The world seemed quieter after a storm.
A few days had passed since the duel between Gary and Elias shook the Academy's social circles. Rumors still buzzed in every corridor, in every whispered gathering — but for now, no official challenges loomed over them.
In a sun-dappled courtyard tucked away from the main roads, Dawn, Gary, and Ingrid sat around a low stone bench, enjoying a rare moment of stillness.
Gary, his arm still faintly bruised, shifted uncomfortably. "I thought my ribs were made of steel by now," he muttered, wincing as he stretched.
"They are," Ingrid teased, plucking a blade of grass and twirling it. "Problem is, Elias brought a bigger hammer."
Dawn leaned back against the sun-warmed stone, arms crossed loosely. "You fought well," he said in that flat, calm tone that somehow carried more weight than any exaggerated praise.
Gary gave a small, sheepish smile. "Doesn't feel like it when you get knocked down seven times."
"You stood up seven times," Dawn said simply.
Ingrid nodded. "You didn't break. You didn't even shout some stupid defiance like most heirs would."
Her voice held a kind of respect — raw, honest. Gary looked down, fiddling with his sleeve. He wasn't used to being praised for losing. More accurately, he wasn't used to losing. He is the heir of House Amberson after all.
"I thought..." Gary started, then stopped. He tried again. "I thought people would laugh. That they'd remember the defeat more than the stand."
Dawn shrugged. "They only laugh at those who betray themselves."
"And you," Ingrid added, "looked like a damn mountain."
They fell into a brief, comfortable silence, listening to the faint ripple of a nearby fountain.
The sun hung low, painting the courtyard gold. Somewhere distant, a bell chimed the hour.
"You know," Ingrid said after a while, "Elias looked pissed. Like he wanted you to beg."
Gary chuckled under his breath. "If I begged, my grandfather would probably rise from the grave and smack me."
"Good incentive," Dawn said dryly, drawing a laugh from both.
"But still..." Ingrid's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "This whole thing wasn't just personal pride. Elias was making a point. He wanted everyone to see it."
Gary's fists clenched slightly. "Yeah. He wanted to put the 'upstarts' back in their place."
"But he failed," Dawn said, his voice like a blade striking stone. "You're still here. Standing."
Gary's shoulders relaxed a little.
Ingrid flashed him a sideways grin. "And besides, it's not like you're going to stop at one mark. Give it time. You'll crush him underfoot."
Gary smiled — a real smile this time — slow, steady, and quietly burning.
"Yeah," he said. "In time."
---
But as night fell and his friends drifted away to their own training, Dawn found himself walking alone.
Drawn by an invisible pull, he descended once more into the forbidden realm buried beneath the Academy — the half-formed world he had shaped with his Will.
---
The realm stirred as he entered.
The sky above — no longer just a static shell — shifted and breathed like a living thing.
The seas rolled slowly, tasting the edges of the land. The soil cracked underfoot, but it was growing, healing — just barely.
It was no longer pure chaos.
It was no longer pure void.
It was becoming.
All because Dawn bore its existence on his back, refusing to let it die.
He sat on a jagged cliff, overlooking the half-born world.
Above, the stitched-together stars glimmered faintly — artificial constellations woven by sheer stubbornness.
And inside his mind, the words from the Codex of Ascended Forms spun endlessly:
"Only by defeating your true self can you crush the halos and not die."
To advance. To forge the Astral Embodiment.
He needed to shatter his halos — the rings of transcendent light that floated around his soul.
And then, to bind himself to an astral body — a star, a planet, a constellation.
But...
His Astral Embodiment... it should be the crowning layer of his physique.
He already had the others, naturally harmonized through struggle and survival:
Blood throbbed with Resonant Energy.
Skeleton was clad in a radiant Luminous Frame.
Flesh shifted with the chaotic flow of the Infernal Mantle.
Organs pulsed within the crystalline weave of the Cosmic Lattice.
Yet, to ascend further — to birth the Astral Embodiment — he needed more.
An astral body.
A star. A satellite. A constellation.
Something beyond himself to embody.
And therein lay the void.
There was nothing.
No star singing his name.
No constellation weaving his fate.
No satellite whispering promises.
Nothing.
Only the heavy silence of a boy without a destiny.
Dawn clenched his fists until the cracked stone shuddered under his knuckles.
"How do I fight something that doesn't exist?" he thought bitterly.
"How do I defeat a self that might not even be real?"
The forbidden realm's sky rippled — a shudder, like a dying breath.
A ragged sigh escaped him.
He was so lost in thought that he almost didn't notice the old man appear — as if conjured by the realm itself.
The Grand Instructor stood a few paces away, his hands behind his back, watching him with those deep, ageless eyes.
"Troubled, are we?" the old man said lightly, as if asking about the weather.
"Didn't you say that you can't enter the forbidden realm?"
"That was in the past, besides this just an avatar. No harm done."
Dawn exhaled, the tension bleeding out of him. He nodded. "I'm stuck. I need an astral body to bind with. But... there's nothing."
The Grand Instructor regarded him for a long moment — so long that Dawn wondered if he'd heard him.
Then, the old man's mouth quirked up into a strange, almost baffled smile.
"Nothing?" he said, voice tinged with wonder. "Boy, don't you already have one?"
Dawn blinked, stunned into silence.
The realm around him pulsed — as if echoing the Instructor's words.
He already had one?
But how?
Where?
The old man's smile deepened, half-mischief, half-pride.
"Think carefully, Dawn," he said softly. "Sometimes... we craft our stars with our own hands."
And with that cryptic blessing, the Grand Instructor vanished — leaving Dawn alone, heart hammering, in the half-born world he had woven.
---