Not Dormant
1628 Words
The roar of the crowd slowly faded as Jack stood in the settling dust of the Crystal Plaza, chest still heaving from Chan’s strike. His fingers remained locked around the cracked Rocky Elixir. The phantom burn of the Sigma Leader’s forearm lingered on his palm.
His mind drifted pulled backward to when everything had truly begun.
“Jack… hey, Jack!”
The voice was too soft for the arena. It didn't belong to the scent of burnt floor or the sight of a crater. Jack’s head jerked, his eyes snapping open.
The dust was gone. Chan was gone.
Gray pillars stretched into a vaulted ceiling lost in shadow. The air was thin and cold, carrying the scent of damp earth and incense. No shattered marble. No screaming nobles. Only the Temple of the Origin.
“…Jack?”
He turned. Lara stood right beside him, her usual calm shattered. Her fingers were twisted together so tightly her knuckles had gone white. Her pulse fluttered visibly in her throat.
“When did you get here?” Jack’s voice came out as a low rasp.
Lara’s brow creased. “I’ve been standing next to you the whole time. You just… froze. You looked like you were seeing ghosts.”
Jack stared at her, then back at the empty hall. No lightning. No Sigma Leader.
Jack exhaled and rubbed his temple. The vision of Chan’s massive fist still flashed behind his eyes. “I was just thinking.”
He wasn’t lying entirely. The stone in his pocket already felt heavier than it had an hour ago.
“Jack…” Lara’s voice dropped to a jagged whisper. “I don’t think I can do this.”
The tremor in her voice pulled him back to the present. He followed her gaze toward the center of the hall.
The Altar stood there a slab of obsidian so black it seemed to swallow the dim torchlight. It didn't just sit on the floor; it felt like an anchor holding the world in place.
Behind it, two monoliths rose like frozen gods.
To the left, a Dragon carved from white jade, wings unfurled as if to shred the clouds. To the right, a Demon of volcanic glass, grounded and hulking, its eyeless face turned toward the beast. They weren't statues of worship; they were caught in a moment of interrupted s*******r.
“…What if nothing chooses me?” Lara whispered, her gaze locked on the Dragon’s jade claws.
Jack exhaled, the chill of the temple settling into his bones. The arena had been about survival. This was about identity.
He felt the stone in his pocket pulse. Once. Twice.
Now, this was real.
A low hum crawled through the stone floor, a rhythmic vibration that felt less like machinery and more like the temple itself was breathing.
Names echoed through the vaulted hall, each followed by a sudden flare of light.
“Step forward.”
A boy from the Divine Region marched upward, his chin level with the obsidian altar. Gold liquid ignited within the ritual vial, spinning into a clean, controlled flame that wrapped around his forearm like a sleeve of living silk.
“Expected,” a noble whispered. “Divine blood never fails.”
The ritual didn't pause for the applause. It was a factory of judgment.
“Lara of the Scroll Region.”
The name cut through the air. Lara flinched, her breathing turning into shallow, uneven hitches. Her gaze wasn't on the altar; it was pinned to her own trembling fingers.
“I can feel it,” she hissed, her voice thinning. “Everyone else… the air is pulling them. But nothing is calling me.”
Jack stared at her profile, his expression unreadable. “You remember the Ash outbreak?”
She froze. The trembling stopped, replaced by a sudden rigidity. “Why bring that up now?”
“Because you’re doing it again,” Jack said, his voice a steady anchor. “Standing here thinking you need permission to matter. You and your mother walked into the Ash wards when the High Priests stayed behind their gold gates. You didn’t ask who was worth saving.”
Lara’s lips parted, the color returning to her face.
“You just did it,” Jack continued. “The altar doesn't change that. You’re still you.”
The tension in Lara’s shoulders snapped. She exhaled a slow, controlled release of air and unclenched her fists. She didn't nod, but her eyes cleared as she stepped toward the obsidian slab.
The Silverine moved. It didn't explode like the gold; it drifted, a soft, ethereal mist that spiraled around her in a silent embrace. A quiet glow settled into her skin, marking her as a Healer.
“Brace bloodline… typical,” someone muttered, but Lara didn't look back at the crowd. She looked at Jack.
Then, the air turned cold.
“Jack of the Ash Region.”
The name dropped like a stone into a well. As Jack stepped forward, the hum beneath his boots broke rhythm. The golden flickers from the previous candidates dimmed. Even the torchlight seemed to recoil.
Jack didn't look at the vials. He looked at the shadows. The Dragon’s silhouette stretched across the floor, unnaturally sharp. On the other side, the Demon’s stone fingers twitched a fraction of an inch hidden from everyone but him.
What the hell…
Then, the Crystalline vial lunged.
A violent burst of white light detonated, flooding the temple until the world was nothing but blinding ivory. Gasps erupted into a roar of shock.
“Crystalline? Impossible!”
The light screamed toward Jack, hungry and predatory. His breath locked in his lungs. Something inside his chest surged to meet it not fear, but a dark, jagged recognition.
CRACK.
The light died. No fade, no transition. Just a sudden, suffocating blackness.
The Rocky Elixir shattered in Jack’s hand. Gray stone spread across his skin. Cold. Heavy. Suffocating. It dragged at his arm, locking his joints in a silent, stony cast.
For a second, the temple was a tomb. Then, the laughter started.
“Of course! Trash picks trash!”
“Look at him, he almost had a spark, then the stone claimed him.”
Jack didn't hear them. He was staring at the gray crust on his skin. It didn't feel weak. It felt compressed. Like a spring being pushed down by a mountain.
He lifted his head, his gaze locking onto the High Priest.
“I don’t need it to shine,” Jack’s voice cut through the mockery, steady and hard as the stone on his arm. “I just need it to work.”
The laughter flickered. For a heartbeat, the nobles looked uncomfortable, their eyes darting to the shattered remains of the Crystalline vial.
Jack turned and walked away, the gray stone clicking against the floor with every step. The feeling in his chest didn't leave. It stayed, watching, waiting, and pulsing with a rhythm that was no longer human.
The sound cut out of the world. Jack’s boots stopped grinding against the stone. The gray crust on his arm, the weight of his failure, thumped. Once. A heavy, tectonic pulse that vibrated in his marrow.
Then, the world fractured.
“Jack of the Ash Region…”
The voice didn't belong to the temple’s High Priest. It was sharper, amplified by the open air, and stripped of the temple’s sacred echo. Jack’s vision splintered like a mirror. The Jade Dragon vanished. The Obsidian Demon dissolved into smoke. The altar shattered into a thousand shards of blinding white light.
Jack inhaled sharply.
Damp, dusty air hit his lungs not the cold incense of the temple, but the metallic tang of the arena.
“…you have passed to the next stage.”
The announcer’s voice finished, the words rolling across the Crystal Plaza. Sound rushed back in a violent flood: the roar of the crowd, the crackle of distant magic, the heat of the midday sun.
Jack staggered half a step, his boots catching on a jagged ridge of marble. He blinked, his eyes stinging.
The crater was there. The broken platform was there. Chan, the Sigma Leader, was already walking away, his silhouette blurring into the settling dust.
It was real. All of it.
His hand tightened instinctively. The stone sat in his palm dull, cracked, but vibrating with a low, predatory hum. It wasn’t empty anymore.
“Next candidate!” The announcer didn't pause. He didn't care about the boy standing in the wreckage of his trial. “Lara Brice. Scroll Region.”
Jack’s head turned instantly. Across the scorched platform, Lara stepped forward. To the nobles in the stands, she looked composed, a perfect daughter of the Scroll Region. But Jack saw the tell-tale stiffness in her shoulders and the way she held her breath a fraction too long.
Their eyes locked for a heartbeat.
She didn't speak, but the subtle widening of her pupils told him enough.
Jack didn't nod. He didn't offer a sign. But his stance changed, his weight settling into his heels, grounded and immovable.
The temple, the Crystalline explosion, the crushing weight of the gray stone that wasn’t memory. It was a selection. Something had tried to take him, and something else something deeper, had chosen him instead.
The stone in his hand pulsed again. It wasn't a hidden vibration anymore; it was an acknowledgement. It answered.
Jack exhaled slowly, a thin cloud of dust escaping his lips. He lifted his gaze toward the high balcony, toward the rulers and the guilds that had already calculated his worth and found him wanting.
“Good,” he muttered, his voice barely a whisper against the wind.
He wasn't angry. He wasn't afraid. He was certain.
"Now I decide what I become."
- Writer
