The world about him had never seemed more obvious, more clear. Countless details about his surroundings assailed his mind, threatened to overwhelm him, but they battered against the certainty of his path. it felt effortless to sweep away information that was irrelevant to him and his cultivation.

He felt the landscape about him, the mix of ancient sand and bedrock sweltering beneath the heat of the Phoenix’s divine aura. Understood the connections between stone and ember and flesh. How larger objects exerted an infinitesimally stronger pull upon their attendant lessers-- subtle on a small scale, but at a celestial level, this gravitic dominance held sway over the entire cosmos.

Across the distant skies, familiar and foreign cultivators waged war upon one another. Their Dominions stained reality as far as he could see, the energies of their conflict turning the horizon into a palette of violent hues. The aftershocks of their techniques swept through the encampment, mostly harmless, sometimes bisecting a fleeing mundane with a stray burst of aspected qi.

All of this information flooded Cyril’s mind within moments. Then the external world vanished from his senses, and all he could see was himself. Not a towering golem, but his normal form as Prince Cyril. He was a nexus: flesh and blood of the material realm, merged with the meridians and channels of the spiritual realm. Behind it all stretched the unfathomable shadow of Behemoth’s metaphysical presence. Together, this triumvirate formed his Destiny, coalesced together into the core nestled within his dantian.

His recent advancements had solidified his core into a dense, compact sphere, dark brown and tinged with lichen green. The acceptance of his true self surged throughout his spirit and crystallized within his dantian. Cracks formed throughout his core. Tiny fractures at first, spreading and widening into fissures that gouged through the surface of his soul. Fragments of qi crumbled and leaked away.

Cyril felt no panic as he watched the obliteration of his core. Some distant, analytical part of his mind understood what he was going through: the transformation from Condensation to Foundation Stage, and the subsequent reforging of his spirit.

Within the depths of his revelation, time ebbed and flowed in an uncertain tide, moments or ages passing as he beheld his own ascendance. He could not shake the feeling that his core was modeled after the world itself--a planetary sphere. Yet it was grossly incomplete, lacking any elements beyond earth. A barren expanse, alone and isolated.

But, he realized, that was not quite true. All around him pulsed Phoenix qi, the fluttering rhythm of his sister’s heartbeat, elevated and enraged with bloodlust. While it was not part of his true Destiny, it resonated with him. With this secondary revelation, Cyril’s attention was drawn to his Magmatic Heart. Not to be undone by the evolution of his core, it siphoned Phoenix qi into itself greedily. Metaphysical heat spread throughout his meridians--the bounding arteries of his soul that linked all of his organs, both physical and spiritual, into a complex array.

With the infusion of Phoenix qi came understanding of a concept that had tickled the periphery of his mind for a while: the Dominion of Volcanoes. A concept on the borders of Behemoth and Phoenix’s Dominions, some of its truths laid bare within this unique environment.

It was possible for him to add the concept to his Soul immediately and acquire some basic Cantrip from the First Sphere of the Dominion of Volcanoes. A worthless breakthrough in this situation. Instead, he seized the knowledge circulating throughout his entranced consciousness, imagining it as an incandescent bundle of understanding blazing within his cupped hand. Within his mind’s eye, he imagined thrusting the budding Dominion through his own chest.

White-hot pain instantly blinded him. The agony was everywhere, endless. He was like a blade suspended above the brutal heat of a forge; the uncaring heavens watched on, ignorant of his suffering, until they were satisfied with his reformation. His Heart flared with ethereal light as it reshaped itself, molten valves and chambers trembling.

At the same time, his core rumbled and quaked as it tore itself apart. He observed the tectonic devastation of his soul, attempting to lose himself within its conceptual contours to escape the suffering of his ascension. While he knew that advancing was more difficult for higher-level spirits, he hadn’t anticipated such a cataclysmic shattering of his Condensed core.

It shed its external mantle in chunks and segments, leaving behind a marble of crystallized qi that retained its dirt-and-lichen motif: his Foundation core. To his annoyance, tiny cracks marred its surface--impurities he had not shed, and had reinforced their insidious presence within his spirit. Fixing them would prove a most obnoxious future endeavor.

Then, his Magmatic Heart completed its transformation. The difference was subtle, a slight refinement of the spiritual organ, but it no longer pumped an uncertain blend of Earth and Sun qi. The Dominion of Volcanoes had found its home, bound to the crags and crannies of his Magmatic Heart--turning it more into a molten sculpture, veined with vibrant energies.

Each pump expelled blazing Volcanic qi, pouring into his channels. The sight of it made him pause in a moment of weakness, remembering how it had once annihilated his lower arm during his clash with Hunger-Made-Alive.

Now, his body absorbed the qi with unabashed gluttony. A numb, tingling pain, like thousands of acupuncture needles quilting his body, was all that remained of his initial agony.

As the Volcanic qi circulated throughout his body, it returned back to his core. And as it washed over the imperfect marble, it flowed into the cracks as if these impurities had been intentionally designed to contain them. Most of the Volcanic qi pumped back out of his core, but what remained stagnant within the cracks soon hardened into scars of obsidian, gleaming from internal sparks.

Only then was he released, a moment or an eternity later, finally returned to his senses. For a moment, the world seemed alien, unreal, then the wave of disassociation passed and he once more blinked at the mad slaughter all about him. He stared down at the enlarged hands of his bronze-golem form, at the hints of molten radiance leaking from every inch of his body.

Another few seconds passed--and more of his people died--as he attempted to orient himself to his new senses, his new strength. Early Foundation Stage. Though his burgeoning senses and spiritual epiphany had been reined in after his breakthrough, the sensitivity and breadth had tripled. He had to suppress himself to avoid becoming overwhelmed in the infinite, irrelevant details of the chaos around him.

The conceptual whirlwind that had sprung up around him also died down as he suppressed it; the spiraling barrier of gravity had scoured the ground about him in a ten-foot radius. It whittled away to little more than wisps of ethereal purple qi rotating close to his body, and the winds of their passage faded away. This new technique--or, at least, what he suspected was an evolution of some other technique or principle--reminded him of the hurricane forces that would precede Behemoth's wandering, toned down to his scale.

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The frantic crowd gave him a wide berth. A woman fled past with a little girl clutched to her chest. The child, no more than five summers old, stared at Cyril with eyes glazed in shock. What had she seen in this hell?

He shook his head. He had to end this, no matter the cost. If this continued on much longer, his people would never recover. Even if they survived, the tribe would be crippled by trauma for generations.

Through their mental link, Loras and Tyrin seemed to understand that Cyril had returned to his senses. He felt their acknowledgement of his ascension, though they couldn’t spare a moment for much more than that.

He needed to join them. To turn the tide of the battle in the central compound. If the encampment was compromised, valuable assets would feel compelled to return. Some of the veterans had mundane family members and lovers. The Wandering Phoenix Tribe were a passionate people, for better or worse, and many of them would break formation in order to return for their loved ones. Even more enemies would spill in through the gaps. The battle would be lost.

Cyril surged forward, exulting at his new strength and speed as he soared above the crowd in one explosive leap. He headed toward where his companions battled with the Ascended, transmitting ideas and plans through their mental link. Loras and Tyrin paused for a moment, then sent terse acknowledgements. Even with his breakthrough, they were still worried he would only get in their way, or at the very least harm himself.

Cyril’s Magmatic Heart roared in his chest, filled his body with infernal power. He couldn’t estimate exactly how much the breakthrough had empowered him, but he knew his soul had fundamentally evolved to new heights.

He was the stone. He was the earth. The bulwark of his people. And the fight against the Ascended was not a quick duel--it was an erosion, a wearing-down, death by a million cuts. It was a battle of perseverance, not strength. A battle he knew they would inevitably win.

But first, it needed to be contained. Collateral damage must be minimized. Through the numb haze of his enlightened mind, the detached nature of the thought sparked an angry reactionary thump from his Magmatic Heart. Collateral damage. His kin.

Another explosive leap carried him within sight of the battle. They had settled in the space between the central Sunstone Hall and the Obsidian Prison. The Ascended, its back to the black glass edifice, had gathered a shallow lake of blood beneath its feet. Submerged to its ankles in his people’s lifeblood. Phantasmal reflections, too distorted to make out properly, glimmered above its surface.

Loras remained at the shores in his ebony form, playing a dissonant song on his flute. The crimson waters reached for him, lapping gently toward his feet, but he kept a careful distance from the deceptive tide. Tyrin’s manifested blades and winds continued to batter the Ascended, throwing eddies throughout the blood lake and vaporizing miniscule sections one at a time. Together, they would eventually break down the defensive technique, but it was continuing to stall without taking any damage.

That only benefited the Ascended. And that was most of all concerning because it meant that the Sect of Sacred Tears were confident they could win if enough time passed. Cyril was one of the few unknowns they could not have accounted for in their plan.

In his enlightened state, his comprehension of seismic activity in the area had amplified to new heights. Beneath the Ascended’s feet, faint tremors infected the earth, tunneling deep and spreading wide.

That was why, no matter how the reserve cultivators had tried, they hadn’t managed to fend off the wyrms. The Ascended was continuing to spawn them through the bottoms of its feet. The Ascended had attempted to conceal their presence with some sort of conceptual barrier, but it failed to mask all physical signs of such a disruption.

As Cyril approached, he crouched down and swept a couple fingers along the ground. With a thought, he Transmuted the ground of the entire central compound into blessed stone.

It was a measure he had avoided before because several of his people had been dragged below ground or had partially fallen into holes from the wyrm’s emerging. He sensed their contours, wyrm and people alike, in perfect detail. Watched as the Transmutation swallowed them all. He lacked the control to spare the humans, to create pockets of safety within the working.

And so he sacrificed hundreds of wyrms, and six of his people. More of them would have died if he hadn’t stemmed the flood, but their deaths weighed on his soul. Each frenzied beat of his Magmatic Heart seemed like an accusation.

Shaking his head, Cyril leapt forward like a meteor, blazing through the air. The Ascended noticed his presence, frowned slightly. It ignored a barrage of burning wind-crescents that exploded against its chest; its cerulean eyes tracked Cyril’s passage as he streaked through the air, parallel to their battlefield. Heading toward the Obsidian Prison.

Loras ran forward, swift enough to move atop the surface of the lake and avoid the bloody tendrils grasping for his ankles. He collided with the Ascended in another futile series of strikes. The blows had one intent: keep the Ascended focused forward, away from Cyril. Wreaths of smoke billowed upward as Loras’ feet dissolved within the bloody waters. He remained relentless.

Cyril landed next to the Prison, the force of his impact cracking even the blessed stone ground. He hurried forward and reached for one of the dark, gleaming walls--a deep bulwark of void that hurt his amplified senses to look upon.

This was the real crown jewel of the central compound. The Wandering Phoenix Tribe placed their most powerful prisoners within this edifice for a reason. While the other glass buildings possessed no special properties, the obsidian could absorb ambient qi like an infinite abyss, cutting off those sealed within from accessing the regenerative bounty of the external world. Once a prisoner exhausted the stores of their own internal alchemy, their spirits would starve.

Though it was possible that they could force the Ascended inside and exhaust its reserves, such an effort was easier said than done. He doubted it had revealed the full extent of its powers. If it understood their plan, it would resort to some of its tricks to avoid captivity.

So, Cyril took a deep breath and focused on understanding the Obsidian Prison. The arcane glass was cool beneath his touch, a numbness more spiritual than physical. A gentle pull nipped at his hand, as if it sought to absorb some of his qi but could not breach through his defenses. After a moment of hesitation, he lowered the boundary that separated his internal spirit from the world beyond.

A wisp of his qi--Behemoth’s qi--seeped into the Obsidian Prison. His palm tingled. Cyril smiled as he quickly reviewed the bottom of his list of Transmute options:

[Null Obsidian - C-grade]

Sighing in relief, Cyril sent confirmation of his success to his companions through their mental link. He hadn’t been sure if he would be able to harvest the material, since none of the glass buildings had reacted to his touch while still in the Condensation Stage. But his breakthrough--and, in all likelihood, the obsidian fissures scarring his core--made it possible.

Loras and Tyrin had attempted to corner the Ascended and force it inside the walls of the Obsidian Prison. Once sealed inside, it would no longer be able to draw energy from the environment. Though the concentration of ambient Water qi was nearly non-existent within the territory of his tribe, it was stealing the blood of his people to power its techniques. As more and more of them were sacrificed upon the altar of the battlefield, the Ascended’s qi reserves swelled to impossible depths.

They needed to cut it off, or else it would be a futile battle. But the Ascended possessed a savage, eldritch intelligence, and had begun to resist their efforts. While before it had been happy to let them fling it about, it made sure to keep its distance from the entrance of the Obsidian Prison.

Grinning savagely, Cyril charged forward.

That’s fine. I’ll bring the Prison to it.