The golden fire from the Council's leader hissed, a condensed beam of solar energy intended to incinerate Elias where he sat. But it didn't hit him.
The air around Elias didn't just ripple; it cracked. The violet runes on the Sumerian tablet bled into his skin, crawling up his neck like obsidian vines. The shadow behind him—the horned silhouette of Enkidu—clamped its ethereal jaws shut, swallowing the divine flame whole.
[Synchronization Rate: 1.2%]
[Current State: Primal Resonance]
[Warning: Sanity erosion detected. Subject is experiencing phantom sensations of a prehistoric wilderness.]
"What... what is this?" the Council leader stammered. His eyes, glowing with the borrowed light of Ares, widened in genuine terror. "Sumerian? Those gods were purged in the First Cataclysm! They are Void-kin!"
Elias didn't answer with words. He couldn't. His throat felt like it was filled with hot sand. Inside his mind, a thousand lions roared at once. He saw visions of a Great Flood, of a king weeping over a friend's corpse, of a civilization buried under the weight of divine spite.
"They... chained... the... wild," the Echo inside Elias growled. "Break... the... links."
Elias moved. He wasn't running; he was pouncing. His human muscles screamed as they were forced to mimic the explosive power of a beast that once wrestled with Gilgamesh.
He closed the ten-foot gap in a heartbeat. He slammed his obsidian-veined palm into the leader's chest.
[Skill Activated: Shatter-Point of the Wild]
A shockwave of raw, unrefined "Void Essence" erupted. The tavern's wooden floor disintegrated into splinters. The Council leader's white silk robes—enchanted by the priests of Olympus—shredded like wet paper. He was launched through the tavern wall, leaving a jagged hole that looked out into the rain-slicked streets of the Sunless District.
The other two Council members drew their weapons—blades forged in the fires of Hephaestus.
"Kill the heretic!" one shouted, his blade humming with a high-frequency vibration. "He's a Vessel for the Void!"
Elias felt his heart hammer against his ribs—not with fear, but with a rhythmic, ancient drumbeat. His vision began to split. In his left eye, he saw the tavern; in his right eye, he saw a golden city of ziggurats being torn down by lightning bolts from the Seventh Hanging.
The synchronization was rising too fast. If it hit 5%, his human consciousness would shatter.
"Get out," Elias rasped, his voice vibrating with a dual-tone—his own and the beast's.
"Or what, boy?" the second swordsman sneered, lunging forward with a thrust aimed at Elias's throat. "You're just a scavenger playing with a dead god's toy."
Elias caught the divine blade with his bare hand. The metal hissed against his obsidian skin, but it didn't cut. He looked the swordsman in the eye—and for a second, the man didn't see a boy. He saw a prehistoric forest, a place where gods were just prey that bled.
"Or," Elias whispered, "I'll show you why the Olympians were so afraid they had to bury us in the Zero Layer."
With a sickening crack, Elias snapped the divine sword in half. He didn't use a technique. He used Mythic Weight—the sheer gravity of a forgotten history pressing down on a modern lie.
The swordsmen froze. They realized too late: This wasn't just a fight. This was a Mythic Entanglement.
Elias Thorne was no longer a "Blank Canvas." He was the first page of a new, blood-soaked testament.