The pocket dimension was not a place of light or color. It was an endless, obsidian expanse where the stars were not suns, but frozen tears of mana. Here, gravity was a suggestion, and time flowed like thick, cold honey.
Cian collapsed onto the "floor"—a surface of dark, glass-like ripples—his hands still clutching the tattered silk of his mother's dress and the heavy, cooling weight of his father's arm.
He tried to gasp, but his throat was a ruined tunnel of scorched flesh. Every breath felt like swallowing shards of hot glass. He rolled onto his back, staring up at the "sky" of his own soul.
[The Mourning Grave: Ex-Rank]
[Status: Soul-Bound. Master Recognized.]
The words flickered in his mind, glowing with a ghostly white light. The ability didn't speak with words anymore; it communicated through a cold, direct injection of knowledge. He now understood the price of his awakening.
He was no longer fully human. To hold an Ex-rank ability with an E-rank body was like trying to contain a star in a ceramic jar. The jar was cracking. His throat was just the beginning.
The Stasis of Grief
Cian dragged himself toward the bodies of his parents. In the stasis of the Mourning Grave, they didn't bleed anymore. The red pools on Elara's chest were frozen in time, glittering like rubies.
He touched his mother's face. Her skin was still warm—a cruel vestige of the life that had been snatched away seconds ago. On Earth, as a surgeon, he had seen hundreds of corpses. He had delivered "Time of Death" pronouncements with a steady voice and a professional mask.
But this wasn't a patient. This was the woman who had sung to him when the "Ex-rank" whispers in his head became too loud.
A sound tried to tear itself from his chest—a sob, a howl, a scream for justice. But it died in his mangled larynx. He opened his mouth, and only a spray of dark blood hit the glass floor. He beat his fists against the ground, his small frame shaking with a silent, violent tremors.
He was a doctor. He knew the anatomy of a broken heart, but he had never known it felt like this—like being hollowed out by a rusty knife.
[...Master...] the Void whispered, its voice now a low, subservient thrum. [...I... can... preserve... them...]
In the distance of the dimension, two pillars of translucent crystal began to rise from the dark water. They weren't graves; they were pedestals of absolute stasis.
With a trembling hand, Cian guided the bodies of Kaelen and Elara onto the pedestals. A shimmering film of Ex-rank mana wrapped around them, freezing their cells, their hair, and even the last expressions on their faces.
They looked like they were merely sleeping.
"I'll bring you back," Cian thought, his eyes burning with a light that was no longer childish. "Even if I have to phase through the gates of the afterlife itself, I will find a way."
The Imperial Spire: The Ripple in the Pond
Back in the physical world, the atmosphere in the Imperial Spire was no longer one of triumph.
The Emperor stood before the holographic playback of the massacre. He watched the moment the "C-rank" boy turned into a pillar of darkness. He watched the S-rank Inquisitors—men who could level mountains—shiver like frightened dogs.
"What was that?" the Emperor asked, his voice a dangerous, low hum.
Duke van Astra sat in the shadows, his face pale. "The Crystal said C-rank. It said E-rank mana. It... it shouldn't have been possible."
"That was not C-rank," a new voice interrupted.
The Pope, Valerius, stepped into the light. His golden robes seemed dimmed, as if the memory of the blackness he had just witnessed was still draining the light from the room. "That was a Phenomenon. A rank that the Church's scripts haven't named in three thousand years."
"You mean SSS+?" the Duke asked, his voice cracking.
"Yes," the Pope whispered, his eyes fixed on the empty space where Cian had stood. "Something that makes SS-RANK like us look like a flickering candle. SSS+ rank."
The room went deathly silent. If a boy with an SSS-rank ability was loose in the Empire—and he was the son of a man they had just murdered—the "Stability" of the Empire was no longer a certainty. It was a countdown to a catastrophe.
"Find him," the Emperor commanded. "I don't care if you have to burn every village or a Noble from here to the border. If that boy reaches maturity, he will not just kill us. He will exterminate us."
The Saintess's Spiral
While Cian stood in his silent grave, the High Cathedral of Aethelgard was in chaos.
Evelina stood on the balcony of the Saintess's spire, her hands gripping the stone railing so hard the marble began to crack. She watched the smoke rising from the western horizon—the funeral pyre of the Kaelen manor.
"No... no, no, no," she whispered, her silver hair whipping in the wind.
This was her third regression. She had sacrificed her soul, her memories, and her very sanity to loop back to this point. She had leaked information, she had tried to influence the Duke, she had even prayed to a Goddess she no longer believed in.
And yet, the manor burned.
"It's a fixed point," she laughed, a jagged, terrifying sound that made the nearby priests flinch. "The Weaver... she's still holding the shears. She won't let him live."
Evelina turned her gaze toward the Cathedral's central altar. Her eyes, usually a calm blue, were now shot through with veins of violet Ex-rank mana. She wasn't just a Saintess anymore; she was a woman who had seen the world end twice.
"If the world won't let him be a part of it," she hissed, her aura flaring with enough pressure to shatter the stained-glass windows behind her, "then I will burn the world until there's nothing left but him and me. If he becomes the ghost, I will become the grave."
She didn't know he had survived. She only knew the thread was gone. And in her madness, she began to draft a new prophecy—one that would lead the Hero, Lucian, not to victory, but to a collision course with the ghost she thought she had lost.
The Void's Hunger
Deep within his dimension, Cian stood up. His E-rank mana was completely depleted, and his body was beginning to phase out of existence involuntarily. His fingers were becoming translucent, flickering like a dying lightbulb.
[...Your... shell... is... weak... Master...] the Void warned. [...The... Heart... of... the... Sky... is... needed... or... you... will... become... the... Distance...]
Cian knew what it meant. He remembered the novel. In the Emperor's vault lay the Heart of the Ancient Dragon—a quasi-SSS rank relic that could stabilize even the most volatile mana veins. It was his only hope.
But he was ten years old. He was mute. He was alone.
He looked at his parents one last time. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his surgical kit—the only thing he had managed to bring with him. He looked at the scalpel.
He didn't need to be a hero. He didn't need to be the "Extra."
He needed to be a ghost.
Cian closed his eyes and focused on the memory of the capital's sewers—the dark, forgotten veins of the city. He didn't have the mana to teleport, but the Void offered a different path. He would phase through the layers of the world until he found the place where the sun never reached.
The Assassin's Guild: The Nameless.
In the novel, they were the ones who did the dirty work for the Royals. They were the ones who knew the secrets of the Vault.
Cian stepped forward, his body flickering into nothingness. He was leaving behind the boy who loved his mother. He was leaving behind the doctor who saved lives.
When he emerged in the shadows of the capital's underbelly, he was nothing but a silent shadow with a blood-stained scalpel.
The Shadow of the Aunt
Cian didn't have the mana to stay in the Mourning Grave. His body was flickering, his atoms struggling to maintain their bond. He focused on a memory—a name his mother had whispered once in secret, a name his father had forbidden in the house.
Valeria. Elara's estranged sister. The woman who had chosen the blade over the book.
Cian phased out of the Grave and emerged in the heart of the Capital's underbelly—the Sector of Sighs. He moved through the walls of the sewers, a silent, bloody specter, until he reached a tavern that didn't exist on any map: The Severed Hand.
He collapsed in the center of the tavern's back office.
A woman sat at a desk, sharpening a dagger with a whetstone. She was the mirror image of Elara, but where Elara was soft and warm, this woman was made of flint and shadow. This was Valeria, the Master of the Assassin's Guild.
She didn't jump. She didn't gasp. She simply looked at the bleeding, translucent child on her floor.
"You have her eyes," Valeria said, her voice like grinding stones. She stood up, her S-rank presence filling the room. She looked at the blood on his clothes—the blood of her sister.
Cian tried to speak, but only a wet, rasping wheeze escaped his throat. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his mother's signet ring, held out in a trembling hand.
Valeria took the ring. Her stoic mask didn't break, but her grip on her dagger tightened until the metal groaned.
"The Inquisitors?" she asked.
Cian nodded slowly.
"The Emperor?"
Cian nodded again.
Valeria knelt in front of him. She saw the way his body was flickering—the sign of a power that was eating its host. She saw the Ruined throat.
"They think they killed the Kaelen line," she whispered, reaching out to touch his forehead. Her hand passed right through him. Her eyes widened. "Ridiculous... So that's why Elara died. She was protecting a monster."
She didn't look at him with fear. She looked at him with a dark, predatory hunger.
"You can't talk, you can't stay solid, and you're half-dead," Valeria said, pulling a vial of dark liquid from her belt and pouring it onto his throat to numb the pain. "But you're my blood. And if you want to turn the Empire into a graveyard, I'll show you where to dig the holes."
Cian looked at her, his eyes two pits of starless night. He didn't want a family. He didn't want an aunt. He wanted a weapon.
He reached out and took a piece of parchment from her desk. With a shaky hand, he wrote a single word in his mother's favorite calligraphy:
[VENGEANCE]
Valeria smiled. It was the most terrifying thing Cian had seen since the massacre.
"Welcome home, Little Ghost."