EndlessReverie
Chapter 10: Resonance
𝚉𝚊𝚒𝚛𝚘𝚗
05/28/2025
A/N: my brain was not braining even more today. have fun reading.
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Time had been exchanged and offered to the world.
The space within Aetheria was refreshed with abundance of essence provided by all organic matters that could bring an evolutionary chain for the betterment of the universe.
But as the world is. For Navalia, the winter winds bit deeper that year.
Snow coated the marble roofs of Navalia's inner sanctum, softening the elegant architecture of the ducal citadel with a serene illusion of peace. Inside the estate wherein Zairon resides—he was currently standing barefoot before the massive doors that will take him outside. His breath curled in silver mist, steady and silent, undisturbed by the world around him.
He had been acting strange for weeks, as if something or someone was lingering inside Zairon.
"Ten years old today," muttered Yve Felicia as she watched from a distance, arms crossed, brow tight with concern. "Still no spark from his thread… but no frost dares touch him. It's like the air bends for him."
"It's unnatural," Ethereth said, her voice as still as the trees. "—father told me of such occurrence wasn't possible. I started with a faint thread yet it was enough. I dearly wish Zairon's okay."
A pulse surged beneath Zairon's feet. He opened his eyes.
He felt something—it was tugging at him, it beckoned him to look inside his mind.
@|#©!@—
Ali——a#√$¥£
cia———(!✓∆#@
It was painful for Zairon. He didn't understand what was happening to him. He couldn't rely on his sisters or his mother because even they couldn't cure what was speaking to him on the inside. He figured that the highest authority of this world was essence—yet it wasn't able to help him.
He remembered a lesson led by his mother, sometimes by his father — yet everything was taught by the doting Aidelie. It was to ensure that Zairon would understand what would come up should he reach that certain age.
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Every living being in Aetheria is born connected to the Corelace—a vast, invisible plane of existence that weaves eternal upbringing, thought, and destiny together. From this Corelace, its flows a living energy known as Essence, and those attuned to it carry within their soul a mark of their place in the loom:
Essence Threads
Essence Threads are invisible to the naked eye—unless revealed by will. Yet such a feat is near impossible without the resonance born of a soul attuned to the Corelace. The reverberation akin to through sacred stirring can only a being glimpse the threads that define their path.
To perceive and command these threads is to touch the hidden complexity of existence itself. With them, one can reshape self, bend the space around them, influence others—and if within reach in the most profound csses, nudge the rhythm of time and the flow of the world itself.
Each thread varies in hue, weave density, resonance, color, and strength. These qualities determine a person's affinity, emotions, talent ceiling, and potential fate. The threads manifest in several forms, beginning with the faintest before reaching to the stage of refinement.
⿻ » Faint Threads — a pale, nearby invisible shimmer. It symbolizes the thread that one's soul was born with and its creation of someone. It's common among the mundane or unawakened.
⿻ » Mild Threads — a subtle strand visible to the attuned. Those that resonated their threads gain the basic perception, control, and enhancement of the essence flowing within or around them.
⿻ » Clear Threads — a much defined, vibrant, and clear thread that flowed through a resonant, signifying one's stable mastery of their own essence. It allows for elemental initiations, spiritual connections, and even to a higher degree of essence manipulation.
⿻ » Refined Threads — a radiant, harmonized weave. It was potent, mysterious, and great. It helped understand oneself and the world around them, a deep metaphysical awareness and manipulation could be achieved by reaching such height.
From the faintest thread to the most glaring thread, it helped objectify the restrictions and freedom of one within Aetheria. While of course, there are other levels where one can reach to a higher form and categories of these threads such as those that can be cursed, artificially made, unified, and such—it's a lesson for another time.
A/N: let me cook and flesh this world.
Essence threads serve as conduits and amplifiers for one's potential. Through them, one can enhance their body, shape supernatural forces, forge constructs, manipulate or disrupt the space, and such—it may even serve as help for those willing to understand weapon talents by transfering their essence to create a divine or destructive tool, or otherwise improve the lives using the world's essence.
The more resound and refined the thread is, the more complex and mysterious actions one can take. For instance, a mild thread may let a knight enhance their capabilities to the usage of their sword. But a refined thread bearer might bend the trajectory of time mid-swing, ensuring their strike always lands while interfering with the space around them.
In essence, threads are not just power.
They are purpose given form.
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𓊆 Inner Sanctum — Navalia Ceremonial Hall 𓊇
The ceremonial hall was a sanctified place, rarely used. It was woven with runes across its domed ceiling and darkened pillars, it was formerly unconnected and remained alone until the Navalia decided to utilize this as an external chamber. It was a remnant place of the original people who led sanctity within these winter mountains with the Corelace.
Today, it was opened for him.
Zairon stood at the center, cloaked in nothing but the thin black robes with golden ceremonial lining made by his mother, Aidelie. He wasn't shivering, despite the icy temperature hugging his entire body. The chamber's usual warmth refused to touch him.
Around the perimeter stood the sovereigns Aidelie and Asareth, their eldest daugher Ethereth, and three towert court mages. Among the three that stood was High Ardent Surya, one of the continent's few licensed essence-readers.
The air shifted as Surya stepped forth.
"The essence mirror is ready," Surya announced solemnly, holding up an old relic taking form of an obsidian disk inlaid with silver glyphs. "Zairon von Navalia—son of Duchess Aidelie von Navalia and Sovereign Asareth von Navalia, do you offer yourself to the Corelace for thread examination?"
Zairon nodded.
He didn't speak—not out of fear. Something told him words would shatter the moment.
Surya knelt before him and whispered a prayer in a language older than old Saeter script of Aetheria. The mirror pulsed faintly.
"Reveal, O' Threads of Loom. The shape of this soul—
Perceive the development and pave the way, O' Corelace—
Show the divinity untold by the world, for Zairon shall revere the Corelace."
The mirror flashed.
Silence fell.
Everyone leaned forward.
No flicker of thread hue. No vibration. No resonance. Just... blankness.
But no color surged.
No flicker of thread hue. No vibration. No resonance. Just... blankness.
The surface of the mirror reflected Zairon's face—but nothing else. Not even his aura. It was as though the device refused to acknowledge him.
Silent gasps rippled through the chamber.
One of the mages whispered, "Threadless?"
The court mages looked in curiosity and disappointment. It seemed like the one before them was a blank—a resonator with no color nor talent.
On the other side—where Zairon's family were spectating from couldn't hold back their sadness and disappointment into finding that Zairon was cursed.
"... My poor baby," Aidelie muttered. She was deeply afraid of what would happen to him due to Asareth's personality, but he would still take care of their son.
Just as they were about to end the ceremony and announce the results of the revelation—
A light of one color.
A light of several colors.
A rainbow flickered through the mirrow—
The space around them bent—not in heat, not in wind—but in focus. Like everything was drawing in, converging.
"Mom! What's happening—!" before she could continue, she was cut off. A blinding flash surged throughout the chamber, even reaching outside the room where guards and staff lingered.
The mirror cracked.
A single, jagged line running straight down the middle.
Surya recoiled in alarm, clutching the disk to her chest. "Impossible," she muttered. "That's never—"
Then the world went quiet.
The runes along the chamber walls dimmed.
Then the rainbow merged and it formed a white thread.
Zairon fell to the ground upon the sudden impact he felt from the essence pouring straight into him.
Then blank—
A dark space, Zairon's young body stood there.
His eyes of fear and of concern. He doesn't know where he is—feeling as if his senses were caught off save for his words and hearing.
A/N: bold quotes are from the older Zairon.
"Hello."
The voice echoed without echo—clear, ancient, still. It didn't sound like anyone Zairon knew, yet it felt achingly familiar. Like a memory half-formed, suspended in midnight.
He turned toward the sound, bare feet stepping over nothing. The void was soft beneath him, filled with subtle glows, threads flickering in and out of focus like breathing stars.
A figure emerged from the dark.
Taller. Older. Sharper.
Zairon saw himself—or rather, someone shaped like him, with violet eyes dimmed by time and a weight behind the gaze only known to those who had lived beyond one life.
"You're… me?" the boy whispered.
The older Zairon smiled faintly, a flicker of sorrow behind it. "Yes—and no. I'm who you were. Who you're becoming. A reverberation of the life before."
"Before?"
The older one stepped forward, kneeling to meet his gaze directly.
"You don't have to understand it all now. Just remember this: you've walked this world once before. You made a promise. And now, the Corelace has granted you a thread no soul can color."
Zairon looked down at his small hands. "Why don't I have a thread like everyone else?"
The older one stumbled into confusion. He thought this little one must've not seen the rainbows fusing before him, he has decided to follow the lead of his present self.
"You do," the older version replied. "But it's blank, because it remembers too much. It can't be dyed like others. It absorbs. Reflects. Reshapes."
The boy's eyes filled with confusion—and something else. A shiver of curiousity. A tinge of conviction.
"But... what am I supposed to do with it?"
A silence lingered, and then the older Zairon stood. His cloak shimmered with a thousand threads spiraling inward, a cyclone of memory and emotion condensed into one white flame.
Then his words — a dam full of resolve.
"When the others begin to fear you, remember this place. When your thread is called a curse, know it is a gift meant only for those who dared defy fate itself. And when she returns…"
"...She?" Zairon interrupted, breath catching. A flutter of a heartbeat rang like a bell in his chest. He didn't know why, but he knew who the older him meant.
The older Zairon smiled sadly. "Yes. She. The one you chose, again and again."
The darkness began to crackle, like stained glass under pressure. This world of thread and soul could not hold both of them for long.
"You'll forget most of this," the older him said. "But the feeling will remain. You'll remember enough. Just don't run from who you are."
The younger Zairon reached out, voice trembling. "Wait! What's your name?"
The older figure paused, eyes softening. "Yours."
And then—
Shatter.
A pulse tore through the ceremonial hall.
Zairon's body jolted upright, gasping.
The mirror lay shattered before him. Mages were sprawled on the ground. Aidelie knelt, clutching Zairon's face, tears falling—but her eyes were wide in stunned reverence.
She opened her mouth yet no words came out.
He felt others rushing—questioning of concern for him. But it felt as the world deafened.
On the floor where he had stood…
A thread lingered for just a moment.
Not colored.
Not glowing.
Blank.
Yet when the light caught it—
It shimmered with every color.
"Zairon—!" His father's voice, sharp with panic, cracked through the haze.
He finally heard his father speak.
Asareth pushed past the stumbling mages, his steps thunderous, his presence commanding even amidst the disarray. His cloak flared behind him like a storm given form, and for the first time in Zairon's young memory… there was fear in his father's eyes.
Before Zairon could respond, Aidelie knelt beside Zairon again, pulling him into her arms. "You scared me," she whispered shakily, her voice cracking. "You scared me, Zairon. Are you hurt? Does anything feel wrong?"
He rested his head against her shoulder, eyes fluttering. "No—" he paused, he shouldn't lie—but the way his mother is looking at him made him lie for the first time. "N-no."
Ethereth approached slowly, her expression uncharacteristically shaken. "That wasn't a normal awakening," she said. "I've never seen a thread form like that. I—I felt it. It pulled at mine."
A faint, shimmering pulse still lingered in the air like a heartbeat echoing backward. Ethereth's eyes locked with her father's. "This isn't something we can hide—"
"No," Asareth responded.
Suryu, who once was dazed, was already up and looked at Asareth. Confusion was obvious in her eyes. "Sovereign Asareth, this is something that I cannot hide from the tower—"
"I said no!"
A firm voice of thunder resonated throughout the chamber.
The chamber went still, the aftershock of Asareth's voice pressing against every wall. Runes carved into the marble seemed to dim further, responding not just to power—but to authority.
Suryu flinched, but her jaw tightened. "With all due respect, Sovereign Asareth, the Tower is bound by the Accords of Revelation. A thread like this—unclassified, unheard of—must be documented. If not by us, then by—"
"You think I'll let the Arbiters dissect my son like some curiosity?" Asareth stepped forward, and though his voice lowered, the weight of it deepened. "You saw what he is. What formed here today transcends your parchment-bound laws, your job was to assess his essence, you do not have to do anything further."
Sillan and Oren exchanged a nervous glance, but neither dared interrupt.
Zairon, quiet through the clash, raised his head. His eyes shimmered—not with tears, but with distant light. "I don't want to be hidden," he said. "But… I don't want to be used either."
Suryu softened. "We don't mean harm, Zairon. But when threads like yours emerge… they change things. The world."
"And yet you call it blank," Ethereth shot back, "when it's the only one that made you feel something."
That struck true. The mages fell silent again.
Asareth's gaze swept over the chamber, the broken mirror, the breathless stillness. Then he turned to his son. "No matter what path this thread draws, it will be one we walk. No Tower, no Seer, no person will take that choice from you."
Zairon met his father's gaze—and nodded.
Then, almost too softly to hear, the boy whispered, "She's waiting for me."
Aidelie blinked. "Who, sweetheart?"
But Zairon said nothing more.
He only stood, the shimmer of the white thread still pulsing faintly at his back, and the Corelace—silent and vast—held its breath.
Alicia.
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Somewhere in the far north of Navalia—nigh reaching the monstrosities of a world that should be untouched.
Somewhere deep in the mountains — clouded by the dense forest.
A silver fox awakened.
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𝙰𝚎𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝙲𝚘𝚍𝚎𝚡
Corelace, is a metaphysical plane that underlies all of Aetheria. It is the essence that weaves every living being, binding thoughts, emotions, destinies, and importantly potential. Otherwise the soul of the powers that thread within someone.
High Ardent Surya, a clear thread master that holds power in the northern regions of the continent. She is one of the defenders and authorized essence readers led by the tower.