Spirit's Awakening: The Path of Lightning and Water-Chapter 319: Solid Foundation

Lassim reopened his eyes, staring blankly at array paper in front of him lit by the outside storm’s shifting bolts of lightning that cast fleeting patterns across it.

"The language of runes needs to be clearly separated. Space isn’t like lightning or water," he spoke lightly under his breath, leaning back in his chair. He rubbed his temples.

"It’s easier to channel elements like lightning or water into symbols—they are tangible forces that you can feel and observe and have an already established language that us Spirit Warriors have built up, and been taught, by the gods over multiple millennia. Space is a different beast entirely, though."

He paused before continuing expressing his thoughts, "It’s a new element, and even if Khaalseru has a system of runes set up, didn’t she tell me that as the Progenitor, I’m going to need to figure it out myself on how to use the element? She explicitly didn’t give me any techniques or other tools for the element and said it’d be purely on me to develop it. So, how does one define something that lacks boundaries or substance, something that exists in the void?"

He picked up his quill again, rolling it between his fingers as he reviewed his notes on arrays and the crude attempts he’d already tried so far. Space was about connection, distance, and the fabric that held everything together. This weave that existed through everything would need to have runes that matched this concept.

Lassim flipped the sheet over, revealing an untouched and clean side of the paper, his mind sorting through concepts.

Connection.

Infinite boundaries.

Finite spaces.

These were the building blocks he needed to represent.

He began with some more simple shapes, a circle for stability, bisected by a straight line that he intended to symbolize division and connection. But as he stared at it, the design felt shallow, like it was missing the essence of what he was trying to capture.

"No," he muttered, scratching it out. "It’s still too rigid and not right. Space doesn’t split like that unless it’s being ripped apart on purpose. Instead, it bends, curves, and encompasses everything. Maybe a rune down the line can look like that, but I still don’t have the initial essence figured out."

He tried again, drawing some layered arcs that flowed into one another, connecting at points that he intended to suggest direction. It seemed like it might work, so he poured a little mana into the array paper to test the reaction.

Yet, when he charged the design, the lines felt incompatible, clashing with each other in dissonance.

"Still wrong." He exhaled heavily and set his quill down. The occasional crashes of thunder within the storm reaching his ears and offering no celebration.

Lassim rose from his chair and paced the room, his thoughts racing. If lightning’s power lay in its speed and force and water’s in its adaptability, then what was space’s essence? It wasn’t just a lack of form—it was the existence of potential between points.

"If space has no edges, then how do you even give it a form in the shape of a rune?" he wondered aloud. His thoughts spiraled as he leaned against the window, gazing out at the storm-swept landscape of the Tempest’s Cradle being protected by the Storm Leaf Tree’s leaf barriers. "If it’s infinite, where does it start—or end? What would even define the bridge I’m trying to make between two places?"

He closed his eyes, letting the questions simmer. The answers weren’t forthcoming, but the process was part of the journey towards his goal and he remained focused.

When he returned to the desk, the clutter of scribbles and scratched out runes he’d attempted on the sheet and his open notebook seemed less daunting. He cleared them aside, pulling out a single fresh sheet.

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This time, he tried a new approach. Instead of trying to represent every aspect of space at once, he focused on one thing: a single anchor point, something to ground the vastness of infinity. It seemed ridiculous to imagine that, but objects themselves held an attachment to space.

"Why can’t the runes be the attachment to the concepts of space?" He pondered, "Like an anchor…"

The resulting symbol he finished was a simple triangle, its base wide and stable, with radiating lines extending outward to suggest connectivity. Lassim studied it carefully, turning the page sideways and tracing the lines with his finger. There was something in its stability that felt right, though when he imagined using it as part of a larger system.

"Almost, but…," he murmured, crossing the lines and starting anew. "Space needs to weave itself into its surroundings. A single point isn’t enough."

He experimented with interlocking patterns, taking inspiration from structures he’d observed in his travels. The intricate webs of the Spider Queen’s domain came to mind—fluid and strong, with each thread reinforcing the others, and their written language forms that he’d learned from Cirra and Gregor. His hand moved with newfound clarity as he recalled those shapes, sketching lines that curved and overlapped, forming a design that felt oddly like a spider’s web center.

When he finished, he held up the page, studying the symbol in the faint light. It was different from his previous attempts—neither as chaotic as lightning nor as amorphous as water. It had its own unique but balanced structure.

He then pulsed a charge of his fused mana into it, only to have a wave of mental pressure hit him hard across his mind and spirit sense.

Lassim staggered, nearly falling from his seated position in the chair, gripping the edge of the desk as his vision blurred. The rune on the paper seemed to come alive and shimmer faintly with a subtle but undeniable glow radiating from its lines. The air around it felt heavy, charged with a strange energy that pressed into his mind like a heavy weight.

"What…?" His voice was strained as the pressure mounted, his thoughts bombarded by the overwhelming presence of the rune. It was as if the symbol carried a meaning so profound that it sought to etch itself directly into his consciousness.

Instinctively, Lassim’s progenitor marks flared to life, spreading from his chest to his neck and face. Their glow reduced the strain, the sudden clarity of his [Spatial Vision] allowing him to see the rune not just as lines on paper, but as a three dimensional or maybe four dimensional structure within the fabric of space itself that was interacting and oscillating with the weave it touched. The shape he was witnessing appeared to almost grip heavily on those threads that it was in contact with, holding onto them steadily and firmly.

The rune’s meaning unfolded in his mind like a revelation, a single word echoing with clarity: Solid.

The rune’s meaning was clear—a stabilizing force that could anchor the threads of space. The burden lessened as he understood and observed the rune, but his body felt weak as he sank further into the chair.

"Solid," Lassim murmured with exhaustion. "It’s not everything I will need, but damn that’s a great start."

He stared at the symbol, the faint glow fading as his progenitor marks dimmed as he retracted his mana from the rune. He was happy as he realized that this crazy idea felt manageable, as though he’d found a foothold in the right direction.

And he would build on it.

The storm’s relentless rhythm seemed to echo his thoughts, punctuated by occasional flashes of violet lightning that lit up the room. He didn’t need to look outside to feel its energy; the Tempest’s Cradle was alive with the hum of power, a perfect place to foster the intensity of his ideas.

Lassim decided that that sheet would be where he placed the completed set of runes every time a new one was created. It would be his Space Rune Alphabet sheet. Creating two clear piles, he pushed it onto a different corner of the desk opposite of the previous sheets with scratched out and failed attempts. He retrieved a new sheet of array paper and laid it before him.

If "Solid" was the foundation, then the next step would be exploring how connections might form—something that could link two points anchored by stability. A thread, a bridge, a pathway. His hand hovered over the paper as he considered the concept, but the complexity of it loomed large.

Threads, if we went with the spider’s silken weaves, by their nature, were dynamic. They didn’t exist in isolation and they were flexible, bending and stretching, all within a connected ecosystem and design. A symbol to represent such a concept would need to embody both directionality and flexibility.

His first attempts were crude, borrowing heavily from the curved lines and layered shapes of water runes he’d learned from his [Tidal Rune], something that had immense push and pull forces or rather flexibility in his mind. Yet, these designs once again still felt too fluid, lacking the precise directionality required for meeting whatever the "essence" was of the spatial element.

Lassim frowned, his quill tracing idle patterns on the edge of the page as his thoughts spiraled.

His mind returned to the webs of the Spider Queen’s domain’s Nidus, the Queen’s Palatial section and residence within The Funnel. He recalled their intricate designs that formed connections that radiated a presence of intimidation that was both strong and subtle. He recalled the way each thread reinforced another, creating a cohesive structure out of seemingly the most delicate of strands.

Drawing inspiration from those memories and his time with Silvari, the Spider Princess, he began sketching again, this time incorporating overlapping lines that flowed into one another. The designs started to take on a natural rhythm, their curves and intersections suggesting movement without losing coherence. Yet, as he imagined connecting these threads to the [Solid Rune], something felt off. The symbols would clash, their energies incompatible even in his mind’s eye.

"No harmony," Lassim muttered, his frustration bubbling to the surface. He crossed out the lines with a sharp stroke of the quill, the ink smudging slightly as he pressed harder than intended.

He set the quill down and rolled his shoulders, the tension from earlier creeping back into his muscles. The idea of an anchor and threads connecting them was clear in his mind, but translating them into tangible symbols was maddeningly difficult.

Taking a deep breath, he leaned back in his chair and let his eyes drift shut. The faint glow of his progenitor marks that seemed ready to activate once more at a moment’s notice lingered in his peripheral awareness.

He picked up his quill once more, his strokes slower and more deliberate this time.

Instead of focusing on complex, interwoven shapes, he stripped the design back to exactly what it needed to be. A single thread, extending outward from what would be the anchor symbol. He experimented with different angles and curves, testing how they might interact with the stability of the anchor. Each iteration brought him closer to something that felt right, though the progress was incremental.

At last, he sketched a line that would curve gently outward from the triangular base of the anchor, its tapering shape hopefully going with his intended suggestion of both movement and connection for the meaning. It was simple, almost ridiculously and laughably too simple, but as Lassim studied it, he felt a flicker of possibility.

"This might work," he murmured, his voice quiet but steady.

He drew the new thread symbol next to the anchor rune, connecting them with the ideal shape and imagining how the two might function together before sending the smallest bit of mana towards the two runes.

The mana seeped into paper and then into the [Solid Rune] and thread rune he’d drawn, the faint light from the thread symbol illuminating the room in an unsteady flash as it built up from the [Solid Rune]’s triangular base.

He felt the energy stir, an eerie tension building in the air. His breath caught as the symbols responded to the charge, and for a fleeting moment, everything seemed like the fine start to an array line that he could use.

Then, the thread surged brighter, and a sudden, silent, sharp crack split into the air.

The mental weight hit his forehead and sent his head backwards as the space above the array paper twisted violently, the distortion snapping into existence with a deafening roar of the air of Nexaria meeting the deepest, blackest, shattered void trying to consume it.

Lassim’s heart lurched as the gaping tear appeared before him. Its edges shimmered, jagged and uneven, like shards of glass suspended in midair. The sight sent a jolt of alarm through him as he realized he’d messed up. He hadn’t put an anchor point or [Solid Rune] to connect it on the other side of his thread rune.

The tear began to expand.