Eyes of Veyr

The morning began like all others—with silence, breath, and mana absorption.

Ares sat cross-legged in his room as dawn painted the sky in shades of pearl and gold. His eyes remained closed, palms resting on his knees with practiced stillness, as invisible threads of mana seeped from the Cradle's atmosphere into his eager body. He didn't manipulate the energy, didn't direct its flow. He simply absorbed, like a sponge drinking water.

It was the first thing he learnt since coming to this world and by himself, before footwork, before etiquette and even before knowing how to grip a sword without cutting himself.

The absorption process was slow but steady, a quiet ritual he performed every morning and presently its effect had started showing, his focus was improving. His consciousness drifted with the rhythm of his breathing, touching the edges of power that hummed just beyond his grasp.

His thoughts wandered to the previous day's brutal training in the martial ring, the echo's relentless assault and the pain that had become his constant companion. He had survived, but barely, and survival was no longer enough. There was always more to be done, more strength to be found.

Today was elemental training. For the others, just another Tuesday. For him, it came once every five days like a religious observance.

His turn to fail spectacularly.

– – –

The training grounds sprawled before them, it was another day of bone breaking training, the training ground had been divided into the different affinities and the shrine masters stood patiently waiting for the boys who were obviously late, their robes fluttering in the morning breeze.

Evandor claimed his place near the fire and earth stations. Caelum moved toward the lightning and water stations. Rowan, humming a tune that sounded suspiciously like a funeral dirge, joined the wind and water stations with his usual unsettling cheer.

Ares lingered at the edge of decision, feeling like a dinner guest who'd forgotten which fork to use.

The masters gestured him forward with expressions that managed to be both encouraging and pitying. He was to try each station, as usual. Expected to reach for power that danced just beyond his fingertips like a cruel joke.

First fire, he extended his consciousness and felt the element's wild hunger respond with curious interest. Then lightning, Water, Ice, Air, Earth.

Each time, he reached out with desperate hope... and something stirred. The elements responded like old friends recognizing a familiar voice. Faintly.

But nothing ignited. No streams of flame. No dancing sparks. No ripples in reality's fabric. No true control.

He moved to the sidelines, jaw clenched behind a mask of passive acceptance while his pride bled internally. He had read the book which explained how it would feel while using the elements. He could feel them all, every element singing in harmony, but he couldn't make them dance to his will.

Not yet.

Not until his body learned to speak their language with more than whispered pleas.

– – –

Later that day, after the others had left to nurse their own wounds and victories, Veltrissa summoned him to her office with the kind of quiet authority that brooked no argument.

He stepped inside, expecting punishment, or worse, another evaluation that would strip away what little dignity he had left.

She stood beside an ornate pedestal, on top there was a dark orb lined with concentric silver rings that seemed to drink light from the air itself. The artifact pulsed with mana that made his teeth ache, each beat synchronized with something deeper than his heartbeat. A sigil glowed beneath it with ethereal fire: an eye within a perfect hexagon, watching everything and judging all.

"The Eyes of Veyr," she said.

Ares froze as if lightning had struck him twice.

Appraisal.

The word hung in the air between them like a sword waiting to fall. She didn't explain the implications, didn't ask for permission, didn't offer comfort for what was about to be revealed. She simply nodded once with the finality of fate itself.

"Place your hand."

He stepped forward on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else and pressed his palm into the groove worn smooth by countless other hands. The artifact's surface was warm, too warm, as if it held the memory of every soul it had ever appraised.

The orb pulsed once like a dying star. Twice like a newborn heart. Then light poured upward into the air with the force of revelation, forming glyphs of glowing script that burned themselves into his retinas.

Name: Ares Eisenklinge

Potential: Primordial

Talent: Elemental Mastery

Mana Rank: Intermediate (Peak)

Elemental Affinities:

Fire – Level 1

Lightning – Level 1

Water – Level 1

Ice – Level 1

Air – Level 1

Earth – Level 1

The room went silent as a tomb, both Ares and Veltrissa shock plastered on their faces as the results of Ares' appraisal were too shocking.

Ares stared at the floating glyphs, heart hammering against his ribs like a caged bird desperate for freedom.

'Primordial?'

He'd never encountered that classification before, in the 10,000-page webnovel he'd devoured in his past life like a man dying of thirst there was no mention of a Primordial talent. The highest potential ever mentioned had been Sovereign, achieved by a hand full of peoplein the entire epic. And not a single protagonist had commanded all six base elements simultaneously.

He swallowed hard, tasting copper and possibility.

'I could feel them,' he realized with the clarity of lightning striking stone. 'All of them. But I never understood why.'

He hadn't known how to wield their power, only how to absorb their whispers, only how to survive their absence. Now the cruel mathematics of his situation finally made sense, written in letters of fire across the air.

And if this appraisal ever reached Alaric's ears, he wouldn't be ignored anymore. He'd be seen, either as a threat to be eliminated or a weapon to be wielded. Neither option particularly appealed to his sense of self-preservation.

'I need strength,' he thought with the desperate clarity of someone standing at the edge of a cliff. 'I need something that lets me stay ahead of the game. Something only I can use.'

He looked up, meeting Veltrissa's unreadable gaze with newfound determination.

"I want the True Perception Auracore."

Veltrissa, unreadable as ever, blinked once with deliberation. Then her eyes narrowed.

"What did you say?"

"I want to learn the art. True Perception." His voice carried the kind of quiet confidence that came from having nothing left to lose.

A long silence stretched between them.

Inside her mind, Veltrissa reeled as if struck by invisible fists.

'Even Daimon couldn't bond with that Core,' she thought, remembering the screams that had echoed through these halls. 'Even I was rejected like a suitor with poor credit. It only accepted Alaric and then Sigmund his son. It nearly burned out everyone else who dared to touch it.'

And yet here stood a five-year-old boy, asking for the impossible like it was a birthday present he'd forgotten to request.

"How do you know that Core exists?" Her voice carried the weight of suspicion and grudging respect.

"I read," Ares said with the calm of someone who'd mastered the art of selective truth-telling.

'No,' Veltrissa thought with crystalline clarity. 'You dig.'

She straightened, decision crystallizing in her mind like ice forming on still water.

"You want that Auracore? Fine. Then earn it."

She walked past him with predatory grace and reached for a scroll that seemed to radiate menace from its very parchment.

"You'll face the Intermediate-ranked echo of Dagan Eisenklinge. No TierSync adjustment to coddle your inexperience. His real recorded speed. His real pressure. His real talent for making people question their life choices."

Ares didn't flinch, though something cold settled in his stomach like a stone.

"If you win," she continued with the inexorable logic of fate itself, "the Auracore is yours. If you fail, you return to elemental basics and don't speak of this conversation again. Ever."

Ares nodded once, the gesture carrying the weight of destiny. "Understood."

Veltrissa turned toward the door, her mind already racing through the implications.

Privately, she would report only to Alaric—a conversation that would either elevate or destroy the boy standing behind her.

Publicly, she would say nothing, maintaining the careful balance of secrets that kept the Cradle's political machinery functioning.

But in her heart, for the first time in years, she felt something stir that she'd thought long dead.

'He may be able to do it.'

The thought carried with it the weight of prophecy and the sharp edge of hope that could cut both ways.