Chapter 36: Chapter 36
Frickon’s voice dropped lower, almost reverent.
"That’s when it happened, when tearing through the very fabric of reality, from the plunging darkness, they came. Our saviors."
He paused, eyes unfocused, as if the memory itself wasn’t just a story but an echo carved into his being.
"They weren’t beings of flesh or flame. They looked like fragments of the cosmos itself, clusters of radiant energy swirling inside translucent shells, just like ourselves. You couldn’t tell where their bodies ended and where the void began. Every movement they made rippled across existence, bending light, humming softly like a dying star trying to remember how to live again."
"And yet, they were gentle. With nothing to gain from us, they helped us rise. They didn’t command or rule. They taught. They showed us how to contain the chaos within us, how to channel it instead of destroying everything we touched. They turned our weaknesses into our greatest defenses. And then... they created it."
His tone trembled slightly, as if the very word carried weight.
"From nothing. Out of the static between worlds, they drew a form. Our ancestors could only watch as a foreign substance, something we’d never seen, began to flow. It shimmered like melted glass under moonlight. They called it water. It spread over our lands, pooling, gathering, forming a vast lake at the world’s heart. But that lake was not just water. It was alive. It breathed. It connected our realm to another, the human realm."
Frickon’s gaze wandered across the crystalline plain, lost in the reflection of that memory, as if he was there with the ancestors.
"At first, we didn’t dare touch it. We only observed. Watched the humans beyond the veil. They were fascinating, smart, creative, fragile beyond belief. Everything they built could be destroyed with a single spark of our energy, and yet... they thrived. They laughed, loved, fought, dreamed, and rebuilt every time the universe broke them."
"After decades of watching them, something stirred in us. An idea. And when we reached it, they smiled. For the first time since their arrival, they smiled. As if they’d been waiting for that moment. As if every silence, every lesson, had been leading us here. They didn’t tell us the answer. They wanted us to find it ourselves."
Frickon leaned forward slightly, his expression flickering between pride and melancholy.
"The lake was the key. A one-way gate, designed only for us. We could cross it freely, shape ourselves within the human world, exist as we pleased. But nothing could cross back. Not the humans. Not the monsters. The balance was perfect. We had found a way to exist, stable, contained, alive."
He exhaled slowly, voice softening.
"And once we learned to control it... they left. No warnings, no farewells. Just a stillness in the air, like the aftermath of a storm. Their forms dissolved into the nothing they came from, as if they had never existed at all."
He looked at Aziel, eyes distant yet glinting faintly.
"Only one thing remained. Their parting words, carried through the lake’s surface before it fell silent forever. A name."
"A name?" Aziel whispered, as if trying to seek to know if Frickon knew it or not.
Frickon nodded, his voice dropping to a hushed murmur.
"Yes. The name of those who taught us to rise from chaos." He paused, almost as if afraid to utter it aloud. "They called themselves... the Harbringers."
"And that’s how—" Aziel interjected, a faint smirk tugging at his lips, as if he had figured out the code, the matrix. Nᴇw novel chapters are publɪshed on N0veI.Fiɾe.net
There was risk involved, serious risk, but he didn’t care.
Just to prove he knew everything, he let his thoughts form into a theory. One that could make him fit in... or destroy him completely if it went wrong.
"The lake got its name, The Lake of Harbringer." Frickon’s gaze fell on Aziel’s as he nodded in affirmation, or maybe acknowledgment, or maybe just because Aziel had filled in the gaps of his knowledge.
But out of the blue, he crashed out, darting his finger towards Aziel.
"Hey, don’t interfere while I am still speaking. You will ruin my wordings, like you just did, and that would only affect my evaluation, not yours, so shut the hell up."
The fuck. This guy is committed, but it seems he has forgotten that he is being evaluated by me. Anyway, I should keep quiet.
Aziel went quiet and motioned Frickon to continue his ramble. Frickon did not probe further, diminishing his anger like the idiot he was, and continued.
"And one must wonder, what was the idea. The idea that our ancestors had, the idea that was so profound, so striking, that even they themselves could not help but smile." He paused, letting his words hang in the air, as if the silence itself demanded attention.
"You see, the humans, apparently, even after being so fragile, really were gifted. Even in their frail bodies, a lot of things could be stored. Such as the thing they call mana, which seemed to flow within them, almost as if it was part of their essence. Even our plasma energy, our raw, chaotic power, could be stored within them, and that too, almost most of it. It was astonishing. Truly astonishing."
Frickon leaned forward slightly, his eyes sweeping the crystalline field as if seeing the process unfold.
"That is when we had decided, as a collective, to bring those humans to our world, to summon them, to make them our energy containment vessel. Instead of the energy storms, which were wild, destructive, and unpredictable, this method was far more efficient."
"We would go into the human realm, approach them, invite them. And as they accepted, as they willingly stepped forward, they would be summoned within the lake. Gradually, over time, a layer of crystalline would form over them, a protective shell, even before they could dare swim out into the vast expanse."
He spread his hands, which felt almost comical to Aziel. He would have been intimidated if it was someone like Drozaqy.
But for Frickon, this bubblehead, he could only laugh.
"It was precise. It was methodical. It was the way to control, contain, and channel the energy safely."