Serena felt the tension drain from her as the door closed on her sanctum. The encounter with one of the local predators had left her on edge.

I can't believe how hard it was to notice. If that's the standard then I have to improve. I will prove to it that I am the superior one.

Turning to her bag Serena pulled out the berries, salivating at the thought of something other then jerky or hard tack.

Pausing as a thought came to her, she reached over to a cleansing potion and held it ready. She didn't want to be poisoned twice in one day after all.

The little white berries were sour, with an odd delightful tinge of energy to them, that left her feeling giddy while it lasted, but drained after it faded.

The grey strawberries tasted more like less sweet watermelons, she decided. Not much flavor overall, but tonnes of juice. She decided to spend some time in the future seeing if she could extract water as an alternative to the little streamlet.

Happy with her haul Serena turned to her next objective. Namely turning the place upside down to see if she could find the origen of the ritual. And so she began searching for signs of magic.

"DETEC-", she began, before the spell snapped into place. Freezing, Serena looked around her. Unlike normal, where she could only see active or recent magic, whatever this was showed everything. From the flows of power in the stone and air to the tiny stars of the white berries.

Another oddity of the spell was how it was powered. Usually Serena channeled Divine power, as all divine casters did. This energy was different, coming from inside herself.

Curious she dropped the spell and began to investigate the energy. Touching it with her mind brought it to the surface, causing it to give off a similar feeling to the white berries.

Moving the energy to her fingers and releasing it caused a dull violet light to spring into existence. When she focused she found herself able to change the color, but if she stopped it returned to the same color as before.

But what is it? It can't be mana can it? They tested my ability as a sorcerer and I couldn't light the testing orb they handed me. Though it is possible I've have a wild Awakening, but weren't those insanely rare? Ah. Whatever, I suppose it doesn't matter what it is it I can figure out how to use it. Plus it feels nice. Like being embraced by the shadows.

Excited by her new ability, Serena turned back to exploring.

After a few weeks Serena had settled into her routine.

In the morning she would check the traps, harvest berries, and refill her water skins. She also collected some root vegetables she had found, including one that looked and tasted almost exactly like a radish. Except for the fact it was rainbow colored.

After returning home she tested her new ability. She had found that shadows shifted to her will. Sometimes she could even move into them leaving her looking like the Shadow that had ambushed her. With an enormous amount of power she had managed to step through a wall, but the act had left her barely able to move.

She had also found that whatever energy it was regenerated back to fill over the course of an hour. The white berries , now thought of as starberries, gave small busts of power that filled her pool of power. (Get it? Starberries? Strawberries? Well screw you too imaginary voices. Hey what happened to the whispers?) Meditating, too, accelerated it's recovery.

When waiting for her energy to refill she had taken to pulling apart the various mechanisms around the dungeon. Serena found the gears, pulleys, and runes that formed them fascinating and was slowly learning to identify how something worked with a glance.

She had even started to use some of the things she learned in her own game trails, making them less visible and more effective.

At the end of the day, just before going to sleep, she would push power into the portal ritual. Every day she put in as much energy as it collected itself in a week.

All in all, she was surprisingly content with things. And she was so invested that she barely noticed the inky darkness that spread from her wingtips.