Chapter 17: The Awakening
Oct 29
BOOM!
A deafening shockwave exploded from Amon's body, tearing through the room like a hurricane. The air itself seemed to ripple. The floor beneath him cracked apart in jagged, spiderweb patterns, fragments scattering outward.
The first to fall were the scientists. All ten of them were thrown off their feet by the invisible blast, crashing hard against the floor several meters away. Grunts and gasps filled the room—then silence, as everyone struggled to comprehend what just happened.
Above, the upper observation deck groaned.
Crack!
Metal gave way. The entire structure ripped from the wall and plummeted, smashing into the ground with a violent crash that sent debris and dust into the air.
Three figures dropped down from the wreckage soon after, landing amidst the chaos.
Alexander's eyes darted across the ruined lab, disbelief twisting his face. 'Did that brat really have that much power inside him?!' he thought, anger boiling behind his words.
The damage stretched in every direction—walls cracked, air humming, the world itself trembling around the boy.
'Impossible…!'
To Alex, Amon was nothing more than a lab rat, just another experiment. And yet here he was, standing in the eye of a storm he shouldn't have been able to create.
Nearby, James's eyes glimmered with a manic light. "I was right…" he muttered, unable to hide the grin stretching across his face. "His power really is tied to his emotions…"
Rex, crouched beside the wreckage, stared at the trembling air surrounding Amon.
'That… wasn't just a shockwave,' he thought, his instincts screaming something different. 'It felt like… intent itself exploded outward.'
And in the center of it all, floating several feet above the shattered floor, was a small, crying boy.
Amon's tears drifted weightlessly through the air, carried by the same chaotic force that surrounded him. His dark aura writhed and surged like a living tide, wrapping around his body in erratic waves.
'I'm not a monster… I've had enough!'
His mind fractured under the weight of emotion. He couldn't control his power, his rage, fear, grief, they were all pouring out at once, blurring into something far more dangerous.
The magic wasn't just leaking anymore. It was an awakening.
A scientist groaned as he pulled himself off the floor. "W-what the hell was that?!" he shouted, voice trembling.
"Don't tell me… this boy's already awakened his magic?!" another yelled, panic cutting through his tone.
They weren't wrong.
Every human carried Ethernano—the life energy of the world—within their body. But not everyone could harness it. For most, it lay dormant, silent, like a heartbeat they'd never noticed.
A magic awakening occurred when that inner Ethernano resonated with the energy in the atmosphere for the very first time—when body, soul, and emotion aligned perfectly. It was like unlocking a hidden gate inside one's being… one that had always been there, waiting.
And for children, whose hearts were pure and emotions raw—this awakening could be explosive.
Rage, grief, despair, or even love—
The stronger the emotion, the more violent the reaction.
Signs of awakening were unmistakable:
A surge of wild Ethernano, objects levitating, the ground trembling, air distorting. Sometimes, even the elements themselves responded—fire flickering to life, ice forming without thought.
But for Amon… the awakening came as pain.
"That doesn't matter!" one of the scientists barked, reaching into his coat. "Even if he's awakened his magic, he can't control it!"
One by one, the others followed, pulling out sleek, metallic pistols etched with faint magical runes.
Magic Guns.
Weapons forged with embedded Lacrima cores, magical crystals capable of storing and channeling raw Ethernano.
Unlike ordinary guns, they didn't fire bullets. They fired compressed bursts of magical energy. Even non-mages could use them, though their power depended on the quality of the Lacrima inside.
Some of these items served everyday life, lighting Lacrimas for homes, temperature regulators for cities.
But these? These were made for combat.
"Just knock him out!" the scientist ordered, fear dripping into his voice. "Before he brings this whole place down!"
The barrels began to glow faintly blue as Ethernano gathered. All eyes locked on the boy still hovering in the air.
And Amon's aura… only grew darker.
They all fired at once.
A chorus of bangs echoed through the ruined lab—metallic pops that ought to have cut the air clean as knives. The bullets raced toward the floating boy like obedient dogs.
But Amon wasn't hit.
A small, silent ripple rolled out from his chest. It wasn't the earth-shattering blast from before—more a careful push, like someone whispering a command to the world—and every single magic round slammed to a dead stop mid-flight, hanging in the air as if an invisible hand had plucked them from the sky.
The scientists froze. Their mouths opened and closed like fish.
Alex's jaw clenched. 'How the hell…?' he thought, eyes narrowing. 'How is he floating? How did he stop those bullets?'
James' face, which had worn every expression from clinical curiosity to quiet delight that morning, finally spilled a word: "Spatial." The syllable tasted both wonder and alarm.
"This boy… he possesses the Spatial Attribute!" James shouted, disbelief cracking through his usual calm.
The words hung in the air like an echo that refused to fade. Even the scientists—those who lived and breathed magic
theory—hesitated.
Spatial? That was a word they rarely heard outside of legends and high-level archives.
Now, for those less familiar, a quick refresher, because in this world, an Attribute isn't just some flashy label. It's the very soul of one's magic.
An Attribute defines how a Mage's power behaves, interacts, and even feels. It's the unseen law that shapes every spell they cast—the element or concept their very Ethernano responds to.
Fire, water, wind, earth, those are the basics, the kind of magic you could teach to a village child if they had the talent. They shape nature, clash and counter each other like rock-paper-scissors: water snuffs fire, lightning dances through water, wind tears through flame.
Those are what most call the Elemental Attributes, the natural-born magics of the world. They're the most common, the easiest to grasp… and the least likely to break reality apart.
But then, there are the others. The rarities. The ones whispered about in research halls and church records.
Conceptual Attributes.
These are magics that don't control elements—they command laws.
Spatial, for instance: the magic of distance, direction, and dimension itself. The kind that bends the world's fabric just enough to make the impossible… possible. Teleportation, distortion, collapse—it's all part of the same terrifying domain.
Then there's Time, the stilling or quickening of moments; Light and Darkness, reflections of the moral and spiritual; Gravity, Sound, Explosion, even magics born from Thought or Memory.
They don't just manipulate matter—they rewrite how reality behaves. And that's what makes them so rare, and so dangerous.
Of course, Attributes don't exist in isolation. They interact, clash, and even merge—some mages can combine two into a compound Attribute, birthing magics like Fire fused with Lightning, or Light mixed with Darkness.
And lastly, since scholars love their definitions, remember this:
An Attribute is what the magic is made of.
A Magic Type is how it's used.
One defines its nature. The other, its purpose.
And right now, the nature in question was space itself, and it was bending around a boy who shouldn't have had that kind of power.
The lab hummed as the imprisoned bullets trembled. The room had stopped being predictable.
Amon hung there, rimmed in a thick, crawling darkness. He looked very small and impossibly enormous at once, like a single candle that had decided to burn through the night.
"Why… why must the weak suffer?" he said, voice low, and for once the boy's words were not childlike curiosity. They were a verdict.
The nursery math and careful calculations that lived in Amon's head — the lists of survival rates, the probability charts — collapsed into something simpler and uglier. The scientists' cold little sentences slid through him and struck like stones:
"You're replaceable."
"You'll advance humanity, even in death."
"Children die every day."
Names flashed in his mind: Amy, Sera, then the sharper, smaller things: his "father's" cruelty, the phrase that had been hammered into him like a lesson: "Less than nothing."
Images were not images so much as flames. Amy and Sera shimmered, then caught. They burned, not with punishment but with the absurd heat of stolen life. The sorrow that had been sitting in his chest turned molten and terrible.
If the first blast was shocking, this was judgment.
"If this is how the world works," Amon said, and his voice found a new edge, "then I reject it."
His hair stood on end. Violet light bloomed in his irises until they were small suns. The dark aura thickened, coalescing, limbs of shadow that folded into something almost intentional. The darkness around him took on a form, a terrible silhouette like a mask pulled over reality.
"You chose to kill Amy and Sera," he told the room. He didn't ask; it was a charge. Each word was calm and clean as a blade. "Tell me why."
All eyes snapped to James. The man at the center of the observation gallery met the stare and did not blink. He had always liked the look of controlled catastrophe; now he had one in miniature and the scientist's smile tightened like a scalpel.
"Depending on your answer," Amon said, and his voice did something no five-year-old voice should be able to do—coldly judicial, the cadence of an old man sentencing a kingdom, "I will send you to stand before God."
The dark form shivered and resolved. It was not just shadow; it was intent made visible. It leaned toward James as if to whisper a single, merciless verdict.
"No," Amon corrected, slower, the words tasting of something older than him. "You do not deserve to stand before God beside my brother and sister."
The gloom around him drew taut—an invisible noose tightening not around flesh but around consequence.
"Your only service to my wrath," he said, final and unflinching, "will be damnation."
Silence fell so hard it felt like another explosion. Even the frozen bullets trembled as if they, too, had heard the sentence and feared for their makers.
Looking down, Amon finally noticed the dark aura rippling from his body — yet his face remained calm, almost indifferent.
"I don't know what this power is…" he muttered, his voice low, steady. "And honestly, I don't care."
He raised his hand slightly. The suspended magic bullets, frozen midair, trembled—then dropped harmlessly to the floor with soft metallic clinks.
It was proof.
Proof that he possessed one of the Conceptual Attributes—the kind that didn't just defy logic, but commanded it.
The Spatial Attribute.
As the last bullet fell, so did Amon. His body drifted down like a feather, landing hard enough to shatter the stone beneath him. A crater formed under his feet.
'Be grateful,' he thought coldly. 'You'll die knowing you helped me evolve.'
Around him, the entire lab began to tremble. Tables, wires, shards of glass, and machinery floated into the air, caught in invisible currents.
"What's happening?! Is this your doing?!" Alex shouted, his voice trembling between anger and fear.
Amon didn't answer. He tilted his head back, inhaling deeply.
"It's time to hunt."
The dark aura flared violently. The levitating debris spun faster, ripping through the air with shrill metallic screams.
Quake. Quake.
"Is the building shaking?!" one of the scientists cried. Panic spread like wildfire.
Amon's voice cut through it—cold and venomous. "I'm going to slaughter every last one of you bastards!!!"
He lowered his head, revealing a wide, twisted grin. His violet eyes glowed like dying stars.
Across from him, James smiled the same mad smile. The air between them seemed to crackle.
"LET'S SEE HOW LONG YOU CAN LAST!!!" Amon roared.
"LET'S SEE HOW LONG YOU CAN ENTERTAIN ME!" James answered, laughing hysterically.
Alexander's heart sank. James' earlier words echoed in his mind. "If I'm right… that boy might one day become as warped and twisted as I am."
'Is this what he meant?!'
Amon stepped forward, just one step, and the ground split beneath him, webbing out like shattered glass.
James' grin widened. "The angrier he gets, the stronger he becomes!"
"What are you saying?!" Alex barked.
"I'm saying his wrath fuels him!" James shouted, eyes locked on Amon. "The stronger his hate, the greater his power to defy reason itself!"
Amon's laughter cut through the chaos—low, unhinged, and eerily calm.
"All you do is use people," he said. "You used the scientists. You used Amy and Sera. You even used Alex."
He raised his head, eyes burning. "But while you treat people like tools… I see them. I see their true selves."
He pointed at James. "And I know exactly who my enemy is."
His tone sharpened—calm, deliberate. "Will you help me out, friend?"
Before anyone could react, before the meaning even sank in, a blur flashed between them.
CRACK!
Two dull thuds followed as both Alex and James were struck hard in the ribs, the impact forcing the air from their lungs. They dropped to their knees, gasping.
The figure that had appeared moved with precision, his steps silent, deliberate. He gently gathered the bodies of Sera and Amy, holding them as though they were the most fragile things in existence.
He placed them beside Amon, eyes soft with sorrow.
Then he stood.
Tall—around 175 centimeters. Golden-blonde hair cascaded down his back, catching the dim light. His sapphire-blue eyes gleamed like still water—serene on the surface, but unfathomably deep beneath.
His attire was both battle-ready and refined: a form-fitting black-and-white suit that balanced intellect and strength.
James straightened slowly, blood on his lip, fury in his gaze. "You… traitor."
Alex clenched his teeth, rage twisting his face. "You dare betray us?! Damn you, REX!"
...
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