The crystal's surface remained inert, its depths holding no light or movement. Adrian's palm pressed against the cold stone, yet nothing stirred within its core.
Seconds stretched into an eternity of silence. The hall held its collective breath, hundreds of hearts suspended between beats.
"Is the crystal malfunctioning?" a woman whispered from the crowd, her voice a sharp, cutting sound that sliced through the tension.
…
Thousands of kilometers away, within one of the planet's most treacherous, scarred Wastelands, something stirred. The white-grey stone, the mysterious object that had fallen during the Sentinel's revelation, had waited in darkness for two and a half centuries. Its surface, unmarked by time's passage, suddenly gave a response.
The stone's dormant core flickered once, twice, then blazed with recognition.
Found.
…
The world vanished.
Adrian's consciousness descended through various planes of existence, each one falling away like discarded layers until only the most essential remained. The room, the crystal, even his own physical form faded into faint recollections.
He floated in the space between spaces, in a realm where physics bent and meaning dissolved. Here, in this reality beyond human comprehension, he witnessed the architecture of existence itself.
Power flowed before him, not as separate, turbulent streams but as a single, magnificent, and infinite torrent from which all lesser forces drew their strength.
Fire was merely heat given temporary form, water was the dance of molecular bonds, lightning, the brief, chaotic fury of electron storms.
All of it, every affinity humanity had cataloged, were pale, isolated shadows of this singular origin. It's [Source].
The energy called to him with a voice that bypassed his ears and spoke directly to his soul. His consciousness reached out, fingers of will extending into the cosmic flow.
Contact.
…
The crystal's surface cracked, not with damage, but with the strain of containing something vast. Light didn't emanate from within; instead, it bent violently around the monolithic stone.
Adrian's hand remained pressed against the crystal as reality warped. The air itself grew dense, molecules clustering as if drawn by invisible, crushing threads of mana.
"What's happening to the stage?" Leo's voice carried across the hall, tight with concern.
The platform beneath the crystal groaned in protest. Stone compressed under forces that had no name, its surface developing hairline fractures that spread like spiderwebs across polished marble.
Then came the silence, not the absence of sound, but the absence of everything. For one heartbeat, the space around the crystal became a localized pocket of absolute nothingness that swallowed light, sound, and even the sensation of existing.
The vacuum collapsed with a thunderclap that rattled windows three blocks away. Everyone stumbled backward as shockwaves of residual force rippled through the floor and up their legs.
"Space affinity," someone breathed from the crowd, "But that's impossible. No one awakens with that kind of power."
The crystal's glow shifted, displaying readings that climbed beyond the instrument's capacity. Numbers blurred past S-Rank, past anything the device had been designed to measure, until the digits were meaningless chaos.
Adrian's mother gripped the balcony railing, her knuckles white against the metallic surface. "Thomas, that level of spatial distortion—"
"I know." His father's voice, usually a mountain of immutable presence, carried the distinct weight of battlefield fear. "I've seen Space users before. But never anything like this."
The air around Adrian shimmered like heat waves, space itself bending to accommodate forces that shouldn't exist in a sixteen-year-old's awakening.
The proctor backed away from the stage, her practiced composure visibly cracking. "Everyone, remain calm. This is still within normal parameters," she insisted, the lie hanging thick and desperate in the strained air.
When everyone thought the phenomenon had ended, the crystal's surface began to writhe like living flesh.
The display screen above the stage convulsed, its spatial readings dissolving as if erased by an invisible hand. Heat erupted around the monolith in a violent bloom, turning the air into shimmering curtains of superheated atmosphere.
"Fire Affinity detected," the display announced, the words scattering into pixelated fragments.
Frost instantly bloomed across the crystal's surface like crystalline flowers, each ice formation more intricate than the last. The temperature plummeted so rapidly that people's breath turned to vapor clouds.
"Frost Affinity confirmed," the system declared, its voice distorting through speakers that crackled with interference.
Blue lightning writhed around Adrian's form, not the gentle sparks of a normal awakening but serpentine bolts that carved temporary scars in the air itself.
The electrical discharge died as gravity suddenly seized the hall, pressing down with invisible hands that made floorboards shriek in protest.
Many dropped to their knees under the crushing weight. Leo's face contorted as he fought against the invisible force to remain upright, sweat beading on his forehead.
The crystal flickered between states of matter, its surface alternating between solid, liquid, and something that defied classification entirely. Each transition brought new readings that flashed across the display faster than human eyes could track.
"What in the seven hells is happening?" The proctor's voice cracked as she fumbled blindly for the emergency shutdown controls.
Her fingers found dead switches. The crystal had consumed control of its own systems, feeding on data streams that originated from databases of the galaxy sent by celestial eleven.
The monolith's core blazed with information overflowing. Every known affinity in the registry flooded through its sensors simultaneously, creating a feedback loop that threatened to melt the crystalline matrix.
Adrian stood motionless at the storm's center, his consciousness still floating in that space between spaces. The power that coursed through him carried the taste of starlight and the overwhelming weight of collapsing suns.
The display screen convulsed one final time before surrendering to the impossible. Its chaotic readings stabilized into pure white text against a blank background.
"System override," the mechanical voice announced with digital exhaustion. "Unable to categorize multispectral phenomena. Defaulting to conceptual classification."
The hall fell into a breathless silence as the words materialized: Affinity: [Echo]. Potential Rank: SSS.
The proctor stared at his secondary display, where additional data scrolled past in streams of alien text. His face drained of color as translation algorithms struggled with information that predated human civilization.
"The crystal's accessing the deep archives," he stammered. "Data from the first war. This affinity... It's listed as extinct."
The proctor's hands trembled as she accessed deeper files, her voice cutting through the hall's stunned silence.
"Additional data incoming. An Echo user's mana functions as a blank slate or perfect mirror. By observing an opponent use a skill, say, a Rank-C Fireball, the Echo user's highly adaptive mana analyzes the signature. The specific frequency, rotation, and composition of the fire mana. It then temporarily mimics that signature, allowing the user to cast a copy of the Fireball skill."
"That's not possible," someone whispered from the crowd. "How could such an affinity even exist?"
The proctor raised her hand, her professional composure slowly returning as she read from the database archives.
"The Echo affinity is not omnipotent. It comes with severe limitations." Her voice carried across the hall, each word measured and deliberate. "An Echo user must comprehend a skill like everyone else to replicate it. They cannot create skills from nothing."
She scrolled through more data, her brow furrowing in concentration. "An echo is never as pure as the original. Mimicking an A-Rank skill would manifest at a significantly lower power level, perhaps B-Rank or C-Rank."
Leo's eyes widened as he processed the information. "So it's like... a weaker copy?"
"Yes, the process of reshaping one's mana to perfectly mimic another affinity is incredibly inefficient, even though the mana of an echo user is a blank slate, reshaping the mana is too hard," the proctor explained. "Echoing a single powerful skill could completely drain an average user."
A stunned silence gripped the hall, followed by an explosion of chaotic whispers. An Echo affinity, the power to replicate other affinities, remained a myth, a legend, even with its severe limitations. To see it awaken, and at an SSS-Rank Potential, was an event that would shake the foundations of the Organization.
Adrian's consciousness settled back into his body like a sword sliding into its sheath. The cosmic torrent faded to a whisper, yet its memory burned bright in his mind.
Every sensation from the awakening ceremony flooded back, the gasps of the crowd, the proctor's stammered explanations, the weight of hundreds of stares.
A faint smile touched his lips.
The crystal's surface cooled beneath Adrian's palm, its chaotic light settling into dormant transparency. He lifted his hand with deliberate calm.
The hall's collective breath released in a rush of whispered speculation. Hundreds of voices merged into a symphony of disbelief, their words fragmenting into meaningless noise against his awareness.
"An affinity that could copy others," someone breathed from the crowd. "But the limitations... he'll never match the originals."
Adrian's smile deepened, carved from certainty rather than arrogance. They saw a mirror where a wellspring existed, mistook reflection for the source itself.
The proctor fumbled with her tablet, sweat beading along her hairline despite the hall's returned coolness. "Mr. Blackwood, please step down from the platform. We'll need to conduct additional assessments."
"Of course." Adrian's voice carried across the silent hall.
He descended the steps, his footfalls echoing against marble that still bore hairline fractures from the awakening's intensity. The crowd parted before him.
Leo rushed forward, his face flushed with excitement and concern. "Adrian, that was incredible! SSS-Rank Potential! But the proctor said—"
"I heard what he said." Adrian's gaze swept across the assembled students, cataloging their expressions of awe, envy, and barely concealed fear.
His parents watched from the balcony, their legendary composure intact but their eyes sharp with parental worry. His mother's hand rested on the railing, her grip still firm.
"The Echo affinity is fascinating from a theoretical standpoint," the proctor continued, her voice carrying forced professionalism. "But in practical application, its energy costs make it nearly unusable in sustained combat."
Adrian nodded politely, his expression revealing nothing of the cosmic river that still whispered at the edges of his consciousness. Let them believe their databases and records held the truth, but he can feel the truth, what he had was not merely Echo.
The Source Energy pulsed within him, not borrowed or reflected but flowing from the wellspring where all power originated. Fire, water, lightning, space, were all mere facets of a single, infinite gem.
Adrian positioned himself among the other awakened students.
Sarah, still glowing with pride from her A-Rank Healing awakening, stared at him with wide eyes. "Adrian, what was it like? When the crystal started... doing whatever that was?"
"Enlightening." The single word carried layers of meaning that none of them could begin to fathom.
Marcus shifted uncomfortably beside them, his earlier confidence about his B-Rank Earth affinity now seeming insignificant. "The proctor made it sound like your affinity is more trouble than it's worth."
"Every power comes with costs," Adrian countered. His gaze drifted toward the crystal, where the next student approached with trembling hands.
The awakening process resumed its normal rhythm, each subsequent manifestation appearing mundane after the cosmic storm Adrian had unleashed. Wind affinity, B-Rank. Wood affinity, C-Rank. The familiar parade of human potential catalogued and classified.
Yet Adrian felt the Source Energy responding to each new awakening, recognizing fragments of itself in every manifestation. The students weren't gaining new power, they were accessing tiny, channeled portions of what already existed.
"Your parents look worried," Leo observed, following Adrian's upward glance toward the balcony.
"They're concerned about the implications." Adrian's voice carried understanding rather than resentment. "An unknown affinity draws attention from the Organization."
The ceremony continued around them, but Adrian's consciousness was fixed on the cosmic river hidden inside him. Its infinite depths promised power beyond mortal comprehension. But he would reveal nothing yet. Let them think he is limited by their narrow understanding.
After all, the greatest predators were those that appeared harmless until the moment they struck.