Lord of the realm

This was no mere crystallized energy—it was a fragment of the primordial force that had shaped reality itself during the universe's first moments.

Jaenor wasn't aware of the power it held or why it was here. But he could feel the resonance increasing as he moved closer.

The containment circle wasn't harming him as he just crossed it one by one.

He felt the pull growing stronger as he approached the stone.

And when he was within its reach, he raised his hand and touched it.

SSHUUUP!!

There was a sharp noise that reverberated throughout the castle, and the entire castle and the city shook for a few seconds.

The witches were searching for him above in the castle; they suddenly stopped.

The stone pulsed once, brightly enough to illuminate every corner of the chamber, and then began to move toward him with stately grace.

-

Odessa had just returned to the city after a week away on her duties, her boots crunching against the cobbled street as she passed beneath the shadow of her two-story home.

She had barely set foot inside, brushing the dust from her cloak, when the ground beneath her suddenly shuddered and groaned.

The tremor rattled the jars on her shelf, sent her table creaking against the wall, and left her heart pounding.

Her eyes shot upward at once, toward the castle looming in the distance.

The high towers glimmered faintly in the waning daylight, but now they seemed alive with a strange energy, a pulse that rippled through stone and air alike.

Odessa froze in her doorway, her chest rising and falling with unease.

What in the gods' names was happening in that place? She had been gone too long, out of touch, and now the city itself seemed to shift under some unseen weight.

A sudden voice jolted her out of her thoughts.

"Odessa! Odessa!"

She turned sharply to see Aldran, the halfling, bounding toward her, his curly hair wild from the wind, his small boots splashing through the mud of the street. His breath came ragged, and his round face was flushed red from the run.

"What happened, Aldran?" Odessa demanded, stepping down into the street to meet him.

He bent forward, bracing his hands against his knees, gasping like a man who had outrun death itself.

"They—they took him…" he wheezed, his chest heaving.

Odessa's brows knit in confusion, her voice sharp. "Who took whom?"

Aldran lifted his head, his eyes wide and frantic. "They—they took Jaenor."

His voice cracked under the weight of the words.

Odessa went cold, the blood draining from her face.

She gripped his shoulders hard enough to make the halfling wince.

"What!?"

Her voice rang through the narrow street.

"What do you mean—taken? He's been gone this whole time?"

Aldran nodded miserably, swallowing down his breath.

"It's been… it's been eight days now. He vanished. I was with him the night he disappeared—we were down by the sea, smoking, like fools. He left in the night, and I thought he had just gone home. But he never came back."

He shook his head, anger flashing through his tired eyes. "I asked around. You know taverns—they hold more secrets than priests' books. You just need to know the right ones to ask, and I do."

Odessa's grip loosened slightly, but her gaze only sharpened. "And what did you find?"

Aldran's voice lowered, as if the very shadows might overhear. "The Redmoon Witches. They're in the city. And now… they have him."

The words hung between them like a death knell, chilling Odessa to her core.

For a long moment she could not speak, only stared past Aldran at the looming silhouette of the castle, her fists trembling at her sides.

-

Odessa charged towards Basmonte Castle like a furious beast, her true power no longer concealed behind careful glamours.

The castle guards fled at her approach, their mortal minds unable to process what they were seeing.

She strode through the main gates with wings of pure energy spread behind her, her eyes blazing with inner fire that turned the air around her to superheated plasma.

After entering the castle, she killed the guards who blocked her.

After a quick interrogation, she found where Jaenor was locked.

She found the torture chamber easily enough—the residual traces of Jaenor's pain and rage hung in the air like visible smoke.

The Red Moon witches were still there, arguing frantically among themselves about how their prisoner had managed to escape their supposedly inescapable bonds.

And about the tremor they felt, what was the reason behind it?

"Where is he?" Odessa demanded, her voice carrying harmonics that made the stone walls vibrate.

Delia spun to face her, the witch's face pale beneath her crimson hood. "You! How did you bypass our—"

"WHERE IS HE?" The words hit like a physical blow, sending two of the witches sprawling across the floor.

"Where is Jaenor?"

"Gone!" Delia gasped.

"He vanished! Some form of translocation that shouldn't be possible for—"

She never finished the sentence.

A wave of energy unlike anything any of them had ever felt suddenly washed through the entire castle.

It started as a tremor in the deepest foundations and built rapidly into something that made the stone itself sing with harmonic resonance.

Earl Grimwald came thundering down the stairs, his human glamour flickering wildly as panic overwhelmed his control.

Behind him came a dozen castle guards and three court witches, all looking as though they had seen the end of the world approaching.

"The vault!" the Earl croaked, his throat sac pulsing with terror.

"Something's happening inside the vault!"

Another wave of energy, stronger this time.

Dust rained from the ceiling, and several of the torture implements simply crumbled to powder.

But Odessa was smiling.

"You magnificent, impossible boy," she whispered, her own power resonating in harmony with whatever was happening far below.

"You found it on your own."

-

In the depths of the castle, Jaenor stood motionless as the Origin Stone slowly merged with his physical form.

The process was indescribable—not painful, exactly, but overwhelming in its intensity.

He could feel his cellular structure being rewritten, his internal system upgraded to handle energies that would have vaporized his previous form.

The stone pressed against his chest, directly over his heart, and began to sink into his flesh like water soaking into dry earth.

As it merged with him, knowledge flooded his consciousness—not just information, but understanding of fundamental forces that governed reality itself.

Space-time is malleable. Matter and energy are interchangeable. Consciousness shapes possibility into actuality.

His origin power, which had always felt wild and unpredictable, suddenly snapped into perfect focus.

Jaenor's unconscious form floated three feet above the ancient stone floor. His body was wreathed in crimson energy that pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat, each surge of power rewriting his fundamental nature of physique.

The tattered remains of his tunic hung in shreds around him, revealing a physique that had been transformed by the stone's integration.

Where once he had been lean from dock work, his muscles were now pronounced and defined—not bulky, but carved with the kind of perfection that spoke of enhancement. His skin bore a faint shimmering quality, as if starlight had been woven into his very flesh.

But the most dramatic change was yet to come.

With a sound like tearing silk, his shoulder blades split open—not painfully, but as naturally as a flower blooming.

What emerged were wings unlike anything seen in the mortal realm.

There were total of six of them, three on either side.

They unfurled slowly, majestically, spanning nearly ten feet from tip to tip. Each feather was the color of fresh blood, so deeply red they seemed to absorb and reflect light simultaneously. They pulsed with the same energy that flowed through his transformed body, and where individual feathers caught the chamber's mystical illumination, they gleamed like rubies set in living flame.

Jaenor's eyes opened—no longer the brown they had been since birth, but now blazing with inner fire that matched his wings.

The Origin Primarch.

He could perceive the energy flows that connected all living things, see the subtle uncertainties that allowed Origin power to function, and feel the pulse of creation itself singing through his enhanced nerves.

Energy patterns were visible as flowing rivers of light.

Above him, the castle shook as Earl Grimwald and the Red Moon witches realized that something was happening in the deeper parts of the castle.

Jaenor now had this clarity about all things around him; his vision turned pale red, and he could see the hues of deep red color. He could tell they were people, possessing the Origin power. It was completely different from what he knew.

His pupils were bloodshot red as he blinked, watching them.

There was a serene expression on his face. All of this would have been terrifying for the farm boy, but he wasn't that boy anymore. He was totally a different and changed person now.

He closed his eyes for a second, then opened them again, his eyes turning to their normal color, like before, but there was a new sense of understanding and acceptance in them.