Crumpled against the wall in front of him, there were black tattered clothes which hung to the slight frame of someone he had never seen before.
When the resonating wave shot from Noone's core, the being had become caught in the sudden dismantling of the origin laws that followed, and was thrown into the stone.
Noone's mind throbbed in pain when he looked at the being, as though even seeing it was some kind of impossible sin against the universe.
Despite the pain, his mind began to churn with energy. Reinforced by the vestiges of power and the anger which was bottled inside of him, he focused his sight onto the being.
As he did though, the being which had crumpled against the wall outstretched a lone hand towards Noone and began to stand up. Noone stared in shock at the hand.
It was nothing but bone.
The hood on the tattered black robes the being wore slowly fell back, resting on its shoulders. Needles of pain shot into Noone's mind and soul as he stared at the being in horror. Yet he couldn't look away.
Like something out of a nightmare, Noone watched the being stand to its full height of eight feet tall. Its head was nothing but a skull almost floating freely from the spine. Its hands and body and torso were all bones. But it moved, staring back with orange eyes like coal.
What scared him even more was that it didn't stare at Noone's body, but instead looked right at where Noone's consciousness was staring at it from.
It can see me!
As their gazes met, the beings eye sockets flared with ephemeral orange light. They seemed endless and ancient. Filled with primordial fire.
Noone's mind shook again and suddenly the area warped slightly, like a shiver in space, and the skeletal being disappeared as suddenly as it came.
Noone was stunned into silence, unable to work through what he had just seen. He was sure that was not any skeleton of the people of Tapestry. It was too… ancient
The only thing keeping Noone's awareness awake was a hate which was boiling up inside of him. That being was ancient… and evil.
The influx of power fallowed him to barely perceive its existence. His anger bubbled into his mind. Whatever that was, Noone couldn't help but think of all the dead in Tapestry.
Ten thousand people.
And that thing was the only existence around.
Suddenly Noone's body hunched over in pain and he coughed up a mouthful of blood. Veins within his lungs exploded under intense pressure and caused him to collapse onto the floor. The energy coursing through him had finally overfilled his body – it began looking for any way to escape.
Outside of Noone's awareness and control, the influx of energy which resonated out of him extended for miles into a sphere before suddenly stopping. A barrier far stronger and more secure than anything that anyone in Tapestry knew of surrounded the entire conclave.
This barrier closed Tapestry off from the world, hiding it and making it impossible for anyone to enter from the outside. Protecting Tapestry from any foreign threat.
Unbeknownst to him, his body had become home to thousands of strands of energy - every single one consisting of a little bit of the common heritage passed on to them by the ancestor.
The condensed heritage within Noone's body melded into the barrier. The barrier shook and shuddered, seeming to recognize the existence similar to that of the ancestor. With an ear shattering bang, the barrier collapsed into billions of individual pieces. Those pieces warped and shifted before finally disappearing into thin air.
Noone was not aware of this happening, the influx of energy within his body was pushing him into unconsciousness. He screamed out in excruciating pain. The stone underneath him became wet with cold sweat. He needed to manually circulate the energy in his core. Pain etched itself into his very being as he attempted to keep the energy from exploding through his meridians. Even with the reinforced meridians, he didn't want to leave his life to them alone. So he forced the energy to circulate, trying to diffuse it.
Every time the energy would pass through his core, a little bit would diffuse into his body from the life flame which ceaselessly burned. His core continued to fill up with energy until finally even that too could not contain any more.
Noone became less able to control the energy and it grew increasingly unstable in the process. A final ragged gasp escaped through his lips followed by blood. The pain within him caused him to lose consciousness, doubled over on the floor.
Despite how long it felt to go on for, everything that Noone experienced lasted for only a minute up until he lost consciousness.
Anger, hate, shock, confusion, all these bubbling emotions failed to maintain his awareness as the pain wracked through him. Once he lost consciousness, the energy was left to its own devices. The energy melded with his pain, his hate at the unfairness of it all gave the power an outlet.
The Common Heritage of The Ancestor.
Without his awareness, Noone's body broke through into an ancient power system. His pores expanded violently and impurities like mud and blood began to well up from his skin. Unconsciously writhing on the floor, he broke into the first level of Qi Condensation.
The energy slowed down slightly but still rampaged through him. Excess energy flowed like a rampant river.
Suddenly a second spasm shot into his nerves. More impurities were expelled from his pores, the exploded veins within his body gradually began to heal and reattach themselves.
Then a third.
Noone passed into the third level of Qi Condensation, the third level of the first stage of an ancient power system. A power system that gave birth to The Ancestor of infinite power...
To experience such an explosion of power could only be said to be a result of Noone absorbing all of the common heritage left within Tapestry.
It was doubtful anyone else would have ever been able to achieve such a sudden power jump - even more unlikely was it for the barrier set in place by the ancestor to ever be taken down.
If the common heritage were not condensed into a single person, there was no doubt that the barrier would have remained in place for many more millennia.
Suddenly, Noone's hand shot to his heart and he retched up another mouthful of blood in pain. The emotional torment he felt throughout the last weeks in Tapestry cut through his unconsciousness and welled up all at once.
In an eternity past, breaking through into the first stage of qi condensation was always to be done with as tranquil a mind as possible. The sudden explosion of strength and perfusion of energy into the mind and the soul proved to be extremely toxic if not closely watched.
The ancients had a term for it: 'cultivation deviation.' It was a dangerous time where any inner devils would have a chance to penetrate and take over someone's awareness if they didn't keep a careful eye on it.
Noone on the other hand had suddenly advanced all the way into the third level of qi condensation - his mind, heart, and soul were in turmoil when it happened. Noone didn't stand a chance.
As he laid there, his body began to glow.
White lines, from his abdomen – his core, began to spread across his flesh. Intricate designs coursed across his skin, shining with a gentle pure white light and accentuating against his dark-grey stone colored skin...
If Noone had been conscious, he would have noticed that these lines looked very familiar to those which he saw when being nurtured within the flower-pod in the cliff.
Suddenly the spasming, the writhing, the pain stopped. All of the energy which had been coursing through his body finally reached an equilibrium.
Both of Noone's hands flexed, and with an outburst of strength they bashed against the ground, creating a spiderweb of cracks around him. With smooth and strange ease, Noone stood up silent and solid.
A deep breath entered his lungs, and his chest rose and fell. Like a dormant existence awakening from a slumber a harsh cloud of heated air escaped his lips. Noone's body moved slowly, meticulously.
His head turned to look at where he had seen the tall being made of bone.
If anyone had been there to see Noone, they would have felt a chill down their spine just from being near him. An aura of malice flowed out from him like waves of poison water. Violent energy could be felt boiling the air around him.
His eyes swept around the room, looking across the thousands of freshly dug graves. A frown worked its way on his face, and his eyes were burst red as energy seeped into them, influenced by the inner devil that had formed in his heart after he had lost consciousness.
Noone's awareness was now completely transformed by it. Toxic hate filled every inch of his body, down the ends of every limb. Whoever did this to his home, would die.
Power reigned king, and Noone had never felt more powerful in his life than he did in this moment.
Despite seething with rage, it was not unrestrained. In fact, it was cold and focused. Without causing a fuss in the cemetery, Noone walked out silently through the sanctuary.
He stepped into the barren halls and the silence rung cold and distant.
He walked through the empty corridors, past the elders' hall. Every step filled with an unwavering determination. Noone felt he could move at light speed if he wanted to. But he silently continued at his even pace, eyes red and body flowing with energy which shone from him like it did from the people of Tapestry. He walked towards the outcropping that extended from the face of the cliff.
There was nothing left for him there, so up was the only way to go.
He walked to the edge and gripped onto the cliff face. The stone under his hand creaked slightly under his strength. He eased up on it and began to climb, upwards, towards the surface he had seen before. Without equipment, or fear of falling. He coldly climbed, thoughts of death pervaded his heart and mind.
The death of Tapestry.
And the chaos that would follow in its wake.