Alex was back to his room in the living quarters of the Legion’s Keep. Having just returned from the Armoury with his spoils, he decided to first create his Unity before heading out to pick an extermination request from the outpost administration.

“For most people, their cultivation path starts when the Divine Breath starts circulating through their body. That is not the case for the Adepts of Unity. Only by first melding one’s Body, Mind, and Soul into an Intrinsic Unity does the Adept truly embark on the glorious path of cultivation.” Alex recalled the first page of the [Intrinsic Unity Art].

“According to the contents of the Art, it seems that as soon as the Unity is created, a qualitative change takes place in the cultivator, marked by the expulsion of impurities previously inhabiting the vessel.” Alex thought.

Not knowing what the expulsion of impurities meant exactly, he decided to take his Legion robes off before starting. After doing that, he carefully picked Nova off his neck, and let her nestle on his robes which were neatly stacked on his giant bed.

Done with undressing, he took a seat on the floor of his room, crossing his legs into the lotus position. He took a deep breath, steeled his mind, and started.

“The first step in creating a Unity is finding the Divine Breath circulating inside the neophyte, and stopping its erratic circulation before realigning its path,” Alex remembered.

With close to no effort, Alex found the mysterious energy slowly making its way through his body. It followed a weird, chaotic path; at times circulating clockwise, and then counter-clockwise. Sometimes it would move along his blood vessels before hopping off towards his nervous system and following a new path. Alex focused on trying to stop its circulation. At first, he failed utterly as anyone trying to stop their own blood-flow would fail.

As Alex saw that his efforts had no effect, a new idea sprung into his mind. He already knew that the Divine Breath, while not alive, did respond to intent. He never did anything like this before, and so had no point of reference for what intent he should try to project to stop the circulation of the breath, which is why he decided to superimpose the intent to stop with the closest one he did have a reference point for; suffocation.

Alex took a deep breath and held his breath, tensing every muscle in his body. While exerting the utmost control over his body that he could, he gathered every last drop of his will.

“Stop!” Alex screamed internally.

The instant the Divine Breath was subjected to the intent of its host, it immediately stopped circulating, bringing unimaginable pain to Alex. Alex’s vision went white from pain as the feeling of someone ripping a chunk out of his skull suffused his body. Barely being able to form coherent thoughts, it took all of his mental power to remember the next step.

“Once the circulation of the Divine Breath is stopped, the Adept must subject it to his Will, forcing it to follow the Adept’s command. Once control is achieved, the Adept must weave the Breath into a thread and his Will into a needle,” he remembered.

The Breath currently residing in Alex’s body akin to a nebulous gas. Still, under the excruciating pain, Alex tried the first thing that came to his mind.

While he was growing up, his mother would often let him braid her hair. Alex forced the Breath to split into three distinct currents and started braiding it in the same simple pattern he would often braid his mother’s hair into.

“Right current over the middle, left current over the new middle, right over new middle, left over new middle, right over new middle,” Alex focused his thoughts on nothing else except braiding the Breath into a thread.

As soon as he was done, and all the Breath in his body was braided into a facsimile of a braid, he mentally tugged the newly created braid from both ends, tightening it, and thus giving it a more corporeal feel.

With the Divine Breath thread complete, Alex changed his focus towards his own Will. After the long years of suffering culminating with the Legion’s Trial, his Will had gained an indomitable quality, which made the next part child’s play compared to braiding the Breath.

“Gather!” Alex commanded.

As the mental command rang out inside Alex’s mind, his will took the form of a seemingly black needle at the tip of the thread formed from the Breath.

Gritting his teeth through the pain, he recalled the memory of the next step.

“Once the Divine Breath thread, spearheaded by the needle of Will is created, the Adept must guide the needle through their Life Spring, Mind Palace, and Soul Essence, thus sewing the three Primordial Apertures together until they are in direct contact with each other.” Alex read from the imaginary page in his mind.

Alex, still reeling from the pain, started to sew the three Primordial Apertures together. Even though the Apertures were located differently for different species, they followed a general rule. The Life Spring was always located where the vitality of the cultivator was strongest, which, in Alex’s case, was his heart.

He took control of the threaded needle of Will, and with a thought, pierced through his heart. As soon as the illusory needle pierced his heart, a new flash of pain flooded his consciousness, followed by blood seeping out of his seven orifices. As the blood was slowly seeping out onto his face, Nova, who was nestled on the bed felt a fraction of the pain through their bond and started hissing loudly.

It took Alex quite a while before he finally got acclimated to the pain of having his heart pierced by the illusory needle.

After the Life Spring came the Mind Palace, which for almost all living things was located in the brain.

Alex, understanding that the longer he waited, the harsher the pain got, decided to rush it. With a thought, he sent the illusory needle crafted of his Will straight through his brain. As the needle, fueled by nothing except Alex’s sheer stubbornness passed through his brain, Alex felt pain like he never thought possible before. It felt as if every cell of his body was screaming in abject horror at him. Only two things were barely keeping Alex conscious; the fact that if he were to fail now, he would have to start all over from scratch, and the fact that hidden deep beyond all the pain, he felt something different.

Since ancient times, even before the obelisks arrived, humans had the concept of a Soul. All religions, from the oldest to the most recent embedded within themselves the concept of the Soul. Everyone seemed to know of souls, and yet no one could prove their existence or what exactly they were.

With the Life Spring and Mind Palace thoroughly disturbed, Alex could feel something within himself. It seemed to both be inside of his body and outside of it at the same time; concentrated in a single spot and suffusing his whole being. The amalgamation of all that he was; his Soul Essence.

As soon as the pain he was feeling finally overpowered the feeling of epiphany from beholding his very soul, he got back to work. He focused all his attention towards the Soul Essence and squeezing whatever vestiges of his Will remained, pierced through. Alex expected the pain to up its ante once again, but something strange happened when he pierced his Soul Essence; all the pain previously plaguing him suddenly disappeared. Exhilaration filled him as his body broke free of the infernal pain he felt moments prior.

Taking a moment to look inward of himself, he could feel the thread of Divine Breath seamlessly linking his Life Spring, Mind Palace, and Soul Essence in a rudimentary loop. Sighing in relief, he went over the final step of creating the Unity.

“Once the three Primordial Apertures are linked with the Divine Breath thread, the Adept must tighten the loop as much as possible, bringing the Apertures to the closest proximity possible. Once they are as close to each other as possible, ignite the Divine Breath thread with the Spark of Unity, and meld the three Primordial Apertures into the Intrinsic Unity.” Alex recalled.

Going over the instructions in his head time and time again, Alex started the long process of dragging the Apertures out of their nesting places, closer to each other. Straining his already tired Will, he began pulling on the loop, bringing each of the three Apertures together.

The passage of time slowed to a crawl for Alex as he pushed and pulled on the thread. Slowly but surely, the three Apertures started moving towards one another until they finally intersected at where his solar plexus was.

From Alex’s understanding, the Spark of Unity was a metaphorical spark; a thought, imbued with the meaning of what his Unity would signify. Having thought about it since the moment he acquired the Art, he wasted no time in igniting it.

“A force unto myself, following no law but mine,” he thought.

And with that thought, he willed the Divine Breath thread to ignite. The thread immediately burst into fierce little motes of mysterious light and started enveloping the Apertures into a bright golden flame. Seconds turned to minutes, and the golden fire seemed to only burn brighter. At a certain point, the flames covering the Apertures formed something reminiscent of a shell, not unlike the shell of the pitch-black egg from which Nova was born, except golden in colour.

After enough time passed, the golden shell made of fire took an almost corporeal form before finally stabilizing. As the flames died down, the only thing remaining was a transparent golden sphere.

Focusing his attention inside of himself, Alex could clearly feel waves of power emanating from the sphere. As he concentrated even more on the sphere, he could feel something inside of it; a miniature version of himself, seating cross-legged with its eyes closed inside the sphere. Unable to contain his elation at his success, he yelled.

“I did it! Nova, we did it!” he screamed out loud.

As he abruptly stood up, wanting to walk over to Nova and pet her, all the energy fled his body, and he collapsed into unconsciousness on the floor before taking even a single step.

Somewhere far away, in a distant corner of the Starry Sky, a solitary planet, barren and with no stars close-by to illuminate it, floated in the deathly silence of the cosmos. On the highest peak of this desolate ball of stone, was a man.

This man was covered in grime and dust from head to toe. His hands, legs, and neck, bound by arcane chains inscribed with the most potent of enchantments to the sixty-six pillars of bone-white stone encircling him.

Stars were born and extinguished, wars were waged and empires rose while this man slept a dreamless sleep. Nothing could make this man open his eyes. Until now.

With a shudder, he opened his mud-caked eyes in one single motion as he glanced into the vast nothingness above him and laughed with great anger and pain in his voice.

“Hahaha! A new Unity was born! Finally, my freedom moves ever closer!” the man screamed towards the uncaring heavens.

As soon as his bellow rang out on the desolate planet, it seemed as if even the planet core trembled with fear at the man’s scream. Immediately as the echoes died down, the bone-white pillars lit up in a pattern and sent waves over waves of restrictions unto the man through the chains that were binding him to them.

“You can play your cheap tricks, but you can’t play them for much longer!” he screamed once again.

Knowing he had no time, he focused inward on himself, where a golden sphere was serenely floating in the region of his solar plexus. With an effort against his shackles, he willed what little energy he had, and forced a ray of golden light to escape his body from his forehead.

“Run, run, run! Find the new Unity and guide it to me!” he screamed for a final time before the pillars finally overpowered him and forced him to enter the same dreamless sleep he dreamt until now.

An unknown while later, Alex was finally regaining his consciousness, albeit slowly. The first thing he noticed was an unbearable stench coming from around him. A quick look at the floor he was previously lying on immediately revealed a human-sized puddle of black sludge.

“Impurities. Thankfully I took off my clothes before doing this.” he thought to himself.

Jumping over the puddle, he landed near the small table on the side of his bed. He extended his hand towards the ghostly green cleansing enchantment located on it and willed it to clean up the mess on the floor. The enchantment cleaned absolutely everything, even the minute amount of dust and dirt unrelated to his breakthrough.

After stretching his muscles, Alex quickly donned his robe and gauntlets and allowed Nova to snuggle around his neck as usual. As Nova coiled around him, she seemed even more tired than he was as she slowly hissed in annoyance at Alex.

“I know, I’m sorry it took this long. I’m not sure if it’s okay to feed inside the outpost, but don’t worry. We’re going straight to the administration to pick an extermination request and as soon as we’re out of the outpost, I’m sure we’ll find some stragglers to feed on.” Alex said, trying to cheer Nova up.

Doubtful of Alex’s words, Nova hissed and rattled in disbelief once again, before closing her eyes and going to sleep to conserve her energy.

As soon as Nova went to sleep, the smile on Alex’s face only widened.

“This is only the First of the Three Mortal Steps, and I already feel like a god.” he thought to himself as he tensed his muscles.

Leaving his room, he quickly made his way towards the exit of the Legion’s Keep, which was located at the Great Hall he arrived at initially. The way back took way less time compared to when he initially arrived, all due to his newfound strength.

Soon enough, he was in front of the exit. As he was about to step out, he stopped exactly as a thought crossed his mind. Knowing full well what kind of things he would be doing in the future, he wouldn’t want people knowing his real face.

Using his right hand, he took something out of his inner robes. A seamless black mask. With one quick motion, he donned the mask and stepped out of the Legion’s Keep with confidence in his gait.