Chapter 65: The Soul Construct
Philp returned home but noticed that after spending an hour there not even five minutes had passed so he returned and asked to be taken to a training room of the temple.
Philip opened his eyes to the dim glow of the cave . He crossed his legs, rested his hands on his knees, and closed his eyes again.
Begin.
The first step: Stillness.
Breath slowed. Mana receded. No outside force, no thought of battle or fear or hunger. Just being.
From that stillness, he summoned the image.
The broken world came—vivid, haunting. A shattered planet, its plates fractured like ancient pottery. Floating above the pieces, a skeletal tree stretched upward, half-dead, half-blooming. Its roots coiled into the void, and in its core pulsed a faint, red light—like a last heartbeat in a dying god.
He focused on it. Tried to hold it.
But it unraveled.
The image blurred. The roots twisted into snakes. The red glow flickered into a flame, then a screaming eye. His breathing hitched.
The construct collapsed.
He exhaled sharply and opened his eyes.
His aura was flickering wildly, unstable. Sweat clung to his skin despite the cool air.
"Too emotional," he muttered to himself. The memory of the Nexus still had too much weight. He wasn't just seeing the tree—he was reliving it. Feeling the terror, the awe, the helplessness.
That wasn't focus. That was noise.
Day turned to night. Night to day. Again.
He meditated through storms. Through silence. Through distractions of the world.
And slowly, the process improved.
He began each session by drawing the image first—etched into stone, carved with his finger into the dirt, or traced with glowing mana in the air. The repetition helped sharpen the picture. Helped isolate the symbol from the trauma.
Soon, he could summon it in perfect detail.
But making it real—truly real—that was the next wall.
The second step: Filling the Image.
He gathered his soul energy—cool, silver threads weaving from his core—and gently poured them into the mental image.
At first, the energy scattered. It wouldn't bind to the image.
He tried again.
"Shape it, like water filling a mold," he remembered the book saying. "But the mold must hold."
He imagined the tree as a container. He visualized his energy filling the trunk, climbing the roots, expanding into the branches.
It worked—for five seconds.
Then the image shook violently, warped into something monstrous.
The tree turned into a writhing cage. The cracked world screamed. Soul energy lashed out of his chest like knives.
Philip fell back, coughing blood.
The ground cracked beneath him.
He gasped, hand over his chest, where the soul-mark flickered dimly. His heart felt like it had been pierced with ice.
Not enough control. Not yet.
He took a break.
Read lesser soul scrolls the library had gifted him—scripts about patience, about ego and identity. The soul wasn't just energy. It was self.
And every time he attempted the construct, it reflected him.
He realized he was still fractured—haunted by fear of failure, the weight of destiny, the pressure of awakening.
So he meditated not on power, but on balance.
On who he was now—not who the world expected him to be.
And then, one dusk, it happened.
He sat in the training roon as soul essence was released into the room , his eyes closed.
He saw the image again. Clear. Still.
The world cracked. The tree stood. The light pulsed.
He began to fill it.
Slowly. Gently. Carefully.
His soul energy flowed into the roots—anchoring them.
Into the trunk—stabilizing.
Into the branches—lifting.
For the first time… the image held.
And then it glowed. White—pure, new, alive.
A soul wind stirred around him. Leaves formed from light and floated upward, vanishing into the wind.
Philip opened his eyes.
Hovering in front of him was a hologram of the tree. Faint but solid. Real. Projected from within. A perfect match to the image in his mind.
The first layer of his soul construct was complete.
He smiled, exhaustion crashing over him like a wave.