The blue text dissolved from Valen's vision, leaving behind the faint heat of the flame curled around his palm. It wasn't the unstable, hungry glow from before. This one felt…aware. Like it breathed with him.
Keros stared at it, jaw tight, wings folded back tensely.
"This isn't normal flame," he muttered. "Your aura keeps shifting. What happened when you blacked out?"
Valen didn't answer immediately. Keros would detect a lie, but the full truth — A system no one else can see just ranked my fire as Unique — would raise questions he wasn't ready to deal with.
So Valen shrugged. "It changed on its own. I didn't force it."
Keros narrowed his eyes, feeling for deceit… and finding none. "Evolved abilities don't just 'change'. Not without a catalyst."
Valen didn't comment. His focus was on the lingering heat in his chest — a signal he now understood. The moment Voidflame ranked up, other skills had shifted with it, threads connecting them like parts of a larger structure he'd never noticed.
The System's last notification flickered back into memory:
[Secondary Skill Paths unlocked due to Unique Core Awakening.]
[Three skills have evolved.]
He hadn't had time to check what changed during the fight. So he opened the interface quietly, eyes half-lidded so Keros wouldn't notice anything strange.
It unfurled like a silent ripple.
NEW SKILL EVOLUTIONS
• Ember Step → Voidstride
The description rearranged itself:
A movement ability that now let him blink short distances, leaving a fading after-image of black flame. Not teleportation — more like slipping through a thin tear in space.
Valen flexed his foot. The air rippled, faint but sharp.
Yeah, that was new.
---
• Heat Sense → Spectral Perception
This one widened his vision into layers: heat, motion, emotional pressure, and something else—something deeper, like the outline of a creature's intent.
He blinked. Keros' silhouette shimmered with a faint purple haze — cautious, but no longer hostile.
Useful.
---
• Minor Flame Control → Abyssal Flame Weave
This evolution surprised him most. It wasn't raw power but precision: shaping flame into thin threads, structures, even sigils.
When Valen raised his hand, a fine black filament stretched between his fingers, humming softly. He dismissed it immediately before Keros noticed.
---
Keros exhaled slowly. "If you're hiding anything, at least tell me if it endangers the Pact."
"It doesn't," Valen replied simply.
Again, the truth — just not the whole of it.
Keros looked at him for a long moment before turning away. "Good. Because whatever awakened in you… it's attracting things. Strong ones. I felt them during the fight."
Valen already knew.
His evolved perception pulsed again — and in the distance, something massive stirred, brushing against the boundary of his senses like a predator testing a cage.
Voidflame's evolution hadn't gone unnoticed.
Keros looked around and spoke in his mind "We need to move. Now. Whatever you awakened, it's calling attention."
Valen closed the System interface, letting the new abilities settle.
"Fine," he said. "But next time something like this happens, I want to understand why."
Keros hesitated, then nodded. "Agreed."
As they moved, the faint threads of Abyssal Flame Weave curled subconsciously around Valen's fingers, quiet and controlled.
For the first time, the evolution didn't feel like an accident.
It felt like the beginning of something bigger.
The forest thinned as they walked, the heavy shadows breaking apart into long strips of fading sunlight. The air felt less suffocating now, but Valen's senses — sharpened by Spectral Perception — kept brushing against faint distortions. Creatures shifting in the distance. Curious. Hungry. Drawn to the flare of Voidflame.
Keros noticed Valen's distracted expression.
"You're sensing them, aren't you?"
Valen didn't deny it. "They're following us."
"This place reacts badly when something… unusual awakens." Keros said
Valen kept quiet, still adjusting to the hum of power under his skin. But once the trees finally broke into a wide stretch of rocky plains, Keros slowed down, as if giving himself space to speak.
"There's something you need to understand before we go any further," Keros said. "Outside the wilderness, strength isn't simple. It's organized."
Valen kept walking beside him, listening.
"There are five continents," Keros continued, "each with their own systems, powers, and monsters. But across all of them, power is measured by categories of talent."
He lifted one clawed hand, counting off slowly.
"Ordinary talent…
Gifted talent…
Genius…
Prodigy…
And hidden prodigies."
Valen frowned. "Hidden prodigies?"
Keros nodded. "The kind who awaken abilities that don't match their background. Power that shouldn't exist. They're rare — extremely rare — and when they appear, the world reacts. Sometimes violently."
Valen looked away, because that sounded uncomfortably close to him.
Keros kept going, unaware of the parallel.
"Most continents are controlled by sects. Dozens of them. Some openly recruit, others lurk in the shadows. But the strongest ones have Elders… Hidden Lords… people who can crush entire cities if they feel bothered."
Valen raised a brow. "And we're walking straight into that?"
"You'll have to, eventually," Keros replied. "If your evolution caused that disturbance, the stronger powers will sense it once we cross into civilized territory."
Valen didn't answer. He didn't want to think about what the System would look like to people who could detect power without even using skills.
Keros glanced sideways at him. "But don't panic. Most sects won't care unless you openly display something impossible."
Valen resisted the urge to look down at his palm, where a thin black flame shimmered for a moment before fading.
Right. Impossible.
Keros continued, tone calmer now that the wilderness was behind them.
"You'll meet geniuses who have trained since childhood. Prodigies born with monstrous bloodlines. Hidden prodigies shaped by fate. Elders who have lived for centuries. And hidden lords… well, even mentioning them can start a fight."
"But you," Keros added quietly, "you don't fit anywhere on the scale. Yet."
Valen's steps slowed. "Good or bad?"
Keros didn't answer immediately.
"It depends," he finally said, "on how well you can hide… and how fast you can grow."
Valen felt the System pulse in response, the faint echo of something new awakening deep inside him.
The plains stretched ahead, bright and open.
Behind them, the wilderness settled — but not quietly. Its beasts still watched.
Voidflame had changed everything.
And the continent was about to notice.