Alaric slammed the dormitory door behind him, chest heaving, hand clenched so tightly around the amber stone that faint cracks laced his palm. The room was quiet—too quiet—the distant alarms muffled by thick, warded walls. Yet the voice still echoed in his head:
"Child of the eclipse."
He didn't even understand what it meant—but someone, something, clearly did.
He sat at the edge of the bed, his breaths uneven, fingers trembling as he stared at the stone. Its fractured surface pulsed faintly now with twin hues—soft golden light weaving around deep violet shadows—a reflection of the chaos inside him.
Kael's words haunted him:
"You are unfinished."
But unfinished wasn't weakness. It was potential. Unpredictable. Dangerous.
Suddenly, a system prompt blinked into existence before his eyes, translucent against the dormitory walls:
"Skill Acquisition Triggered – External Interference Detected.""New Skill Unlocked: Veil Sight."Allows the user to perceive dimensional rifts and hidden presences for 10 seconds (Cooldown: 12 hours).
Alaric's breath caught.
He didn't hesitate.
Veil Sight—Activated.
The world shifted.
The air thickened, light refracting strangely at the edges of his vision. The walls around him thinned—not crumbling, but warping—like curtains drawn too tight across a window. They shimmered with threads of ancient magic, and just beyond them...
They watched.
Dozens of beings lingered outside the visible world—shapes half-shrouded in veil-light. Some human, others decidedly not. Featureless, silent, still. He couldn't tell if they were observers or jailors. But one among them was different.
Colossal.
It loomed behind the veil like a living constellation. Its robes rippled with cosmic mist, its height defied architecture, and though its face remained cloaked in light, its gaze sliced through dimensions—and through him.
And then...
"He sees you now," a voice murmured in his mind.But it wasn't Windy's. It wasn't anyone he'd heard before.
The skill ended.
The veil vanished, the room snapping back into mundane reality. Yet Alaric no longer felt alone in it. The weight of unseen eyes lingered like frost on skin.
Then—a throb pulsed through his palm.
The amber stone pulsed violently, and in that moment, he realized...
It was no longer broken.
The once-cracked surface had fused, its jagged scar now a jagged spiral. Inside it, swirling in a soft reddish glow, was an embryo—a tiny, unborn thing. It floated like a drop of blood in amber, and with every heartbeat, it absorbed mana—not from the atmosphere, not from beast cores—but from him.
Only a trickle. Barely noticeable.
But it made his vision sway for just a second.
A new prompt appeared.
"New Entity Detected: Proto-Being (Name: Unknown).""State: Dormant.""Embryo requires mana to grow.""Choose source: Atmospheric Mana / Beast Core / Self."
Alaric stared, heart hammering.
What was this thing inside the stone? A parasite? A child? A power yet unnamed?
He reached into his bag and pulled out one of the beast cores he'd taken from the forest—a faintly glowing intermediate-tier orb. Holding it next to the stone, the core began to vibrate softly.
Then the stone drank.
The light from the beast core dimmed rapidly, energy drawn into the embryo like a siphon. The glow within the stone grew brighter, the swirl of crimson now threaded with silver veins.
And then another message.
"Embryo stage increased. Vitality stable. Latent energy synchronizing.""Bond Type: Symbiotic.""New Ability Unlocked: Eclipse Pulse."Unleash a wave of unstable dual energy that pushes enemies back and reveals hidden entities (Cooldown: 24 hours).
Alaric's hand trembled as he tucked the glowing stone back into his pocket. The embryo's warmth remained close to his chest—like a heartbeat that wasn't his own.
Outside, the academy alarms had quieted. Footsteps passed in the hall. Voices murmured from other rooms. All was returning to normal...
But inside him, nothing was normal anymore.
Something has been awakened.
And something else—perhaps older still—was watching.
Not from within this world.
But beyond it.