Novel Full Chapter 328 - Capítulo 328: Origin Pulse
Capítulo 328: Origin Pulse
THUMP.
The pulse came again.
Not in sound. Not in motion.
In presence.
Damien floated in a world stripped of reference—no ground, no sky, no air. Not even pain remained.
And yet…
He felt it.
The pulse.
Like the heartbeat of the void.
No—of the mana itself.
It wasn’t auditory. It wasn’t tactile. It was something deeper. A reverberation that touched the edges of his being not through nerves or breath or bone—but through existence.
He didn’t hear the next thump.
But he felt it closer.
Like a tide brushing the edge of a soul he hadn’t known he possessed.
This place… wasn’t just absence.
It was mana.
Raw. Unformed. Infinite and yet contained.
He couldn’t move here. Not physically. Not even in thought, the way dreams drift.
But his mana? It could.
It did.
He focused—not with eyes, but with whatever this new sense was. The thing that pulsed where his chest used to be.
The nest.
It glowed. He couldn’t see it, but it radiated. Like a lantern in ink, its flicker coaxed the ambient mana near, bending currents he didn’t even know were present.
Not a place.
A field.
A cradle of pressure and weight. No air, but atmosphere. No light, but orientation.
And at the center of it—him.
No body. Not really.
But his presence.
And with it, his will.
THUMP.
The rhythm deepened, subtle, steady, sovereign.
And this time, Damien didn’t just feel the pulse—he felt the response.
Something answered.
Not a voice. Not even a thought.
But recognition.
This field of mana—it was reacting to him. Or rather, to the thing he was becoming.
Because Damien wasn’t just a body now.
He wasn’t just lungs and fists and clever thoughts stitched together by spite.
He was a node.
A frequency.
And this place was testing him.
THUMP.
It wasn’t pain, but it could’ve been.
It wasn’t pressure, but it held mass.
And it moved through him.
One pulse at a time.
Each beat drew the raw mana closer, not into the nest—but against it. Pushing. Testing. Like a tide gnawing at the edge of a shoreline not yet claimed.
You want to form a core?
Then prove you’re stable enough to survive one.
The pulse shifted again—deeper now. No longer neutral.
It began to loop.
A cycle.
A spiral of resonance. Coiling around him.
And Damien, still silent, still blind, still bodiless, did the only thing he could:
He let go of the last of his human anchors.
His limbs. His lungs. His eyes.
Gone.
What remained was will.
So he projected it.
Not as a scream. Not as a plea.
But as a shape.
A spine of certainty in a place where nothing else stood.
And the mana recognized it.
The pulse changed.
Sharper now.
Testing again.
Like iron striking the edge of glass.
Will you crack?
Another surge.
The ambient mana slammed against his nest, shaking the resonance.
Cracks spiderwebbed through the still-forming core—not visual cracks, but incompatibilities. Elemental layers folding against each other with volatile discord.
The fire pushed outward.
The water surged back.
The earth compacted inward.
The air tried to dissolve them all.
And the shadow?
It wrapped around the instability like a noose.
Damien braced. Or… not braced—aligned.
He didn’t fight the discord.
He didn’t try to make them match.
He structured the dissonance.
He turned it into a pattern.
Not harmony—
But cohesion through tension.
Contrast.
He layered each elemental flow like frequencies in counterpoint, allowing the mana to thrash and pull and snarl—as long as it moved with rhythm.
The nest adjusted.
The pulse paused.
Then—THUMP.
And this time, it matched his own beat.
For the first time in the void, he led.
Not the mana.
Not the pressure.
Him.
He pulsed again, and the mana responded.
Less violently now.
Still chaotic—but curious.
And with every beat he projected, every cycle his will repeated, the current grew quieter.
Not weaker.
More… respectful.
It circled him.
Then folded.
Threads of raw mana coiled around the nest again—but not to tear.
To wrap. To stabilize.
To wait.
Like the forge had accepted the metal.
Damien hovered—no body, no breath—and the nest pulsed stronger now.
It wasn’t flickering anymore.
It was glowing.
He didn’t know what shape it would take. He didn’t know what rank, or class, or trait the system would label it with.
ChatGPT said:
He pulsed again.
And this time—it wasn’t just the mana that responded.
It was the world.
Not the forest. Not the battlefield. Not even the Cradle.
Something beneath all of that.
Older.
Wider.
Truer.
A thread of energy looped through his nest, wrapping not like a current—but like a vein. Pulsing in sync, not just with him, but through him. A circuit that didn’t begin in his chest, but somewhere farther—outside himself.
No heart. No lungs. No body.
But he felt it.
The rhythm of life.
The Origin Pulse.
It wasn’t a name he gave it. It wasn’t something labeled or shown or explained.
It was remembered.
Like his blood had always known it.
Like his bones—if he’d still had any—would’ve hummed in recognition.
And just like that—
A memory that wasn’t a memory unfurled.
His father’s voice. Not recent. Not precise. But heavy with weight.
“If you ever hear it… don’t run. Don’t resist. Just listen. That rhythm—it’s not a threat. It’s the beginning. Everything comes from the Pulse. Every soul. Every gate. Every core.”
He had dismissed it.
A story. A myth. A moment told in the dark between wars.
But now?
Now it was his reality.
Because Damien didn’t just feel the pulse anymore.
He was inside it.
Connected.
Threaded into it like a line of code in a program older than existence.
He didn’t move.
He didn’t have to.
The nest pulsed again, but this time it didn’t shake. It didn’t ripple with pain or fracture.
It rang.
A clean tone. Silent—but undeniable.
It stabilized.
The elements, once discordant, now folded tighter. The friction didn’t vanish—it became tension lines, boundaries, architecture.
The fire curled beneath the water like a hidden forge.
The wind threaded between earth’s steady mass like breath inside bone.
And the shadow—
It no longer circled like a threat.
It lay at the base of it all, anchoring the core like a seed pressed into loam.
He felt it finally take shape.
Not circular. Not crystalline.
But organic.
A knot of layered flow, endlessly rotating, endlessly cycling, no beginning or end. Like a heart—not beating, but vibrating. Rewriting what it meant to hold energy. To be energy.
His nest…
His core…
It was formed.
And in the silence that followed, something shifted.
No voice.
No word.
But a chuckle.
Dry.
Deep.
Old.
It didn’t echo in space. It didn’t shake the field.
It landed in him.
Not a sound he heard.
A feeling he absorbed.
And with it—something else.
A whisper—not in words, but in weight.
He didn’t hear it. Not in the way humans understand sound.
But it registered.
‘Someone like us…’
A single note of familiarity and welcome.
Damien opened his mouth.
No breath came.
But something inside him spoke anyway.
“I see…”
And in that moment—
The pulse surged one last time.
And the void—
Exploded with light.
Not blinding.
Not scorching.
But illuminating.
Like fog lifting at dawn.
The battlefield returned.
The waterfall. The pool. The clash of the beast and the intruder.
Time had passed—but the war still raged.
Only now—Damien stood in its center.
No longer crouched. No longer catching his breath.
Whole.
Awake.
With the Origin Pulse still humming in the furnace behind his ribs.
Not as a memory.
As presence.
As power.
And for the first time…
As proof.