{You have slain a Corrupted Titan, Hinge of the Drowned Kingdom, -Unknown-}
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..
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{Prepare for Appraisal...}
Darkness lifted like a curtain.
Kellan stood on a level expanse the color of deep water at night. Pillars rose here and there, each etched with shifting runes. A black ocean breathed at the horizon without a sound. The air was clean. His cuts were quiet. He let the quiet hold him for a breath.
"Yeah," he said under his breath. "Breathtaking." Sunny had been right.
Light gathered in front of him and pulled itself into lines.
{Aspirant! Your trial is over.}
{A nameless stranger entered a drowned kingdom. He crossed roofs above a black sea, slipped past hunters that crawled along the ribs of the world, and cast down the stone-watchers that peered through their hands. He reached the wound at the city's heart. Before the last prayer could finish, he stilled the hinge that kept the ancient sleep, and the waters remembered how to move.}
The thread paused, then reformed.
{Your deeds are counted.}
{Dormant Beast — Drowned Ghoul}
{2x Dormant Monster — Stone Watcher}
{Dormant Monster — Rib-Crawler}
{Corrupted Titan — The Hinge of the Drowned Kingdom, -Unknown-}
{You have achieved the impossible!}
{Final Appraisal: Glorious. Your desires bleed through.}
He let that sit.
{Dreamer Kellan, receive your boon!}
The next line arrived like a bad signal pushed through a narrow gap.
{You have defied the rules of the gods and have gained the lineage of —Unko////…}
{...The Daemon of Hope and Desire…}
The world hit him.
Heat spiked through his veins like wire gone live. His joints locked and then pulled the other way, as if invisible hands were trying new ways to fold him. Breath turned thin. He went to a knee and stayed there because the ground was the only thing that held still.
The pain didn't climb in a clean line; it came in waves. First his chest, like someone was stitching something into his heart with a hooked needle. Then his eyes, as if letters he couldn't read were being pressed behind them until they left marks. His bones felt threaded, tugged from different directions, tested for strength.
He didn't scream. His jaw wouldn't open.
Time frayed. When the worst of it moved on, what it left behind was a tremor running under the skin that didn't know how to stop. He used the shaking to breathe carefully until his chest listened again.
The lines found their place in the air.
{...Through your lineage you have gained the ability to understand Runic Sorcery.}
{...Through your lineage your soul alights with Divinity.}
Warmth answered behind his sternum, steady and small, like a coal someone set there on purpose. He thought of oaths. He thought of the one thing she'd asked of him: don't lie after.
The light tightened into a single clear strand.
{Dreamer Kellan, receive your boon!}
{You have been bestowed a True Name: Hope's Desire.}
It landed without fanfare and still shifted the ground in his head.
New lines formed.
{Your Aspect stirs.}
He thought of the stubborn spark that had kept him moving.
{Aspect has forcefully evolved}
{Aspect Rank: Divine.}
{New Aspect: Mantle of Hope and Desire.}
{Description: A shard of a daemon clings to your fate. Where you stand, hope endures past reason, and desire refuses to remain silent. You are not its master; it is not your jailer. The mantle remembers worship and ruin, and answers only when your will is true.}
{Innate Ability: Resonant Will.}
{Description: Those near you are more inclined to align with your desires and passions. The pull grows with your conviction, presence, and clarity. It cannot birth loyalty from contempt, nor obedience from hatred, and it fades when you lie to yourself.}
The plain did not ask. The next command struck like a bell.
{The First Seal is broken}
{Awakening dormant powers}
There was no choice in it. Pressure built from the ribs out and from the skin in, like a stuck door being opened from both sides at once. Patterns drifted behind his eyes—curves and crossings his hands wanted to trace—and faded, leaving afterimages. His pulse climbed, stumbled, then settled into a pace that felt like it belonged to him again. Breath followed.
The world had not moved. He had. He could stand without waiting for the floor to shift.
Text followed.
{Aspect Ability awakened: Votive Oath.}
{Description: Speak a clear desire as an oath you intend to act on. While you hold to it, your presence, resolve, and cohesion with willing allies are amplified in ways that support that aim. The stronger and more specific the oath, the brighter the mantle burns. If your resolve falters, or you act against the oath, the mantle recoils. The backlash scales with the desire you declared. The mantle will not uphold lies, vague wishes, or borrowed vows.}
The light thinned, saving the last of it for a clean landing.
{All power has a price}
{You have received a flaw}
The blue plain stilled. The runes tightened into a narrow column and dropped each word like a stone.
{Hemorrhage}
{Description: Your blood refuses to stop. Wounds bleed longer than they should, and strong emotion or exertion may reopen what was closed.}
Kellan stood very still. For a second he felt the tug in his shoulder where the stitches would be if pain could live here. Hemorrhage.
"Great," he said under his breath.
"Show me," he said.
Light coiled and spread in a familiar shape: a pane of runes that sank into him as he read.
{Name: Kellan.}
{True Name: Hope's Desire.}
{Rank: Dreamer.}
{Soul Core: Dormant.}
{Soul Fragments: [119/1000].}
{Memories: [Drowned Silence], [Salt Laced Thread].}
{Echoes: —}
{Attributes: [Flame of Divinity], [Runic Sorcery], [Dreamspawn], [Hatred of the Sun].}
{Aspect: [Mantle of Hope and Desire].}
{Aspect Rank: [Divine].}
{Aspect Abilities: [Votive Oath].}
{Flaw: [Hemorrhage].}
He read it twice. Then a third time. The number under Fragments punched harder than the rest—one hundred nineteen. Enough to feel like a beginning instead of a joke.
The pane shifted, expanding each line in smaller text.
[Hatred of the Sun]
{Description: You feel an unyielding hatred toward beings that share the blood of the Sun.}
He blinked. Hatred wasn't a word he liked on paper with his name. The edge of it made him think of a white flame, a tower, a girl with a sword and a face that wouldn't smile. He didn't know why the thought came with a taste like ash.
The next line unfolded.
[Flame of Divinity]
{Description: Your soul is aflame with the light of divinity.
Effect: Your intent resists profanation; vows burn clearer; corruption recoils until the flame dims.}
That one sat easier. Warm, not kind. A coal under the sternum that hated lies.
Another line opened—new, thin hooks tucked into the letters.
[Runic Sorcery]
{Description: You share in the script first breathed by Hope. Your sight catches the strokes that bind the world—curves that gather, lines that divide, hooks that tell a mark which way to move. You can read and sketch simple sigils and arrays; greater matrices demand study, vessels, and price.}
He leaned closer without meaning to, eyes tracing the tiny marks inside the words. Hope. The name snagged. He felt the same prickle he'd felt when the lineage burned its way in. Not comfortable, exactly. Familiar in a way he hadn't consented to.
The last attribute bloomed and just sat there.
[Dreamspawn]
{Description: You are born of two worlds, belonging to both but welcomed in neither. Your soul stands on the seam between Nightmare and waking.}
He stared at that one a long time.
"Dreamspawn," he said softly. "Because I—"
Because he had died somewhere else and opened his eyes on a roof over black water. Because the Spell had written his name on a list where it didn't belong. Because he was a transplant, still trying to take.
"Yeah," he muttered. "Makes sense." He didn't like how true it felt.
The pane dimmed and held without vanishing. He let it hang there and finally looked around with new eyes.
This wasn't the empty plain anymore. The blue was deeper, like twilight about to tip into night. The pillars were still there, but they looked closer to him, as if his sight had found focus. Runes ran along them, patient as tides. Some of the strokes made sense now; he could tell which ones were just flourishes and which carried weight.
He stood on a platform that hadn't been stone a minute ago. It was a circle of something black and smooth, ringed by a low lip. Beyond it, the surface changed. Not water exactly. It moved like water without reflecting. When the breath of wind touched it, faint ripples ran out and didn't come back. Farther away, shapes rose and fell under the skin—hints of structures that might be bridges if they wanted. He didn't feel like testing the idea.
"My soul sea," he said. "So this is mine." The words sounded strange in his mouth. He'd read Sunny's description so many times that seeing his own version made him feel like he'd walked into someone else's apartment by mistake and found familiar furniture in the wrong colors.
There was light here—very faint, like a lantern seen from a beach at night. It wasn't a flame. It was a place. A point across the dark where the ripples seemed to be heading. If he stared, he could almost see a tower that wasn't a tower, made of joined lines and hooks, like a sigil pretending to be a building.
"Okay," he murmured. "I get the hint."
He looked down again at the floating rune-pane, at the two attributes that still felt like splinters under his skin.
Hatred of the Sun. Dreamspawn.
"One thing at a time," he said, and it didn't echo because this place wasn't that kind of place.
He checked the entries again for differences he might have missed.
Memories: [Drowned Silence], [Salt Laced Thread].
The dagger. The thread. He could feel where they would sit in his waking hands even though nothing weighed on him here. He had the sudden, sharp urge to test Votive Oath on the spot—say something small like I will reach that tower—but the mantle wasn't a toy, and the flaw the Spell had handed him would make a bad joke out of any careless oath.
"Noted," he told himself.
The runes held a breath, then folded and withdrew, leaving only the plain and the not-water and the sense that he was being given one last quiet minute before everything started to move again. Back in his old world, the quiet minutes had come at three in the morning and tasted like burnt coffee. Here, they tasted like salt and iron and the edges of letters he could almost read.
He didn't kneel. He didn't pray. He had the feeling this place wouldn't stand for it anyway.
He raised his head and took in the horizon one more time, just to fix it. The black ocean breathing. The pillars with their patient scripts. The far light that wasn't a flame.
Then he let his shoulders drop and said, "Alright."
{Wake up, Hope's Desire!}