Kaen had faced trial after trial, each one breaking him down only to rebuild something sharper in its place. Yet, nothing Vane had thrown at him compared to what he was about to face: himself.
That night, Kaen lay in silence inside the makeshift training shelter Vane had built near the edge of the forest. His body was sore, but more than that, his thoughts were spiraling. Not in chaos—but in echoes.
He had been hearing a voice. Whispering. Low and familiar. It didn't speak in full sentences. Just fragments. Glimpses of a time long buried.
And always the same phrase when it ended:
"You already know."
He sat upright, eyes glowing faintly as he entered his Mind Palace.
It had changed again.
Where once the Palace was a white-and-gold structure of mental order and clean pathways, now there were rooms sealed behind new doors. Doors Kaen hadn't built himself.
He passed through the Hall of Learned Abilities—the corridors where he stored copies of Nen powers he had witnessed or comprehended. Then the Echo Wing, where abilities of his own design floated as glowing spheres in open space. But something pulled him deeper. Toward the unknown wing.
At the very back of the Palace, behind a staircase he hadn't seen before, sat the black door.
It pulsed faintly again—like before during his training—each throb a rhythm matching his heartbeat.
This time, Kaen didn't hesitate.
He placed his hand on the obsidian surface.
And the door opened.
⸻
The world behind the door was not a room. It was a memory.
Kaen found himself standing in a fog-covered field near Whale Island, but the air was heavier, the colors less saturated, like he was seeing the world through someone else's eyes.
A figure knelt in front of him.
Broad shoulders, dark hair, and an aura that rippled in faint violet patterns, calm but vast—like the ocean before a storm.
"Kaen," the man said without turning. "Are you watching closely?"
Kaen felt his mouth move. But it wasn't him. This was a younger version—child Kaen. "Yes, Father."
His heart skipped.
This was real.
A repressed memory.
The man—his father—raised his hand, and the air shimmered.
He didn't speak a trigger phrase. He didn't chant. He didn't even build aura.
He simply thought—and reality obeyed.
A circle of stone lifted from the ground, floated for a moment, and then crumbled into sand midair. He turned to young Kaen, eyes warm.
"It's not power that matters. It's clarity. Your will must be clean. Pure. Not loud."
Kaen, the present one, floated in that space, stunned.
His father had used Nen—or something adjacent to it. But more advanced than anything Kaen had seen. No category. No emission. It was like seeing Specialist aura evolve beyond even Nen's structure.
Then came the voice again.
"You already know."
Kaen opened his eyes, heart hammering.
Back in the real world.
He staggered outside the shelter, collapsing to one knee, gasping.
Vane appeared behind him, wrapped in a thin cloak. "You went into the Palace again."
Kaen nodded, trembling. "There's a memory. A door. My father was inside it. Using an ability I've never seen. Something… beyond Nen."
Vane's eyes narrowed slightly. "What did he do?"
Kaen explained as best he could—the vision, the stillness, the clarity.
Vane was silent for a long time.
"That wasn't just a memory," he finally said. "That was an echo. Something locked into your subconscious, probably by him directly. It's possible he implanted abilities—triggers—directly into your psyche. They're awakening now because you're finally strong enough to handle them."
Kaen looked up. "Is that safe?"
Vane shook his head. "Not even a little."
⸻
Later that evening, Kaen sat at the edge of a cliff, staring down at the dark ocean below. He projected a diagram into his Mind Palace.
The memory formed as a rotating sphere labeled "Echo Seed." A placeholder for the ability his father had used. He couldn't recreate it—not yet. But he understood the intent behind it.
Clarity creates control. Control commands form. Form alters energy.
It was unlike any theory taught in the standard Nen disciplines. It bordered on philosophy, but with power behind it.
Kaen added the sphere to his deepest archive—unusable for now, but not forgotten.
Then he opened a new construct.
A library wing.
Inside it, he created a desk. On the desk, he placed three golden pages:
• Page 1: Echo Scribe – the memory-recording enhancer ability he'd already developed.
• Page 2: Tactical Echo – the conditional-response glyph technique.
• Page 3: Echo Seed – the echo of his father's forgotten power.
He called this new branch: Echo Tree.
A framework. A concept. A line of evolution.
And in that moment, a new realization clicked into place.
His Mind Palace wasn't just a copycat vault. It was a blueprint engine.
He could evolve abilities not just through imagination, but through legacy. Through knowledge that spanned generations. Through echoes of minds past—like his father's.
Kaen smiled slightly, though his eyes stung.
"I'm coming, Dad," he whispered. "Whatever you left behind… I'll find it."
⸻
To be continued in Chapter 5: The First Battle