Lord of the realm

A wide-brimmed black hat shadowed part of her face, but her pale, aristocratic features were visible enough—sharp cheekbones, dark, painted lips, and eyes that gleamed with hunger and intelligence. Her smile was not warm, but it was captivating, the kind that promised both delight and ruin in equal measure.

Delia and Ember, her favored subordinates, rushed to her side, bowing deeply.

Cornelia stood before him and observed him for a minute. She could see the red hue around him, shimmering with a low hum.

A smile crossed her lips as she noticed it.

"My lady," Delia began, her voice quick with urgency.

"He resists. No matter how we probe, his mind is… closed. We cannot reach his memories, nor glimpse his soul."

Ember added with frustration, "The only thing we know is that he has been practicing the Origin power—but he speaks nothing, reveals nothing."

Cornelia's smile widened ever so slightly, exposing the faintest glimpse of sharp, white teeth.

She glided closer, her tall figure casting a long shadow over Jaenor as she came to stand before him. She tilted her head, studying him like one might study a rare creature in a cage.

"So," she purred, her voice smooth as silk and venom. "You are the boy who dares to touch the forbidden flame of Origin. How… fascinating."

Jaenor lifted his head slowly, forcing his heavy-lidded eyes to meet hers.

He did not answer, but the defiance in his silence was loud enough. He was so angry and raged about how he was helpless to get himself out of this situation. It was the second time, and it only made his determination grow stronger.

In his mind, he noted every female who ever stood in his presence in this dungeon, vowing to make them pay for what they did to him.

He looked her in the eye; his anger was palpable.

Cornelia chuckled softly, a deep, velvety sound that made Delia and Ember shiver.

She reached out, her long fingers tipped with black-painted nails, and gently lifted Jaenor's chin so that he could not look away from her. Her touch was deceptively delicate, but beneath it was a strength that promised she could snap his neck like a twig if she desired.

"You do not speak. You do not break. Admirable," she murmured.

"But do not mistake your silence for victory. You see… I do not need your words to bend you. I have other ways."

"Bit*ch!" Jaenor muttered.

It was low, lost in the air, but they heard it clearly.

"How dare you?!" Delia and Ember stepped forward, but Cornelia raised her hand.

"Let him talk," she said.

Jaenor raised his head to meet her gaze again. He looked her in the eye and said, "What?"

It was like he was challenging her, defiant and unafraid.

Cornelia smiled, and then it grew into laughter.

She leaned closer, her lips brushing dangerously near his ear as she whispered, "I have plans for you, Jaenor. Great plans. The others may only see a boy with power he does not deserve, but I see… a future. You will not remain my prisoner forever. No, no—you will become something more. Something useful."

Her smile grew as she pulled back, her eyes glittering with cruel delight. "Perhaps a weapon. Perhaps a key. Perhaps… both."

Jaenor's jaw clenched, his silence now carved of stone.

Cornelia laughed softly at his resistance, as though it were the very thing that amused her most. She turned, her gown swaying with regal weight, and addressed Delia and Ember.

"Break him further. But keep him… alive. I want him strong, even if unwilling. The boy will serve me in time. Whether he chooses to, or not."

With that, she glided toward the door, her voice echoing through the chamber like a promise of doom.

"Prepare him well. When the moment comes… he will be mine."

The dungeon door slammed shut behind her, leaving Jaenor once more in the dark, his breath ragged, the faint sound of her laughter lingering like a curse.

-

A week had passed since they took Jaenor. He was a bloody mess. His clothes were covered in blood, and the cut wounds were open and sore, still leaking blood.

They had some progress on depicting his Origin levels.

They probed him with invasive spells, tested his physical limits with power stress, and dissected his origin power with the cold precision of scholars studying a particularly fascinating specimen.

"Remarkable," whispered Sister Delia, the lead interrogator, as she observed the readings on her crystalline instruments.

"He not only formed the Origin core, but also his power core doesn't diminish under stress—it grows stronger. I've never seen anything like it in a male practitioner."

The other witches murmured their agreement, their scarlet robes rustling in the torchlit chamber. Origin magic was traditionally the domain of females, passed down through maternal bloodlines and covens.

Males aren't supposed to wield the Origin power, or so they believed.

"The legends speak of the Primarch bloodlines," said Sister Ember, consulting an ancient tome bound in scaled leather.

"Males who could draw the Origin force directly from the source of creation itself. But those bloodlines were thought extinct."

Jaenor barely registered their words.

His consciousness drifted in and out of focus as waves of agony washed over him.

He didn't know how many days had passed since he was locked here. The pain and darkness were the only things that he knew down here.

But beneath the pain, something else was stirring—a pull, a resonance that seemed to call to the very core of his being.

Deep. So deep beneath the stone.

Power calling to power.

He was hearing voices, like whispers in his head. But Jaenor was too weak to make sense of them. He could feel a strange pull of energy from somewhere, the same as his Origin energy, towards his core. It was faint, but it was there.

"Increase the resonance probe," Sister Malachar commanded.

"I want to see how his core responds to direct stimulation."

The witch raised a crystal wand that pulsed with malevolent energy, preparing to drive it directly into Jaenor's spiritual centre.

But as the probe touched his aura, something fundamental shifted.

The resonance he had been feeling suddenly exploded into overwhelming clarity.

Far below, buried in the castle's deepest foundations, lay something that called to his Origin power like a lost piece of his soul.

An artefact of such potency that it made the witches' tools seem like children's toys.

The Origin power?!

With a scream that shattered every piece of glassware in the chamber, Jaenor's aura erupted outward. The energy constraints that were placed on him to strain his Origin power were now completely shattered.

The crimson bonds holding him dissolved like morning mist, and his physical form began to shimmer with translucent energy.

"Impossible!" Sister Delia staggered backwards as reality itself seemed to bend around the young man.

"He's attempting spatial translocation! The amount of power required—"

They thought Jaenor was the one who was doing it, but it was the strange power coming from the deeper parts of the castle.

And then Jaenor vanished.

-

The sensation of translocation was like being torn apart at the molecular level and reassembled somewhere else—which, Jaenor reflected dimly, was probably exactly what had happened.

He materialized in a chamber so deep beneath the castle that the stone walls wept with moisture from underground springs.

But it was not the ancient architecture that captured his attention.

Floating in the center of the circular chamber, suspended within a complex array of containment circles, was the source of the resonance that had called to him.

Jaenor stared at it for a couple of seconds, then he muttered, "Origin stone?"

It was the first thought that came to his mind. It gave off the same energy and fit the description Odessa gave him.

The Origin Stone was beautiful in the way that natural disasters were beautiful—terrible, awe-inspiring, and utterly beyond human comprehension.

It was roughly the size of a human heart, pulsing with internal light that shifted through every shade of red from pale rose to deep crimson.

Energy leaked from it in visible streams, creating aurora-like displays that danced across the chamber walls.

Jaenor approached it slowly, his enhanced senses revealing the incredible complexity of the containment system.

Whoever had imprisoned the stone here had been a master of the highest order, constructing barriers that drew power from the castle's very foundations to maintain their integrity.

But those barriers had been designed to keep the stone contained, not to keep someone with complementary Origin power from reaching it.

As he stepped into the first containment circle, the barriers recognized him as compatible and simply... stepped aside.

Of course, he thought with sudden understanding.

Earl Grimwald didn't just happen to have this chamber. He's been guarding this stone for decades, maybe centuries. And when my power manifested in this harbor, it must have created a resonance.

The stone pulsed brighter as he approached, and he could feel its ancient consciousness awakening.