[Your race has met the required threshold for Evolution.]
[Analyzing accumulated elemental affinities...]
[Lightning. Blood. Shadow. Magnetic Earth. Unclassified traces detected.]
[Standard High Human Evolution Path: Available.]
[Alternate Evolution Path Detected: Conditions Unstable.]
Alternate?
Before Atlas could think too hard about what that meant, light erupted from beneath his skin, not gold or white like he might have expected, but a deep, restless black threaded through with veins of crackling silver lightning. It poured off him in slow waves, curling into the air like smoke that refused to disperse.
His whole body locked up, every muscle rigid, as something ancient and enormous stirred somewhere deep inside his core.
Footsteps approached fast from every direction. He caught fragments of voices through the roar building in his own ears.
"My lord!" Elyndra cried.
