Pain.
That was the first thing Vane knew. It was not the sharp sting of a cut or the throb of a bruise. It was a dull, grinding agony that felt like his skeleton had been disassembled and put back together by a drunkard working in the dark.
He opened his eyes.
He was lying in the remains of the cellar. Sunlight was streaming down through a massive, jagged hole in the floor above him, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air. The air tasted of pulverized stone, ozone, and copper.
Vane tried to move his legs. He could not. He looked down. His left leg was twisted at an angle that made his stomach turn, pinned beneath a heavy oak beam.
He coughed, spitting out grey dust.
"Mom?" he rasped.
The silence that answered him was heavy. It was not the quiet of an empty room. It was the stillness of a grave.
Vane dragged himself forward, gritting his teeth as the movement jarred his trapped leg. He strained his neck, looking up the mound of rubble that used to be the east wing.
He found the wheelchair first. It was twisted metal, flattened like a coin on a train track.
Then he found her.
She was half-buried under a section of the roof. There was no blood. Just the stillness of a puppet that had been discarded. Her eyes were open, staring up at the grey sky she had hated so much. The dust had settled on her lashes like snow.
Vane froze.
He reached out, his fingers straining to bridge the distance. His hand trembled uncontrollably. He triggered [Thermal Equilibrium (Grade F)]. He tried to find a heat signature. A spark. Anything.
[Target Temp: Ambient.]
She was gone.
She had not even been the target. Gareth had not aimed at her. He had not even looked at the house. She was just collateral damage. An ant stepped on by a giant who did not even look down to check his boot.
A crunch of boots on gravel made him turn.
Gareth was standing at the edge of the crater. The Knight looked immaculate. His white armor gleamed in the sunlight, unstained by the destruction he had wrought. He was not even breathing hard.
He walked down the slope of debris. He ignored Vane. He ignored the body of the woman. He walked to a pile of shattered furniture and bent down.
He picked up something golden.
The envelope.
Gareth brushed the dust off the wax seal. He froze.
"Is that the Zenith seal?" Gareth muttered.
He looked at the letter, then at Vane, who was trembling in the dirt, clutching at the air toward his mother.
"An admission letter? Why didn't you just show me that from the start? It would have saved us both the trouble." Gareth sounded annoyed. Not guilty. Just annoyed. Like he had filed a form incorrectly.
He tossed the letter onto Vane's chest. It landed with a soft thud.
"You should've led with that," Gareth said. "I wouldn't have wasted the effort."
He turned around. His cloak swirled, pristine white against the grey ruin.
"Wait," Vane whispered. His voice was a broken thing.
Gareth did not stop. He activated a flight spell, rising into the air with a hum of power.
"Wait! Stop! You killed her!" Vane screamed, his voice cracking.
Gareth paused, hovering twenty feet in the air. He looked down. His face was hidden behind the visor, but his posture spoke of mild irritation.
"She shouldn't have been in the way," the Knight said simply.
Then he flew away, disappearing into the grey clouds toward the capital.
Vane lay in the ruins of his life. The silence rushed back in, louder than the explosion had been.
He looked at the heavy beam pinning his leg. He looked at Helena's body, half-buried in the dust.
He could rip the seal now. He could disappear into the golden light and leave this hell behind.
'Frog in a well,' she had said.
Vane gritted his teeth.
"No," he rasped. "I'm not leaving you like this."
He was a criminal. He was a rat. But he was her son. He wouldn't leave her to rot in the open air for the crows and the bandits.
He gripped the oak beam. It was heavy, weighing hundreds of pounds, part of the main structural support of the mansion.
"Move. Damn you, move!" Vane snarled.
He pumped mana into his arms. Not a Skill, just raw, desperate reinforcement. His Rank 3 muscles bulged, the fibers tearing under the strain.
He screamed, a raw, animal sound, and shoved.
The wood groaned. It shifted an inch. Then two.
Vane roared, pouring every ounce of hate and grief into his arms. The beam rolled.
His leg came free with a wet, sickening pop.
Vane collapsed, gasping, white spots dancing in his vision. He looked at his leg. It was a mess of purple bruising and twisted angles, but he didn't care.
He dragged himself toward Helena.
He dug her out with his bare hands. He threw aside slate tiles and splintered wood until he could pull her free. She was light. Too light. The illness had taken almost everything before Gareth took the rest.
He held her for a moment, rocking back and forth in the dust.
"I can't fix this, Mom," he whispered into her hair. "I can't mend this. I'm so sorry."
He laid her down gently. He needed to bury her.
He looked around the ruined courtyard. The ground was packed mud and cobblestone, now slagged and broken by the Knight's power.
Vane crawled to a patch of earth near what used to be the garden wall. He didn't have a shovel.
He reached into his Library.
[Skill Activated: Earth Spike (Grade E)]
He didn't launch the spike. He drove his mana into the ground, churning the soil, breaking up the hard-packed earth. He did it again and again, burning through his reserves until he had a depression deep enough.
He dragged himself back to her. He picked her up. It was agony to stand on his broken leg, but he forced himself upright. He carried her to the grave.
He laid her down. He arranged her dress. He closed her eyes.
He didn't have a shroud. He took off his leather jacket—the one reinforced with mana-weave—and laid it over her face.
He pushed the earth back in with his hands.
When it was done, Vane sat by the mound of fresh dirt. His hands were bloody. His leg was throbbing with a pulse that matched his heart.
He felt hollowed out.
He picked up the golden letter from where it had fallen in the dirt. The blood from his hands smeared over the wax seal.
'You possess a mind sharp enough to cut glass,' she had told him. 'And you use it to extort penny-ante merchants in a mud puddle.'
Vane laughed. It was a wet, gurgling sound.
"You were right," he whispered to the grave. "I was just a big fish in a small pond. And then a real monster showed up and stepped on us."
He looked at the letter. The memory of the woman who gave it to him crashed into his mind.
Three months ago.
Headmistress Evangeline stood in his office. She had just frozen his guards in time.
"I've watched you in the streets," Evangeline said. Her eyes were like collapsing stars. "You only steal from the weak because their memories are small. A bit of hunger, some childhood trauma: you can digest that."
She stepped closer. The pressure of her presence made Vane's knees buckle.
"But if you want to be a king, you'll need more than scraps. Do you have any idea what happens if you try to take my sword? You'd have to live through eighty years of war and discipline in a single second. Your brain would just turn to mush. You can't steal time, Vane. But you can steal the things people are born with. Come to Zenith and find the real monsters. If you can survive their nightmares, you might actually stand a chance at being a god."
Vane opened his eyes.
The memory faded. He looked at the grave one last time.
He had stayed in Oakhaven to protect her. He had stayed because he was afraid of the ocean.
Now, there was nothing keeping him here. Oakhaven was just mud and memories.
Evangeline was right. He could never beat Gareth by copying skills. Gareth had spent decades refining his Aura. If Vane tried to copy that, his mind would shatter under the weight of those years.
He needed to find people who held EX-Rank concepts. He needed to dive into their minds and survive the apocalypse that created them.
It was suicide. It was madness.
"I'm not going there to be a student, Mom," Vane whispered to the mound of earth.
He stood up, putting his weight on his good leg. He clutched the letter tight.
He was going there to find a weapon. A weapon big enough to kill a Sentinel. A weapon big enough to kill a God.
"I'm coming," Vane whispered to the empty air.
He ripped the seal.
Golden light engulfed him, swallowing the ruins, the fresh grave, and the failure.
The King of Puddles died in the rubble. The Usurper was born.