The anticipated agony or some transcendent feeling of elevation never came.
Horace stood where he was, blinked, and took stock of himself.
...He felt nothing.
It was as though a stone had sunk into the sea. Apart from the dark red glow of the blood glintstone in his hand gradually dimming, nothing unusual happened.
Did it fail? Horace suppressed the thought as soon as it arose.
The Gate of Myriad Laws had never steered him wrong. Was the process different because he was too "special"?
Beside him, Froesanks also looked confused and worried (don't ask me how I could tell), and was just about to ask.
Horace was about to contact the Gate of Myriad Laws again and demand to know what was happening-
Crack.
A cracking sound came from his palm.
Horace looked down and saw that fine cracks had suddenly spread across the surface of the blood glintstone.
Then, before he could react, the fragments disintegrated completely into a small pinch of dark red powder that sifted through his fingers.
The instant the powder touched the stone tiles atop the tower-
A solid, vivid red full moon appeared out of thin air without warning, centered on Horace!
This blood moon was entirely different from the one he had constructed in his dreams.
It was more material, its moonlight a viscous red. The instant it appeared, all the light atop the tower took on a faint bloody halo, and even the real Twin Moons high above were temporarily suppressed.
At the same time, Horace's body underwent a drastic transformation.
His hair, previously red only at the temples, instantly turned a dripping crimson beneath the blood moon's radiance.
His barely shoulder-length hair instantly grew to his waist. His eyes once again turned that bewitching scarlet.
But the changes did not