It listened carefully as the Goddess continued to explain. It was as the wisp had first suspected. They had the potential to become something else, something stronger. Perhaps even the strongest? Yet they were warned to fight the old gods they must be together. Perhaps not the strongest then. Nera then moved on, the assembly of wisps inevitably following her, to a stairway that seemed to lead into the abyss itself. The darkness called to some deep memory that it did not remember. Nera explained what lay below and it felt a twinge of sympathy, and some sort of kinship, as though it had felt the same before. Furthermore she explained the rigors they would face, it already knew they would face such things, for it was easy it would've already been done in the eternity Nera had spent waiting.
Then she marked them. It watched the others get marked before it was the wisp's own turn. Still it was not prepared. A glacial chill filled it's chest before vanishing. Was that it? Suddenly everything shattered and the wisp was unable to perceive anything other than the crushing vortex that tore at it. Just as quick as it started it ended, leaving it with a black mark on its soul, body? The two were much the same at this point. The mark curled up and spread across his body in the form of stiches as though it was holding him together.
Perhaps it was. It seemed to pull slightly towards Nera, marking him as forever attached to her in someway. More importantly were the things surfacing inside him. A small bubble inside the swirling power. It came closer, pushing through everything else and it paused. The bubble was what the wisp used to be. But the power around it was tantalizing. It shook it's head. It needed to know what it was. The small bubble of who it was swelled up and it was overwhelmed.
Death. From the very start he was surrounded by death. It got better, at first. Death in childbirth. Then for a time it was fine, close to happy even. Memories of book and studying but also work to pay for it. A girlfriend. Until the death returned. At first it was far away. Then it got closer, racing across the continent it seemed. Plague. He ran. They died.
Books did not stop the plague. The secret didn't lay in the bodies of those he killed. In the failed cries to heaven. In the desperate rituals to below. Heretic. Cut apart and burned. He shivered at the faint recollection. He died like the rest. Powerless. His best efforts and every power that existed had not helped.
Solomon's body finished coming into existence and he shook his head. A troubling experience preceded by a troubling life. He was him again. He felt a pang of regret at the unknown power he'd given up but banished it quickly enough. Perhaps he could regain his memories later, perhaps not. Power however, it had been made clear enough they could get later.
"Solomon" He uttered, as if testing the name out. It suited him. He would've spoke but there was enough speaking already. Instead he did some stretches to make sure his body was working as he remembered it.