The Primeval Era

He felt like his entire body was on fire.

It was a ridiculous sensation to be having right after speaking to his father for the first time in eight summers, but Damian felt it anyway, a raging fire sitting within his whole existence as he watched Uncle Adam and Grandmother Essun changing beneath his hands. The verdant flames engulfed them the way they had engulfed him and Serala a bit ago, and he stood in the center of it all with his tattoos burning and his heart doing something he didn’t quite have a name for.

When the honorable did nothing in the Lands of Stone, the common people burned.

He’d always known this in the back of his mind. It had lived there, felt but never examined. But he’d carried the same mentality as everyone else he’d met, the simple inherited belief that the Lands of Stone were cruel and that some people died while some people lived, and there wasn’t much to be done about which camp you ended up in.

He’d never spent his nights worrying about all the other tribes scattered across these Lands or what they might be going through. He’d only really thought about himself and Uncle Adam, about surviving one more season and keeping his shattered foundation hidden one more day. He didn’t have the righteous mentality of wanting to save everything in the Lands of Stone, and pretending otherwise now would have been a lie his father’s spirit would have seen through across the bridge.

But he had promised. He had promised to scorch the demons from the Lands of Stone, and he had promised to rise as an honorable leader, and the promises hadn’t been given to himself.

They had been given to his father.

He wasn’t doing this for himself as much as he was carrying out the last wishes of Emperor Zuku Vakochev. Saving his mother’s soul was at the forefront of everything, and to reach the Lands of Demons he had to ensure his superiority in power first.

The Primordial Tongue was the basis of all of it.

Two letters carved onto his heart now, Persevere and Exelissomai

. The first utterance of a letter was always the greatest, the inaugural strike of a thing entering the world for the first time, and Exelissomai’s first utterance had transformed him and Serala into Primeval Viridis Lifeforms. But that had been the first utterance. Now he was using it again, on Uncle Adam and Grandmother Essun, and the capability of this letter was becoming clearer as the flames did their work.

The Mana around him danced with rage and joy at the same time, reflecting what lived inside him, and it continued to feed him information as the transformation unfolded.

|The Letter of the Primordial Tongue, Exelissomai, is being utilized upon selected targets.|

|Function: Profound evolution of the target toward a progressively higher stage of existence.|

|Valid targets: Lifeforms, objects, and anything significantly understood by the wielder.|

|Application to lifeforms: Elevation of existential tier, refinement of engineering, expansion of inherent capability.|

|Application to objects: Transformation of mundane form into extraordinary form. A common branch may become an armament unlike anything previously seen across the Lands of Stone.|

|Continued usage: Each target may be evolved further through repeated utterance. Higher tiers of transformation require progressively greater understanding and grow more difficult to attain with each successive application.|

|Limitation of scope: The wielder must hold meaningful comprehension of the target. That which is not understood cannot be evolved.|

|Permanence: Transformations do not regress. What has evolved remains evolved.|

|The Primordial Tongue does not create from nothing. It reveals what the target was always capable of becoming.|

Damian looked at the information hanging before his eyes while in front of him, Uncle Adam and Grandmother Essun rose from their knees with new bodies.

He studied them as the verdant flames receded.

Uncle Adam had jumped straight to Organ Sanctification, his frame taller and broader, verdant tattoos shining across his arms in patterns similar to Damian’s own. Grandmother Essun stood beside him in the same cultivation state, her weathered skin now carrying the same verdant glow, her eyes bright in a way that suggested decades had been given back to her along with the strength.

Neither of them stood as tall as Damian or Serala, and the information confirmed what he was already seeing. They weren’t the same tier of Lifeform that he and the Holy Daughter had attained. They were close to it, reaching toward it, but not there.

He could change that, though. He could keep using this letter on them, on himself, on anything he chose, because this was the power the Primordial Tongue!

With it, he could do a great many things.

And the demons, he realized as the thought settled through him, were becoming less and less worth being afraid of.

He reached down and helped Uncle Adam to his feet, looking at the old warrior who had saved him and protected him across eight summers of running. The man’s eyes were wet and his weathered face was working through something that might have been awe.

"The young prince who ran away many summers ago won’t be remaining in hiding anymore," Damian said. "I’ll be setting off for the Covenant first. My beast form stays here." He paused, studying the man who had carried him across those summers.

"You’ve been fighting all your life, Uncle. For now, I want you to remain within the Cradle of First Flames. When the time comes to face the traitors of the Dominion, if you want to fight them and break their skulls alongside me, you can come with me then."

...!

The words were heavy, and Uncle Adam straightened beneath them.

The old warrior’s posture shifted into something Damian hadn’t seen him wear in eight summers, the pose of a grand warrior of the fallen empire, shoulders squared and chin lifted and right fist crossing over his heart in the salute of the Vakochev Empire. When he spoke, his voice filled with a surge of Mana that rolled across the grass of the Cradle.

"I hear the command of the Heir of Zuku Vakochev! The Young Lugal! Damian Vakochev, First of His Name! The True Heir and Ruler of the Vakochev Empire! I hear and greet...Emperor Vakochev!"

BOOM!

The words struck the air with force that pressed Mana outward in visible ripples, and Damian found himself staring at the old warrior with incredulity he didn’t bother to hide as this old fool was trying to be as loud as possible!