Word Soul: DARKSEID Chapter 3.

Chapter 3: Wordless.

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He had power.

He’d seen it.

He’d stopped a hovercart with a single word.

He’d escaped death just by refusing it. At the instant before Granny's Hammer had crushed his head, a low whisper had escaped him, "SURVIVE"-an echo of the existential desperation that had spilled out his soul.

It was a strange but powerful ability. Also familiar, reminding him of a certain type of magic from a show he'd watched before...all this.

Word Soul Magic. One of the most busted magic abilities from the Black Clover universe. The original user was a Devil and he could basically bend reality to his will merely by commanding it with words.

His version didn't use a grimoire but this only made it even more overpowered as he was not limited to specific spells.

But now, drifting through walls, unseen and silent, he was starting to feel the truth: he was helpless.

Because Word Soul Magic meant nothing without words.

And ghosts didn’t have mouths.

He tried anyway.

First day after the Omega Beam incident, he hovered near the slag fields- a dumping site of broken and rusted equipment, staring at a loose metal beam.

He focused on it, drew from the same gut-deep space he felt back in the pits, and thought:

“Move.”

Nothing.

He tried again.

MOVE.

Still nothing.

He tried for hours.

He screamed the word inside his own head a thousand different ways, but all it gave him was stillness and silence.

No vocal cords.

No breath.

No sound.

The magic didn’t care what he thought.

It listened to what he said.

The frustration burned worse than Granny’s hammer. He had the power of a god, locked behind a mute tongue and a dead body.

At one point, he tried to slam himself into a wall just to feel something — to force a change. But he phased straight through, dropping into a lower level below the site. For a moment, he just hovered there, inside the steel of the floor, half in and half out, lost in the cold.

Then something sparked.

It happened when a ventilation shaft nearby let out a high-frequency hum. A resonance. And something in him reacted.

The noise was steady with periods of a high pitch, and for half a second, he vibrated.

Not in frustration.

Literally.

His spherical shifted, the surface of his soul mass rippling on a frequency level.

He wasn’t matter, not anymore. But he was still Will, memory and thought.

And if the shaft could vibrate the air to make sound frequencies that could affect spiritual bodies… maybe he could vibrate himself to do the same.

It wouldn't be speech. Not yet. But it was a start.

He spent the next two cycles near that shaft.

Listening.

Even phasing into it's inner components to find out what exactly made the vibrations.

He discovered the fans at the end of the shaft were made of an alloy of Nth Metal- it's endurance ensuring it would never break down or need to be repaired as the ventilation system was spread throughout the planet.

He kept his distance from the metal fans, as close proximity disrupted his mass, pulling him in like a black hole.

He studied it's frequency and the way his soul reacted, and soon he could control the ripples of his own frequency. Next was matching the soul frequency to the fan's rhythm...then adjusting. Trying to make anything that resembled a sound.

He failed dozens of times. Either he overshot the rate or lost the rhythm and had to start over. But, little by little, he finetuned his control.

Then—success.

His soul crackled. Barely audible. More static than syllable. But it was his.

Overjoyed and reaffirmed, he tried again.

Were there someone able to see past his invisibility, they would have seen a white ball vibrating in mid-air so fast, the surrounding area warped with mirages.

Faster.

Harder.

Steadier.

Clearer.

And finally, like a nail dragged across a metal plate, the word came out:

[Float.]

And he rose.

Not by instinct.

Not by ghost logic.

But by command.

It worked.

It actually worked.

His soul ached from the effort, but he didn’t care. For the first time since death, he smiled. Or the approximation of one.

Now he had a weapon.

Now he could learn to speak again.

Not just float.

But fight.

A few minutes passed as he rested.

[Float.]

It worked again.

His soul lifted off the broken steel, smooth and weightless. Controlled.

Not instinct.

But intention plus soul vibrations affecting the surrounding air.

Word Soul Magic was not limited to simple commands. He could even create matter or destroy it at an atomic level. Meaning, he didn't have to be stuck as a mere soul.

[Create Body]

Nothing happened. Even with imagination and all his will, the magic failed to take hold. Okay...maybe creating matter out of nothing was a ways off.

-Souls out of synch. Not gone yet, but soon-

Or maybe the problem was his unusual soul. Survival was his first priority but that didn't mean he'd missed the obvious questions. Like why his soul had yet to dissolve like the others. What was so special about him. Was it the transmigration? Or something else?

-Two souls stronger than one. Harder to fade in the Omega.-

Questions aside, he was probably not getting rid of his ghost status anytime soon, but he could still affect his mass.

[Shape To Humanlike]

The effect was instant. His spherical body shifted to form limbs, a head and Torso. Still featureless. Still a ghost but a human looking one.

The words carried undeniable power, but speaking them came at a steep cost. Suddenly weak, he blacked out and without awareness, his soul phased through the middle levels all the way down.

He only came to just an instant before he reached the molten core of the planet.

His form flickered at the edges, like a candle’s flame in a draft. Saying multiple words had drained him like running a marathon on shattered bones.

Slowly, he floated upwards, phasing through the smog to find himself at the lower levels.

Quieter. Less watched. Perfect for practice.

He stopped near a collapsed tunnel, a place the Parademons had abandoned after a fuel line ruptured and charred half the support beams black. No workers or cameras. No reason for anyone to look here again.

Good.

He needed time.

He needed appropriate words.

But most of all — he needed to learn the ins and outs of his power.

He hovered over a chunk of debris and focused.

[Lift] he vibrated, still affected by the exhaustion.

Nothing.

The ripples were weak and the vibrations barely came out. Just a sputtering hiss, like steam in a pipe. He tried again. His soul vibrated harder, tuned tighter.

[Lift]

The rock twitched.

His heart — if he still had one — surged. He pushed not harder but steadier, accounting for his soul's increased surface area.

[LIFT]

The debris flew back, crashing against the far wall. It worked. He spoke, and the world listened.

He collapsed a second later.

-Pain! Too much. Slow down!-

The effort had torn at something inside him, not muscle — memory, maybe. He wasn’t sure. His edges wavered even more dangerously.

Too many words in too short a time.

He pulled himself together, slow and careful, like patching cracks in glass.

Then he sat — or hovered just above the ground — and thought.

One word works. Two hurts. More than three might kill me.

He didn’t have the luxury of recovery time. If he wanted to survive a return to Granny’s chamber — and get that Motherbox — he needed more than just verbs.

He needed control.

He needed syntax.

Another cycle passed.

He learned fast.

[Break]

[Burn]

[Push]

[Stop]

Simple words worked best. They hit like commands, sharp and blunt. But once, he whispered a full phrase — just to test.

[Fall and stay down]

A broken girder thirty feet away slammed into the floor and refused to rise again, like gravity itself had agreed.

But afterward, he blacked out again. Time vanished. When he came back, the tunnel was darker, colder, and part of him had eroded — like losing a layer of skin.

He didn’t try full sentences after that. Not yet.

Just control.

Curious if he could alter something that was physically impossible to affect, he found a metal sheet and whispered:

[Mend]

The steel surface rippled.

But didn’t repair because there was nothing to repair. But it 'heard' him.

That was enough.

He was starting to like this power.

And Apokalips was going to learn what happened when slaves found ultimate power.