"For the people, for the families, I could not save, I promise, in blood, their deaths shall all be repaid, for my kingdom, for my wife and child. for the love you betrayed, we shall see this feud ended here sister. Let us be at war. I offer you the bloodshed you've craved. Let's see who's thirst is stronger." ~Foreshadowing~
A young man paced his porch, kicking a ball as the cool rain fell, marking the long-awaited end of an island-wide drought. The three-and-a-half-week dry spell had seemed endless, making the sudden shower a relief.
Earlier, he had played in the rain, sliding on the wet grass before coming inside, drying off, and resuming his quiet routine kicking the ball while lost in thought. His family had been asleep for six hours, leaving him time to cook, clean, and enjoy his solitude. If he had a phone, he might have been playing games, but without one, he had to find ways to entertain himself.
As he kicked the ball, he reflected on all that had happened and the future he wanted to carve out, making little plans of his own. He played carefully, avoiding noise that might wake his baby sister. Though he loved her, he treasured his rare moments of alone time.
Eventually, deciding it was time to wake everyone for dinner, he prepared for one last powerful kick. This time, he didn't care about being quiet, he intended to wake them all one way or another. Drawing his right foot back as far as possible, he swung with all his strength only to miss the ball by an inch. The force sent him flying, landing hard on his tailbone and knocking the wind out of him.
Though he failed to kick the ball, he succeeded in making enough noise to stir his family. As he lay there, gasping for breath, he heard them waking. He wanted to get up, but his back throbbed, and walking without a limp was impossible.
He couldn't risk telling his father, it would only earn him relentless teasing. Instead, he snuck inside, avoiding everyone, and collapsed in his room. He managed two hours of sleep before his younger siblings found him.
His two baby sisters and baby brother, led by his determined four-year-old sister, had searched the house to find him. Though his room was the last place they thought to check, they discovered him in the end, waking him with a heavy dog pile.
His youngest sister tugged at him, urging him to eat. Calming down, he gave her his hand, and his other two siblings joined in, pulling him up and leading him to the kitchen. He ate while his youngest sister sat beside him, animatedly recounting their search.
His dad and stepmom had already gone to bed, leaving him with the kids once they confirmed he was awake. He didn't mind. He made them some snacks, sat with them to watch cartoons, and soon, they all fell asleep again.
It had been a good day. Over the next two days, he carefully hid his limp from his father while he healed. Fortunately, there was no lasting damage.
Solaria lay in bed laughing, her sides aching from the effort. Yohan had made it something of a routine to tell her stories from his life back on Earth. Isolated for so long, Solaria had been cut off from the outside world and this was his way of helping her catch up. Through their conversations, Yohan made a startling discovery: Oreath, Solaria's home planet was Earth, his own home, long forgotten under another name.
From then on, he shared more and more of its past. Earth, as he knew it, was far from the peaceful utopia Solaria remembered before the fall of Ventris. War had ravaged the land, chaos consumed its people, and nations turned against one another. Still, scattered corners of the world managed to hold onto peace, where people struggled to build better lives.
It was no paradise. In truth, one could argue that after Ventris took control, Earth had been utterly abandoned. And he wasn't wrong. Ventris had left Earth to its own devices after taking her sister's child. Over time, the world moved on and many forgot the gods they once served, ushering in the modern age as we now know it.
On the other hand, Yohan had helped Solaria grasp the concept of time, something she had long forgotten in her isolation. With his guidance, they began to track its passage, marking days and nights as they came. As some of her power returned, she no longer stood idle in the barren silence of the black zone. A day and night cycle emerged, bringing movement to a world that had stood still for far too long.
Still, Solaria retained the power to revert her paradise to its original desolate state, a deception she used whenever an apostle dared to intrude. From afar, she would strike with ruthless precision, responding to their presence with the same fury she always had. It was not uncommon for an apostle or two to go missing when sent to her domain.
Solaria was simply that powerful. The ones they sent were never strong enough to pose a real threat; they were scouts, not warriors. Disposable. As a result, no one paid them much attention. Even the angels assigned to monitor her grew lax, their reports infrequent and late. But none of it mattered to Ventris.
In her mind, the war had long been won. Millennia had passed since Solaria's imprisonment, and Ventris had not yet discovered the newest reincarnation of her beloved, the only tool that truly tormented Solaria. With no urgent leverage to use against her, Ventris had long grown complacent, and Solaria was left alone, able to make a home with Yohan thanks to the neglect of her captors.
Even more importantly, somewhere in the rhythm of their days, the two fell into something tender.
Their bond deepened into a charming friendship equal parts fierce and soft, forged in laughter, loyalty, and shared solitude. They cooked, played, slept, and trained side by side building routines that brought comfort amidst the ruins of forgotten wars. Over the next five years, Solaria taught Yohan to harness the power that now pulsed through him thanks to Aurelius and were putting together plans to free Solaria. The plan was to train Yohan, to get him strong enough to face an apostle, while figuring out how to break the rest of the shackles.
Yohan and Solaria were able to carve out a quiet, almost simple life together. He grew strong, at this point in time he had grown to be even stronger than Aurelius in his prime but unfortunately was starting to reach a bottleneck. He felt like he had made some progress but all the same felt like it wasn't enough, he needed to be strong enough to at least defeat Solaria in a fight, though severely weaker than she was in her prime, her raw physical strength alone was enough to defeat Yohan no matter how much he tried, no matter what progress he had made he could still not seem to get over this wall in front of him.
Solaria made sure to remind him that he was now strong enough to fight most apostles which are basically demigods but he would need to be stronger than that, in his mind he would need to be even stronger than Solaria to make sure that no matter what came his way he could handle it but for now he was unable to escape this sinking feeling and it was affecting his training.
As he sat on a cliff at the beach far away from the castle, he stared out into the horizon and took a deep breath, then crossing his legs, he closed his eyes and entered a meditative state trying to rack his brain to see if there was something he was possibly doing wrong, he opened one eye to peak at Solaria back at the castle, with the progressions he had made before he was now able to see miles away.
Solaria was in the castle kitchen making dinner, Yohan had recently taught her how to cook, and tonight she wanted to make dinner on her own. So, he decided to take a walk. In truth, she was worried about him, constantly trying to figure out ways she could help. But the energy within him belonged to Aurelius, and she didn't understand how it worked. She couldn't guide him through it due to the energy being a different type than hers. All she could do was teach him her own methods, and for a time, they worked until he hit a wall.
She suddenly felt as if someone was watching her. Glancing out through the kitchen window, she saw Yohan sitting on the cliff, staring back at her. She smiled warmly and blew him a kiss. He closed his eyes, a faint blush rising to his cheeks, and smiled in return.
Trying to steady his racing thoughts, he took a deep breath. "Calm down... just remember everything she taught you and everything you already know. There has to be something I'm missing."
He racked his brain for answers, recalling cultivation methods he'd read about in old manhua. Most of them, as he remembered, were overly complex layers of rituals, obscure breathing techniques, or intricate internal visualizations. None felt right. None felt like him. So, he took a different approach.
"What if I make my own?"
He focused inward, searching for a way to shape his chaotic energy not through someone else's path, but through one forged by his own understanding and instinct.
He tried to clear his mind, focusing inward to visualize his energy. In the past, he'd relied on generating it throughout his entire body, and it had worked allowing him to unleash devastating bursts of power. His favorite technique involved concentrating energy in his hands and feet, then releasing it in explosive surges.
The inspiration had come from one of his favorite anime characters, a certain spiky-haired boy with explosive powers and a short fuse. It was flashy, effective, and felt right.
But now, he needed more than just raw output. He needed a way to strengthen not just his magic, but his physical body as well. Deep down, he knew he wasn't weak. Maybe he just hadn't found the right method to push beyond his current limits if only for a moment.
Yohan closed his eyes and visualized his energy as a surging storm of power, wild and crackling like lightning through his core. He focused, steadying his breath, gradually drawing the chaos inward. The storm coiled tighter and tighter until it condensed into a single, glowing blue orb calm, controlled, and pulsing with raw strength.
As he studied it more closely, he noticed something else lingering at its edge, a second presence, dark and cold, like liquid shadow curling around the light.
The sensation was faint but unmistakable.
He recognized it, it was Solaria's.
Then it hit him.
At some point during his training, Solaria had infused a small amount of her own energy into him not to empower, but to stabilize. His energy had once gone berserk, lashing out uncontrollably, and she had acted quickly, using her power to contain the surge. It was a temporary measure, meant only to suppress the chaos not linger.
Yet now, as he stared at the cold presence wrapping itself around the orb, he realized it had never truly left.
The wisp of dark energy began to curl around the orb, almost as if it were trying to enter it drawn by some unseen pull. Yohan, equally curious and cautious, focused his will and gently removed the barrier he had placed around the orb, keeping the energy compressed but no longer sealed off.
The moment the barrier dropped, the wisp slipped inside.
The fusion was immediate. His bright electric-blue energy began to shift, its color deepening into a dark violet, glowing like molten glass. The storm-like crackle faded, replaced by a steady, thrumming pulse. The energy took on a new form, dark liquid fire, roiling with both heat and cold, chaos and control.
He could feel it. Different, but still his.
With the fusion came an explosion, a violent eruption of energy that radiated outward in a blinding flash. The force of it sent shockwaves through the air, a burst so powerful it could have been seen from the castle where Solaria stood. The ground trembled beneath her feet, and she felt an instant surge of uncontrolled power.
Her heart skipped a beat. Without a second thought, she rushed toward Yohan, her instincts telling her that his energy had spiraled out of control once more. She prepared herself to channel her own power, ready to stabilize him as she had done before.
But as she neared, she sensed something different.
This wasn't the wild chaos she had dealt with before. This was… something new.
The combined essence of Aurelius' electric energy and her own darkness had created a force unlike anything she had felt. It was dangerous, volatile, and unpredictable but it wasn't the destruction she feared. It was something mutating a new form of power, far more intense and potent than either energy on its own.
As Solaria watched the swirling vortex of energy, she immediately recognized the mix of her dark power and Aurelius' electric power. But this, this was impossible. Mortals weren't supposed to wield both these types of power at once, in fact not even gods could, the only reason Ventris was able to use her power when it was stolen was because of their shared blood and filtering it through her angels. What Yohan did was beyond the natural order.
Her mind raced as she tried to make sense of it. The only logical explanation, she concluded, was that Yohan's lack of inherent magic had somehow allowed him to blend both energies. He was human, fundamentally without the typical magic that ran through the veins of others, and that may have been the key to what had happened. The absence of magic had somehow made him a vessel, open to both forces without the usual constraints.
The massive vortex of energy continued to spiral, crackling with both the cold chill of Solaria's darkness and the raw heat of Aurelius' power. Desperately, she called out to him, her voice filled with both concern and command, trying to reach him through the storm.
But the energy snapped at her, almost as if it were alive, warning her away. It repelled her touch, a barrier she couldn't break through. She called again, her words growing more urgent.
Then, as if hearing her pleas, the storm calmed. The chaotic energy began to dissipate on its own, settling into stillness.
But Yohan... was different.
His form had shifted, his body now resembling the state he had taken when he fought Aurelius, stronger, more solid, yet radiating a fierce, uncontrolled power. The energy around him had changed him
Yohan's transformation was nothing short of breathtaking. His long dreadlocks, once calm, now flowed with an unnatural energy, rippling as if alive, covered in the same dark energy that had surged through Solaria.
His body pulsed with power, radiating a dark, violet hue that mirrored Solaria's own power. His eyes, now glowing like blue gems, shone with an intensity that seemed to pierce the very air around him.
His tunic had vanished, replaced by his now bare, toned body, brimming with raw strength and energy. Strange, arcane markings shimmered across his skin, swirling like tattoos of power. His shorts were gone, replaced by warrior's Pteruges, traditional armor hanging around his waist, symbolizing both protection and battle-readiness.
His arms were adorned with bands that seemed to be forged from gold, gleaming with an otherworldly luster. And his face—his face was now partially obscured by a skull mask, covering only his mouth, but still giving him an eerie, intimidating presence that was entirely new.
He stood there, a fusion of raw energy and dark elegance, both human and something more.
Yohan looked down at his hands, a sense of wonder and power swelling within him. With a simple wave, a wisp of dark energy materialized, swirling around his hand like a living thing. The energy pulsed and shifted, its color swirling from deep violet to shades of black and blue, ever-changing but always retaining that core, dark hue. It was like gazing into a nebula mysterious, beautiful, and infinite.
His idea of merging the energies had worked, but in ways he hadn't expected. The power felt more uncontrollable, wild and chaotic, yet somehow more potent, more alive. It was no longer simply destructive it was creative, versatile, and dangerous in equal measure.
Curious, he focused on shaping the energy. He gathered it into his hand, and in a flash, a blade of pure energy extended from the back of his hand, crackling with dark power. Before he could fully appreciate the weapon, another surge of energy flowed through him, and a Naginata, a long Japanese polearm with a curved blade formed from the liquid-like energy, as if it were alive, its dark edge humming with raw power. In an instant, a small, round shield took shape in his other hand replacing the blade he had before, solid and unyielding, the liquid energy flowing into its form like molten metal.
Solaria looked at him with a subtle mix of wonder and worry. Her eyes traced over his transformation, his exposed muscles, pulsing with power and despite herself, a soft blush touched her cheeks. Then came a wave of pride. She could already piece together what he had done, and the realization filled her with awe. He had managed to merge their energies, something thought impossible and not only survived, but adapted.