Two days after the deployment notice, the Duskbane fleet arrived at Origin Capital.
The Duskbane Clan was known across the galaxy for their warriors who had survived sieges that crushed many clans. Veterans who had stood against demon hordes at the Edge and lived to tell of it.
And now they were here to help the Origin Clan.
Kaelith stepped off her flagship onto the landing platform.
An Origin administrator approached, a composed woman named Sovia. She politely bowed.
"Respected Lady," Sovia said, "Lord Adrian is waiting for you. Please follow me."
Kaelith nodded, studying the administrator briefly. The Origin Clan had grown in discipline since she'd last visited.
They walked through the Origin Construct's outer halls. Kaelith noted the efficiency of movement among staff members. Everything spoke of rapid but intentional development.
When they stepped into a colossal training arena, Kaelith felt it, a subtle distortion in space and time, faint but persistent, "A Time Field?"
Her steps slowed fractionally. She had seen such formations before on the Edge, witnessed even Lexaria deploying them during critical sieges. But those required Time Crystals worth entire clan fortunes, resources that took decades to accumulate.
The Origin Clan, a faction less than a year old, maintaining one this vast and stable?
Impossible.
She kept her expression neutral, her thoughts locked, and continued following Sovia.
The administrator guided her deeper into the arena. The distortion grew stronger, time's flow bending around them. Kaelith glanced sideways, and what she saw next made her heart skip.
Two Origin warriors were sparring in a cleared section. One conjured spears of ice and launched them forward. The other vanished, blinking across space, reappearing behind him in a flawless spatial fold and counterattacking with the same ice shard technique.
"Space and Ice?" Kaelith blinked.
Before she could process that, the first warrior blinked as well, folding space around himself and repositioning mid-combat.
Her heart skipped another beat. "Two SSS-ranks wielding both space and ice affinities?"
Sovia walked on as if nothing unusual had occurred.
Kaelith forced herself to keep moving, but her gaze swept the arena now, searching. She turned toward another duel.
A female warrior defended with an essence barrier and not just defended, she redirected the attack through spatial manipulation, then unleashed a Stellar-level fire spell.
Flames erupted in a spiral of white-gold heat that scorched the arena floor.
Kaelith's eyes widened.
That wasn't an illusion. The fire essence intensity was real. Advanced galactic concept, the kind that required decades of comprehension, burned in that attack.
But that warrior's presence was only SSS-rank, "Then how did she use a Stellar-level spell?"
Kaelith's pulse quickened. She began walking faster, her eyes scanning every corner of the massive arena. The deeper she looked, the stranger it became.
One spar showed a warrior blinking through shadows, his form dissolving and reforming in darkness. He took a hit, stumbled, and then raised his hand. Emerald mist poured from his palm, healing the wound in seconds. Before his opponent could react, he froze the ground beneath them in a spiral of ice and flame.
Another warrior chained gravity and fire. The battlefield folded around him, space warping under gravitational pressure as flames twisted into compressed spheres that detonated on impact.
Each one. Every single fighter she saw wielded multiple affinities.
And not just weakly, not like dabbling students experimenting with secondary concepts. They fought like they were born with them, like the affinities were natural extensions of their will.
Kaelith stopped dead in her tracks.
Her mind screamed. "This is impossible."
Across the galaxy, even among the oldest clans, only peak Stellars dared to cultivate multiple affinities. It took millennia of mastery, lifetimes spent meditating on universal truths. Most never succeeded. Most died trying.
But here… these were SSS-ranks. Barely adults by galactic measure.
She whispered, her voice barely audible, "This defies everything the empires know…"
Sovia glanced back, noticing her expression, but said nothing.
She led Kaelith deeper into the arena. Kaelith glanced around, her gaze catching on warriors sparring with techniques that should have been impossible for their rank.
They crossed into a new section and saw a chamber lined with shimmering pools stretched before them.
Kaelith's steps faltered. The liquid within each pool glowed with condensed mana that pulsed with power.
"Mana Pools."
Her throat tightened. She recognized them instantly. One of Lexaria's creations, an alchemical blend of condensed mana and essences that could restore a cultivator's reserves in seconds.
The cost to produce even a single pool was astronomical, dense mana crystals, essence crystals refined over centuries, and formations that required master inscribers to maintain.
Lexaria used them only for Stellars and only during Edge sieges where survival outweighed expense.
But here, hundreds of SSS-ranks walked in and out of the pools casually. Training, fighting, resting, laughing. A young woman stepped from one pool, her skin still glowing faintly with residual mana, and immediately launched into another sparring session. A man collapsed into another pool after exhausting himself, emerging minutes later fully restored.
Kaelith's hand trembled at her side.
"You're letting anyone use these?" she whispered to herself, the words barely audible. Pain crept into her voice. "Do you even realize what this costs?"
But the Origin Clan didn't seem to care about cost.
Sovia continued forward without pause, as if walking past priceless treasures was routine.
Kaelith forced herself to follow, her mind reeling. She crossed through other training zones, one bathed in volcanic fire where warriors practiced fire manipulation amidst erupting geysers, another frozen under endless blizzards that howled with ice essence, one crushingly heavy with gravity essence where fighters moved in slow motion, their bodies adapting to the weight.
Then she saw it.
A simulation trying to replicate the Edge Void. Chaotic, tearing, unstable. Space fractured and reformed in jagged patterns. Warriors practiced fighting amidst breaking reality, dodging spatial rifts that could tear flesh from bone. Some failed, stumbling into the tears, only to be pulled out by formation barriers before real harm occurred.
Everywhere she looked, formations pulsed. Each one replicated environmental extremes.
Kaelith could not believe it, "How is this a new clan?"
No. Even clans thousands of years old didn't have these kinds of resources to train their warriors. Not even the empires deployed this level of infrastructure except during critical campaigns.
Her fingers clenched. The pieces refused to fit together. The Time Field alone should have bankrupted them. The Mana Pools should have been impossible to produce in quantity. The formations covering this arena represented decades of master-level inscription work.
Yet here it all stood, operational, thriving.
What she didn't know was that inside this time field, eight years had already passed. Eight years of relentless innovation, collaboration, trial and error.
Adrian and the core clan members had worked together, pooling their knowledge, pushing boundaries. Every idea was tested. Every failure became a lesson. This wasn't the result of one genius. It was the fruit of collective minds refusing to accept limitations.
Finally, Sovia stopped before a dark chamber at the arena's edge. Shadows clung to the entrance.
"The Lord is waiting for you inside," she said softly, bowing once before stepping aside.
Kaelith hesitated, then entered.
The room swallowed her in deep shadow, lit only by faint glowing runes across the floor. She saw Adrian at the chamber's center, surrounded by a circle of young warriors.
He moved like a phantom, weaving through them, demonstrating shadow step. His form blurred, edges dissolving into darkness. He spoke quietly, correcting stances, guiding their essence flow.
Then he moved.
And disappeared.
Kaelith's eyes widened. For a heartbeat, even she, a dual-essence Stellar, couldn't sense where he'd gone. No spatial ripple. No essence disturbance.
When he reappeared, he stood behind one of the warriors, hand resting lightly on their shoulder, correcting their posture.
"Feel the shadow," Adrian said, his voice calm. "Don't force it. Let it recognize you."
The warrior nodded, adjusting their stance. Shadows coiled around them more smoothly.
But it wasn't the technique that stunned Kaelith.
It was him.
She felt it now, fully, without distraction. A presence that pressed against her senses, terrifying and vast. Not the raw power, but something deeper.
She had felt this kind of presence before, but only in ancient cultivators who wielded multiple essences. Beings who had lived millennia, who had walked paths most could never comprehend.
"No!" Her thoughts recoiled. "This presence feels stronger!"
Stronger than those ancient monsters. Stronger than the Warlords on the edge. The presence radiating from Adrian was overwhelming.
She had seen Adrian weeks ago, and he was not this strong, "How did he get this strong?"
Her mind churned. A terrifying thought crept in, sending chills down her spine. She remembered the Astral Omen. Most dismissed its implications as distant, something that would take centuries to manifest.
But now, seeing Adrian, witnessing his impossible growth, a doubt crept into her…
She had been there when he fought Veythar. She saw his weaknesses in combat, the gaps in his foundation. She also saw his power level at that time.
Then, within months, she watched him build the Origin Capital. Watched him erase entire demon fleets with a word. Watched him stand against a Demon Lord and win.
Every single day, Adrian was growing. And the growth rate was ridiculous.
She knew Adrian was someone who hadn't even known about the concept of dual-essence when they first met. Someone who learned it existed only because she told him.
And someone like that, within a few months, gave her this kind of presence.
Adrian finally turned toward her. He dismissed the warriors gently, his hand gesturing for them to continue practicing on their own. They bowed and dispersed into the shadows, resuming their training in pairs.
He walked toward Kaelith.
As he moved, the shadows receded, clearing a path.
With each step Adrian took toward her, she felt the presence intensifying. The darkness of this environment, the lingering shadow essence coiling around him, the faint glow of runes beneath his feet, everything combined created an eerie, almost otherworldly atmosphere.
Her pulse quickened despite herself.
Adrian stopped before her. He looked the same, his voice was the same as always, "Welcome back, Kaelith. You came just in time."
And though his words were warm, genuine even, Kaelith's heart pounded as the truth settled in her mind.
"This man might be the very storm the galaxy had feared."