Kelvin clenched his jaw and replied to the warden. "Then teach me or you get out of my way.
The Warden stared at kelvin for a long time and nodded slowly with a reply. "Then survive the Trial of Embers." Immediately those words came out of his mouth the floor cracked with a loud sound coming from the ground.
From the rune it laced to the throne, fire erupted from it and spiraling in a column that swallowed Kelvin in whole.
Pain surged through every nerve as the fire tested him, the fire did not merely test his body but his soul was tested as well.
His mind was filled with visions of Xerion devouring cities, Riftstorms shredding skies, and a lone figure which is himself standing against it all, still wrapped in the flame his knees buckled, but he didn't scream.
He allowed the fire burn away every doubt in him, burn away every weakness locked inside of him. He let the bond speak.
And Xerion said with a loud voice.
"You seek mastery, but mastery begins with a total surrender. You must feel the flame and become the flame. Only then can you wield it with mastery."
Immediately the fire vanished.
Kelvin stood alone on the throne as his breath ragged, his skin was soaked with sweat. At that point the Warden approached him with a gleaming eyes.
"You did not die," they asked, almost in disbelief of what they saw. "Then perhaps... you are indeed the heir."
Kelvin moved down away from the throne towards the steps, at that point something was different about him. The sigil no longer burned under his arm but it flowed.
A part of him now is no longer a parasite but a vein of molten power coiled around his soul.
He left the cathedral before nightfall, heading back toward the city's edge. But as he tried to cross the ruins of a once-grand plaza, he felt it as the Rift was opening.
A tear in reality cracked open before him with a violet lightning arcing as a hulking shape crawled through the earth, he meet with a Ragger and it was not a lesser Ragger this time.
This beast was armored in old plates, adored with wings made of bone and smoke was curling from its back. A Greater Rift spawn.
The Ragger roared, at this time with a thunderous voice and the sound of its voice shattered many windows. Kelvin looked at the Ragger with a fierce anger and he didn't run, instead he raised his hand and the fire obeyed him and swallowed up everything.
The battle lit the sky.
And the world would soon learn that the End-Tyrant's heir had been awakened.
Kelvin got home after his experience with the Ragger he met on his way back from the Cathedral, he lay down with a bit of excitement and many questions yet to be answered. He could not find sleep, he went on to bury himself into studies and he went on reading his books.
Before dusk, he went out to avoid been noticed by people and their he met with the ruins from last night, the wastes stretched beyond ValeBreach like a sea of ash and ruin, as quite as a graveyard of forgotten machines and bones scoured by persistent winds.
Kelvin moved through the cracked earth with his spear as a crutch for his wounded thigh now bandaged with his scavenged cloth but still painful with every step he took.
The Sigil of the Overlord glowed on his arm, its crimson glow was hidden beneath his sleeve was a constant reminder of the beast that he bound and the bunker he barely escaped from.
Xerion's presence lingered in his mind. The violet scars in the sky had dimmed a bit with the smell of the passing rift storm, but the air is still buzzed with latent energy. The storm might have passed, but its consequences were far from been over.
Kelvin's boots crunched over a rusted gears and shattered glass, his eyes were scanning the desolate horizon. The collapse of the bunker would draw the attention people, scavengers like Vark's crew or tamer guilds who dealt in beasts and power will soon be on the look-out for him.
He was not a warrior but just a scavenger with a sigil that burned with the promise of catastrophe. His plan was for him to reach Dusthaven and barter what he knew of the bunker to enable him stock up on supplies and vanish before anyone had traced the sigil to him.
But while he was moving along the wastes, his plans shattered easily as shattered bones, when he saw a shadow flickered overhead too swift and too precise for a cloud.
Kelvin moved behind a rusted husk of a toppled cargo truck, his wounded leg was screaming in protest. He tightened his grip on the spear and looked up carefully. A dark shape that is encircled, hawk-like and with wings that sliced through the air in rhythmic sounds of bees.
Not a Riftborn. It was too deliberate. A tamed beast which meant that it is a tamer.
Kelvin's heart panted painfully. From the books he has been studying he realized that tamers don't roam alone unless they were hunters and hunters always track preys but a sense of what he has ran through his mind as a reminder.
Just immediately, he heard a voice "Show yourself, scavenger," the voice was sharp, commanding, with the voice of someone who had seen too much war.