He watched, unable to look away, as his arms beca weapons. Biceps the size of a man's torso grew beneath his skin, triceps hardening into corded steel. His forearms thickened, veins becoming visible as the sheer density of muscle increased. His hands—already large—beca massive, fingers extending, joints reinforcing until his grip alone could crush stone.
His neck thickened, becoming a column of muscle and power. His shoulders broadened, becoming impossibly wide, the deltoids growing so large they nearly touched his ears when his arms hung at his sides.
The skin was changing now.
His normal complexion—tanned skin—began to pale, shifting toward sothing bloodier, sothing more terrible.
It started at his fingertips, a creeping discoloration that spread up his arms like a stain. The color wasn't red exactly—it was the red of old blood on ancient stone, of arterial spray dried and oxidized, of violence crystallized into pignt.
The transformation crept up his arms, across his shoulders, and down his torso. His chest beca pale red, his stomach becoming a canvas of power made visible.
The color continued down his legs, covering every inch of his body until he was no longer any recognizable half-elf or half-human—he was sothing else entirely.
His eyes were the worst.
The red eyes they'd been began to burn.
Not with heat—with light.
A crimson glow started in the iris and spread, consuming the color, replacing it with sothing that looked like molten tal in the shape of eyes.
When he opened his mouth and tried to scream, crimson light poured from between his teeth like he was drowning in liquid fire.
The pain reached a crescendo that would have driven him unconscious if the transformation hadn't been forcing his body to new levels of endurance. Every nerve ending was screaming, and every cell in his body was being torn apart and rebuilt into sothing stronger, faster, and more terrible.
The tattoo on his neck had spread all over his body at a rapid pace, and within no ti, he was covered in black and green tattoos.
Then the wings ca.
Alaera Excidii.
The ergence was the most excruciating mont yet. Unlike before, they had grown in size, and their appearance had changed too.
His shoulder blades cracked open—not taphorically, but literally split down the middle as sothing forced its way out from within his body. Blood—that bright, luminescent arterial blood—sprayed backward as the wings forced their way through his flesh.
They weren't feathered in any traditional sense.
As they erged and unfolded, they revealed themselves to be constructed from solidified blood itself, crystallized blood-based force shaped by instinct and magic into structures that mimicked avian anatomy but transcended it.
Each individual feather was a blade—a sharp, curved edge capable of slicing through flesh and bone with contemptuous ease. They caught the light and threw it back in crimson patterns that hurt to look at directly. The wings were massive, spanning easily twenty feet from tip to tip, each one moving with fluid, predatory grace.
When he flexed them, droplets of manifested blood flew from the feathers, sizzling against the superheated ground.
The air around the wings seed to distort, to waver, as if reality itself wasn't quite sure how to process them.
His height continued to increase.
Six feet beca six-foot-six.
His body continued its upward trajectory, bone and sinew stretching, gravity becoming nearly irrelevant as power flooded through him.
Six-foot-nine.
Seven feet.
Seven-and-a-half.
Eight feet tall, and still growing.
The ground beneath his feet began to burn.
Not with fire—with sothing far worse.
The surface itself seed to recognize what was standing upon it and began to break down at the molecular level. Stone turned to magma, sand fused into glass, and dirt simply ceased to exist. The molten ground spread outward in a slowly expanding circle, each mont adding another foot to the radius of destruction.
The heat radiating from his body was so intense that the air itself began to ignite.
Not with flas—with so fundantal alteration of reality that made the very concept of cold irrelevant.
Moisture in the air crystallized into ice and then sublimated directly into steam.
Eight-foot-two.
Eight-foot-three.
And finally, the growth stopped at eight feet four inches.
His body now towered even by red elf standards.
His shoulders were broader than a horse's body, his arms thick enough that his wrist was the circumference of a man's thigh. The pale red skin covered every inch of him, unmarked by hair or any traditional characteristics of humanoid beings.
He was sothing carved from nightmares and ancient bloodlines, sothing that predated modern civilization, sothing that should not exist in any sane world.
In his hand, manifesting as if pulled from the depths of reality itself through sheer force of will and power, a sword appeared.
It didn't materialize gradually—it tore into existence.
The air around its formation shrieked in protest as reality was forced to accommodate sothing that had no business existing.
One mont, his hand was empty; the nex,t it held a weapon that seed to defy rational comprehension.
The blade was massive—easily six feet long, proportioned for his new form, with a blade that seed to drink light rather than reflect it. The color wasn't the standard red of blood—it was sothing darker, sothing more terrible. It was the red of arterial spray, of life draining away, of death made manifest and weaponized into edged steel.
The sword pulsed with power that made the air around it vibrate at frequencies that human ears couldn't properly process. Where it existed, reality seed uncertain, as if the laws of physics were negotiable suggestions rather than absolute rules.
The blade seed to extend into dinsions that normal sight couldn't quite perceive, as if it were simultaneously both more and less real than the physical world surrounding it.
Jorghan finally heaved a sigh, but it was like a cyclone hit the ground; as the air thrust from his point, stones and debris flew away. Even the water at the deep crater level too.
He looked at himself, taking in the transformation, quite surprised at himself. For so reason, he knew what he was and knew about the form he had changed into.
He could feel the primal energy flowing inside of him, the Sol'vur clan's legacy; he was getting closer to the final phase of his progression.
Then he looked at the red blade in his hand.
He tested the weight of it in his hand.
The movent was casual, effortless, despite the blade's obvious imnse mass. The weapon moved through the air like it weighed nothing, leaving trails of distorted reality in its wake.
Jorghan stood in the center of an expanding circle of molten ground, wings spread to their full twenty-foot span, sword held casually in one massive hand. His crimson eyes burned with light that seed to co from so internal furnace, so power source that was fundantally beyond mortal comprehension.
He looked like a devil torn from the deepest pits of hell and given physical form. He looked like what should have erged from nightmares made flesh.
He looked unstoppable.
[Primordial Sol'vur Form]
[Descendant of Ancestral Bloodline Achieved]
[Host had made a rapid progression]
[Initiation of Berserk mode will comnce soon]
From the distant observation point, where the assembled clans watched from their position pressed against the outer walls, a wave of primal terror washed through the crowd.
They could feel the energy waves radiating from Jorghan from where they were standing. It hit them like a heat wave, making them shudder in complete dread.
So fell to their knees, overwheld by the sheer presence emanating from the transford figure.
The power was so absolute, so overwhelming, that their minds struggled to process what they were witnessing. It was like trying to comprehend infinity—the more you looked at it, the more you realized your perspective was too small to truly understand.
Others tried to flee but found their legs wouldn't obey, paralyzed by sothing more primal than fear.
This was terror at the genetic level, instincts embedded in their ancestors' DNA recognizing this as the presence of sothing that could extinguish their entire bloodline with a casual gesture.
"What is that?" Soone whispered, voice thick with terror and disbelief.
"Is he really a human?"
"Is he an elf? No, he can't be. What is he?"
"What has he beco? That's not a being—that's a force of nature. That's a catastrophe walking on two legs."
"The legends," Sarhita breathed, her liquid gold eyes wide with shock and sothing that might have been recognition. Her hands had gone cold, and she felt the blood draining from her face. "The old stories about the Sol'vur clan. The ancient texts I studied are about what they could beco when pushed to their absolute limits. I thought they were myths. I thought they were just stories told to frighten children."
Her voice cracked slightly.
"The Berserk Lords. The accounts say they could stand against entire legions and hordes of beasts. Single individuals who could reshape realms. I've read the descriptions dozens of tis, and nothing—nothing—prepared for seeing one actually manifested."
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