As Ray looked at the fragment lost in the nebulae, Ashborn's voice interrupted his thoughts, saying, "Your senses are perfectly attuned to the flow of Nyrr, others would see only a purple crystal, a simple stone. You see its true, energetic form. Now, hold it in your hand. Focus your will. Do not just break it; command it. Shatter the physical crystal with your intent and imagine the released Nyrr as a fog you must capture and control. Then, pull it into yourself. Guide it through your skin, down to the core space in your abdomen. Visualize the path."
Ray closed his eyes, the cool, hard surface of the crystal resting in his palm.
He focused all his concentration, pushing out everything else—the smell of death, the chill of the cave, the memory of pain.
He willed the crystal to break and it shattered with the slightest effort.
In his mind's eye, he saw it crack, a web of light spreading through it, and then it shattered into a million glittering pieces.
In reality, the purple crystal in his hand vibrated violently, humming with pent-up energy, and then it disintegrated into a fine, sparkling dust that fell like violet sand between his fingers.
But the energy within did not simply explode outwards in a wild, uncontrolled burst.
It coalesced, held by the net of Ray's focused intent, into a dense, shimmering violet fog. It hung in the air around him, swirling and alive, contained in a sphere about five meters in radius.
He was the center of this storm.
He then pictured his skin not as a barrier, but as a porous membrane, and the fog as water desperate to be absorbed.
He visualized it streaming into him, a river of violent light flowing along his limbs, a torrent of power converging in the space below his navel, the reservoir Ashborn had described.
His body responded instantly, hungrily.
With his eyes still closed, he could see the Nyrr obeying his command, the violet fog swirling around him in a vortex before streaming towards his body in thick, visible tendrils, being absorbed through his scales and skin like a sponge soaking up water.
Inside, he felt an incredible warmth building, a pressure growing in his abdomen.
The energy first formed a swirling, chaotic vortex of violet gas, a miniature hurricane of power.
As more and more of the fog poured in, the gas condensed, collapsing under its own density into shimmering, liquid droplets of pure Nyrr. These droplets then further transformed, solidifying, hardening into millions of tiny, dark, ash-like particles.
They gathered and swirled in that specific, separate space within his core, a pocket dimension that seemed to exist just out of phase with his physical flesh, a vast, internal reservoir of pure, usable power.
As the last of the violet fog was assimilated into him, vanishing from the air, a surge of power, far more intense and focused than anything he'd felt before, erupted through him.
It was like being struck by lightning from the inside out.
He felt his body grow, his bones lengthening, his muscles expanding and becoming denser, harder.
He gained several inches in height, his frame filling out with new, defined muscle.
His black hair, which had been at his shoulders, now grew longer and thicker, falling down his back in a lustrous, dark wave.
"Good," Ashborn said, a note of approval in his voice.
"The foundation is set. Your body is changing, accepting the power. You are on the very cusp of fully entering the Ashborn stage. But there is one final, crucial step. The Baptism. When a being fully accepts the Path and takes the first step with true intent, the world itself acknowledges it. Your body will resonate with the fundamental Nyrr of this reality, and you will be granted your True Name. A name that defines your essence on the Path."
"What's a True Name?" Ray asked, feeling the new, stable power coursing through him, a heady, addictive sensation of potential.
"It is an identity carved into your soul by the universe itself," Ashborn explained solemnly.
"It is a source of power and a definition of your nature. It is who you are, and who you will become, in the eyes of the cosmos. Prepare yourself. Do not fight it."
Soon, Ray felt a strange, deep vibration starting in his core, where the ash-particles swirled.
It was a humming that grew in intensity, a resonance that shook him to his bones.
It was his own condensed Nyrr singing in harmony with the ambient Nyrr of the world.
A small, localized storm of dark, crackling energy began to brew directly in front of his forehead, a personal tempest.
It grew bigger and bigger, swirling faster and faster, until it enveloped his entire vision, blocking out the cave, the corpse, everything.
He was trapped in a personal hurricane of power and potential.
He could see nothing else, hear nothing else.
Then, in the calm, silent heart of the tempest, words began to form from the chaos.
They were not in any language he had ever seen or heard, but he understood their meaning on a primal, soul-deep level.
They were golden, shimmering with an ancient, untouchable aura, and they burned with an authority that felt older than time itself.
The script was elegant and impossibly complex, each character a work of art containing universes of meaning, a story written just for him.
The words hung in the air before him, waiting for his recognition.
Then, they began to move, drifting slowly but inevitably, towards his forehead.
There was no impact, no pain.
As they touched his skin, they simply… dissolved into him, searing themselves not onto his flesh, but directly onto the fabric of his soul.
And in that moment of perfect, profound clarity, he knew.
He understood their meaning, their weight, their significance.
It was his identity, his purpose, his true self, given form by the cosmos.
It was a promise and a warning, a beginning and an end.
Azearth.
The storm of Nyrr vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, the energy dissipating into the air.
The cave was silent and still once more.
Ray—no, Azearth—stood there, panting slightly, the new name echoing in the vast halls of his mind, feeling as natural and right as breathing, as if he had never been called anything else.
A sense of profound completion, of a first chapter closing and a far more dangerous one beginning, settled over him.
He was no longer Ray, the victim, the forgotten.
He was Azearth.
As the power settled firmly within him and his True Name took root in his soul, a subtle yet profound ripple of energy, a psychic shockwave of unique signature, emanated from the cave, pulsing outwards and traveling through the many layers of the demon world like a stone dropped in a pond.
In their distant, towering citadels of obsidian and despair, in their palaces of ice and wrath, the masters of the nine great clans—the living avatars and most powerful children of the Primordials—felt it.
A flicker of disturbance, a faint but distinct ping on their cosmic radar, a new note in the symphony of power.
A new power had undergone a True Baptism.
Another potential rival, another ambitious monster, had been born into the new generation.
Most dismissed it with a mental shrug, a ripple of annoyance.
The world was always spawning ambitious ants, flashes in the pan that were quickly extinguished. They would crush it if it became a nuisance. The balance of power, built on their nine pillars, was secure. It was of no consequence.
They were wrong.
It was not a True Baptism.
It was a Divine one.
And the name it had granted was not that of a mere monster, but of a reckoning yet to come.