The morning after the collapse of the vault brought a silence too thick to be natural. Even the toxic winds of the Sunken March seemed to retreat, holding their breath as if watching Kael from afar. The air was heavy with residue—not from the fusion, but from something more profound: awakening.
Kael sat on a broken pillar outside the wrecked vault, staring at his glowing hands. The ember-flame was no longer wild and flickering. It now moved with purpose, forming lines across his fingers that resembled ancient script. Not in any language he knew, but he felt the meaning.
Bind. Shape. Reflect.
He didn't understand it fully, but he knew the fusion with the schematic had changed him. The mirror shard in his pouch was pulsing too, as though excited or anxious.
Aren crouched beside him, a bundle of salvaged gear at her feet. "You're either the luckiest scav I've ever met, or the stupidest."
Kael gave her a crooked grin. "Can't I be both?"
"Usually one cancels out the other."
She tossed him a flask. He took a sip—filtered root broth, bitter but energizing.
"Do you remember what happened?" she asked.
He shook his head. "Not clearly. I touched it. The schematic. Then something clicked. Like a gear locking into place. The next thing I knew, I woke up glowing."
Drex approached, a half-assembled arc-rifle slung over his shoulder. "You didn't just wake up glowing, kid. You pulled a shutdown echo from mid-manifestation. That ain't talent. That's war-mage level reaction."
"I didn't know what I was doing," Kael said.
"Even worse," Drex muttered. "Instinctual fusion. Been a century since that's happened."
Lira joined them, holding her sphere construct, which now buzzed erratically. "Whatever you fused with rewrote your echo. This little guy says your talent signature is shifting every few minutes."
Kael frowned. "Is that... bad?"
"Not bad," she said. "Just unstable."
Aren stood. "We have to move. This place is compromised. If you suppressed an echo burst that size, Hollow Sun's gonna notice."
Kael looked around. "Where to now?"
"East," Drex said. "Across the Verdant Scar. Toward the Spirewoods. There's an enclave that owes me a favor."
"Spirewoods?" Kael asked. "I thought they were dead."
"Only to tourists."
---
The Verdant Scar was a cracked ribbon of jungle that stretched for hundreds of kilometers. Once, it had been part of the Grand Oasis, a vast greenbelt that spanned a continent. Now it was a place of biotic war-forms and rogue flora, seeded during the final years of the Talent Wars to consume enemies and terrain alike.
They entered through the Hollow Thickets, where trees grew in spirals and vines pulsed with faint bioluminescence. The ground squelched underfoot, alive with root-mind pulses and sentient fungus.
"Don't touch anything that hums," Lira warned.
"Or sings," Drex added.
Kael's talent hummed quietly within him. The ember-flame was reacting to the life around them—reading it, perhaps.
At one point, Kael reached out to a twisted sapling. The bark unfurled in a flinch-like motion, revealing a single, unblinking eye.
He stepped back quickly.
"Alive," Aren said. "Everything here is. It's why this place is so dangerous. The jungle learns."
"What does it learn?"
"Pain. Movement. Memory."
They moved fast, avoiding the thickets that hissed or trembled. Kael felt like he was being watched the whole time. But not just by predators. By the forest itself.
Two days in, they encountered a ruin. A wide stone circle buried under moss and roots, its edges lined with faintly glowing glyphs.
"A Talent Ring," Aren said. "Pre-collapse training site."
Kael stepped closer. He could feel something pulsing within the stone.
"Can I try it?"
Drex looked wary. "Those things test your talent profile. You sure you wanna poke it while you're still shifting?"
Kael nodded. "If I don't learn what I am now, I'll never control it."
He stepped into the ring.
The glyphs flared. A hum filled the air.
Light spiraled upward, forming a cage around him. The world vanished.
He stood now in a mirrored void. Before him, six figures shimmered—shades of himself, each tinted in a different hue: red, blue, gold, green, white, and black.
Choose.
A voice, from nowhere and everywhere.
Kael stepped toward the gold shade. It radiated warmth, focus.
Balance. Reflection. Fusion.
The shade spoke without words.
Kael felt his flame stretch toward it, merging briefly, tasting its nature.
He turned to the red shade.
Power. Force. Will.
To the blue.
Memory. Echo. Silence.
To the green.
Growth. Shift. Life.
White.
Order. Logic. Bind.
Black.
Decay. Hunger. Freedom.
Kael paused. Each one called to him. But none fully fit.
He returned to the gold.
And then he stepped between them.
The space between colors.
There, a seventh form emerged.
A shadow of light. Undefined. Unnamed.
Potential.
Kael reached out. The ember-flame surged.
When he returned to the real world, the glyphs were flickering.
Aren was crouched by the ring. "You alright?"
Kael nodded, though his hands trembled. "I saw myself. All versions. But none fit."
Drex looked at Lira. "That ever happen before?"
She shook her head. "Never."
Kael stared at the sky. He didn't know what his talent had become.
But he was certain of one thing:
It was still evolving.
---