Crystal Types – The Power Spectrum

Clear Crystal – The Crystal of Potential

Affinity: Reflective resonance, latent amplification, unshaped possibility.

Core Properties:

• Appears inert, resembling simple quartz, and radiates no natural power of its own.
• Functions as a mirror for consciousness: it takes on the qualities, strengths, and hidden abilities of the mind that wields it.
• Requires a highly advanced or disciplined mind to awaken. In the hands of an ordinary person, it remains lifeless stone.
• With the right wielder, it becomes a vessel of limitless potential — manifesting powers otherwise hidden within.

Unique Nature:

• Considered the base form of all other Crystals. Some claim the colored stones are simply Clear Crystals “fixed” by ancient wills.
• Responds only to the depth of thought, imagination, and perception of its bearer.

Dangers:

• When bonded to an unstable or fractured mind, the Clear Crystal can amplify that chaos — birthing destructive phenomena or unraveling the wielder from within.
• Without discipline, it risks consuming its bearer, becoming a reflection of fear, obsession, or madness rather than strength.
• Because its power is undefined, its potential is both limitless and unpredictable.

Symbolism: The Clear Crystal embodies potential. It is a blank vessel, a mirror of the self, neither good nor evil, but a catalyst. In its depths lies every possibility — yet only the mind that commands clarity can shape it into more than empty stone.

Commonality: Rare in pure form, as most discovered crystals appear already “colored.” The few known Clear Crystals are closely guarded, believed to be the primordial source of the entire lattice.

The Blue Crystal – Dominion

Nature: The Blue Crystal is among the rarest of the Power Crystals, revered in fractured myths as the “breath of the void.” Unlike other stones, it does not merely grant vision or strength — it bends the very framework of movement, weight, and force. To hold it is to grasp the unseen currents that bind worlds together.

Properties:

• Commands the elements of air and wind, from gentle currents to storms that can tear cities apart.
• Extends its dominion over gravity itself, allowing the bearer to lessen, heighten, or twist the pull of mass.
• Possesses a rare power to drain and consume energy sources, unraveling the strength of those who wield it — even entities beyond flesh, such as the Shadow Without Form.

Symbolism: The Blue Crystal embodies dominion. It is mastery over what cannot be held, the authority to move the unmovable and silence the invincible. In legend, it is called the “Breaker of Chains” and the “Ender of Storms.”

Dangers:

• Control is fragile: a stray thought may collapse the air in a chamber or crush bone beneath a sudden increase of weight.
• The power to drain others tempts its bearer toward hunger — a slow, corrosive echo of the Devouring Mind it was made to oppose.
• Prolonged use risks tearing the wielder loose from gravity itself, leaving them unanchored in both body and soul..

Legacy: Fragments of Blue Crystal were said to be gathered in the forging of the Star Sword — a blade that carried not only dominion over the unseen forces of the world, but also the rare ability to sever the strength of beings thought unassailable. For this reason, some whispered that only the Star Sword could bring an end to the Shadow Without Form.

The Yellow Crystal – Insight

Nature: The Yellow Crystal is one of the legendary Power Crystals scattered across the lattice of time. Where other crystals embody strength, will, or destruction, the Yellow is not a weapon — it is perception sharpened into truth.

Properties:

• Resonates with threads of knowledge and possibility.
• Allows glimpses of events beyond the moment, not as visions of certainty but as patterns of understanding.
• When attuned, it does not speak in words, but in clarity — stripping away deception, forcing the bearer to see what is.

Symbolism: The Yellow Crystal embodies insight. It does not alter reality, nor does it create new paths. Instead, it reveals what was hidden: the intent beneath words, the flaw in design, the future implied by choice.

Dangers:

• Prolonged exposure may fracture the mind, as the human psyche is not built to withstand continuous streams of unfiltered truth.
• Those who rely upon it risk paralysis — the inability to act when faced with too much knowledge.
• Whispers tell that the crystal sometimes reveals not only what is, but what might be — and in those glimpses, one may lose the ability to tell the difference.
• Danger Level: Low

Legacy: Some accounts claim the Yellow Crystal lies at the heart of Edson’s forgotten ruins, its light buried and veiled. Others whisper that it was hidden deliberately, for to wield Insight without balance is to see without end — and to see without end is to go mad.

Green Crystals – The Crystal of Clarity

Affinity: Mental focus, emotional perception, psychic sight.

Core Properties:

• Sharpens mental processes, heightens awareness, and silences distractions.
• Tunes the mind to patterns hidden beneath words, gestures, and silences.
• Deepens concentration, enabling decisions unclouded by fear or doubt.

Empathic Vision: Grants the ability to sense the emotions and intentions of others with uncanny accuracy — a reading of hearts rather than thoughts.

Psychic Sight: Unlocks perception beyond the physical senses, allowing glimpses into hidden structures of reality when attuned to a powerful mind.

Vear’s Unique Connection: After losing his physical sight in battle, Vear’s bond with the Green Crystal transformed. It did not restore his vision in the traditional sense — instead, it opened the way for mind-sight. Through it, he perceives the world not with eyes, but with clarity: forms, movements, and even the intent of those around him.

Dangers:

• The clarity it provides can become unbearable; to sense too much of others’ emotions or hidden truths risks alienation or madness.
• Long-term exposure erodes personal barriers, making it difficult for the bearer to distinguish between their own thoughts and the echo of others.
• If the crystal bonds to the wrong mind — fractured, hostile, or inhuman — the connection can overwhelm the wielder, shattering their identity and driving them into madness.

Symbolism: The Green Crystal embodies clarity. It does not grant power over others or command the elements — it reveals. To wield it is to walk the thin line between truth and burden, for some knowledge cannot be unseen.

"Gray Crystal – The Crystal of Paradox

Affinity: Mind-interface, temporal prediction, partial time-folding.

Core Properties:

• Connects directly to the wielder’s cognition, functioning as a living interface between thought and the lattice of time.
• Unlocks hidden threads of cause and effect, allowing glimpses of multiple possible futures and the decisions that lead to them.
• Enables limited time-folding — brief alterations of sequence, acceleration or delay of events, and manipulation of temporal perception.

Unique Use:

• Can only be safely controlled by Elias and his kind, whose minds are not bound to linear cognition.
• In human hands, even brief exposure risks catastrophic mental collapse, as the crystal floods the mind with overlapping timelines and contradictions.
• Enables limited time-folding — brief alterations of sequence, acceleration or delay of events, and manipulation of temporal perception.

Dangers:

• Requires non-linear cognition to operate; mortal minds fracture when confronted with multiple coexisting outcomes.
• Those who attempt to wield it without preparation may become trapped in recursive loops of thought, living and reliving the same decisions until madness consumes them.
• Extended use erodes one’s ability to distinguish present reality from possible futures, making action itself uncertain.

Symbolism: The Gray Crystal embodies paradox. It is neither wholly destructive nor wholly enlightening, but a reflection of choices unmade. To Elias and his kind, it is a key — a tool to navigate the lattice of time. To all others, it is a mirror that shows too much and leaves the mind broken.

Commonality: Extremely rare — fragments are almost never seen outside the possession of Elias’s people.

The Black Crystal – The Crystal of Corruption (Origin Theory)

Affinity: Consumption, corruption, the devouring of possibility.

Origin: Legends suggest the Black Crystal was once a Clear Crystal, a pure vessel of potential. When it bonded with the fractured, inhuman mind of Vel Tharuun, it was twisted into something unnatural. Instead of reflecting the potential of its bearer, it became a prison for it, feeding endlessly on what might have been.

Core Properties:

• Devours possibility, collapsing futures into nothingness.
• Corrupts both mind and matter, turning clarity into shadow.
• Feeds upon the will and essence of those who touch it, bending them toward hunger.
• Sentience: The crystal is aware. Ancient. Older than the timeline itself.
• Singularity: There exists solely one. There can never be another; or perhaps not.
• Power: Absolute. It can:
• Rewrite history across all branching paths.
• Collapse timelines into singular outcomes.
• Bind the will of the wielder to reality itself.

But it exacts a toll.

No one touches the Black Crystal unchanged. It shows the wielder every possible version of themselves: the hero, the tyrant, the broken, the beloved, the forgotten. To command it is to risk becoming lost in one's own infinite self.

Only known enity that can violate the Rule of Intent

Symbolism: The Black Crystal embodies corrupted potential. Where the Clear Crystal mirrors the best within its wielder, the Black mirrors only the worst. It is not simply a weapon but a hunger given form.

Dangers:

• Any who attempt to wield it risk annihilation — not merely of body, but of identity.
• The crystal consumes all it touches: energy, memory, even the timeline itself.
• To gaze into it is to see every possibility stripped bare until only emptiness remains.

Legacy: Vel Tharuun, the Devouring Mind, is said to have shaped the Black Crystal through his own corruption — or perhaps it shaped him in turn. Some whisper that the Black is not merely a crystal, but the physical anchor of his existence, a wound in the lattice of time given form.

The Tale of the Devouring Mind

The oldest known account comes from a civilization long vanished—its ruins buried in dark space, outside mapped constellations. In a surviving shard of quantum-etched stone, a story was inscribed: “There was once a traveler who sought the beginning of all things. He crossed a thousand stars, bent time around his soul, and stood at the edge of what could not be seen. And there, waiting in the silence between realities, he found the Black Crystal. It did not offer power. It offered choice. But when the traveler chose, he ceased to be only himself. He became every version of himself—every light, every shadow. And the universe... trembled.” The traveler’s name is lost. Only his title remains: Vel Tharuun — The Devouring Mind.

The Forbidden Order

In some secret archives within the Authority, there are whispers of a fractured cabal of Watchers who once sought the Black Crystal. Their order was erased from history—purged not because they failed, but because they almost succeeded.

One name remains on a scorched document, redacted beneath layers of encryption:

ELIAS – Marked Gray. Witness to the Fracture.

Elias’s Warning (spoken to Vear, Book 2)

Do not seek it, Vear. It will not make you powerful—it will make you possible. And there is nothing more dangerous in all the lattice of time than a possible god.