The sky above the Savannah had ceased to be a part of nature; it was now an altar of divine execution. The silver lightning descended in the shape of gargantuan, jagged swords, each one a hundred meters long, vibrating with a frequency that threatened to shatter the eardrums of every living creature for miles. These were the 'Swords of Heaven,' sent to punish the mortal boy who dared to reach for a power beyond his biology or say, beyond his predestinated destiny.
The Ancient Tree, a Top 10 Lord of the world, bore the full weight of this celestial assault. Having shed its wooden exterior, it had fully transitioned into its war-form: a gargantuan Golden Dragon. Its leaves had fused into overlapping metallic scales that shimmered with a holy light, yet even this divine armor was being crushed.
Every bolt that connected sent tremors through the dragon's massive frame, forcing its claws deeper into the scorched earth. The dragon's roar was no longer a sound of defiance, but a groan of agony as its very essence was being hammered by heaven's might.
But if the dragon was a shield, Dreleon was the weapon being forged on a furnace called five elements.
"DRELEON!"
Princess Venesa's voice was a thin (animals here were able to talk with vocals because of evolution), fragile thread lost in the voice of the storm. She was pressed against the interior wall of the golden cocoon, her Claw white as she gripped the vibrating branches.
The sound coming from Dreleon wasn't a normal cry; it was an inhumane, guttural shredding of his vocal cords. It was the sound of a soul being pulled apart by wild horses. Hearing those screams, Venesa felt a sickening clutch in her gut—a physical manifestation of the guilt that was drowning her. I did this, she thought, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. This power was meant to be a gift, but I am watching him be destroyed.
She was too innocent that's why dreleon was able to make a pact with her just because he was her only friend with no other intentions or say he was able to hide those intentions deep within him.
Then, the first phase of the tribulation struck: The Metal and the Earth.
The rich, red soil beneath Dreleon's trembling form hardened; it transformed. liquefied into a strange, matte-black metal of unknown origin—a substance that seemed to absorb the light around it. This metallic earth didn't stay on the ground. Like living veins of obsidian, it crawled up Dreleon's legs, melding with his skin.
His biology was being re-coded. The earth minerals were forced into his pores, replacing his calcium-based bones with a carbon-metallic. Every bone in his body was methodically snapped, reduced to powder, and then instantly woven back together. The pain was rhythmic—crush, repair, crush, repair—until his skeleton was no longer human, but a reinforced frame designed to hold the weight of a transcendence.
Suddenly, the air inside the cocoon grew thin and biting. The temperature plummeted from the jungle's humidity to a soul-chilling frost. This was the Ice and Water trial.
Inside his veins, a violent war broke out. To finalize the pact, the Ancient Tree had injected its essence—half of its own blood, which flowed like shimmering, molten gold. For a fleeting second, Dreleon's veins glowed with a divine radiance, the gold fighting to stabilize his heart. But the blackness within him—the demon—refused to be conquered.
The black and gold blood swirled together in a chaotic eclipse. The gold tried to heal; the black tried to consume. Slowly, the golden light began to dim as the black blood regained its dominance, thicker and more viscous than before. It became clear to anyone watching that the black blood wasn't a disease or a spirit—it was Dreleon's true nature, the parasite buried deep in his DNA.
The frost didn't last. It was instantly vaporized as the third element arrived: The Furnace of Fire.
A pillar of white-hot flame erupted within the cocoon, turning the space into a vacuum of heat. This wasn't ordinary fire; it was a purgatory blaze intended to burn away every human impurity. Dreleon's skin charred, blood evaporated and transformed bones become blood red, all his flesh stand peeled, revealing the dark, metallic muscle beneath. The fire sought out the black blood, trying to boil it away, yet the black remained. It was an ability or perhaps a curse that even the fires of heaven could not purify. He sat in the center of the blaze, his body glowing like a coal in a furnace, his mind barely tethered to reality.
As the fire died, the Wind element took its turn to kill.
The air was sucked out of the cocoon entirely, creating a localized void. Dreleon's lungs collapsed, his chest heaving for oxygen that wasn't there. His face turned a bruised, horrific purple. He was dying. In the silence of that suffocation, his five physical senses finally failed him. His sight went black; his hearing went deaf.
But in that moment of absolute emptiness, a new sense was born: The Soul Perception. Without the distraction of the body, Dreleon began to 'see' the world in its rawest form. He perceived the soul energy of the jungle—the green threads of the plants, the golden aura of the Lion King, and the purple-red sparks of the demon energy within himself. He had survived the physical forge; he had learned to breathe the energy of the world itself.
Just as he achieved this breakthrough, the final trial began, The trial of sky, also known as trial of mind.
His consciousness was ripped from the Savannah and thrown into an Unknown Space. It was a void without color, without sound, and without end. Here, he forgot the Princess. He forgot the Dragon. He even forgot his own name. To his mind, an eternity passed in that silence. He lived a thousand lifetimes in the dark, his spirit being stretched like a wire across the universe. It was a test of the mind—would he go insane, or would he become a diamond?
He survived. With a mental roar that echoed through the void, he reclaimed his identity, his "will" acting as the glue that held his fractured mind together.
Back in reality, the "Black Hole" anomaly in the sky reached its breaking point. It had absorbed too much of the heaven's energy, and it was ready to detonate. The light it produced was so bright it blinded every beast in the jungle.
The Ancient Tree, exhausted and its golden scales cracked, was at its limit. It couldn't shield the cocoon from a blast of this magnitude.
Just as the black hole began to expand into a world-ending explosion, a massive shadow eclipsed the sun. The Divine Jungle Lion King, the ruler of the Savannah, leapt into the air with a roar that silenced the thunder. He positioned his own body between the blast and the cocoon, his golden mane flowing like a sun-fire.
The explosion hit.
The shockwave leveled every tree for three kilometers. The Lion King was thrown back, his magnificent fur charred black, his flesh bearing the horrific burns of heaven's wrath. He hit the ground with a thud that shook the earth, but he did not move. He had borne the brunt of the blast to save his daughter.
Inside the ruins of the ritual site, the golden cocoon began to unravel, the branches turning back into dry wood.
Princess Venesa stumbled out roaring like a dignified lioness, her eyes searching for the boy. But Dreleon was gone. In his place, sitting in the center of the scorched earth, was a massive, pulsing Black-Red Egg with some golden luster and lion's might. It stood three feet tall, its surface covered in vein-like ridges that hummed with a deep, rhythmic heartbeat.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
The ritual hadn't just created a pact; it had triggered a metamorphosis. The boy was gone, and something far more powerful—and far more dangerous—was waiting to be born.