Also makes his claws and tail longer

I didn’t find anything new when I brushed the dirt away, didn’t grasp any unknown wells of power—but I found a bit more of myself. Details that had been hidden under an invisible coating of grim, every inch covered in fine detail by…by everything that made me who I was, I suppose; all the moments that had shaped me, however slightly. As I shook myself loose of that concealing dust, my soul drew closer to the shackles that held it bound, and for a moment I feared I might spontaneously combust. There was a light within me that burnt like a sun and I thought that insignificant things like flesh and blood and bone would evaporate at its expanding touch.

But somehow, it didn’t. I thought, perhaps, that it might have been a near thing, something narrowly held in check, but it stayed just beneath the surface and contained itself for the sake of my mortal coil. It seemed like a careful balance, as if my adamant body was shirt far too small for it and the wrong move would tear it at the seems—but for the moment, that didn’t happen. I thought that if I left it alone and didn’t poke it with anything, it might miraculously stay that way.

That’s not what I did, though. Instead, I took a breath and a step and without another word, unleashed Bai Hu’s masterpiece. It wasn’t a complex technique, not truly—not a grand expression of advanced Aura theory or anything like that. It was something more basic and personal; a simple art honed to utter perfect through endless use, until sheer mastery of form had eventually led to something more. My soul blew outwards, expanding from the heart of my being to beyond it. It wasn’t a slight thing, like the common minor spillage of Aura into the visible spectrum.

No; it erupted.

It engulfed me.

Power and white light surrounded me, rising from my skin as much as it shined through it. It grew around me until it had a shape of its own—not a mere outline, but an image in its own right, overlaying me. A tail that extended beyond the length of own and claws that grew past my fingers, all of it shining like the sun. For a moment, that light was pure and untainted, but then stains began to appear, traces of darkness that coiled and stretched and spun markings above my skin.

Black and white, I thought. Like a White Tiger’s strips. Something caused by the technique or by my actions?

I supposed it didn’t matter.

My fingers flexed and the claws of my soul danced, slightly out of sync with the motions of my body; the twitching of my tails did the same. As my heart pounded in my chest to the rhythm of pulsing light, I could feel my body on one level and my soul on another—closely intertwined, but not fully bound together. It was a dangerous state to be in, enough that I felt my body burning at both ends.