Ethan moved with the fervor of a starving hawk sighting prey. Before Kael's acquiescence fully left his lips, the old mage had already dragged him to a circular chamber where the air thrummed with ozone. Obsidian walls drank the light from floating orbs that cast shifting constellations across rune-carved arches.
"Sorcery," Ethan began, his voice resonating with ceremonial weight, "is the art of conversing with creation's building blocks." He gestured dramatically, causing luminescent dust to swirl around them. "This world breathes arcane energy - what dullards call 'magic elements'. Our craft lies in persuading these primal forces to dance to mortal tunes."
The lecture unfolded like an ancient scroll revealing forbidden secrets. Ethan's hands painted ephemeral diagrams in the air as he spoke of mana tides and elemental affinities. Kael absorbed every word, the concepts sparking strange familiarity - like rediscovering a childhood lullaby in a foreign tongue.
When Ethan finally paused for breath, his eyes gleamed with challenge. "Now. Show me your void."
Meditation. The word triggered instinctive response. As Kael settled cross-legged on the chilled obsidian floor, reality dissolved. Not darkness, but a starscape unfolding - countless azure sparks swirled like bioluminescent plankton. They brushed against his consciousness with curious intimacy, their song resonating in his marrow.
"Bloody hellspawn!" Ethan's curse shattered the trance. The old mage stood white-knuckling his beard, staring as if Kael had sprouted dragon wings. "First-timers take weeks to achieve basic sensory deprivation! You just... you simply..." Words failed him. Decades spent guiding initiates through meditation's torment, only to witness this raw novice achieve transcendent state on first attempt - it bordered on heresy.
Kael blinked away residual starlight. "I could see them. The... elements?"
"Elemental manifestations!" Ethan snapped, secretly delighting in the correction. He schooled his features into stern disapproval. "Basic perception, nothing more. My grandmother's tabby could sense mana fluctuations." The lie burned his tongue. That spectral feline had actually been an immortal familiar bound to his family for thirteen generations.
As Kael pressed about Ethan's early training, the old archmage deftly redirected. "Enough prattle! Let's see if you can handle practical application." His staff struck stone, conjuring swirling elemental matrices - intricate patterns resembling quantum equations made tangible.
What followed defied all magical pedagogy. Where apprentices typically required months to stabilize simple water globules, Kael's first attempt produced a perfect crystalline sphere. By third repetition, he'd accidentally created self-replicating ice fractals that threatened to engulf the chamber. Ethan dissolved the growing glacier with sweaty-palmed nonchalance, silently questioning every life choice that led to mentoring this eldritch prodigy.
"Passable," Ethan conceded through gritted teeth when the demonstration concluded. "Though your control resembles a drunkard's swordplay." Truthfully, the boy's precision surpassed his own after decades of study. "Natural talent is crude ore, boy. Without discipline's forge, even the purest mana crystal remains useless." The lecture flowed automatically - the same speech given to generations of students, now carrying unprecedented relevance.
Kael's earnest nod soothed Ethan's bruised ego. "Now, the true test." With theatrical flourish, the archmage produced a scroll sealed with wax glowing like miniature supernova. "Elementary cantrips. Master these before moonrise, and perhaps you're worth teaching."
Alone in the chamber's echoing silence, Kael unfurled the scroll. Strange glyphs shimmered with inner light, their patterns etching themselves directly into his neural pathways. As he reached for the familiar meditative state, reality fractured.
There, amidst the swirling constellations of his mindscape, floated an impossible artifact - the grimoire from his final gaming session. The Codex Aeternum pulsed with golden light, its cover bearing the Ouroboros Mandala that had haunted his dreams. Pages turned autonomously, revealing shifting texts in dead languages that somehow made perfect sense.
His gaming avatar's ultimate prize had transcended digital boundaries.
The revelation struck with physical force. Kael's eyes snapped open to find glowing sigils burning themselves into his retinas. Unseen energies writhed beneath his skin as the Codex's whisper filled his skull - not words, but pure arcane truth.
In the observation chamber above, Ethan stared slack-jawed at mana sensors gone supercritical. Ancient warning bells began tolling campus-wide. Somewhere in the archives, a prophecy scroll spontaneously combusted.
"Sweet Mystra's mercy," the old archmage breathed, watching his new pupil's aura eclipse the sun. "What have I unleashed?"