The Anomaly's Path

The entire room fell into an uncomfortable, suffocating silence.

I winced inside, burying my face a little deeper into my palm as the weight of dozens of eyes slowly shifted across the room.

The guy who asked the question was near the front, some noble kid whose name I couldn’t even bother to remember. He was staring up at the podium with real, honest curiosity, completely clueless about the huge trap he had just stepped into.

You bastard, I cursed at him in my head. Of all the questions you could have pulled out of your ass today, you had to ask that one?

Slowly, like everyone already knew what was coming, heads started turning toward our section.

Alice leaned back and glanced at me sideways with a smirk that practically screamed he’s talking about you. Even Roan let out a faint, dry breath and shifted in his seat as quiet whispers began to ripple through the back rows.

I kept my expression completely blank, staring straight ahead at the podium, but my mind was already racing. It wasn’t like I didn’t care, the truth was, I was just as deeply curious as the rest of them.

It was a question I had thought about more than once during those long nights in the training halls.

In the current era of Aetheris, ever since the Great Descent eight hundred years ago, the law of the world was absolute: one core, one person, one affinity. The human body had adapted to the dense mana by specializing completely.

Even Arthur, with his status as the protagonist, the hero, and his dual affinities, didn’t actually have two element cores in the normal sense. His Soul Dominion in the game was a single, combined thing built around his sword intent, pulling his light element into one whole.

No one in recorded history had ever manifested two distinct Arcane Realms or Soul Dominions.

Because a Soul Dominion wasn’t a spell you could swap out or cast sequentially depending on what weapon you were holding. It was the physical, absolute projection of your soul — your affinity, your Will, your Intent, your pain, your memories, and your entire existence dragged out and forced onto reality itself.

A person only had one soul.

So what did that mean for me?

I had three affinities, Lightning, Space, and Soul Flame. Three basic forces coiled together inside a soul that shouldn’t have survived awakening in this world at all.

If I ever reached the point where I could pull my soul out into reality, would my domain break apart under the pressure of three conflicting affinities? Would it split into three weak, incomplete pieces? Or would it fuse into one terrifying anomaly where space ripped open, lightning squeezed tight, and soul fire burned all at once?

And deeper than the affinities... there was the darker, unspeakable question that had been sitting in the cold corners of my mind ever since I met the Moon Goddess.

Whose soul is this anyway?

I was a transmigrator, a guy who died in Earth, whose soul was ripped away and shoved into the body of Leo von Celestial. The original Leo, had died and his soul faded, his body stayed, and I took over.

...Or at least, that was the story I told myself.

Because the truth was far messier.

I had his memories. I had his shame, his bitterness, his childhood guilt, and that pathetic, desperate craving for his mother’s warmth. In the beginning, those emotions bled into me so deeply I couldn’t tell where he ended and I began.

Even after accepting every broken piece of myself to unlock the Third Form, the fundamental doubt never truly vanished.

Am I a stranger wearing a dead boy’s skin? Am I a fusion of two souls bound into one? Or... am I just the original Leo, a boy so utterly broken by trauma and despair that his mind went insane and constructed an entire ’past life’ on Earth just to escape the agonizing horror of his reality?

What if ”Earth” was just a delusion? What if the game, the transmigration, the memories of a normal world were just a made-up mental fortress built by a shattered mind to cope with failure? I didn’t know...

And that lack of knowledge terrified me far more than anything.

Because a Soul Dominion is the pure, naked truth of a person’s existence. If I didn’t even know who or what I truly was, if I didn’t know whose soul was powering this body, how could I possibly know what shape my domain would take when I dragged it out into the light?

Professor Lorien let the question hang in the heavy air of the hall.

Her sharp eyes drifted slowly over the crowd until they landed directly on me. She didn’t call my name. She didn’t have to. The quiet pressure of her gaze was enough to draw every lingering whisper in the room straight to a dead stop.

”An intuitive question,” she finally broke the silence, her cold, melodic voice echoing easily off the walls. ”And a logical one for those who study elemental theory. But it comes from a basic misunderstanding of what a Soul Dominion actually is.”

She stepped down from the raised podium, her posture impossibly straight, her silver hair catching the light of the hall.

”...Just because I was talking about how important affinity is doesn’t mean you should make the mistake of believing that affinity is the only source of your domain. Yes, affinity matters. It shapes your domain. It colors it. It gives it form. But it is not the only thing. Your affinity is just the color of the paint. It is the language your mana speaks most easily. But the canvas itself? The structure? The absolute authority that forces the world to kneel?”

She paused, raising a single finger. ”That comes from you. Your will. Your intent. Your experience. Your soul.”

The room stayed dead silent as her words sank in.

”Intent is the sharp edge of a single moment,” Professor Lorien explained, pacing slowly along the front floor. ”It is the decision to strike, the decision to kill, the decision to freeze an incoming blade. It is precise, immediate, and focused. When a swordsman swings, Intent is the thought that declares ’this cut will sever.’ But Intent alone is brittle. Without substance, it flickers out the moment it hits resistance.”

Her eyes swept over the rows, pausing briefly on a few students before moving on.

”Will is the long war,” she continued, her tone a bit softer.

”Will is the unbreakable command that binds your intent to reality and forces the world to obey. When a Transcendent declares that the space inside their domain belongs to them, it is not their mana that makes the miracle happen, it is their will forcing its law over the laws of nature. You can have a strong affinity, huge mana pools, and perfect spell skill, but if your will is weak, you will never forge an Arcane Realm. You will stay a spectator to those who can.”

She stopped pacing and turned her gaze back toward the student who had raised his hand.

”To answer your question directly: no. A ranker cannot have two Soul Dominions, and they cannot maintain two Arcane Realms. A soul is singular. A core is singular. Even if an anomaly existed in this world, someone with multiple affinities... they would not manifest separate Soul Dominions.”

I felt a slight tightening in my chest as I listened to her words, my eyes narrowing slightly.

”If such a soul were strong enough to survive its own existence,” Lorien said calmly, ”their Soul Dominions would not split. It would be forced to become one. The multiple affinities would crash together, layer over each other, and merge under the weight of their single Will. What comes out would be a domain that fits no normal type. That process would be harder, more violent, and would need a Will strong enough to crush the natural friction between opposing elements. But if achieved...”

She didn’t finish the sentence. The quiet meaning hung in the air like a weight.

”Now,” Lorien turned back toward the front of the room, her voice strict and cold again. ”We will begin with the fundamentals. Pay attention...”

As she started teaching, I leaned back in my seat and let out a long, silent breath through my nose. Her words bounced around in my head, drowning out the low chatter around me.

A single, unified domain... one where the instant shift of Space, the blinding speed of Lightning, and the endless burning of Soul Flame weren’t used separately, but woven into the very fabric of the reality I pushed outward.

It sounded insane.

It sounded like something that would rip a normal ranker’s soul into bleeding pieces the moment they tried to anchor it. But as I looked down at my own hands, feeling the quiet, steady pulse of three distinct affinities flowing smoothly through a single core, a faint, dry smirk touched the edge of my lips.

Difficulty has never been the problem, I thought quietly to myself, resting my chin against my palm as the professor’s voice faded into background noise. If it takes breaking myself to pull it off, then so be it. I’ve survived worse than my own soul.

_

For the rest of the two-hour lecture, I barely heard a word.

While the rest of the class scrambled to take notes, my mind remained buried deep within my own soul space—staring at the towering, grey-stone fortress that anchored my consciousness, wondering what kind of terrifying monster my domain would become when the time finally came to drag it out into the light.

”...And that concludes today’s session,” Professor Lorien’s voice suddenly snapped me back to reality.

I blinked, shaking my head to clear the lingering fog as the amphitheater filled with the noise of students scraping their chairs, packing their bags, and chatting in low, relieved tones as the class ended. Beside me, Roan was already on his feet, casting me an amused look while Alice stood up right after him, slinging her satchel over her shoulder.

”So, Mr. Anomaly? Thinking about how you can grab three Soul Dominions?” Roan teased softly, leaning over with a grin. ”Aren’t you a little greedy, my bro?”

Before I could even open my mouth to reply, Professor Lorien’s cold, crisp voice cut straight through the rustle of the departing crowd.

”Roan,” she called out smoothly, not even looking up from her desk. ”Stay behind for a moment.”

Roan instantly froze in mid-step, his shoulders slumping in visible defeat. He let out a low, agonizing groan that sounded like it came from the very bottom of his exhausted soul, rubbing his temples in utter misery.

”Kill me now,” he muttered under his breath, casting a desperate, helpless look back at us as the rest of the class filed past him toward the doors.

Alice burst into a quick, muffled laugh, patting his shoulder with zero genuine sympathy. ”Bahaha, let me kill you right here and do the whole world a noble favor.”

Amelia offered him a small, polite smile of pity, while Lyssaria simply shook her head with a soft, quiet sigh.

”We’ll save you a seat at the cafeteria,” I said, giving his shoulder a firm clap as we passed him. ”If you’re still alive by then, that is.”

”Traitor,” Roan hissed quietly, though there was no real venom behind it as he turned around and began walking slowly down the steps toward his aunt, looking every bit like a man marching toward an executioner’s block.

_

Stepping out of the doors of the lecture hall and into the bright, crisp afternoon air of the academy grounds, I took a deep breath. The sky above was clear and blue. The mana of the campus hummed with its usual steady energy.

I parted ways with Alice, Amelia, and Lyssaria as they headed toward the central plaza. I turned down the quieter path leading toward my final class of the day.

As I walked, a thought struck me.

Lorien was right about one thing, the element didn’t matter as much as the foundation holding it up. The Eclipse of the Singularity was already training my soul to weave three forces into one, using pure Will to bend reality long before a domain ever showed up.

It was a sword art. I had forged it myself, in the mud of the Path Trial, in the blood of the Gate, and through every near-death moment that had stripped away who I used to be. Every scar, every drop of pain, and every stubborn refusal to die had been poured straight into my blade.

Without even realizing it, had I been weaving my own Intent and Will into every single form?

And then there was the Third Form.

It was almost complete, so close I could practically feel the final piece humming at my fingertips. All it needed was that last push.

It was the form that combined all three of my affinities, Lightning, Space, and Soul Flame, into a single strike. But more than power, it was a technique of pure Will. A declaration that whatever I cut no longer had the right to exist.

The Form of Acceptance...

I hadn’t named it out loud yet, but the meaning behind it was clear. It was the mirror of my own soul. I was still carrying the guilt, the lingering doubts, and the bloody weight of my past. And until I fully accepted every piece of who I was, the form would remain just short of perfect.

I let out a quiet breath and cleared my head. The next class was Advanced Array Theory and Spatial Rune Mechanics.

I should move before I’m late, I thought, picking up the pace.