The night's wind didn't get there, but Kael felt cold anyway. It wasn't a common cold - it was the kind of emptiness that only appears when you face truths you preferred not to know.
Aria watched him from afar, arms crossed, while the other members of the base prepared the main hall for what she called the "field fusion."
- We never tried this with anyone. You can explode, "she said, with a more serious tone than usual.
Kael took a deep breath. He felt the heat dancing under his skin, ready to manifest. But I knew it was still unstable. It was like carrying a sun in formation - at any time, could collapse.
"If I don't try, I will never exceed this limit," he said.
Aria nodded. Everyone walked away. Kael was in the center of the hall, surrounded by capture antennas and energy driving stones - ways to measure and contain any out of control.
"Focus on," said Aria. - This is not a brute force. It is not just "dropping energy". You need to understand every part of it. Feel each atom burning in harmony.
Kael closed his eyes. The golden light began to radiate from the skin, vibrating with the low sound of a resonance that only he seemed to hear.
But this time something was different.
He started trying to connect this solar energy with other frequencies. He remembered the allies of Aria, each with his own essence: ice, gravity, electricity, sound… energies that manifested in completely different ways.
Kael tried to fuse his light with Auren's gravitational field - the black -eyed ally. At first the light shaking, then began to distort around the body, as if the space were bowing with the heat.
"It's working ..." Aria murmured, surprised.
But the next moment, gravity collapsed. Kael was thrown against the wall with a crash, cracking the concrete.
- Again! He shouted, getting up.
The sweat dripped, the muscles trembled, but it didn't stop. He tried to combine his light with Yune's vibrational frequency, the sound girl. For a few seconds, his body seemed to emit a harmonic sound next to the golden shine - a pure, almost divine corner.
But again… collapse. The sound reverberated and made its hearing fail for minutes.
Even so, he continued.
Tried with all: light + magnetism, light + ice, light + bioenergia. Each attempt made his body more worn, but his connection to his own light was also more refined.
Until, in the last attempt of the night, something happened.
Kael stopped trying to merge by force. He just felt. He accepted the essence of each energy as it was - and allowed its light to be shaped, such as water.
A subtle combination with the field of bioenergy. The light inside it became more fluid. Less explosive. More alive.
His body shone like the sunrise of the sunny sun underwater.
"That's ... It's just the beginning," he said, panting, kneeling, with the floor around him burned in perfect spirals of light.
Aria approached and reached out.
- Now you're not just a gun. It is a forge. You can create… and destroy.
Kael squeezed her hand.
"And I'll start by creating a new way." One where they never control us again.