As Acolytes, our Anima Depths were small, and our Anima were mere wisps. In a fight, our magic was the first to run out before our bodies gave out.

Even an Adept’s magic would run out before their bodies gave, but my magic was tearing me apart.

These threads of lightning were beyond anything that could be considered normal, even for a mage.

Each of the threads emerged from my channels, thinner than a spider’s, but they were too numerous and sharp, and as I wielded them, it was my fingers that began to fall first, and soon I had four fewer digits across my two palms.

The channels inside them were thin, and the bones and connecting tissues, even with Mortal Shell, could not hold for long, but I was killing faster than I had ever done before.

[ Stored Essence: 58,000 → 61,000 ]

I had crossed the threshold eight thousand units ago, and the gate had not so much as creaked. I had known it would not. A door in a burning house does not open because you have the key; it opens because you put your shoulder through it.

"BOOM!"

So I put my shoulder through it.

"BOOM!"

I poured more essence into the gate than the gate had asked for, and I felt the door strain. There is no better word for it, even though it was not a door.

"BOOM!" 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

It was not enough, but there are more demons to kill; there are always more to kill.

"BOOM!"

Threads of lightning erupted from my arms, and my palms were shredded to nubs. It hurt, but I could distract myself by trying to break down the third Earth Gate.

"BOOM!"

At this moment, I believed my Celestial Anima Depth and Marrow were robust enough to handle what it would throw at me.

[ Stored Essence: 61,000 → 64,000 ]

"BOOM!"

"BOOM!"

"BOOM!"

It was resisting me, as if the gate had been broken, its frame was now warped, its wood swollen, and the hinge rusted in place because no one had opened this particular door in ages.

"BOOM!"

"BOOM!"

The Order of the Heavens had broken, and the machinery of the heavens had broken with it, and the Third Earth Gate was a piece of that machinery, and it did not want to move because moving cleanly was no longer a thing it knew how to do.

Fine! I was getting frustrated. I did not need it clean; no matter how hard it was, it would break under the weight of a million million souls!

[ Stored Essence: 64,000 → 67,000 ]

"Crack!"

I felt it give.

∞

The gate exploded open; it was the difference between a window raised and a window smashed, and the glass went everywhere... and the glass was me.

The essence I had been pouring against the gate went through it all at once when the gate failed: sixty-seven thousand units of demon-death backed up behind a stuck gate, releasing in a single instant into a body that had not been ready for maybe something a bit graceful and got violent instead.

Ah, who was I kidding? It was always going to be violent.

Cor Telluris seized in my chest as a wheel spun too fast, then caught, then raced, and the new channels did not carve themselves so much as they were blown open, paths tearing through marrow that had been Celestial for less than an hour and was now being asked to become more Celestial still, faster than flesh should ever be asked to become anything.

I was screaming, and then the flood reached my arms.

My shredded, bleeding arms, which were held by the wish and freaking prayers, erupted with light as Celestial Marrow poured into my body.

There were layers to pain, and there was this.

New fingers popped out of my arms, and the wound on my flesh began to seal as the rush of power essence pouring through the gate entered my body in relentless waves, and for one bright second, my arms stopped being a wound and started being an instrument again.

And then the new Anima slammed into me and erupted through my channels, both the ones that had been transformed and the normal ones.

I was dimly aware that a shockwave had erupted from my body and a dark cloud was beginning to gather over me, creating a storm that was beginning to spread.

Even though from past experiences, I knew that the Anima entering me with each gate I opened got more potent, I had no framework for what that might mean, until now.

It was denser, cleaner, a quality that made the gaseous brightness I’d been carrying look like a sketch of itself. A higher variant. The Avatar’s exact words paid into my soul with interest.

[Third Earth Gate — Open ]

[Bonus: +20 Anima Depth, +50 Endurance ]

[Substrate Infusion: Creation-Anima, Tier Three]

I hardly read the numbers because I knew that it did not matter, because with the infusion of Anima into my core, I had crossed the threshold of the Acolyte Tier... and that was all that mattered.

My Anima Depth had been at fifty at the start of this loop, reaching sixty was the threshold for an Adept, with twenty units of Anima added to my soul, I broke past the limits.

However, transformation was never easy, especially one like mine, where I had a foreign Anima added to my soul.

The Anima added to my soul was both powerful and empty, and it was up to me to refine it to become part of me, and that was not an easy task because my welded soul had been upgraded to a tier it had no business wearing.

I felt my whole body settle into it like a foot into a boot one size too large, you know the kind you grow into or die trying.

That was the gift. Here, as ever, is the price, as refining this soul to make it mine would mean becoming more than I was ever meant to be.

With a greater soul came more power, but also a more potent memory. I had expected this to happen, as the first gate had sharpened my mind, the second took it a step further, and the third turned my mind into an open book.

I saw my friends dying again and again in detail that no mortal mind should see, my imagination conjured scenes of my village burning and my family being torn apart by demons, but the potency of my mind was so great that these imaginations were filled with color, I could even taste the tears of my screaming mother as she was torn apart by Khaaz, and a dark part of me thought that this was mercy, for I know that there was so much horror out there.