Damien's eyes opened.
No fanfare. No glow. Just the slow, deliberate lift of his gaze as the world returned around him.
The battlefield snapped into clarity. The beast and the shadowed intruder still tore through each other in vicious arcs of raw force, the pool of mana glowing beneath them like molten silver. Light refracted through the waterfall's curtain, distorted but steady.
But Damien didn't move.
He didn't need to.
Because in that moment—he realized.
He could command it.
Mana.
Not just draw it. Not just survive it.
Command it.
He inhaled—lightly. The air shimmered. Particles of ambient energy bent toward him, not in chaos or resistance, but in response. Not passive. Not wild. But deliberate. Attentive.
He exhaled—and the circuits inside him thrummed to life.
The flow obeyed.
Like blood through arteries. Like electricity through a wired will. Each thread moved along the paths he'd forged earlier—not strained, not stuttered. Synchronized.
