Celestial_Trinity

Dawn did not flinch beneath the old man's gaze. The wind, a restless spirit of the high peaks, tugged at his worn academy robes, whispering secrets he couldn't yet decipher. The clouds, bruised purple and gold with the nascent sun, shifted and reformed across the vast canvas of the sky. But the ancient figure before him remained a monolith of stillness, etched against the dawning light—as though time itself, in its ceaseless flow, had paused, breath held, awaiting his pronouncements.

The old man—no, the Grand Instructor. The realization, slow and dawning like the light itself, began to crystallize in the back of Dawn's mind, a forgotten piece of a puzzle clicking into place. The subtle authority in his posture, the unnerving depth in his ancient eyes, the way the very air seemed to hum with a latent power around him – it all coalesced into a truth he'd been too focused on survival to recognize. The Grand Instructor watched him for a long, drawn-out moment, a silence thick with unspoken history and veiled expectations, before finally breaking it.

"Why do you seek strength, boy?"

Not power, the crude wielding of force. Not victory, the fleeting triumph over others. But strength, a deeper, more intrinsic quality. The word resonated within Dawn, a chord struck in the ruins of his past.

The question was a single, unassuming thread. But as it unraveled in the stillness of the morning, it tugged at the tightly wound knots of Dawn's memories, loosening them one by one.

He remembered the gnawing emptiness, the days when his own flesh felt alien, a fragile cage constantly threatened by the brutal world. Pain had been his most constant companion, a dull ache that blossomed into searing agony at the slightest provocation. Despair, a suffocating shadow, had clung to him, whispering promises of oblivion. He remembered the taste of ash on his tongue, the gritty feel of it beneath his broken nails as he crawled through the ravaged landscape, each breath a prayer for the sweet release of death.

Until the radiant figure. A memory haloed in a warmth and light that seemed to defy the desolation around them. That stranger, an echo of a forgotten kindness in a world consumed by cruelty, had offered no easy salvation, no miraculous healing. Just a question, stark and direct amidst the dying embers of his hope: Do you want to keep living? And then, a direction, a single beacon in the overwhelming darkness.

To the Primordial Academy. A name that had meant nothing then, a whisper of possibility in the face of utter ruin. To a future not guaranteed, not even promised—but a future nonetheless. A chance.

Dawn's voice, when it finally came, was quiet, honed by hardship, yet surprisingly unshaking. The vulnerability of his past had forged a core of steel within him. "I want to be strong," he said, his gaze meeting the Grand Instructor's with a newfound clarity, "so that no one suffers as I did. I know what it is to be consumed. Hollowed out until there's nothing left but a ghost. If I can prevent even one fate like mine, if my strength can shield even one person from that abyss, then it's worth any price." The words hung in the crisp morning air, a testament to the fire that had been kindled in the ashes of his despair.

The old man exhaled slowly, a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of ages. His lips, thin and etched with the lines of countless observations, curled into a rare, broad smile, a genuine expression that softened the severe lines of his face.

"I've seen many rise, their flames bright for a time," he murmured, his voice a low rumble that seemed to resonate with the very stones beneath their feet. "Many fall, their ambitions crumbling to dust. Most fade, their potential withering like unwatered blooms. But you…" His gaze intensified, piercing through Dawn's outward composure. "You are terrifying."

Dawn blinked, taken aback by the unexpected pronouncement. "Terrifying?" The word felt alien, a harsh descriptor that didn't align with the burning empathy that fueled him.

The old man chuckled, a dry, rustling sound like autumn leaves skittering across stone. "Yes. Not because you're a genius. I've met those, their minds sharp but often brittle. Not because you're a fool. I've met more of those than I care to remember, their blundering often more dangerous than any malice. Neither genius nor foolishness unsettles me, boy. They are predictable in their own ways."

He looked skyward again, his gaze seemingly able to pierce the veil of the atmosphere, as though seeing echoes of cosmic events long past.

"But madness… madness does more than scare me. It terrifies me to the very core." A tremor, almost imperceptible, ran through his ancient frame.

Dawn stayed silent, a knot of unease tightening in his chest. He sensed that the surface of their conversation had been breached, and something deeper, something profound and perhaps dangerous, was beginning to unravel.

The Grand Instructor's tone shifted, becoming colder, yet imbued with a strange reverence, almost fear. The amusement had vanished, replaced by a solemn weight.

"Madness is not error. It is perfection. It is clarity sharpened beyond reason—when a man sees the world, truly sees it, stripped bare of its comforting illusions, and decides, with absolute conviction, that it must be changed. When the stars themselves whisper truths the fragile human mind should never touch, truths that unravel the very fabric of sanity, and the soul, against all instinct, answers: Yes." His voice dropped to a near whisper on that final, chilling affirmation.

He turned to Dawn fully, his gaze intense and unwavering. "I've met two such madmen in my long, long life. The first, driven by a vision born from the whispers of forgotten ages, built a machine so vast, so blasphemous in its ambition, that it tore at the fundamental laws of reality. Its repercussions were so profound, so terrifying, that it forced the Transcended Primes themselves to abandon the land, to flee in terror to the relative safety of the skies."

Dawn's breath caught in his throat, a sudden understanding dawning within him like the first rays of the sun. The implications of such a feat, the sheer audacity of it… The first madman…

The old man gave a knowing glance, a flicker of something akin to pity in his ancient eyes. He saw the dawning recognition in Dawn's face.

"Yes. That madman, in his terrifying clarity, wrote the Codex of Ascended Forms. The very text that has guided your journey, the key to unlocking your potential. You found it, didn't you? In that dusty, forgotten corner of the archives. I gave it to you myself—though you thought me just another insignificant old assistant, shuffling papers and lost in my own senility." A hint of wry amusement returned to his lips.

Dawn's eyes widened, the pieces of the puzzle snapping together with startling force. The unassuming old man, the cryptic advice… It had all been orchestrated.

"The second," the Grand Instructor continued, his voice regaining its chilling reverence, "decided that even the Transcended beings, those self-proclaimed gods who rule above us, should fall. Not just be challenged, but utterly destroyed. As a mere mortal, armed with nothing but an unshakeable conviction born of some unimaginable trauma, he tried to slay them. When his mortal efforts inevitably failed, the whispers of the void took root in his shattered mind. Madness bloomed. He captured fiends, twisted creatures from the outer darkness, and began experimenting on them, delving into forbidden arts. His work was so grotesque, so utterly devoid of empathy, that it haunted even those cold, ancient Transcended, leaving scars on their immortal minds." He shivered visibly, as if recalling a nightmare so profound it defied the boundaries of waking thought.

"And now," he said, his gaze locking onto Dawn's once more, the weight of his words pressing down like a physical burden. "Here I stand before the third."

Dawn remained still, the revelation shaking him to his core. He wasn't a prodigy, not merely a determined student. He was being categorized, placed in a lineage of terrifying individuals. "I'm not mad," he finally managed, the denial sounding weak even to his own ears.

"Not yet," the old man smiled, but there was no warmth in it. It was a knowing, almost predatory curve of his lips. "But you will be. If you continue down this path, if you truly seek the kind of strength that can reshape reality, you must be. Madness is not a deviation, boy. It is the inevitable price of touching truth, of grasping at the fundamental forces that govern existence."

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To be Continued