Solaena was a Human girl who watched her parents vanish beneath the claws of [Time] demons, their laughter echoing as the world bent and broke, the Nexus weeping for the unnecessary loss of [Life] and display of unrequired [Evil].
In that moment of grief, something within her awakened, a [Will] to thrive, an [Ambition] to rise, and she formed the [Time] aspect, fragile yet unyielding against the unforgiving reality imposed upon her.
She left her ruined home and walked the world, chasing whispers of [Power] and meaning, while the [Wind] carried echoes of moments that could never be anymore.
A wandering master found her, or maybe their meeting was as unavoidable as the tragedy that put Solaena on this Path.
He peered through the flickers of [Time] and saw what could be, henceforth teaching her to shape seconds like threads.
She trained through hunger, loss, and endless failure, until moments obeyed her [Will] and the ticking of existence softened in her [Presence].
She helped villages escape disasters, healed wounds before they were struck, and became a quiet legend, her name spoken like a prayer against [Fate].
Along her journey, she found [Love], a [Soul] who stood beside her without fear of what she could become.
But tragedy returned, swift and cruel, and her [Love] fell lifeless in her arms.
This [Time], however, Solaena refused to break, and with trembling hands she reached into the fading second and pulled him back to [Life], defying [Fate] with unwavering [Will].
The world trembled at her defiance, and the [Time] demons came for her once more, drawn like [Corruption] to pristine Essence.
She rose to meet them, no longer a child, but a master of [Time], bending ages into weapons as the Realms fractured under the weight of her [Intent].
Their battle shattered eras and rewrote entire realities, yet Solaena endured and erased them from every moment they had ever touched, leaving only [Silence] where their cruelty once lingered.
With their end, she ascended beyond all limits and became the supreme lord of [Time] itself, her [Presence] anchoring the endless [Flow] of existence.
Ages later, she returned to her birth village, [Unseen], and in [Silence], where memories of loss still lingered in forgotten corners.
She turned [Time] back to the day of the disaster and chose a different ending.
Her parents lived, the village thrived, and the past split into a brighter Path.
In that final act, her [Time] Aspect diverged into [Omnipotence], and she watched over all moments, forever, as the Nexus stood in quiet awe of what she had become.
Thus ended "Solaena's Journey - A Tale Of Seeking Meaning Through Tragedy".
And for the first time, I truly experienced what it felt like to be overwhelmed by emotions.
No matter what [Guided] urged me to do, I couldn't do it.
I couldn't simply move on to another book.
I couldn't stop my eyes from tearing up and blurring my vision.
Just like I couldn't stop my heart beating at multiple times its habitual rhythm.
It felt like, for the first time since I could remember, [Guided] vanished from my life, and I had to stand alone.
Alone against a stream of emotions that was as unstoppable and unavoidable as the Nexus Realm's ceiling collapsing.
Alone against emotions I never knew existed, and that made it hard to breathe.
Hard to think.
Hard to contemplate anything other than...
Solaena's Journey...
It felt like my own tale.
An unyielding young life thrown against her [Will] into the gauntlet that was reality.
Forced to walk a Path no one else could understand.
Endlessly battling against what others didn't want to face.
Hunger.
Exhaustion.
Pain.
Her entire journey, all of it, it intimately spoke to me
Including her end.
So what if my mother was already dead and I never knew her beyond her selfless act of giving birth to me and abandoning me at a refuge instead of in a dirty street corner?
So what if I could never meet the gray-haired one that smelled bad or the wrinkled one again?
The answer to everything that ever troubled me was now laid bare before my eyes.
Not [Time].
[Omnipotence].
The [Power] to turn all that was, all that is, and all that will be, to suit my chosen ends.
Absolute [Authority] over reality itself,
Existence bent entirely to my sole [Will].
I knew such an Aspect couldn't possibly be formed, or someone would have already achieved it, and then this someone wouldn't allow anyone else to form it in turn...
But that wasn't the point.
No.
What my [Insight] enabled me to see, even from such a fantasized tale that couldn't be more than an idea...
Was that so long as one didn't lose their way.
So long as one didn't forget where they came from.
So long as one never gave up.
Then the end justified the means.
All the suffering I was subjecting myself to.
Just like I always knew, like I always felt, but without ever being able to put it into words.
It was all worth it.
And it was this book, "Solaena's Journey - A Tale Of Seeking Meaning Through Tragedy", that provided me an answer I never knew I craved so deeply.
I decided there was only one way I could forever honor and remind myself of why I never renounced being [Guided] through until torment.
My name.
Empty.
Another reminder of my origin as an unwanted existence.
No longer.
From this second henceforth... I would have a name.
A name of my own choosing.
A name akin to an Aspect.
A name embodying all my determination to forge through any ordeal the world dared to place in front of me.
My name would be Solaena.
◇ ◈ ◈ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◈ ◈ ◇
Even as I attempted to fall asleep from complete and utter exhaustion, the pressure just kept on climbing, and climbing, and climbing, higher and higher, until it felt like it was eroding away at the boundaries of my physical existence.
"Ah..." And yet, still it kept on pushing, and I simply couldn't hold onto the grunts of pain that escaped me as I contorted my body in vain hope to free myself of this ever-increasing agony
My entire body felt like it was on fire, like something was about to give, but the expected release never came, regardless of how strongly I [Will]ed it to come.
Aspect Advanced: [Will] (Tier 0) ➞ [Will] (Tier 1)
Through a haze of utter exhaustion tormented by pain, what felt like an eternity passed before a change I truly came close to believing would never occur finally befell me.
Nevertheless...
Despite one of my Aspects having clearly just advanced.
Despite having persevered through something I was absurdly certain no one else got to live through...
The pressure kept on surging.
Despite the inherent warmth of my manifested [Will] having clearly been pushed to new heights as I wielded it with newfound comforting effects against which was wreaking havoc through my body...
My ordeal wasn't over yet, and [Guided] could do nothing but tell me to mindlessly maintain my [Cycle], [Will] my existence to a state of wellness, endure, and see this through to the end.
This went on to last... too long, as it turned out, as amidst my blurry state of consciousness, I vaguely felt myself being taken and moved somewhere else, only then truly grasping how much my state had worsened.
Not that the ever-rising pressure diminished one bit despite what I assumed to have happened.
In the end, there was simply nothing I could do but bear the indefinable pressure.
It wasn't a question of being willing or not.
I simply had to do it.
I simply had to bide my time.
Through the impression of my bones being crushed to powder.
Through the sense of my muscles turning into mush.
Through the sensation of my breath ceasing.
Through the impression of my heart stopping.
Through the genuine feeling of being on the verge of dying.
All with just a [Will] repeatedly manifested beyond what my [Cycle] should have sensibly enabled me to.
Until, finally, I felt it.
Something shifted.
And against all odds, my deliverance emerged in the form of something giving in from within.
No wondrous release of pressure.
No surge of clarity.
Just...
An excruciatingly slow dwindling of the pressure that previously threatened to rip apart my being.
Up until the pain and the sense of being about to burst well and truly vanished, and a novel sensation of lightness and of being able to float suffused me.
None of that mattered to me, though.
For a long overdue slumber awaited me, and I welcomed the true release of [Darkness].
◇ ◈ ◈ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◈ ◈ ◇
"...she should pull through now."
"...remarkable symptoms. A wonder she survived that on her own."
"...do you know who the Magister personally escorted?"
"...no way it's only a cosmetic mutation, right?"
"...first time dealing with such a strange case."
Emerging from the comforting [Darkness] of obliviousness, my hearing was the first of my senses to fully wake up, only for it to instantly be assaulted by a buzzing background noise originating from many voices coming together in a raucous mess.
Then came my senses of touch and smell, telling me nothing beyond the fact that I was in a bed that smelled unfamiliar.
Eventually, battling through my waking drowsiness, I blearily opened my eyes, but kept them nearly closed as the brightness of where I was located was blinding.
Nothing that some [Perception] [Exertion] couldn't deal with, however, thus shortly enabling me to get a first look at what surrounded me.
Plain metal walls.
Lots of lights.
Lots of curtains.
Other beds.
People lying on those beds.
People taking care of those lying on the beds.
I recognized exactly where I was.
I started visiting this place every so often since I was proclaimed an honorary Initiate trainee.
I was in the infirmary.
Well, that made sense, considering what I just went through.
Thinking about how things went down, I should really have just headed straight here at the first sign of things being wrong instead of stubbornly keeping to myself.
This had clearly been vastly different from the normal sense of building pressure that everyone experienced when one of their Aspects was on the verge of advancing, after all.
Lesson learned, I guessed.
As for the consequences...
Without having paused to consider the implications, I had already allowed myself to be [Guided] through reestablishing my [Cycle], and it appeared everything was normal.
So I was fine, right?
I sat up and didn't feel anything different.
My body felt as normal as ever, no sudden spikes of pain when I moved, no labored breathing, and I still felt all my limbs.
I stretched my wings, and-
Something iridescent flashed in the corner of my vision.
I turned my head to follow it.
I found it.
My wings.
Or rather, not my wings.
At least not the crystal-clear wings I was used to having attached to my back, growing every day so that I may one day take flight.
What I beheld instead was a mesmerizing iridescent wing merging various splendid hues of yellow, green, blue, purple, and pink, reminding me of my eyes.
Except... that was my right wing, wasn't it?
I turned my head the opposite way, but I found the same iridescent spectacle awaited me, and by the same, I meant the exact same.
I turned my head left and right multiple times to confirm it.
After taking five such looks, there was no further doubt in my mind.
My wings had changed.
Then it hit me like when I was [Guided] to execute an all-out [Will] manifestation to get rid of all my energy.
I threw the blanket covering me away, stood up, and, as if I had always known how to do it, flapped my wings once.
My feet momentarily took off from the mattress, alongside my entire body, before softly landing back on it.
No way.
No. Way.
I beat my wings again, this time stronger, and with a clear intent.
I instantly felt my momentum shift upwards, but unlike all the other times I attempted to do that, it was vastly, viscerally, different.
It felt like there was no resistance, like I belonged in mid-air, as if I could readily fly in any direction I wanted.
All the intense [Exertion]s I did that included any manner of employing my immature wings came in ridiculously effective there, and with a softer beat there, an adjustment in one direction here, along with a careful balancing of my body posture...
I was flying.
Effectively flying.
Or hovering, if I wanted to be more specific.
Still flying.
"No flying in the infirmary, Solaena!"
I was about to liberate all the frustrations I suppressed due to having wings that never permitted me to fly, when a voice sharply called me out.
My hovering neither perturbed nor unbalanced, I looked around to find its origin.
"Oh." That's when I noticed everyone who could was now staring at me, including Archivist Trius, my favorite healer, a grizzled Ninak healer I couldn't be more familiar with, as we not only crossed paths here in the infirmary but also out in the Seeker sanctuary, prompting me to meekly land back down on the bed beneath me. "Sorry..."
On his part, Trius first signaled one of his aides to do something, this same aide swiftly leaving the infirmary, and only after that did he approach my bed with his unusually large strides, his elongated visage and protruding fang-lined snout swiftly coming to loom over me in a way I wasn't quite used to yet.
"Now that you've woken up, you'd better get ready to undergo an Essence [Appraisal], whether you want it or not," he said, and I could only nod back with hardly-veiled reservations.
"I'm not in trouble... am I?"
"More so than in trouble, you've made yourself a subject of interest by undergoing an Essence mutation so young. Something which Rekindled some old debate about immature Essence entities being more flexible. Not my field of study, though, so I couldn't tell you more than that you looked like absolute shit when you were brought in."
Essence mutation?
Like a missing puzzle piece—one of those interesting challenges where you cut a picture in misshapen fragments and then have to put it back together—fitting perfectly with the nascent interpretation I already made of my own previous and present situation, reason finally prevailed over illogical nonsense, and my [Guided] mind could finally dig up knowledge that now seemed more relevant than ever.
"Essence mutation... alternative names, Essence adaptation."
"An event transpiring in nearly all known cases due to the overdevelopment of one's Essence, generally following medium to long-term periods of time where one had their Essence intensely stimulated by numerous subsequent Aspect advancements or formations."
"The effects and impacts of undergoing an Essence mutation are extremely complex to appreciate, as the process itself can range from being deadly to going completely unnoticed, with the associated blessings varying over a similar large spectrum of being totally benign, to growing a second heart, to forming an Origin Aspect."
"The most well-known Essence mutations recognized as such are all Essence mutations that were successfully transmitted to one's progeny: The uncontrollable growth of multiple other pairs of limbs in Uras, the hazardous self-consuming regeneration of Neryp, the inability of an entire Elfen sub-clan to physically grow beyond their children form."
"A sufficiently advanced Essence [Appraisal] can generally be utilized to uncover the surface consequences an Essence mutation has caused, so long as the Essence Entity undergoing the Essence [Appraisal] has a basic grasp of the changes brought by this same Essence mutation."
By the time I finished being [Guided] through reciting whatever I read on the topic in the past, making resurface—or recreating—my evidently absent memories on the subject, Trius' eyes had comically widened.
"Your memory will never cease to amaze me," he breathed out, "To the point that despite knowing it isn't, you could arguably convince me your Origin Aspect is [Knowledge]."
"Remind me to refer to you some more works on healing once this matter blows over, you would easily pull through the hardest hurdle there is to clearing the healer qualification."
"You already told me that, all your books are already written down on my exponentially-growing to-read list, and yes, I'm already interested in the healer qualification, so there's no need to convince me."
I rolled my eyes at his continuous, unsubtle reminders of me being a perfect fit for becoming a healer thanks to my "astonishing memory", the fact that I already formed the [Will] Aspect and thus could achieve magical healing, and reminded him in turn that I didn't need more convincing at this point.
I just needed time.
Just like I now needed time in order to recognize what I went through over the last... days?
"How long was I out?"
"If my poor memory serves me right, which you are insinuating it isn't, but I won't take offense due to your youthful rashness, you were admitted four days ago."
"Four days‽"
Trius nodded.
"And if you wish for more details, I can describe how your body was contorting in apparent agony as you were undergoing your Essence mutation. But now that I think about it, maybe you were faking it? Who knows? Not like you were responsive enough to confirm or deny anything."
"Haha." I laughed dryly with a deadpan face.
"Haha, effectively. And speaking about agony, would you be so kind as to start transcribing your lived experience through this wonderful event that saw you finally take your first steps towards fairy adulthood? There you go."
With one quick thrust, a cold metal writing board was inserted into my hands, and after a short staring battle with Trius, I decided that defying the healer's order was bad manners and lowered my head, not in defeat, but to get to writing.
I had lots to think about, anyway.
Like, why did my Essence mutation cause my wings to become iridescent?
Like, could I have really reached a degree of Essence overdevelopment capable of inducing an Essence mutation in less than a year from being born?
Like, how dangerous was the Essence mutation process I went through?
Like...
Fascinatingly, writing down what I experienced actually turned out to be much more useful than I expected it to be, and it wasn't until the infirmary slowly filled with people discussing my "curious case" that I stopped trying to remember any fragment and memory of torture I could get my thoughts on, in favor of readying myself for what came next.
"My best guess is that it has something to do with her Essence having matured too early, and there being an Essence externalization, her wings' flight ability, to her maturation."
"But we observed a clearly adverse reaction to her early maturation, something which naturally fluctuates in any other Essence entities blessed with Essence externalizations, but never causes any Essence disorder of such magnitude, and much less an Essence mutation."
"Shouldn't we simply ascribe everything to her youth? It's already a confirmed fact that young Essence entities are more flexible, after all."
"A young Essence Entity is far less flexible than you seem to believe they are. The comparison is simply born of the fact that the older an Essence Entity gets, the stronger its outer shell as it naturally learns to fight against ambivalent Essence corruption."
"If her Essence mutation, or I wonder if adaptation is a more suitable term to use here, is merely cosmetic, I would be willing to eat my own feet. Essence simply doesn't work with additions, an early maturation and an overdevelopment must have caused something truly rare-"
"Order!" A loud, authoritative voice pierced through the racket, causing the infirmary to plunge into silence, and allowing everyone to recognize who had just arrived.
Magister Eliott.
Highest authority of the Faith Of The Aspect in the whole Red Sand Sector.
And he was clearly looking for me.
"Trius informed me you made a complete recovery already?" he asked.
I nodded, unsure, but feeling well enough to resume my routine if I were [Guided] to do so.
"Perfect, let's proceed with your Essence [Appraisal] in the neighboring room. As an official member of the Faith Of The Aspects, while your Aspects will be kept private, the state of your Essence as a potential source of academic interest will be shared with all Faith members of sufficient ranks. Do you have an objection?"
I didn't.
I didn't even really care about my Aspects becoming known by everyone here, honestly.
"I have no objection," I said as I stood up, ready to take off.
"Good." Eliott didn't spare me an additional glance before he turned around and headed out, obviously expecting me to follow after him.
Leaving the now warm metal writing board on the bed, I spread my wings, adjusted my body posture...
And launched myself upwards.
It truly was as easy as breathing.