Volume 9: Opal Illusions

Light guides, fire consumes, wisdom reveals, life endures, space shifts, thunder strikes, tides surge, and will stands firm—but illusion blurs the line between truth and deception. In the vibrant chaos of India, an opal awakens, wielding the power of dreams and distortion. This is the story of the ninth chosen, a weaver of visions, and a battle that bends reality to its breaking point. Welcome to Opal Illusions.

Chapter 1: Colors in the Chaos

Varanasi, India, May 14, 2025—eight days after the events in Vietnam. The sun blazed over the sacred city, its golden rays painting the Ganges River in hues of amber and blue. On a bustling street near the ghats, Ravi Patel, 26, knelt before a brick wall, his hands stained with paint—red, yellow, green. His dark hair flopped over his brow, his brown eyes alight with focus beneath a threadbare cap. A street artist with a knack for turning drab corners into vibrant murals, Ravi lived to bring joy to Varanasi’s weary souls.

Today, he’d finished a masterpiece—a dragon soaring through a sky of fire and stars—when a stranger dropped a small box beside him and vanished into the crowd. Inside gleamed an opal—multicolored, shifting like a kaleidoscope. “What’s this?” Ravi murmured, lifting it. The moment he touched it, reality rippled. The dragon on the wall roared to life, scales shimmering, then dissolved into mist, leaving onlookers gasping.

Ravi stumbled back, heart racing, the opal tumbling to the cobblestones. Before he could retrieve it, a blast echoed nearby—smoke billowed from a market stall. Shadeweaver emerged, her black cloak stark against the chaos, flanked by Obsidian Order enforcers. Her white eyes locked onto him. “Ravi Patel,” she said, her voice slicing through the din. “Give me the Opal of Creative Illusion, or this city becomes your nightmare.”