The Extra's Transcension

"…That's what's bugging me the most."

Ren moved toward one of the shelves, brushing his hand across the spines until he found a thick, timeworn tome.

As he pulled it free, a plume of dust erupted, making him cough and wave the air.

He flipped it open, fingers grazing the fragile pages as he spoke again, more slowly this time.

"You said it felt like you were pulling from something else. Like… something deeper than mana. Maybe it wasn't mana at all."

Lyrium, still leaning against the stone wall, turned his head toward him, eyes narrowed.

"Then what the hell was it?"

Ren didn't answer right away.

His gaze dropped to the page he'd stopped on, an illustration of a being wrapped in swirling energy, its limbs frayed into black smoke.

His brow furrowed.

"There are old theories,"

He said at last, voice quieter now.

"Stuff older than the Age of Classification. Way older. Back when humans barely understood magic. Before it was even called mana. They spoke of another force. Raw, unshaped, and untamed. Some called it Void Energy. Others named it Anima or Ether. Different cultures, different words, but all describing the same thing."

He turned the book around, showing Lyrium the ancient diagram.

"They said it was unstable. Impossible to measure. And… supposedly extinct."

Lyrium scoffed, arms crossed.

"That sounds like myth. Like the kind of bedtime bullshit you feed kids to keep them scared of the dark."

"Maybe,"

Ren replied, voice tighter now.

"But something tore those training walls apart like paper. You did that. With a single instinctual cast. And it sure as hell wasn't a fairy tale doing it."

A faint smirk tugged at Lyrium's lips despite himself.

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

Ren shrugged with a half-grin.

"A little. I mean, it's not every day your friend turns into a goddamn walking anomaly. If I'm being honest, I've been waiting for something to make this academy less boring."

But then, just as quickly, Ren's expression shifted.

The humor drained from his features like sand slipping through fingers.

"If what you tapped into really is some ancient force,"

He said, his voice now laced with a hard edge,

"Then this place won't just monitor you. The Grand Council doesn't play games, Lyrium. You'll be labeled, filed, and vanished. One day they'll stop calling your name in class, and by the next week, you'll be a hushed rumor. A cautionary tale for first-years. And if you're lucky, if you're lucky, you'll just be forgotten."

Lyrium's gaze dropped.

His fingers clenched slightly.

"I know."

"Do you?"

Ren's tone cut sharper now.

"Because if you really did, you wouldn't be keeping shit from me."

Lyrium looked up slowly, and his voice came out lower.

"It's not about hiding. It's about protecting. You saw what I did, Ren. That wasn't a spell, it was instinct. A reflex. And it shouldn't have been possible."

He stepped forward, speaking with more weight now.

"Whatever I tapped into… it responded to me. It felt alive. Like it knew what I wanted, what I feared. And I wasn't in control. Not really. That's the truth."

Ren looked at him for a long moment, silent. Then he set the book down and sighed.

"Alright. Then we figure it out. Together."

He turned to the rows of ancient shelves, eyes scanning the cracked titles.

"There has to be something in this library. The academy's been around for centuries. You really think they don't have records of forbidden magic buried somewhere beneath the curriculum? We find it. Before they find you."

He tossed another book onto the desk with a thud.

"Welcome to the Secret Research Club, Blackwood. You're the president. I'm your charming, overqualified vice."

Lyrium exhaled a faint laugh.

"You're still an idiot."

"And you're still a pain in the ass,"

Ren shot back, grinning.

"Now we're even."

Then Lyrium's tone shifted, going quiet, firm.

"No more accidents. No more slipping up. From now on… we do this my way."

Ren smirked, all teeth and trouble.

"About damn time."

A thick silence filled the room, no longer empty, but dense with tension and purpose.

Dust swirled lazily in the slanted light.

The smell of old paper and arcane ink lingered.

The air crackled with something ancient and unspoken.

A force beyond magic.

A student stepping into a role not meant for him.

And the Grand Council, already stirring in the shadows, preparing their next move.

The rules had changed.

And Lyrium Blackwood had just made his first.

*****

The silence between them lingered like smoke, thick, unmoving, until Ren cleared his throat and stepped forward, grabbing a lantern from the corner.

A flick of his wrist and it sputtered to life, casting a pale golden glow across the shelves.

"Alright, President,"

He muttered, pulling a stool over and sitting down with a groan.

"Time to get our hands dirty. Let's start with the pre-Classification archives. The dusty ones that smell like regret and mothballs."

Lyrium arched a brow, dragging a stack of books toward the center desk.

"You mean the ones Professor Theodeus said were for 'historical appreciation only'?"

Ren grinned.

"Exactly those. Translation: there's shit in here they don't want us reading."

He flipped open a brittle tome, the pages groaning under his touch.

Symbols danced across the parchment, etched in faded gold ink, the language archaic but faintly recognizable to anyone who'd studied Old Arcanum.

Ren tilted his head.

"Etherial Lattice Theory'… Sounds promising."

Lyrium picked up a volume bound in cracked black leather.

Its title had long faded, but the weight of it, literal and metaphorical, made his fingertips tingle.

As he opened it, something pulsed.

Faint.

Faint… but there.

He whispered, more to himself than anyone else:

"The book is humming."

Ren glanced up.

"Humming?"

Lyrium shook his head slowly.

"Not out loud. It's like… I don't know. Resonance. Like it recognizes me."

Ren's smirk dropped.

He stood.

"That's… not normal."

"No shit,"

Lyrium muttered, flipping carefully through its yellowed pages.

Strange sketches filled them, circles within circles, diagrams of beings without faces, and notations that curved like vines rather than lines.

There were no spells.

No instructions.

Just theory.

Dangerous theory.

When the world was young, and mana was not yet named,

He read aloud,

The First Flame sang a different song. One of void and breath, of soul and shadow. Those who heard it did not shape the world. They became it.

Ren leaned in, brow furrowed.

"First Flame? That's a Genesis term. That predates structured spellcasting by… hell, a thousand years at least."

Lyrium's eyes narrowed on the next lines.

To draw from the Breathless Depths is not to cast. It is to awaken. The caster becomes vessel. The vessel becomes the gate.

He looked up slowly.

"…This isn't about control,"

He said.

"It's about surrender."

Ren leaned back against the wall, arms crossed, mouth tight.

"Surrendering to a force that can destroy an arena without you even trying? Sounds like a terrible idea."

Lyrium nodded faintly.

"That's the part that scares me."

Another pause passed, the kind that said they were standing on the edge of something.

Then Ren exhaled through his nose, grabbed another book, and sat down hard.

"Well, guess it's too late to turn back now."

He smirked at Lyrium.

Page one: How Not to Get Possessed by Ancient Cosmic Forces. You think they have a chapter on that?

Lyrium cracked a faint smile.

"If not, we'll write it ourselves."

Hours passed like minutes as they sifted through half-burnt scrolls, translated phrases scrawled in the margins, and notes that hinted at something called The Breathless Path, a ritual of resonance, not incantation.

A technique not of shaping magic, but of opening oneself to it.

And in all of it, one phrase repeated.

The Gate is not a place. The Gate is the soul.

By midnight, Lyrium sat back in his chair, eyes aching, mind spinning.

"It's not a source,"

He whispered.

"It's a frequency. That's why it felt alive. It's not something you cast… It's something you tune into. Like a symphony only a few people can hear."

Ren's face was pale.

"And if you tune too deep?"

Lyrium looked up, expression unreadable.

"You don't come back."

They both fell silent again.

The lamp's flame flickered.

Somewhere in the distance, the clock tower rang once, soft and hollow.

A warning.

A reminder.

Time was moving.

And so was the Council.

*****

A thick silence hung in the air like a noose, heavy with everything unspoken.

Dust drifted slowly through shafts of candlelight, but neither of them moved.

The books were quiet now, as if they too were listening.

Ren broke it first, running his fingers over the leather spine of the tome he'd just tossed on the desk.

"If the academy knew what kind of crap they're hiding in here… they'd burn this whole wing down."

Lyrium's eyes were still fixed on the wall.

His mind was elsewhere, on the walls that shattered, on the power that answered when it shouldn't have, on the echo that still hadn't faded inside him.

He finally said, voice low and cold,

"They've built their entire world on mana. Structure. Classifications. Rankings. Control."

Ren snorted.

"Yeah. And you just pulled something older than all of it."

Lyrium stepped forward, placing both hands on the desk.

"I didn't just pull it. It pulled back."

Ren glanced at him.

"What do you mean?"

"When I tapped into it… it felt me. Not like mana, not like a spell. It looked back. Like it had eyes."

There was a pause.

Ren let that hang in the air before replying.

"Mana's like a river. You dip your hand in and take what you need. But what you're describing? That's not a river. That's a depth."

Lyrium nodded slowly.

"Exactly. It wasn't something I cast. It was something I became."

He looked down at his hand, flexing it slowly.

"When I broke those walls, I didn't feel stronger. I felt... like I didn't belong to this plane anymore. For a second, it was like I'd stepped through a crack in the world. And something welcomed me."

Ren didn't speak immediately. Then he muttered,

"This isn't just some forbidden technique."

"No."

Lyrium's voice was firm.

"It's a system beyond systems. And if even a fragment of it survived… then the world is balancing on a lie."

A silence.

Then Ren picked up a thick book, flipping pages with purpose.

"Alright. Then we rip the lie apart."

He set it down with a thud.

"Here. Pre-Age theories. Stuff about 'Anima Signatures,' 'Void Interfaces,' and 'Axioms of the Breathless Path.' Ever heard of it?"

Lyrium shook his head.

"No. But the moment I touched that force, I heard a whisper."

Ren looked up.

"A whisper?"

Lyrium nodded.

"It said, You opened the Gate."

Ren went dead still.

He pulled another book off the shelf, flipping rapidly.

His eyes widened.

"…Lyrium. There's something here. An excerpt, probably from a banished philosopher."

He read aloud:

He who opens the Gate becomes neither man nor god. He becomes the Vessel. The Breathless. The Unanchored Flame. And in his breathless path, the world remembers its ancient name.

They both stared at each other.

Ren shut the book and muttered,

"Okay. That's creepy as hell."

Lyrium didn't laugh.

He stepped back, his mind racing.

The whisper.

The force.

The gate.

Breathless.

That word was burned into his soul now.

Then, behind them,

Creak

A noise.

From deeper in the library.

Not from them.

Ren spun, drawing a small blade from his coat.

"We're not alone."

Lyrium's gaze sharpened.

"Cover me."

He extended his hand, calling on the force again, but cautiously.

Carefully.

This time, the pull was immediate.

Like something had been waiting, coiled, eager to respond.

A breath escaped his lips.

We are listening.

A voice.

Inside him.

No, not inside.

Through him.

His veins glowed faintly.

His shadow split into several directions.

Ren's eyes widened.

"What the hell, "

From the far end of the aisle, a cloaked figure stepped into view, wearing black robes that shimmered with faint geometric glyphs.

No face.

No sound.

Then it spoke, voice smooth as silk and death.

The Gatekeeper has stirred.

Lyrium stepped forward, eyes burning.

"Who the hell are you?"

The figure tilted its head.

A Seeker. Like you. But less… reckless.

Another pause.

You shouldn't have pulled from the Well, Blackwood. Not yet.

Ren's grip tightened on his dagger.

"You knew about this?"

The figure turned slightly toward Ren.

We were watching before your world was born.

A chill settled in the room.

Lyrium clenched his fists.

"Then what do you want?"

The figure stepped closer.

To offer a choice. One that's only given once.

Awaken… or run.

*****