The chamber around him was silent, but the silence felt… wrong.
Not empty.
Listening.
The fragment of crystal in his hand dissolved into streams of light, the last traces of its ancient patterns burning themselves into his meridians, his bones, his blood. The energy no longer tore through him. It flowed. It obeyed.
Kali rose slowly.
The world felt different.
Not lighter.
Sharper.
The Abyssal Sector pulsed around him — the distant rivers of molten energy, the warped gravity currents, the buried ruins of civilizations long dead — all of it brushing against his perception like waves against a cliff.
His core answered them.
Not by pulling.
By commanding.
A subtle pressure rippled outward from his body.
The fog at the edges of the chamber recoiled.
The fractured stone beneath his feet hummed.
Kali's breath caught.
This was not raw power.
This was authority.
His system interface flickered to life across his vision, text forming in slow, deliberate lines.
[Relic Assimilation: Complete]
[Core Integrity: Stabilized]
[Unknown Resonance Detected — Abyssal Compatibility: High]
A warning symbol pulsed beneath the final line.
Kali frowned.
Then the chamber shook.
Not from above.
From below.
A deep, ancient vibration rolled through the city-ruins, heavy enough to make the fractured towers groan. Far across the Abyssal Sector, something answered his presence.
Once.
Twice.
Then many times.
Energy signatures ignited across the buried city like dying stars.
Kali stepped out of the chamber.
The sky of the Abyss was no longer only crimson.
Veins of violet light were spreading through it, drawn toward the point where he stood.
From the distant ruins, shapes began to move.
Not beasts.
Not constructs.
Candidates.
They were coming.
Because they could feel it too.
The inheritance had awakened the Abyss.
And the Abyss was choosing its battlefield.
Kali clenched his fist.
His bones rang with quiet thunder.
Whatever he had become inside that chamber, the Selection Grounds would no longer treat him as prey.
They would treat him as a threat.
And the war had just entered its real phase.