The sky did not split. The bells did not toll. But something deeper had rung—a tuning fork struck within every student's soul.
The Hall of Choice had done what legends whispered it could. It had reached into each being, sifted through bone and belief, and engraved a blueprint into their Origin.
No paper. No artifact. No guiding scroll. The blueprint pulsed behind the eyes, hummed with breath, burned under skin.
For some, it appeared as geometric clarity, fractal and divine. For others, it was a firebrand, an image too sharp to stare at.
It was intimate. Absolute. And it demanded one thing: Forge your Celestial Mark.
---
Dawn walked alone through the forging fields—vast stone courtyards and canyons carved by will and war. Students had taken over every inch, each corner a silent ritual of violence and awakening.
He moved with silence, unseen yet known. The Mark within him—the Vast Sky—did not thrum like the others. It waited, quiet as a canvas before the first stroke.
---
He found Gary first.
The boy was a furnace of motion, his fists ringing out like war drums. Before him loomed a jagged boulder—easily twenty tons, weathered by generations of storms.
Gary's arms were wrapped in thick gauntlets, steel and hide layered over knuckles that had long stopped caring for mercy. Each strike sent shivers into the stone. Chips flung outward. Dust spiraled.
But more than the rock, it was the resonance that mattered. The boulder sang back. Each strike returned a fracture of its song, a vibration that laced into Gary's Origin, challenging him.
Forge through me, it seemed to say. Or break.
Dawn watched as a final blow shattered more than the rock. Gary's gauntlet cracked—splintered into numerous pieces and falling down in a cascade of sparks.
He didn't stop. His next punch landed bare. Skin tore. Blood splashed. But his reslove was unshakable!
And thus his Origin answered.
His Primal Origin Light surged, not outward, but inward—crystallizing.
From his wrist to his knuckles, a gauntlet of Radiant Light took form. Not summoned. Forged.
A gauntlet that burned with Resolve.
His fist collided with the heart of the boulder.
From bare, broken fist drenched in blood to a Gauntlet of Light. The transformation was swift and before his hand touched the boulder, it was enveloped in light. Before the boulder could vreak his arm in a rebound force, ut was broken by his reslove!
Dawn approached just as Gary flexed his new hand, the light of the Mark of the Gauntlet of Resolve still simmering.
"That boulder steal your lunch money, or are you just declaring war on geology?"
Gary laughed, breathless. "Feels like I'm finally doing what I was meant to. No more pretending. No more holding back."
Dawn smiled faintly. "You going to punch your way through all twelve Marks?"
"If that's what it takes," Gary said, serious now. "Each mark… it wants to be earned. Not granted. Earned."
Dawn nodded, the Vast Sky stirring quietly behind his gaze.
---
Next came Ingrid.
Her training ground resembled a warlock's laboratory—sigils drawn in light, loops of raw energy forming diagrams that hovered mid-air.
But she was no scholar perched behind books. She stood in the center of her madness, arms outstretched, conducting electricity through her own veins.
Each pulse seared lines into her skin—not harm, but information. She was using herself as the conduit, testing the limits of control.
Dawn stepped silently beside her circle.
She didn't flinch. "You here to lecture me about safety again?"
"Would it work?"
She smiled, a streak of lightning arcing from her palm to her shoulder.
"Nope. But I'm glad you came. Watch this."
She shifted her stance. A halo flared behind her. Light converged on her spine.
From the energy matrix she'd built, a glyph activated. It synced with the engraved blueprint inside her—a complex mark she hadn't fully shaped yet.
But in that moment, the matrix obeyed her will, a proof-of-concept that her body could channel volatile energy safely and intentionally.
The glow stabilized. A sliver of a future mark took form—unsteady, embryonic, but alive.
"Still refining," she murmured. "But I'll get there. One arc at a time."
Dawn watched, his silence an affirmation.
---
Cedric came last.
He was shirtless, drenched in sweat, and carrying a ten-ton iron yoke across his back. Not training with elegance or technique. Just brute existence.
He stomped the ground every few paces, each impact syncing with his breathing, his Halos flaring with pressure.
There were no sparks, no runes, no elegance. Just repetition. Raw will against weight.
His blueprint demanded the Mark of the Mountain Spine. He had to be as straight as a mountain.
Dawn lingered, but did not interrupt.
Some moments weren't meant for words.
---
He returned to the summit of the field, alone now. Above him, the stars had not yet bloomed.
Within him, the Vast Sky stirred. Not forged by resonance. Not called forth by alternators or experiments.
It was not a mark. It was his world.
The canvas upon which he could paint any reality he knew well enough to believe. Weapons. Energy. Ideas.
All he needed was:
Knowledge. Vision. And Will.
He exhaled. And the sky above felt wider for it.