity—an expectation.


    The pull from his mark intensified, drawing him forward across the endless green-tinted sea. He couldn’t understand why, but he needed to get closer. With each step, the liquid Essence shifted beneath his feet, warm and weightless like the air in the summer. As he approached, the limbs and eyes emerged and faded from the Tree’s surface—manifestations of life itself. He felt as if he was gaining in wisdom every ten steps.


    Suddenly, the tether of Essence vibrated. Kallen stopped in his tracks, not feeling the pull of the divine anymore. As he lifted his head, he noticed a change of color beneath the monster’s midsection cracks. The white scales grew even whiter, akin to molten iron. The air was getting hot. Intensely hot.


    ?????? ??????????


    The Tree’s wailing grew in intensity, matching the sudden heat. Kal instinctively knew what it was as primal fear had overtaken his mind. This was hostility.


    ?????? ???????? ???????????????????? ???????? ??????????????????????


    “No—wait!” His voice echoed in his head but couldn’t escape further than his own psyche. The tether strained, now glowing red hot alongside the sea beneath his feet.


    ????????????, Bathory.


    Light erupted from the Tree’s core, engulfing him in white fire.


    <hr>


    He awoke with a gasp.


    The rough stone of his cell pressed against his back, its chill anchoring him back to reality. The faint amber glow of the oil lamp flickered beside his old manual, casting long shadows across the walls. His heart pounded as if he had run for miles, yet his limbs felt lighter than they ever had.


    Was that... no…it was too real…


    He touched the mark on his lower back. Echoes of the heat remained. Kallen sat upright on his stone floor, breath steadying, gaze upon his hands. There it was, this elusive energy he had been looking for these last two days, leaking out from his hands like an overflowing river. He could see it, feel it. It was warm and soothing. However, something immediately caught his attention. The Essence that circulated all around the room was colorless, but his… his was…


    “Orange..”


    Hearing this flat, familiar voice made Kallen jump on his feet out of surprise. As he turned towards where the hidden door should be, the instructor stood there, silent, blending among the shadows, a notebook and a feather pen in hand.


    “...Is it…morning time already…?” uttered Kallen, scared to even address the Vessel. No, he was even more afraid to understand the situation.


    It could only be so. Kallen quickly guessed that his dream came after a much-needed slumber strained by stress, exhaustion, and sudden enlightenment. He quickly reached for his forehead, but even before touching his horn, he knew what to expect. More scales grew on the back of his hands and arms; his horn grew longer, and…for some reason, his hair as well, a few strands now swaying before his eyes. He was running out of time.


    “Describe it.” Replied the shadow.


    “I...I don’t understand…” Said the child, confused and hesitant.


    “The Tree. Describe it.”


    A hint of recognition spread in Kallen’s mind, First Contact. Aren. As the young warrior spent his time boasting about his Swan stories each time he visited their now-ruined home, Kal and his brother were told about this phenomenon that touches every Vessel-to-be.


    “When Essence graces you for the first time, the Tree will greet you.”


    As a cynical nonbeliever, he thought it was one of the many exaggerations his sister’s lover loved to narrate to look better than he actually was. Kal now realized that his words weren’t just hyperbole or superstition.


    He understood now that his juvenile and shallow preconception of life meant nothing in the world he just entered. He knew nothing. Thus, he needed to open his mind to every possibility. Even about divinity, apparently.


    “It was gigantic…A white snake falling from the sky…Arms, eyes, wings everywhere, head like a drake…It had three suns instead of eyes. It was looking at me...”


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    “...Sensitive…Acutely, so…didn’t seem like the type. How far were you from it? Could you move?” Replied the instructor


    “...It was really..really far. I felt like I could put an ocean or two between us…but it was so big that I still felt it could reach me... I kept walking forward even if I knew the distance wouldn’t change.”


    “Good. Anything else?”


    “When it spoke, my head—”


    “It spoke..?” For the first time, Kallen detected a spark of emotion through the masked man. Surprise.


    “…Yes…” whispered the boy with caution.


    “An orange Seer. How odd…Were you able to figure out what the Tree said to you?”


    “No…”


    “...”


    He answered too fast, and silence filled the room for a while. The air confined into the small cell felt even more suffocating than usual as the tension filled Kallen''s lungs as well. Cold sweat dripped from his forehead. His instincts screamed at him to end this conversation as soon as possible.


    The Tree’s hostility, the single word he managed to grasp within those eldrich vibrations: Bathory. Not every truth was good to know, and Kallen knew those new secrets wrote themselves to the short list of things he would keep until the grave.


    He was lying, and the instructor obviously noticed. The tall man stayed immobile as Kallen maintained a shaken gaze on the light-absorbing mask.


    Then suddenly, he turned without needing instruction. Facing the slab, he sat cross-legged, waiting. The touch of the instructor’s cold hand against the mark sent a wave of energy surging through his body—stronger than yesterday but less overwhelming. Kal''s breaths remained steady, his awareness riding the current rather than resisting it.


    After a moment, the hand lifted.


    “Better,” the Instructor remarked coldly. He placed the bowl of gruel and water cup beside the slab. “Now sit. I am to give you further instructions”.


    Kallen got up promptly and sat on his stone bed. Eyes filled with anticipation.


    “Have you fully read the book?” Pursued the man.


    “Yes. Fully.” Replied Kallen with an even tone, matching his teacher.


    “Did you notice anything?”


    Kallen stopped for a moment. He kept gazing at the man’s covered face, unable to get any kind of read on him. Finally, the boy cleared his throat and gathered his voice.


    “Is it…incomplete?”


    In what felt like just an instant, the instructor opened his notebook and scribbled something in a flash before slipping it back into the darkness of his cape.


    While the book was an instruction guide for seal-making, Kal noticed that he had never actually seen a passage mentioning the Sealing Ceremony or how to apply a seal even once. The boy ignored this, thinking he would have to figure it out later, but it remained a dreadful question he confined to the back of his mind.


    “Watch closely.”


    A right hand emerged from the shadow’s dark mantle. Palm facing the ceiling, it didn''t take long until Essence started to gather over it. The colorless energy spiraled in a whirlwind, hovering in harmony until a large, perfect circle was formed.


    Kallen''s face remained firm, but his eyes struggled to hide his awe. This ring, as large as a window, floated over the instructor’s hand. There was not an inch of irregularity, the Essence circulation was flawless, rotating in harmony. This was precisely what the old manual depicted, what he needed to reproduce.


    But the child’s eyes regained focus when he noticed the seal slowly shrinking. The Essence flow gained in speed, with a portion of it escaping the circle, ejected at high speed. Its size kept diminishing steadily until it became no larger than Kallen’s fist, no larger than his mark.


    “Once you master your manual’s instructions, this would be the easy part. Next, come Ei-Sul.”


    Confusion riddled Kal’s face. He used to memorize Vessel terms for fun as they seemed so foreign to his life. This one was one of the many that escaped his grasp.


    “The moment you will close the circle around your mark, it will activate and fight you. Aggressively so. It will try to break your concentration by any means possible.” The instructor then reached for the seal he had formed earlier just to crush it brutally with his hand. ”The moment you lose control means death. You yield to the beast, become one. ”


    A chill shiver parcoured the child’s spine. There was the infamous reason the Sealing Ceremony had such a high mortality rate. He just wasn’t aware it had a proper name. It was said that the corpses of children who failed the ceremony were burnt right away because they always ended up losing to the mark at the last moment. Despite his struggles, the process, as of now, indeed looked far too easy for a ritual so feared by the Empire’s entire population. Ei-Sul was the actual wall he had to face, what separates humans from Vessels.


    “Whenever I return to this room, I will ask you if you feel ready. If so, I will assist you. Succeed, and I will escort you out. Fail, and I will kill you.”


    The man’s unwavering tone didn’t sound like a threat, just a truth. Kallen knew it deep within his bones. The stone door slowly slid open. The instructor turned around to go through its gap, melting into its darkness. He added.


    “You are free to try on your own. The result will only be a testament to your wisdom.”


    The stone door sealed shut, leaving Kallen alone once more.


    ***


    After eating the tasteless gruel and drinking some of the cool water, Kallen resumed his practice. The rhythm of droplets became his guide, their steady cadence aligning with his breath. With each inhale, Essence filled him; with each exhale, it flowed outward, orange, saturating the room as it turned into invisible mist.


    By following the manual’s breathing methods, he quickly understood that it helped generate more of his own Essence. Now, the task was to make it bend to his will.


    What cannot be stopped can’t be controlled.


    Just before the chapter about circles came a chapter about Essence manipulation, his next task. The instructions were written under a simplistic image of a man meditating with a dark symbol over the chest, protected by a thin layer of green light. Kall needed to learn how to limit the flow of Essence endlessly pouring out of his body.


    This time, the flames did not claw at the edges of his awareness. They lingered, dormant but present, like coals buried beneath ash. He wasn’t scared to experiment.


    He lifted his right hand up, palm facing the ceiling, his gaze upon the energy flowing out of his grasp, dancing around his fingers. This was the most Essence he could produce at the moment. He wanted to spread it all around himself in order to get a better understanding of his own energy.


    In Essence lies intent, an extension of the self. Once one becomes fully aware of themself, they become each other''s Vessels.


    To hell with these old men''s sayings…


    By this point, Kallen already had an intuition that even if the instruction were written in the most explicit way possible, he probably still wouldn’t get it. Success lied more in understanding and self-search than the words themselves. But even then, he felt like he would grow tired quickly if he had to study and question concepts of life every time he needed to go through a page. He was a man of action.


    Now fully coated by a dense orange layer of energy, Kallen studied its movements by moving his fingers and hand. He was quickly able to make an observation. As it flowed out, Essence wasn’t trailing behind his movement. Both were perfectly synchronized, mimicking his every move, twisting around his limbs.


    “Intent uh…”


    Suddenly, he threw a fist through the air, then another. The speed didn’t matter, the synchronization felt all the same. The phenomenon somewhat fascinated Kallen as he continued to swing his fists left and right.


    Quickly, he grew tired and thirsty. As he searched his water cup with his eyes, he noticed something that made him freeze in place. As he found what he wanted, before he even decided to lift his hand to reach for it, Essence was already flowing in its direction. He stayed for some time in the same position, trying to figure out what to make of his discovery.


    It knew what I wanted…Is it because it comes from me…?


    With the urge becoming stronger the longer he remained immobile, Kal decided to lean and grab his cup and quench his thirst. But as he did, a deafening pain seeped into his head, his vision turning blurry, his muscles turning into jelly. His strength was leaving him. As his head hit the ground, only a single word managed to escape his dry lips.


    “...Crap…”


    End of Chapter