“A person’s desire is often rooted in one of two things. Either they long for what they’ve never had… or they’ve tasted something once and can no longer live without it.”

  Lucien’s voice echoed softly into the silence, spoken to no one, as he stood in a place he hadn’t known existed. His eyes swept across the room, absorbing everything, even as his mind lingered on the thought.

  “My father… was a strange combination of both. There were things he could never obtain. Then he met my mother. And she changed him. Perhaps even more than he realized himself.”

  He folded his arms, standing perfectly still in the middle of the hidden chamber. His words came not from emotion, but from a careful blend of observation and memory.

  Even though he was never here before, he immediately knew who made this place and for whom. The air carries a specific fragrance, characteristic of his Mother's preferred palettes.

  A soft, golden glow radiated from the ceiling above—not painted. A false sun drawn from rune craft, radiant with the warmth. Its light fell upon a garden suspended from the ceiling, a canopy of enchanted flora that flourished without time. Jasmine and rose, their scents rich and ageless, mingled with rarer, unnamed blossoms, all woven with runes that pulsed gently beneath their petals.

  Each flower not only beautiful, but also mysterious, mesmerizing, elegant and calming just like his mother

  This was no laboratory of sterile tools and steel. This was a sanctum. A space build by a lover for his dearest. A hidden world tailored not to Diego, but to Hilda.

  Lucien closed his eyes for a brief moment, then opened them again. “I knew that rune work was embedded in the letter, but to think… But to think its purpose was to teleport me here”

  He walked forward, inspecting the letter with sharp precision. “Three layers… no, five. Five overlapping runes, each veiling the one beneath it. The real effect was hidden even from me.”

  His gaze moved across the room again.

  Alchemical pillars stretched upward like crystal towers, glowing faintly with arcane mixtures of unknown use. Smaller plinths stood like guardians, each holding singular, curated objects, relics or ingredients, he couldn’t yet tell.

  But it was the far wall that arrested him.

  Mounted there with deliberate reverence were two things.

  His sword, .

  And his armor, his great armor. The very same he had been stripped of the day he was sealed, the day he spilled the blood of his siblings. The sword’s edge gleamed, unchanged, Patiently waiting for its master.

  But the armor… as if it didn't bother waiting for him

  It was white.

  A gleaming, almost divine white, pristine and untouched. It stood tall, immaculate in the light of the artificial sun. But to Lucien, it looked utterly wrong.

  He narrowed his eyes.

  “He changed it.”

  His voice was flat, the disapproval immediate.

  “No one told me he would tamper with my equipment. I absolutely do not approve this.”

  He stepped closer, studying the armor’s helm once jet-black, imposing. Now, pale, radiant. A mockery.

  “I would look like a fool in white. It’s highly impractical. Blood shows too easily. It ruins the intimidation factor. It doesn’t reflect my personality in the slightest.”

  He shook his head slowly, but his hands remained behind his back. There was no anger in his voice, only distaste.

  Lucien looked around once more.

  A hidden room he never knew existed, built by his father… in honor of his mother.

  Just as Lucien had begun to grow accustomed to the room, a sudden sound shattered the stillness. A voice echoed through the chamber, rich with arrogance and theatrical mockery. It was a voice Lucien had long assumed he would never hear again.

  His father’s.

  “HAHAHA HA, how’s , you little bastard? Shocked, aren’t you? C’mon, admit it.”

  The voice rang out from nowhere and everywhere, exaggerated in pitch, almost gleeful.

  “First, tell me: how’s the room? Not bad, right? Don’t want to brag—actually, that’s a lie, I want to brag—it’s one of my finest works.”

  Lucien’s reply came flat and unimpressed. “That’s the best you could manage? What a shame.”

  The voice fired back instantly. “I bet you made some snide remark, didn’t you? Don’t even bother answering, I’m not listening. This is a recorded message. You’ll only make yourself look like an idiot talking back.”

  Lucien let his eyes drift around the space again,“Could have added a chair. At the very least.”

  The voice turned sharp, animated, biting. “Since a rogue, reckless, egotistical, self-serving bastard like you finally bothered to open my letter, something serious must’ve happened. Because I could’ve bet my that a pompous little brat like you would either toss it in the trash or lock it in some dusty drawer for decades.”

  “You’re such a whiny loser. Hahahaha! So—what happened? You lost? Lost your pride, your control? And now you’re here, crawling back to me, shamelessly hoping I might’ve left behind something useful?”

  Lucien, leaned slightly toward a nearby flower. “This one smells decent. Are there any seeds stored somewhere?”

  “You’re ignoring me, aren’t you?! YOU’RE IGNORING ME, YOU ARROGANT LITTLE—! Don’t ignore me! I’m getting to the part, you fool!”

  Lucien’s ears adjusted, filtering out the noise, tuning only to the content that mattered.

  “You should have the package. Inside it, there are three keys. Silver, gold, and bronze. Pick the silver one. Leave the others in the box. Carry the box with you. Now go to the left wall. Look for the eagle sigil.”

  Lucien followed the instructions silently. He opened the box. Three keys lay nestled inside, each cold to the touch, each humming faintly with embedded runes. Without hesitation, he took the silver one, closed the box, and approached the left wall.

  The eagle sigil waited, carved subtly into obsidian.

  As the silver key touched the mark, the wall split open with a whispering hum, revealing a narrow, darkened corridor. He stepped inside. The door sealed behind him.

  The room was pitch black. Absolute. Only the echo of his own breath returned to him.

  Then—

  A flicker.

  And his father appeared.

  Not the old Diego. A younger Diego, eyes sharper, hair darker, smirk still cut from steel.

  Lucien:“A projected image?”

  Diego’s smile widened. “Don’t get too sentimental. As you’ve probably guessed, this is nothing more than a recording, some manipulated image work. No soul here. No ghosts.”

  He took a step forward, arms open, like a performer stepping onto stage.

  “But still... let me show you why this is one of my finest works.”

  The words triggered something deep within the chamber.

  The void around Lucien dissolved.

  Stars burst across the ceiling like shattered glass, painting the world in constellations long forgotten. Below his feet, the floor melted into a mirrored sea, silent, dark, endless.

  The sound of waves lapping against an invisible shore filled the air, and with it, the hum of a thousand whispered voices, like wind caught between worlds.

  Followed by the meteors shooting stars ripping through the night sky overhead and below, water rose in vast tsunamis, towering and curled, crashing just short of him, yet never touching. It was an illusion. But it was flawless.

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  Lucien stood still as the ocean curled around him, unblinking.

  “What’s with all this theatrics?” he muttered.

  Diego’s image vanished, leaving Lucien alone again in the darkened chamber. Yet his voice remained, rolling in from all directions—rich, commanding, impossible to escape.

  “Watch and listen with full attention, you moron. There are no repeats. No rewinds. No second chances.”

  Lucien sighed, “A normal letter would’ve been better. Far less dramatic.”

  The chamber began to stir again. The air shifted. From the center of the room. Shapes, scenes, shadows dancing in deliberate sequence.

  An ancient auditorium constructed of illusion and light, built for one audience alone.

  And so it began.

  Diego’s voice returned—no longer mocking, but colder now, heavier, like thunder rolling in behind storm clouds.

  “There is one absolute law in this world. One law so fundamental that not even I, nor your mother, with all her brilliance, could bend it, let alone break it.”

  “The lower realm cannot perceive, affect, or comprehend the higher.”

  “No matter how powerful a being becomes, how enlightened, how godlike they may appear in this world… they remain bound to their layer of existence. Always.”

  The shadows on the stage shifted into layered planes—figures drawn in chalk on parchment, oblivious to the hand that sketched them, the pen that could erase them at will.

  “A figure drawn on paper cannot reach out and harm the one who sketched it. We would look the same if one look at this realm from the higher realms.”

  Images changed again. Ethereal beings towered above flat realities, moving unseen tools, brush, blade, compass, script.

  “The higher realm wields colors, parchment, instruments beyond our grasp. It shapes entire realities, magic, all the causes, draws borders, builds monuments, gives breath to myth. Imagine everything in this world is made of some structure and that structure is only visible from that realm”

  “And yet... we cannot see it. We cannot feel it. It is unknowable. Unimaginable.”

  He continued, voice quiet now, reverent and distant.

  "I once dreamed of crafting a masterpiece, of something truly unmatched.

  Not for glory, but for joy. For curiosity. For the simple wonder of creation.

  So I researched, experimented, and pursued that dream with reckless passion, hoping to give birth to something greater than any ordinary creature."

  The images twisted again to alchemy tables, blood-slick circles, creatures growing in strange vessels, memories suspended in stasis.

  “Then... we found you. It was as if the universe itself handed us a gift.”

  Lucien’s gaze didn’t change. But something in the air grew colder.

  "A child rescued from a cult—severely emaciated, blind, and unable to move. At first, we thought you were simply broken. A fragile life barely clinging to existence."

  “But you weren’t.”

  “No. You were beyond anything I had ever encountered.”

  The shadows shifted to a figure small, frail, but pulsing with unstable energy.

  “But the more I examined you, the more amazed I became. Your cells, your tissues—they were in constant motion. Not healing. But adapting.”

  “You were adapting to everything we exposed you to. Every threat, every toxin, every environment. Your body refused to break. It repaired, endured, and strengthened itself. That cult poisoned you with seventeen different toxins, each one fatal enough to kill dragons. Yet you lived.”

  “You felt pain. Tremendous pain in the process. You were in agony, But you survived."

  Lucien still stood unfazed unbothered but hearing the content with focus

  “The real revelation,” Diego continued, “wasn’t your survival.”

  “It was your perception.”

  “ You could . You perceived the higher realm. More likely you could interfere with it had you know how to”

  “You were breaking the fundamental law of the universe, and you were doing it as a child.”

  “But it wasn’t a gift. Not to you. It was a disease.”

  “You could perceive everything—both from this world and from the higher realm. It overwhelmed you. Your mind couldn’t handle it. You were blind in one sense, yet burdened by sight no living being should possess because of this your mind was suffering, making you something like a marionette whose string have been severed.”

  Lucien looked at his hand.

  “To make the matter worse your adaptation was definitely was protecting you from your 1st ability breaking you apart, but it was also more of a curse than blessing it burnt mana and energy at tremendous level, making you unable to use any form of magic or spell even any kind of ability, sometime you wouldn't even be able to move on your own. Aura being related to life force was still accessible though, in fact your aura was the most potent one I had ever seen”

  Diego’s voice softened just a fraction. Not pity. Not regret. Something colder.

  “I had named your these to ability, blessing or curses call it whatever you like to call, true perception and absolute adaptation “

  “Years of research. Years of failure eventually, I made you functional, Normal, But I couldn’t preserve your true abilities.”

  “They’re still there, somewhere inside you but diluted. Downgraded. Not even one percent of what you once held.“

  “I trained you, tested you, hoped your old powers would return naturally. I could’ve forced it—torn through the layers to dig them out. But it might’ve turned you into a mindless shell. And Hilda… she was against it."

  A long silence followed.

  Then Diego’s voice returned, sharp and final.

  “That is your story. Your origin. What was given, what was stolen. What you could have been. And what you are.”

  “Now, let’s move on to what actually matters.”

  “I knew—if you ever came to me—it wouldn’t be for love. It wouldn’t be for sentiment. You came here for something useful.”

  Lucien finally spoke: “Yet you wasted so much time.”

  The chamber stirred once more. Light returned—not soft or warm, but deep and vast, casting endless blue around them.

  Suddenly, it felt as though they were beneath an ocean.

  Lucien stood weightless, surrounded by dark water that moved without motion. Light shimmered overhead, broken into dancing fragments. And before him, his father reappeared, Diego Sinclair—poised at the center of this submerged illusion. On either side of him stood two towering pillars, ancient and monolithic, each humming with a different presence.

  Diego's arms spread wide, eyes lit with familiar arrogance.

  “I wasn't wasting time,” he said, voice echoing through the impossible sea. “You should know that better than anyone.”

  His smirk deepened.

  “You remember what I once told you? That I would make you stronger? That I would forge the best version of you this world could imagine?”

  Without warning, a scene materialized beside them, projected from the water itself.

  A younger Lucien appeared, made of cloth and stuffing, a teddy bear effigy of the boy he once was. He sobbed quietly at Diego’s feet, stitched arms clenched tight around his body. And beside him stood Diego, exuding confidence, speaking down with mock reassurance and smug pride.

  Lucien, the real one, stared at it with a blank expression. He didn’t speak. But the flicker in his eye betrayed his discomfort.

  The vision faded, replaced by silence. Then Diego turned, arms lowered now, and his voice became solemn.

  “And so,” he said, “I offer you the result of everything your mother and I built. Our entire lives. Every failure. Every discovery. Every sin. All of it.”

  He raised his hand, and both pillars responded.

  “Two paths. Two gifts. Two choices. You must choose only one”

  The one on his left glowed with a deep, elegant darkness, not terrifying, but beautiful. The obsidian shimmered with dark blue veins, like stars behind a night storm.

  The pillar cracked open, revealing a floating object within: a dodecahedron, forged from some unknowable dark alloy, its surface wrapped with fine, silver lines of light. Not quite covering it, only accenting the impossible shape beneath.

  “This,” Diego said, “is the Delta Core.”

  He gestured to his right.

  The second pillar flared with radiant golden light. From it emerged a cluster of twenty-six astral plates, small, delicate-looking artifacts that floated within the casing.

  Each plate shimmered like starlight, etched with tiny, incomprehensible runes, their warmth tangible even from where Lucien stood.

  “And these,” Diego said, “are the Astral Plates.”

  He stepped back, letting the oceanic silence fill the void between them.

  Diego’s voice echoed once more, the surrounding ocean pulsing with light.

  “The two things I’m offering you, Lucien, are vastly different from each other—opposites, almost, in method and risk.”

  He turned toward the obsidian pillar, where the Delta Core floated, silent and cold. It spun gently in the air, its silver tracery glinting with every rotation like the movement of a celestial machine.

  “The Delta Core, once absorbed, will return what you lost. Fully. Everything that was taken from you… your old abilities, your perception, your true nature… it will come back.”

  He paused, tone darkening.

  “But make no mistake, this path is not kind. You will endure pain. Not the kind you’ve already known. Worse. A billion times worse. Your body will be pushed to its limits, again and again. Your adaptation ability will accelerate, violently so, forcing you to evolve at a speed most living things cannot survive.”

  “The Delta Core does not care who uses it. It simply amplifies what already exists. For you, it won’t just enhance, it will awaken. But you must be ready. If you fail to master it... you could lose control entirely. The consequences could be irreversible.”

  He turned his head slightly, as if measuring Lucien’s silence.

  “I don’t know why you’ve come to me now. I don’t know what’s driven you to open that letter. But if you choose this path, do it only when you truly believe your own power on its own is not enough. Or when the stakes are so high, hesitation would be death.”

  Then he gestured to the other side the golden pillar, where the Astral Plates shimmered like fragments of starlight. Their glow was gentle, pulsing like breath.

  “This,” Diego said, “is a different approach entirely.”

  “The Astral Plates also unlock pieces of your original self… but only partially. At first, just three percent. A fraction of what you once were. But unlike the Delta Core, this method is stable. Safer. Slower.”

  “As you grow stronger, as you learn to control it, the plates will release more. It’s a gradual evolution, built on mastery, not shock.”

  He smirked faintly, though his voice remained steady.

  “When you absorb the plates, you’ll feel weakness for a few days. Not pain, not devastation, just drain. They’ll restrict your adaptation process at first, preventing harmful side effects. But they won’t kill it. In time, as you learn to command it, the adaptation will activate freely, when you need it. When you desire it.”

  He stepped back, letting the plates rise higher, catching the oceanic light.

  “This path takes time. Real time. And if you’re relying on your own strength alone… it may take years to see its full potential.”

  He paused, then chuckled.

  “But... since you’re the type who probably rolls their eyes at anything slow, we added something extra.”

  The plates shifted, aligning themselves like a constellation, a network of purpose.

  “There are twenty-six plates. Eighteen of them serve a special function. Each acts as a slot, a vessel designed to absorb and bind to unique energy signatures. If you come into contact with someone possessing a distinct energy, mana, aura, essence and the slot recognizes it, you can absorb it. Bind it. Make it yours.”

  The lights of the plates danced now, each flickering with a different colored aura.

  “Once bound, the plate engraves that signature onto itself. Permanently. From that moment, you can wield that energy type. But you must find them. Hunt them. Bond with them. Leave this well of yours, explore the world. Walk its wild places. Take power from those who carry it. Though even if you have bonded with the energy signature the original user won't lose their abilities or power, keep that in mind”

  The glow dimmed slightly, and Diego’s voice deepened.

  “The other eight plates are simpler. They store mana. Think of them as anchors, power banks for when your adaptation is active.”

  “In other words, even when you're fighting at your peak, even when your body is adapting at full force, you might actually be able to use magic again. You’ll have to learn it, of course, I am pretty sure Hilda taught you right. But the potential is there. I repeat, this is the path of patience, slow as a slug but far better than the previous one ”.

  “So what would you chose, Lucien Sinclair”