The air in Shadow-Crest Manor didn't smell of sanctity. It smelled of cold iron, damp earth, and the metallic tang of blood.
Elian lay on a slab of black basalt in the manor's subterranean recovery chamber. Above him, a rotating circle of purple mana crystals hummed, attempting to soothe the jagged edges of his shattered nervous system.
Every breath was a battle.
The Neural Burnout had left his nerves feeling like frayed wires exposed to salt water. But the pain was secondary. The primary sensation was the Mass.
The Ring of Weight was no longer a piece of jewelry. It had become part of his marrow. He could feel his bones—dense, heavy, and resonating with the very core of the planet.
"Drink," a voice commanded.
Lunaria stood over him, holding a vial of glowing obsidian liquid. The Moon Elf's eyes were sharp, scanning the black veins—the Abyss Markings—that now snaked up Elian's left arm.
Elian reached out. His hand moved with a strange, deliberate slowness. When he took the vial, the basalt slab beneath him groaned and cracked.
"Control it, Elian," Lunaria warned. "You are not just carrying weight anymore. You are the weight. If you lose focus, you will sink through this floor and into the mantle of the world."
Elian swallowed the liquid. It was bitter, cold, and tasted of old graves.
"Morality is a luxury for those with intact Cores," Elian rasped, his voice a dry whisper. "In the Abyss, there is only the cost of staying alive. This pain... it's just the interest I'm paying on the debt of my survival."
He sat up. The movement was a violent display of physics. The air around him seemed to warp, the atmospheric pressure spiking for a brief second.
Countess Vespera entered the chamber, her silk robes hissing against the stone floor. She looked at the cracked basalt slab and then at the boy whose face was as beautiful as a doll's and as cold as a tombstone.
"Your 'Hantu' has caused quite a stir, Lunaria," Vespera said, her voice dripping with political venom. "The Church of Celestia hasn't just put a bounty on him. They've sent a formal request for extradition to our Queen. They call him a 'World-Eater'."
"The Church fears what they cannot categorize," Lunaria replied calmly.
"They have reason to fear," Vespera countered. She snapped her fingers.
From the shadows of the room, a Shadow-Sentinel emerged. It was a liquid-mana construct, a Tier 3 guardian designed to restrain and neutralize high-threat mages. It had no face, only a shifting mass of dark tendrils that hummed with a silencing frequency.
"A test?" Elian asked, his eyes turning a pitch-black that seemed to swallow the room's light.
"A necessity," Vespera said. "If you cannot defeat a simple sentinel without collapsing the manor, you are a liability, not an asset."
The Sentinel moved. It didn't run; it phased through the floor, appearing instantly behind Elian. Its tendrils lashed out, intended to wrap around his neck and drain his vitality.
Elian didn't turn around. He didn't have to.
He closed his eyes and felt the Mass of the Sentinel. Everything has weight. Everything has a center of gravity.
Internal Art: Mass Anchoring.
Elian didn't strike. He simply increased the density of the space around his left shoulder.
When the tendrils touched him, they didn't constrict. They shattered. It was like a silk ribbon trying to squeeze a diamond. The Sentinel's mana structure buckled under the sudden gravitational shear Elian emitted.
"My weight isn't a burden," Elian muttered, the black veins on his arm glowing with a dull, menacing light. "It is the only truth I have left."
The Sentinel recoiled, its form flickering. It tried to phase into its "Ethereal State," becoming intangible to avoid physical damage. This was the trick that made Shadow-Sentinels the nightmare of physical warriors.
But Elian wasn't just a warrior.
He lunged. His hand, heavy with the force of a falling star, grabbed the "intangible" shadow.
The Abyss Markings on his arm flared. The broken Core in his chest acted as a vacuum, not for mana, but for the very essence of the shadow. He wasn't hitting it; he was pulling its existence into his own void.
The Sentinel let out a silent scream as its form was crushed into a small, dense sphere of mana in Elian's palm.
CRUNCH.
The sphere imploded. The shockwave blew out the mana crystals in the ceiling.
Elian stood in the sudden darkness, his hand still smoking from the friction of reality bending.
"Impressive," Vespera whispered, her previous arrogance replaced by a genuine, shivering dread. "You didn't use a single spell. You simply denied its right to exist in your space."
"Hope is a parasite," Elian said, looking at his hand. "It lives on the blood of the desperate. I stopped hoping for a cure long ago. I've accepted the rot. Have you?"
Lunaria stepped forward, her expression unreadable. "Vespera, the boy is tired. We have the pass. We leave for the southern border tonight."
"You might not make it to the border," Vespera said, pulling a scroll from her sleeve. It bore the seal of the Order of the Weeping Eye. "The Church isn't waiting for the Queen's response. They've sent The Executioner."
Elian's eyes sharpened. "Alaric?"
"No," Vespera said. "Alaric is a boy playing at being a hero. The Church has sent High Inquisitor Malphas. He is a Tier 5 Zealot. He doesn't capture. He purges."
Elian reached for the Vane's Rusted Blade leaning against the basalt slab. The weapon was old, ugly, and covered in a layer of grime that no polish could remove. But as he touched it, the blade resonated with his bones.
"A Tier 5," Elian mused. He didn't look afraid. He looked hungry.
"If they want a monster," he continued, "I will show them the abyss they created. A High Inquisitor's blood should be enough to stabilize my nerves for the journey."
Lunaria looked at him, realizing that the "training" phase was over. This was no longer a rescue mission or a flight for safety. This was a war of attrition between a boy and the world that had tried to bury him.
"We leave in an hour," Lunaria said. "Malphas will likely intercept us at the Grave of the First King. It's the only place where the mana density is high enough for him to manifest his Full Domain."
"Good," Elian said, his footsteps cracking the stone as he walked toward the exit. "Let him bring his domain. I'll make sure it's the last thing he ever sees."