Jas blinked, caught off guard by the boy’s question. His mind scrambled for a response before his words ca out in a careful, asured tone.
"Why are you looking for our Lord?"
For a mont, the forest fell silent. The distant hiss of cooling flas was the only sound. Eden’s eyes widened slightly at the phrasing. ’Our Lord’ he thought, disbelief flickering across his face.
"Lord?" he repeated aloud, searching Jas’s expression for any hint of mockery or deceit. There was none, only sincerity, awe, and confusion.
Eden’s gaze hardened, but his thoughts moved elsewhere. ’Blessing,’ he spoke telepathically, ’are you sure you sensed him among these people?’
Blessing floated closer, her tiny brows furrowing. ’I’m certain,’ she replied in his mind. ’These people have clearly been with the Ancestor. His essence lingers, strong, with them.’
Eden exhaled slowly, rubbing the back of his neck. ’I can’t get used to that na,’ he thought with a weary sigh. ’Ancestor... really, Captain? you have really been busy.’
He looked over the group again. They didn’t seem like elites or nobles, just hardened fighters, disciplined but humble. Yet, if Leon’s presence truly lingered among them, that ant he had shaped them directly.
His mind drifted back to the mont he’d first t Blessing, an accident that could’ve killed him.
When Eden had first entered the trial world, he’d appeared inside a forming cluster. A world still being born, its laws unstable, its tether reaching for a guardian to bind to its core. That guardian was supposed to be Blessing. But the cluster had chosen him as part of the process, his body and mind, used as raw materials to complete the guardian’s creation.
He rembered the pain, the void tearing through his mind, the hopeless stillness before everything shattered.
Then it happened.
Across Pandora, a shift had rippled, when Leon Kael had beco a Void Spawn. The birth of that paradox had reached even the cluster’s heart, disrupting its formation. Most clusters at that mont reverted to normal. But the one Eden was trapped in, reacted differently.
Because of him.
Because his ntal state had already begun to fray.
And that single flaw had changed everything.
****
Eden hung motionless against a cold stone wall, his arms and legs bound by glowing runes. The magic circle beneath him pulsed with a rhythm that wasn’t his own but sothing ancient, chanical, and hungry.
Below, a girl floated above a massive sigil carved into the ground, her pale hair drifting like smoke. Streams of light and corruption flowed between them, twisting together in painful, luminous threads.
Eden scread as the corruption burned through his veins. He could feel his body being rewritten, his essence being drawn out of him, devoured by the ritual ant to complete the girl’s transformation. He struggled, but the bindings held firm, leeching the last of his strength. His mind blurred under the pain, his vision dimming to flickers of red and black.
He’d been powerless before, used, betrayed and pushed into corners until there was nothing left but the will to survive. From the falsified trial results that branded him a fraud, to the manipulations of Eleanor, the woman who’d toyed with his loyalty until it shattered... all of it had carved a hollow in him. A hole so deep it had never truly healed.
It was a miracle he hadn’t gone mad.
And now, the universe seed determined to finish the job.
As the ritual reached its peak, the sigil flared. The girl’s eyes snapped open, pure white, and empty as Eden felt his soul start to tear apart. His consciousness began to drift away, the pain fading into a cold, familiar void.
But then, sothing changed.
Across all of Pandora, reality rippled. A new existence was being born.
At that exact mont, Leon Kael, the man who would beco a legend, transford into sothing that should never have existed. A being of pure paradox. A Void Spawn.
That singular event sent shockwaves through every cluster, through every tether, through the very concept of corruption itself in the whole of pandora. For a heartbeat, all the clusters faltered.
And eden felt it instantly.
The magic circle lost its perfect balance. The energy feeding the girl convulsed, her form flickering as the corruption scread in confusion. And in that chaos, Eden felt sothing enter him. Sothing that shouldn’t have been his to touch.
Countless mories poured into his mind—Blessing’s mories. A little orphan girl, starving in the gutters, praying for rcy until a voice whispered from the darkness, offering her strength in exchange for her will. The sa voice now fueling the cluster, the sa corruption seeking to remake her into a perfect weapon.
But Leon’s transformation had changed the rules.
Normally, the creation of a mutant required two elents: corruption, the body’s fuel, and a ntal factor, the force that shattered the mind into obedience. The process always ended in submission.
But as the corruption across Pandora warped under the birth of the Void Spawn, those elents split apart.
The corruption remained in Blessing.
The ntal factor, the force ant to enslave her was drawn into Eden.
And in that instant, the ritual broke.
****
As the ntal factor surged into Eden, it wasn’t a gentle infusion, it was an invasion. A flood of alien will and screaming thoughts clawed their way into his mind, searching for a hold.
The corruption had intended him to be nothing more than fuel, a disposable vessel. He wasn’t ant to contain this power. He wasn’t a conduit, he was just material. And because of that, the corruption itself couldn’t empower the ntal factor as it tried to take root.
But even un-empowered, the ntal factor was still lethal. It was a weapon designed to erase the self and hollow the mind until only obedience remained. Anyone else would have crumbled under it, their psyche reduced to mush within seconds.
But Eden wasn’t like anyone else.
His mind was scarred, yes, but those scars were also armor. The countless betrayals, the humiliation, the manipulation, each had tempered him in ways no spell could replicate. He’d been broken before, and yet he refused to stay broken. That defiance, that stubborn streak to remain himself no matter the cost, was what saved him.
The ntal factor slamd against his psyche, roaring with the weight of a thousand dying minds. It tried to consu him, bend him into submission, but Eden fought back. The struggle wasn’t one of magic or strength; it was a battle of will.
For a few agonizing seconds, his mind beca a battlefield of shrieking voices and distorted mories. His vision flashed, faces from the past, pain he thought he’d buried, but through it all, he clung to one thought:
’I am still .’
The ntal factor writhed, resisted... then began to yield.
And when it finally submitted, the storm fell silent. Eden stood, still himself, but changed.
The ntal factor had been tad.
It couldn’t kill him, and it couldn’t leave him either. And because it could not return to the forming guardian, the ritual faltered completely.
The girl in the magic circle, Blessing—scread as the corruption lost control of her evolution. The light of the ritual dimd, then twisted, the once-stable sigil cracking beneath her.
Her transformation seized... and then restarted.
But this ti, it wasn’t the corruption guiding it but Leon’s transformation and the connection between her and Eden, began to reshape the process. The energy that was ant to make her a mindless guardian now flowed in reverse, linking her essence to his instead.
The corruption shuddered, unable to comprehend what it had just created.
In that broken ritual, amid chaos and failure, sothing not entirely new was born
not a guardian, not a monster, but a bonded being tied to Eden’s will.
****
A/N: Thank you for reading... and don’t forget we get a ass release when we reach top 50 in golden ticket ranking
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