The house was quiet again, just the whisper of the wind against the shutters and the faint creak of the old beams above him. Yami sat cross-legged on the mat, the bowl of cooled tea untouched at his side, his mind half within his own body and half deep in the shadowed place where the beast's spirit still thrashed.
It was weaker now.
Much weaker.
Where once it had been a tide of pure hostility, that strange, monstrous will was now nothing but a ragged echo. Every time Yami had gone into that place over the past days, his own Aether had seeped deeper into the cracks of its being—corroding, breaking, unweaving what it had been.
The malnourished frame he'd carried for years was gone. His shoulders no longer jutted out like broken spears; his ribs no longer drew sharp lines under the skin. The change was subtle at first, but now even his reflection in the warped bronze mirror seemed… grounded. Stronger.
He exhaled slowly.
That was the first stage done.
"Almost gone," he murmured to himself. "When it's empty… a new spirit or soul can inhabit the body ."
It wasn't mercy. He wasn't saving the creature's form out of pity.
A hollow shell—one cleansed of its original will—could be repurposed. A summoning beast, bound to him. The thought had come to him two nights ago, and since then, it had rooted itself deeper with every breath. A tool, not an enemy.
For now, he simply kept dismantling what remained of the old spirit. His Aether wasn't just pushing—it was rewriting. A few more days, and there would be nothing left of the beast that had once stalked him.
Physically, the absorbing the creature had changed him.
The Aether pulled from the twin stars still hummed in his veins. He'd begun trying to shape that power in different ways:
• From the black star, he could now call forth a spark of black flame—small, but alive, and hungry.
• From the other, he could coax slivers of raw elemental sparks: a bead of frost, a breath of wind, a flicker of lightning no bigger than a needle.
They were tiny.
But they were his.
The void, though—that was different.
He'd touched it once while tearing through the creature's essence, felt that strange, cold absence whisper back. But he hadn't dared to test it yet. Not until the shell was his. Not until the bond was absolute.
He rose and stepped to the window, looking out at the quiet street below. Life went on as always: merchants calling their wares, children running past in bare feet, an old shinobi leaning on his cane in the shade.
They didn't know.
They couldn't know.
The Aether wasn't meant for this world's chakra-bound arts. And he had no interest in weaving the two together—chakra felt crude, thin, easily polluted. If he awakened it, it might dilute what he had now and also aether that he accquired from absorbing the creature is more powerful but less versatile.
So he didn't.
He wouldn't.
For now, there was only the quiet work—devouring the last of the spirit, shaping the empty vessel..
Next as he slowly absorbing the powers he found something new
The first signs came quietly.
When Yami stood in front of the cracked mirror at home that morning, he noticed something—his reflection didn't quite match his own movements. The faintest shimmer, like rippling starlight, flashed across his irises. For an instant, they were no longer the dull black of his old life, but deep cosmic pools, each bearing two faint rings of light, spinning slowly around a miniature star.
He didn't know what triggered it—until he realized his aether flow had surged slightly while he was thinking about the void fragment he absorbed from the beast.
The thought struck him:
If aether could awaken these eyes… then what happens when I blend it with the void .
Not wanting any villager—or worse, a shinobi—to witness whatever might happen, Yami packed dried food, water, and his worn satchel, slipping out toward the wilds beyond the northern ridge. This wasn't the hunting route he used before; this was a place older villagers avoided. A place where the air tasted heavy and shadows stretched longer than they should.
He passed crumbling stone pillars, remnants of some forgotten watchtower, until the land opened into a wide canyon. Perfect. No one would stumble here unless they had a reason.
He stood in the canyon's center and let the void stir. It was strange—it didn't feel like chakra, and even aether had a kind of hum to it. The void was… silent.
When he willed it forth, the light dimmed around him. Not by blocking it—more like the light was simply absent.
He raised his palm and felt an invisible pull, a small patch of space rippling like water before sinking into nothing. A pebble rolled into it—and vanished without a sound.
His breath quickened. Marvel's comic-book words came to mind—gravity wells, space warps, null spheres. The beast's void power wasn't just destruction—it was erasure.
He decided to test the eyes.
A deep breath, aether surging—
The rings in his pupils flared, spinning faster until his vision sharpened a hundredfold. The canyon floor wasn't just rock anymore; he saw the faint threads of energy running beneath it, like veins in stone.
The stars in his eyes pulsed once. A cluster of small void sparks formed above his palm, not collapsing but orbiting one another like a tiny black constellation. With his sight, he could adjust their pull, make them draw toward or repel from his target.
He threw one at a distant boulder—
It didn't explode. Instead, the stone imploded, folding into a shadow the size of a fist before winking out.
Curiosity took hold.
What if he merged aether and void?
The result was… unstable. The void devoured energy, but aether resisted being consumed. In his palm, the fusion created a black flame laced with faint, starlit arcs. It hissed, burning cold but pulling heat into itself. He tossed it into the canyon wall—where it didn't just scorch stone; it left a hole leading into complete darkness.
Yami shivered. This wasn't something he could use casually.
As the canyon winds whistled, he thought back to the creature's broken spirit, now nothing but an empty shell. If a new spirit took root in it—one bound to him—it could serve as a summoning beast. A void-born ally under his control.
But first… he needed mastery. These powers weren't just stronger than chakra—they were dangerous enough to make him a target if anyone learned of them.