"Truly splendid reactions."
The tone was light, almost amused, but something in it crawled down the spine of everyone there.
The president stiffened.
The pressure he had been emitting immediately shrank in response to this overwhelming entity, folding inward back on itself like space bent by gravity.
The heaviness the president had controlled had now been replaced by something far more powerful.
Iskael felt this pressure sink into his outline, pressing on every fragment of color around him, commanding instinctive obedience from things he had only just started to notice.
"To say the Hero's Requiem project would fail," the voice continued,
"What a blasphemous insult."
A soft chuckle followed.
"Wow... here you all are. Intact and quick to have adapted to this unknown emptiness just after your unfortunate deaths. Truly wondrous."
The moment the man finished his speech, light began blooming into the space, though it wasn't the scattered, fragile threads of a floating kaleidoscope of colors. It was real, functional light.
A pale radiance rose from the distance, seeming to come from the entity itself, washing over the darkness in a slow wave, eating away at the darkness entirely as it pushed the shadows back, revealing the shape of the space they stood in.
And surprisingly, it wasn't just emptiness left in it all.
The three hundred students appeared to be in a hall. A vast one at that.
Its ceiling arched high above them, carved with intricate patterns that seemed to shift in an otherworldly sense if one stared too long.
The walls were lined with towering, angelic statues, four wings stretching from the backs of each, while they all wore beautifully sculpted stone garments.
Though these entities looked truly divine, their faces seemed eroded beyond recognition, as if a message or warning had been left.
Each of these angel stones held tablets in their hands, tablets covered in symbols that glowed faintly when the light passed, while others held designated tools.
These tools seemed unique.
Some held harps and other musical instruments, flutes and whistles to the position of their ruined mouths and many others.
While others held weapons like shields, swords, spears, and bows.
All seemlessly standing on higher platforms, looking down on the humans as if they were nothing at all.
The surface on which they stood was white stone, polished and smooth, stretching out in all directions, marked with concentric circles that intersected under each group of students, as if they had been standing on designated points from the start.
Surprisingly, the last to be revealed, even if the light had come from him, was the man.
He walked toward them at a calm, unhurried pace, hands loosely clasped behind his back, just as any old man would walk.
His features were unique, and his figure wasn't excessively tall, nor was it short. He seemed ideal, just as his face looked at peak maturity without a speck of oldness.
His face had the kind of ageless quality that made it hard to place his exact age. Fine lines etched the corners of his eyes and mouth, but his gaze was sharp, clear, and far too bright.
A trimmed beard framed his jaw.
His clothes were simple, a robe that did not belong to any culture Iskael recognized, white trimmed with gold, the fabric shifting like liquid when he moved.
To most, he probably looked like some dignified elder.
But to those who could see the threaded colors, he was something else entirely.
The threads of light in the air wrapped around him like affectionate creatures, circling his arms, his shoulders, and even his neck. They clung to him, thicker and more vibrant than anywhere else in the hall.
To say the colored light loved him would be an understatement, as his entire being was excessively coded in them, to a suffocating degree.
An aura unmatched by anything Iskael had seen, figuratively.
As those who could see stared, they instinctively felt that if they remained in that state any longer, they would be swiveled up and turned into those threads that hung to that clandestine prism shining colorfully around.
Reduced to never having another conscious thought again.
Iskael's eyes narrowed as he turned his gaze, looking only with his peripheral vision, feeling that this was the only way he could survive.
All the others who could see also did this exact act instinctively.
'Is he the reason we're here?' Iskael wondered.
The man smiled.
His gaze swept lazily across the assembled lines of students, but when it passed over those whose colors were thicker, his eyes lingered a fraction longer.
"Good," he said. "Truly splendid to have already been chosen."
He lifted one foot lightly.
Within the next step he took, it placed him directly in front of the president.
An impossible feat, moving in a manner that had not a single transition or blur.
He had seamlessly appeared instantaneously, bringing intense fear to all those who could minutely understand what his existence really meant.
Several students gasped at the sudden movement, though Iskael, frightened, did not.
His fingers curled slightly at his side.
'So fast it felt as if light hadn't even registered his movement? How is that possible? That's against every conventional law. No living organism could possibly move at such speeds.' Paranoia filled Iskael's heart.
While Iskael felt wonder and fear at the action, the president felt truly tense, shoulders pulled on him in fear, not understanding what monstrous entity was before them.
Despite his fear, his face remained composed, though if one paid close attention, his clenched jaw seemed to give him away.
"Are you not frightened at the mere sight of me, enough so to beg for your existence to remain, boy?" the man questioned the president in curiosity.
"If you intended to kill me," he said politely, "I assume you would have done so already, great sir."
The man's smile widened.
"Hoho."
The laugh sounded old-fashioned, but it fit him.
"What a good head you have on those shoulders," he said.
"Clear, even now. Very good. Very good."
His hand lifted.
He grasped the president's forearm, turning it slightly as if inspecting a piece of crystal.
Colored light reacted instantly, surging around the point of contact, flooding up along the president's arm like liquid drawn into a tube.
"Hoo," the man breathed. "Mana."
The word dropped into the hall like a stone into still water.
"Yes," he continued, humming.
"Even though you come from a manaless world, I expected those chosen for the Hero's Requiem project to have decent constitutions, enough to at least see glimpses of it. But to have traces of it already moving through your systems, even though you are nothing but souls without bodies..."
His fingers squeezed gently, his face contorting in a slightly wicked smile.
"What monstrous talent."
'Mana?'
Iskael repeated the word in his head.
'Is this what this is? Just like in those fictional tales, this is mana?' Iskael thought in wonder.
This energy wasn't just light, nor was it just a hallucination, but something clearly important based on the way it wrapped around the mysterious entity and the way he called it had clear value.
'Mana.'
He rolled the term around in his thoughts, fitting it into the unique patterns he had observed so far.
A unique, foreign energy source. External, with no solidity. Visible only to some, and comforting when assimilated into the skin, like what happened with Sere.
His eyes lowered briefly to his own hands again.
The strands there trembled, still drawn faintly toward the man at the center.
Beside him, Serene swallowed.
She kept her gaze fixed on the scene in front of them, but her hand had crept from his sleeve to his wrist, fingers curling around it.
Her grip was tighter than before.
He glanced at her.
She noticed and, as if caught, forced her fingers to relax a little.
When she looked up, her usual leader mask was cracked slightly at the edges.
"...Iska," she whispered, trying to make her tone light and failing. "Do you think this is the part where we go to heaven?"
He huffed, a quiet sound that almost counted as a laugh.
"I doubt it," he murmured back. "The statues do not look very welcoming."
Her lips twitched.
Even in this, she tried to make it easier to breathe.
His gaze returned to the man.
The self-proclaimed examiner of talent took one last look at the president's arm, then released it, satisfied.
He turned, facing all three hundred students properly now.
Colored light gathered around his shoulders like a mantle, a soft storm that never touched the ground.
When he spoke next, his voice lost its amused edge for a moment.
It became heavier.
Sharper.
He smiled, but there was something unnerving in the angle of it.
"Since you are all awake," he said, "allow me to introduce myself."
His eyes swept over them once more.
Every student watched him.
Those who could see mana felt it tighten.
Those who could not see anything at all still felt something pressing against their souls.
He spread his arms slightly, as if in welcome.
"I," he said, his words sinking into the floor and ceiling and every translucent chest at once,
"am a god."