CHAPTER 216: EX 216. THE SOURCE

Julius held the shard of fractured core between his fingers, the ember veins pulsing faintly as if the thing still breathed. With steady hands, he dropped it into the bowl of boiling water.

The fragment cracked with a brittle hiss. For a moment the sound was soft, almost harmless, until it became pale, red motes of star dust began to bleed into the water. The surface shimmered like liquid fireflies, swirling and spreading, tinting the clear water into something dangerous and otherworldly.

Julius waited. Patient as stone. He could have stirred it, sped the process along, but hesitation was wisdom here. If he agitated the mixture too soon, he risked destroying the fragile balance of dust and heat.

When the last glow had evened out across the water, Julius reached for the side nozzle. He twisted it open, slowly. A trickle of liquid poured through the spiraling tube, hissing as it cooled and condensed. The stream carried its diluted essence into the sealed container below, where fire rocks burned hot, building pressure.

Julius crouched low, eyes fixed on the container. He could hear the faint whistle, the low rumble of heat trapped within. His pulse quickened. Finally, he opened the second nozzle.A breath of pale red vapor escaped. Steam hissed out, curling upward as it was funneled into the flask. The glass filled with it in rippling waves, glowing faintly like captured bloodlight.

When the last thread of vapor swirled into the vessel, Julius snatched it from the table. His gaze lingered on the flask, knuckles tight around its neck. This would not grant him a core, not yet. But if it worked, it would give him what he had sought all his life: a clue. A spark to prove it could be done.

He turned to Luna. Her ears perked forward at his voice.

"In case anything happens... I’m counting on you."

The young wolf’s awe faded into focus. She crouched low, eyes sharp, muscles taut. "Don’t worry, brother. I’ve got your back."

Julius nodded once. Her ability was still raw, and unpolished, but moonlight flowed in her blood as it did in their mother’s. Enough to bind wounds, enough to keep him breathing, maybe. He had already swallowed herbs to sharpen his mind and dull the pain, though he knew both were but frail walls against the storm he was about to invite.

He exhaled slowly.

"By the moon."

The seal of the flask clicked open. The vapor leapt out, rushing into his nostrils in a flood of heat and iron.

At first, nothing. His lungs burned faintly, but no more than when he had run too far, too fast. He drew in another breath, deeper, until the last of the vapor vanished into him.

Then the world tilted.

A violent chill surged down his spine, followed by heat so sharp it felt like fire had been poured into his skull. Julius staggered, clutching his head, yet even before his knees buckled, he felt it. His spirit tearing loose from his flesh, ripped free like a thread from a seam.

Luna’s voice roared in his ears, distant and warped.

"Brother!"

And Julius Arman, powerless son of no one, drifted into a void of crimson light.

****

At first, Julius felt nothing. No body, no breath, no sound, only an endless crimson silence that pressed in on all sides.

Then his eyes, or whatever counted for sight here opened. He was adrift in a place beyond words, where the fabric of reality itself pulsed faintly like the skin of some cosmic beast. All around him glimmered countless tiny lights, each one linked by delicate threads of essence and star dust.

Julius floated, wide-eyed. The points of light stretched into infinity, some faint and small, others immense, throbbing like suns. Despite their distance, each was bound to the others by those faint shimmering strings.

His lips moved soundlessly at first, then a whisper escaped.

"Are... these the beasts’ cores?"

The number overwhelmed him. They were everywhere, a lattice so vast it reminded him of the night sky when the moon had sunk low and the heavens were scattered with stars.

But as he stared, something else revealed itself. The connections were not simple. Each core did not only tie into the network, it had another link, a hidden tether pointing outward. A second bond, faint but unyielding.

Julius’s thoughts raced.

"This... this might be what I’ve been looking for all along."

He followed the threads. Slowly at first, then faster, drawn along the current of essence. The farther he drifted, the fewer cores there were around him, but the ones that remained grew larger, more radiant, like colossal lanterns of burning knowledge.

He pressed forward, relentless. Until finally, there were no more. He reached a boundary, a wall that no core dared breach. Beyond it stretched a silence deeper than before, guarded by the weight of an invisible law.

But Julius had no core. No anchor to chain him back. As he slipped through the veil with ease.

And there, in the heart of infinity, he beheld something so magnificent it shattered his mind’s language to dust. A shape that could not be shaped. A presence that was both stone and flame, void and brilliance, beast and god.

The journal’s words broke down at this point.

"@#@#?#@?#?#@—"

Lines dissolved into incoherent markings, symbols scrawled without order, the ink smeared as if the very memory had resisted being written.

---

Leon blinked down at the page, confusion cutting across his face.

"What the hell...?" he muttered, sitting upright.

Every line past Julius’s discovery was meaningless nonsense, incomprehensible jargons tangled like the scribbles of a madman. The neat, steady hand of the emperor had collapsed into chaos the instant he tried to describe what lay at the center.

Leon ran a hand through his hair, staring at the page as though it might fix itself if he looked hard enough. His voice carried in the silence of the library.

"What the hell is this supposed to mean?"

Unaware, his words weren’t the only thing stirring the air.

From the shadow of a bookshelf behind him, something shifted. A figure stood still, silent as breath, its presence folded into the dark. Watching him.

****

A/N: Fast pass code: ABDHYP3QUY8AH8B9A