The river sang its usual song, and the wind moved through the trees like it always had — gentle, ancient, unbothered. But Lee was no longer moved by the forest's rhythm.
Because at age eleven, he had started writing his own.
He sat cross-legged in the Threading Chamber, surrounded by relics — bone-tipped brushes, glyph-marked jars, bits of soul-thread coiled like cobwebs in glass. The obsidian ring at the center had darkened over time, stained with residual aura. At its edges, Lee had begun constructing the second layer of his personal sanctum: emotion-forged totemic stones.
Each stone bore a symbol carved from memory — not just images, but feelings. A cracked mask for deception. A wilted lotus for failure. A snake biting its own tail for obsession.
These were the fundamentals of control, the inner bricks of the world's fear.
And Lee had begun stacking them into bodies.
At first, the constructs were primitive — globs of emotional energy compressed into flickering shapes. They fell apart in minutes. Couldn't hold cohesion.
But the method was improving.
Emotion anchor → compressed fear shard → tethered spirit thread → glyph sigil casing.
It was working.
By his third week of tests, one construct — a weeping child-figure made of wind and sobbing — had followed his instructions for four full minutes before collapsing into ash.
He named it "Whimper."
Not because he cared.
Because it helped categorize results.
He now saw spirits the way blacksmiths saw iron.
Not as mysteries. As materials.
Each one carried properties:
Coldroot Wraith → slowed movement, icy aura.
Murklicker → illusion fog, memory haze.
Shriekbeak → sonic pulses, flocking effect when fragmented.
Lee never fused them whole anymore.
He threaded, filtered, categorized. Each fragment was stored like a library entry. And when he felt bold, he fused them temporarily — creating what he now called "Trial Echoes."
Echoes were not alive. Not truly.
They were shells.
Puppets made of horror.
He began testing how people reacted.
Wearing a simple charm to suppress most of the aura, he walked past a group of local traders while projecting a whisper-thin dread pulse toward one man — a heavyset miner with a guilty twitch in his right eye.
Within seconds, the man began mumbling to himself.
By the time Lee had passed, he had dropped his coin pouch.
Lee didn't take it.
He didn't need the money.
He needed to confirm something:
That his aura, in its current state, could extract guilt memories. That it could direct fear toward internal pain.
Confirmed.
That night, back in the chamber, he summoned Whimper again.
Only this time, he added new threads — a hint of the Shriekbeak's echo and a sliver of Murklicker fog.
The result?
Whimper now emitted a low moan that made Lee's bones vibrate.
It lasted eleven minutes.
Progress.
One day, while meditating on the riverbank, Lee felt a spike in spiritual resonance.
Not from nearby.
From the Spirit World itself.
A ripple — sharp, jarring, distant like thunder underwater.
He opened his eyes.
That wasn't random. That was conflict.
Something was happening beyond the veil — a clash of wills. Spirits colliding. It reminded him that the balance of realms was always in motion. That someday, someone would notice what he was doing.
The Avatar? Spirit guardians? Old gods?
Didn't matter.
He would be ready.
By the final moon of the year, Lee had created seven fully functioning Echoes:
Whimper
The Hollow Crow
Spiderweep
The False Mirror
Lanternhead
Gnawboy
Echo-Ashen (a partial clone of his own aura, used for stress testing)
Each had specific purposes — misdirection, intimidation, surveillance, interrogation.
He could summon two at once now without breaking concentration.
The chamber had become a true lab.
And in the center, drawn in gold-dusted charcoal, was a new glyph:
無神 — "No God."
Not as rebellion.
As prophecy.
He would rise without divine permission.
At age eleven, Lee had stopped dreaming of power.
He had begun crafting it.
Ashen Hellflame wasn't coming anymore.
He was already here.
And the world had no idea.