The elder’s eyes widened fractionally—the first show of surprise from any of the ashen elves. "I can tell that you have been touched by chaos," he said, reaching out a long-fingered hand that stopped just short of touching Jolthar’s chest.
"And quite deeply too. And yet you are still standing."
"Even the man that inford of you of his place, had died wielding that power. What is your purpose, coming here? To trespass on our lands like it’s your own?"
The elder’s assessnt was spoken with unmistakable wonder.
In all his centuries, perhaps he had never seen a human vessel contain such chaos power without fracturing. Most humans who touched chaos energies were consud by them, their minds shattered, their bodies transford into abominations.
"I ca to seek just for the sa reason my ancestor did. I need your help," Jolthar told him. It was truth. There was no use in beating around. If he wants them to teach him, then he has to be sincere in his attempts and start by telling the truth.
"What makes you think that we will help you? You do know that we sent back that man when he ca asking for our help. He was a greedy man and wanted to eat more than he could chew."
Jolthar raised an eyebrow. He didn’t know much about Mad Sovereign. He just read about him being the strongest being in the midlands in his pri and his sword teachings and the parts where he learned from his grandmother. Other than that, he doesn’t know about him.
"Frankly speaking, I am not aware of what kind of person he was. And just because I have the sa blood as him doesn’t an I am the sa as him," Jolthar said, shrugging his shoulders.
Elder talked in human tongue, and so the rest of the mbers are not able to understand what Jolthar and the elder were talking about.
The elder looked at Jolthar for a minute, studying him. He could tell Jolthar wielded a power equivalent to chaos, and no matter how much he probed, he couldn’t find what it was.
"Summon your chaos for , boy," the elder commanded, stepping back to give Jolthar space.
Jolthar hesitated only briefly.
This was why he had co, after all—to understand the power that flowed through his veins. Voidwrath, the beast king’s power and the blue aura – he got them along the way; he made the power obey his will, but this chaos was too hard to control.
But the chaos... that was sothing else entirely.
He raised his hand slowly, palm upward.
The bindings around his wrists were no impedint to this particular power. He closed his eyes, reaching inward to the well of energy that pulsed at his core. Not the familiar silver of his voidwrath or the primal green of the beast king’s essence, but sothing different—sothing that felt both foreign and intimately part of him.
He had grown accustod to the chaos that he no longer needed the sword to summon the chaos.
When he opened his eyes, a fla of pure violet energy danced above his palm.
Loud gasps and murmurs of awe rose in the gathering. They were completely taken aback by the level of control and the amount of chaos Jolthar wielded.
Even their most skilled warrior would take a century to garner that amount of chaos, but Jolthar seed like an infant in front of them, and yet he had this much chaos in him.
anwhile, Jolthar was still stretching his hand, holding the chaos in his hand. It wasn’t hot—not in the conventional sense—but every elf in the vicinity could feel the reality-warping properties it contained. The chaos fla twisted and turned, sotis looking solid, sotis liquid, defying the natural laws that governed ordinary matter.
A collective gasp rose from the gathered elves.
They had expected perhaps a spark, a flicker—evidence of a human barely touched by chaos energies. Not this controlled manifestation that Jolthar held effortlessly in his open palm.
"Impossible," one elf whispered.
The elder silenced them with a sharp gesture, his eyes never leaving the violet fla. "Enough," he commanded.
Then, to Jolthar: "Alright, co with ." He said after staring at the violet fla for a few seconds.
Before they could move, a younger elf stepped forward from the crowd. The familial resemblance was unmistakable—the sa prominent cheekbones, the sa set to his jaw, though lacking the weathering of centuries.
"Father!" an elf, he seed older than twenties, protested, "you can’t let him in. He is a human."
The elder turned slowly to face his son.
He said nothing, but the weight of his gaze was enough to make the younger elf step back into the crowd.
No one, it seed, raised their voice against the elder twice.
It was how much they respected their elder, the leader of this elf community. And his decision was final.
"Follow," the elder said to Jolthar, already walking toward a structure at the far end of the settlent—a building that seed to be part crystal, part living wood, and part sothing Jolthar couldn’t identify.
As they walked, Jolthar extinguished the chaos fla with a thought, though he could feel it still, pulsing within him like a second heartbeat.
The elder led him past the suspicious stares of the ashen elves, through a series of archways ford by trees that had grown together at impossible angles.
As he got closer to the structure, he could see it was a massive tower-like building, with trees and vines wrapped around the structure.
The pathway to the structure was lit by the torch on either side, and there were steps carved into stone. Jolthar could guess that it was so sort of temple.
The sanctuary they entered defied human architecture. The ceiling soared upward, opening to the sky in places, while remaining perfectly sealed in others. The walls seed to breathe with a subtle rhythm, and the floor beneath his feet felt simultaneously solid and yielding. The entire floor was a white marble, and the walls were covered the wooden statues.
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