Losing all hope of survival, Noah unknowingly embodied defeat. While sinking through the lava, having lost consciousness, he had yet again entered another world; another mind.
Spreading out before his new eyes, an endless expanse of white coalesced, covering the ground and walls and sky. As he looked around in what felt like an mental asylum, nothing but white existed in every direction. Beginning to walk, he moved forwards, or was it backwards, or sideways? He could not tell.
The feeling of having both his legs again was wonderful: the freedom and ability to walk like a euphoria. Time passed, or it should have were it not imperceptible. Whiteness was still the only thing making up this strange world.
"Hello?" Noah said aloud, his voice echoing unusually well in what did not feel like a room. Listening to his own words bouncing through the air, he continued to stroll, the sound following him strangely precise.
Another set of time should have passed when Noah decided to stop walking, his face painted by a strange, confused expression. Bending down and untying his leather shoes, he pondered about the idea that had grown in his mind.
Stretching his back, he began to jog, leaving the shoes on the floor. The ground was covered in perpetual mist, stretching as far and wide as the white world containing it. Seeping through his woolly socks, the humidity caused his jogging to feel damp and wet: the socks making splashing noises with every step.
Jogging for a while, Noah soon came to a stop yet again, the shoes now in front. Looking down at them, Noah's face scrounged as he struggled to comprehend why it was that the shoes had appeared before him. Not only had they appeared before him, they were also pointed towards him, signalling that he had actually not jogged in a circle.
Deciding to do one more test, Noah separated the shoes, placing them with some distance in-between. Placing himself right in the middle, he began to walk away, leaving the repositioned shoes behind.
Counting the steps, he walked onwards, his mind still struggling to come up with a reason for the odd phenomena. At the count of a thousand steps he was once again on the same spot: right in the middle of his two shoes. This time, he was facing the direction of the heels, as opposed to walking off with the tips pointed at his back.
Picking up the shoes, he sat down and began to tie them on. Cringing at the cold and wet mist making his behind go damp, he positioned himself for meditation, closing his eyes and shielding his vision from the bright white world.
During his walk, he had come up with another idea: if mist covered the ground, there had to be water energy, right? Spreading what he perceived as his energy sense, which in reality was just his water affinity yearning for the plentiful source around him, he began to look for strings of energy to manipulate, or, at least, try to manipulate.
With his mind, he imagined a hand stretching out into the world of energy, grasping a string of water. Pulling at it and beginning to weave it, Noah shaped it into a blob: round and still. Opening his eyes, he stared at the extremely small droplet, hanging suspended in the air. Shocked enough to yelp, Noah's concentration broke, the droplet falling to the ground and splashing water at his crossed legs.
Starting over, he began to shape more and more droplets, using the time in this perfectly calm world to practice his usage of energy. Unlike the slow sinking through the lava pool, which his secondary body did, the energy here in the white world was much less volatile and much more pure: consisting only of water energy. This was the main reason to the sudden success in manipulating water.
But if the body sinking through lava was Noah's secondary body: the manifestation of his mind. What body did he currently possess? Without realising, Noah had, due to the excessive pain experienced from bathing in lava, entered his soul, or with other words: his energy core. But why was it white, and not red?
Actually, the redness coming from Noah's core was in relation to the imperfections in its aura. The inside, which he was currently in, was like a room ready to be filled; yet currently locked. And the key? That was the spirit, the root of one's power. Finding your spirit inside your core led to the sudden expanding and building of life and wonders; giving power to the host: elevating it to new heights.
The matter of finding the spirit involved danger, pain and immense pressure. Only by exerting yourself to your utmost can you gain the perception needed for finding the root: an elusive entity who does not like to be found.
Wanting to try another theory of his, Noah released his mind. Unlike from the earth and wind trial, where he just neglected the feelings coming from his soul, he this time tried to exit his body with his mind.
Stretching his mind thin, the range of Noah's perception widened, growing larger every second. Spreading in a circle around his meditating body, he felt the lingering energy, drifting like wafts of air over the mist-clad ground.
Feeling the energy in the white world was a feeling like no other. The otherworldly energy he had felt that fateful day in the Mystwood Forest felt much more real and compatible, willing to bow to his command.
In the air, tendrils of wind energy flew around, dancing and spinning and twirling as if it was a real organism; which now that he thought about it, could not be excluded.
Losing himself in the new, magical world of energy, time passed quickly; Noah's utilisation of his perception growing gradually better. The ability to stretch his mind was an innate ability for every practitioner of Blessings, their perception the key to feel and guide energy.
Blessings played a big role in the difficulty of finding one's spirit: the better the blessing, the harder to find the root but you would also gain a bigger improvement upon finding it. For Mark, with his Elemental Blessing in Space, it took 20 years. For Prometheus, the guy from the glen, he required over a hundred years to even notice the faintest, lingering waft of energy relating to his spirit.
And for Noah, whose destiny has yet to be completed, the time for finding his spirit should have been astronomically long, but no, it took a much much shorter time.
Pain ran through his mind as a blinding light covered Noah's eyes. Sending the mind back into the body, the pressure from the world grew and grew and grew, crushing the boy into the ground. Above him, a majestic, white entity hung suspended in the air, the root twisting and turning in a delicate pattern, weaving itself into reality.
Suddenly, it shrunk. Down to the size of his core, the root shrunk fast before shooting with an unfathomable speed towards Noah's abdomen. Passing through skin and flesh and bone as if it were nothing but air, the root entered the boy's core, coming to a rest in the centre. Out in the world of his core, which Noah's crushed body rested in, the whiteness receded, the mist absorbed into the ground, grass now growing.
Rumbling noises resounded in the air, chains of mountains shooting up in the distance, trees and flowers littering the now grass-clad ground.
The sky turned blue and clouds entered the world, specking the blue canvas with contrast.
And then, a lonesome star began to shine, its light surrounding the one figure in the world, whose body now nothing but crushed meat and bone, the pressure having grown lethal a long time ago.
With a flash, Noah's consciousness got sent back to his secondary body, just in time to witness the whole mountaintop explode in a rain of molten lava and flying rocks.
And from his abdomen, the blinding light from his newfound spirit blessed the world of trial with its existence: Mark and The Deer gazing astonishingly at the wonder boy.