Lucent Harmony I

The teleportation wasn't smooth. It never was. Even when executed perfectly, spatial shifts left the body disoriented, tumbling across unfamiliar terrain as reality reasserted itself. I hit the ground hard, rolling to a stop against something solid—cool to the touch, slightly luminescent. I groaned, forcing my limbs to obey as the last traces of distortion faded.

A forest. Not just any forest—a place painted in deep, royal purples, shimmering like an oil slick beneath an unseen light source. The trees weren't the verdant green of nature but something otherworldly, their bioluminescent veins pulsing with energy. A thin mist clung to the air, carrying a faint, electric hum. The magnetic pull of the forest's mana was intoxicating, rich and concentrated, as if I had stepped into a place where magic itself was alive.

A rustling sound cut through the stillness, the soft tread of something large moving with deliberate grace. I twisted around, body still aching from my earlier injuries, forcing my senses to focus.

How had I not noticed it before?

Then she stepped forward.

Luna.

A Qilin. Not the creature of myths from my old world, but something far more potent. Her form radiated an ethereal luminescence, a creature sculpted from the very concept of divinity itself. Her mane shimmered, cascading silver light through the trees as if she carried the remnants of a dying star in every strand. The ground trembled subtly beneath her hooves, not from force, but from presence. The air around her thrummed with raw, uncontained power, the kind that warped reality by its very existence.

I had seen strength before. I had stood before Lucifer. I had watched Alastor Creighton demonstrate magic so precise it felt like a law of nature. But Luna… she was something else. Something unrestrained.

Her eyes met mine, and I felt like I was standing at the edge of an ocean, staring into depths so vast they could swallow me whole.

"How peculiar." Her voice wasn't a sound but an understanding, something woven directly into the fabric of my thoughts.

I had no words.

She tilted her head slightly, amusement flickering across her celestial features. "I had expected the other one to arrive here, albeit in a few months, not you."

The words clicked immediately. "Lucifer," I breathed.

"The one destined for kingship," Luna mused, her voice carrying the weight of certainty. "Yet, it is you who stands before me."

A pause. The flicker of a frown ghosted across her expression, something so fleeting it barely registered. "You are… unexpected."

A chill ran through me, though not from fear. That was new. Everything about me was wrong to her, an anomaly she hadn't foreseen.

In all my time here, with all the advantages of knowing the future, I had never been confronted by something—or someone—who could see the threads of fate and still not see me.

A shiver of something I couldn't name crawled down my spine.

Luna stepped forward, closing the distance between us. I didn't move. Couldn't move. Her gaze held me still, dissecting me with a scrutiny that felt less like looking and more like understanding. A moment later, I felt weightless, lifted effortlessly by an unseen force. She was healing me.

The bruises faded. The soreness in my ribs eased, the remnants of the Abyssal Tide Serpent's strike washing away as if they had never been.

"Intriguing," Luna murmured, stepping even closer. Her eyes, twin nebulae swirling with unreadable depths, locked onto mine. "You are not bound by the constraints of destiny like others."

I swallowed hard. "What… does that mean?"

"It means your story is yours alone to write," she said simply, as if stating a fact of nature. "You are not woven into fate. You walk outside of it."

A weight settled over me, something deep, something foundational. It had never truly occurred to me what my existence in this world meant. I had assumed I was just… replacing Arthur. Taking his role in the grand scheme of things.

But Luna wasn't talking about replacing. She was talking about severance. About existing beyond the cosmic blueprint.

"So," Luna said, stepping back, smiling, "I shall take a chance on you."

There was no warning.

Her fingers lightly touched my forehead, and suddenly, my knees buckled. My soul felt like it was being stretched, examined, unraveled and rewoven all at once. My vision blurred, my consciousness teetering on the edge of an abyss.

A voice—not Luna's—whispered at the edge of my awareness.

"Huh. That's different. He wasn't supposed to… Ah well. No use resisting."

I tried to grasp at something—anything—but reality slipped away before I could form a thought.

When I woke, I was lying in a clearing, my head pillowed against something soft. A hand—cool, gentle—threaded through my hair. The sensation was so foreign, so comforting, that I almost didn't react.

Then I realized who it was.

Luna.

Not in her celestial beast form, but as a woman.

Her human guise was just as breathtaking, her long violet hair cascading in soft waves, her golden eyes half-lidded with amusement. Even now, she radiated power, an undeniable force that bent the world around her. Yet, in this moment, she seemed almost… playful.

I blinked, still groggy. "Why…?"

"You humans enjoy this, do you not?" she asked, tilting her head in curiosity. "A lap pillow, I believe it is called?"

I had no words.

A literal divine beast was giving me a lap pillow.

Luna chuckled, brushing a stray lock of hair from my forehead. "You have changed, you know. The power within you has shifted."

Power.

I reached inward—and felt it. A warmth, foreign but familiar, etched into my very core.

Her Beast Will.

Luna's essence, now part of me.

"Try activating Lucent Harmony," she instructed softly. "It is the key to wielding my power."

I closed my eyes, reaching for the insignia imprinted onto my mana core. Silver light bloomed, spreading through my veins, my senses sharpening beyond anything I had ever known. I could feel the world. The mana in the air, the pulsing of life in the distance, the energy threading between every living thing.

I gasped. This… this was astral clarity. A level of perception far beyond my rank.

Luna smiled. "Now, tap into the elements. The ones you have never touched before."

I reached again, and the world tilted. Time rippled. Gravity buckled under my awareness. Light and dark coiled at my fingertips, balanced in delicate harmony.

Luna watched, nodding in approval. "You have potential. But you are unrefined. You will need time to master it."

She slowly rose, and in an instant, her celestial form returned. The Qilin loomed over me once more, a guardian of the heavens, her presence immense yet strangely familiar now.

Luna stepped back, her celestial eyes narrowing as if seeing me for the first time—not as an anomaly, but as something fundamentally wrong.

I could feel it too.

The warmth of her Beast Will settled into my core, but it didn't integrate smoothly. It slammed into my mana circuits like water forcing itself through cracked pipes, meeting resistance at every turn. My body shuddered, my breathing sharp and uneven.

And then Luna frowned.

"…What have you done to yourself?" Her voice wasn't just curious—it was concerned.

I barely had the presence of mind to answer, but the look on her face—the intensity—made me force out words. "I trained."

"You broke yourself," she corrected, stepping closer, eyes scanning me like she was reading the very structure of my being. "Your circuits… They have been shattered and rebuilt over and over. That is not normal. That is unnatural."

I clenched my jaw. "It worked, didn't it?"

Luna exhaled sharply. "Yes. But at what cost?"

Before I could answer, a surge rippled through me.

The Beast Will wasn't just settling in—it was forcing its way through, rushing into every fracture, filling every broken piece of my mana system like molten gold into shattered porcelain.

My core—already stretched thin from the brutal training I had endured—snapped the final barrier without hesitation.

High Silver-rank.

The change was instantaneous.

My perception exploded, my mana stabilizing into something sharper, more controlled, yet more wild. My entire body pulsed with newfound strength, the sensation of raw mana finally flowing unrestrained.

Luna's eyes widened—not in fear, not in awe, but in understanding.

"You were not supposed to reach this level yet." Her voice was quieter, her gaze calculating. "And yet you did. Because you forced your body beyond its limits—not once, not twice, but repeatedly."

I met her stare, breathing steady now. "I don't have the luxury of waiting."

A beat of silence. Then Luna laughed—a quiet, knowing sound that carried an edge of something unreadable.

"You are either the most determined human I have ever met," she said, her voice laced with something akin to amusement, "or the most self-destructive."

I didn't correct her. Both were true.

She shook her head, the glow of her form flickering slightly. "Very well. Let us see if your recklessness will serve you."

And with that, her presence fused with mine, and the voice she left me with echoed in my mind.

"Now… show me what you are truly capable of."