The heat of Vance's forge was a living, breathing entity. It licked at the soot-stained stone walls and baked the dampness out of the air, creating an oasis of stifling warmth in the otherwise freezing slums of Oakhaven.
Kaelen stepped through the heavy wooden doors, the metallic scent of fresh blood still clinging faintly to the collar of his tattered coat. He didn't say a word. He walked straight to his corner, picked up the massive leather bellows, and began the rhythmic, exhausting work of stoking the coals.
Push. Pull. Push. Pull.
Vance stood at the anvil, his back turned to Kaelen. The crippled blacksmith was hammering a piece of folded steel, the rhythmic clang-clang-clang ringing out with absolute precision. But today, something was different. The rhythm was faster, harsher.
Suddenly, the hammering stopped.
Without turning around, Vance casually tossed the heavy, five-pound iron hammer over his shoulder, directly toward Kaelen's head.
It wasn't a gentle toss. It was a projectile moving with the speed and lethal kinetic force of a ballista bolt. A normal unawakened boy would have had his skull caved in before he even registered the movement.
Kaelen didn't flinch. His Void Perception, operating passively, had calculated the trajectory, velocity, and mass of the hammer the microsecond it left Vance's calloused hand. Kaelen simply raised his left hand, letting go of the bellows for a fraction of a second.
Smack.
Kaelen caught the head of the hammer perfectly in his palm. The sheer kinetic force of the impact sent a shockwave up his arm, tearing the worn fabric of his coat sleeve, but his bones did not break. His muscles, fortified by the dark energy of the Null Singularity, absorbed the momentum instantly. He set the hammer down on a nearby barrel without a word and resumed pumping the bellows.
Vance slowly turned around, leaning heavily on his wooden peg leg. The old man's scarred, burn-ruined face twisted into a terrifying, humorless grin. His sharp blue eyes, usually dulled by exhaustion, were currently burning with an intense, suffocating light.
"Three dead," Vance grated, his voice dropping an octave, sounding less like a blacksmith and more like an avalanche grinding stones together. "One crippled. Peak Rank 1 and Early Rank 1s. And you butchered them in less than six seconds using nothing but a piece of pig bone and raw leverage."
Kaelen didn't stop pumping the bellows. "They were in the way."
"The Blood Hawks run the Narrows," Vance continued, limping toward Kaelen. With every step, the ambient temperature in the room seemed to drop, completely defying the roaring fire of the forge. "They are backed by the 'Iron Vein Syndicate' in the Undercity. Their boss is a Mid Rank 3 Earth Realm cultivator. If he finds out a slum rat slaughtered his men, he won't just kill you, boy. He'll flay you alive and hang your skin from the gates."
"Then I will ensure he doesn't find out," Kaelen replied, his voice a flat, dead calm.
Vance stopped inches from Kaelen. The old man reached out and grabbed Kaelen's wrist—the one that had caught the hammer. Vance's grip was like a vice made of star-forged titanium. Kaelen tried to pull back, utilizing his newly evolved Mid-Phase Rank 0 strength.
He couldn't move an inch. It was as if his arm was embedded in a mountain.
Impossible, Kaelen thought, his dark gray eyes widening slightly. He isn't using mana. There is no aura. This is pure, unadulterated physical density.
"You think because you survived the night and killed a few street thugs, you are strong?" Vance whispered, leaning in. The suffocating pressure radiating from the old man was purely physical—the aura of a predator that had slaughtered armies. "Your body has evolved. The void inside you is reinforcing your flesh. But you are still an infant playing with swords. Your bones are harder than iron now, yes. But against a Rank 3, iron is paper."
Vance let go of Kaelen's wrist and reached under the heavy wooden workbench. He pulled out two thick, brutally unrefined bracers. They were completely black, lacking any shine, and seemed to absorb the light from the forge fire.
He threw them at Kaelen's feet. They hit the stone floor with a deafening, unnatural THUD, cracking the solid granite tiles beneath them.
"Abyssal Lead," Vance stated, crossing his arms. "Mined from the deepest trenches of the Mountain Range. It completely rejects mana. Cultivators hate it because they can't reinforce it with their aura. But it is the densest, heaviest mundane metal in existence. Each bracer weighs two hundred and fifty pounds."
Kaelen stared at the dull black metal. Five hundred pounds of dead weight.
"Your iron training sword is useless now," Vance said, turning his back and walking toward his private quarters in the back of the forge. "Put them on. Wear them when you sleep. Wear them when you eat. Wear them when you pump those bellows. If you take them off for even a second, don't bother coming back to my forge. The void needs pressure to grow, Kaelen. If you don't crush yourself, this world will do it for you."
The heavy wooden door slammed shut behind Vance.
Kaelen stood alone in the heat. He looked at his hands, then down at the bracers. A normal person would die of exhaustion just trying to stand up with them.
Kaelen knelt down. He undid the heavy leather straps and locked the Abyssal Lead bracers onto his forearms. The moment the clasps clicked shut, Kaelen felt the world try to pull him into the core of the earth. His knees buckled instantly, slamming into the cracked granite floor. The muscles in his back screamed, tearing under the sudden, immense gravitational shift.
Sweat poured from his forehead, stinging his eyes. He gritted his teeth, tasting blood as he bit down on his own lip. Inside his chest, the Null Singularity pulsed faintly, releasing microscopic tendrils of dark, healing energy to repair the tearing muscle fibers.
Slowly, agonizingly, Kaelen pushed himself back up to his feet. His arms hung by his sides like lead pendulums. Every breath was a battle against gravity.
"One," Kaelen whispered, taking a single, shuddering step forward.
He didn't leave the forge. He walked back to the bellows. He grasped the handles with his impossibly heavy arms and began to push.
Push... Pull...
It was a slice of life in Eldoria. A quiet, unseen, brutal war fought in the shadows of a rotting town.
Night descended upon Oakhaven like a suffocating blanket. The freezing mist rolled in from the Whispering Woods, cloaking the slums in a dense, impenetrable gray.
Kaelen sat cross-legged on the floor of his shack. The Abyssal Lead bracers rested on his knees, pinning him to the ground. He was in a state of deep meditation, not cultivating mana, but actively trying to understand the terrifying void inside his chest.
With his Void Perception turned inward, he realized that the Null Singularity wasn't just a black hole; it was a hungry, living organ. It had consumed the Corrupted Wolf, using a fraction of that energy to heal and evolve Kaelen's physical vessel to Mid-Phase Rank 0. But the rest of the energy had vanished into the abyss, locked away behind a threshold he couldn't yet cross.
To reach Peak Phase Rank 0—the final stage of mortal limits before true supernatural ascension—he needed an astronomical amount of energy. Far more than a single Rank 2 beast could provide.
A sudden, faint rustling sound outside his shack broke his concentration.
Kaelen's gray eyes snapped open in the darkness. His Void Perception swept outward. Through the rotting wooden walls, he saw a condensed, suppressed sphere of emerald-green mana moving stealthily toward his door.
Peak Rank 2. The girl.
He didn't move. He simply waited.
A moment later, a rhythmic tapping sounded against the wood. Two quick knocks, a pause, then one more. A code.
"It's unlocked," Kaelen said, his voice carrying clearly through the freezing air.
The door creaked open, protesting on its rusted hinges. Elara slipped inside, immediately pulling the door shut behind her. She threw off her dirt-smeared brown cloak, shivering from the cold. Beneath the rags, she wore a beautifully tailored, albeit mud-splattered, traveling suit made of deep blue wyvern-silk—a material worth more than the entire slum district combined.
She looked around the miserable, ten-by-ten-foot shack. There was no fire, no food, just a rotting bed and Kaelen sitting motionless on the floor, cloaked in shadows.
"You're hard to find, Kaelen," Elara said, her breath misting. She tried to maintain the haughty, composed aura of high nobility, but the subtle tremor in her voice betrayed her anxiety. "And you live in... less than ideal conditions."
"If you came to critique my architecture, you can leave," Kaelen replied flatly. He didn't stand up; the bracers made unnecessary movement a waste of calories. "How did you find me?"
"I'm a Vaelen," Elara said, lifting her chin slightly, a spark of pride returning to her amber eyes. "My family controls sixty percent of the Empire's information guilds. I may be cut off from my network, but tracking a boy with no mana signature who frequents the grumpiest blacksmith in town wasn't impossible."
She took a step closer, her eyes dropping to the massive black metal weights on Kaelen's forearms. She was a Peak Rank 2 cultivator, deeply educated in magical materials. She recognized the dull, light-absorbing sheen instantly.
"Abyssal Lead?" she gasped, her composure slipping entirely. "Are you insane? Those must weigh hundreds of pounds! Why are you wearing them?"
"They keep me grounded," Kaelen said simply. "State your business, Elara."
Elara blinked, surprised that he knew her name. But she quickly regained her footing. She reached into her silken robes and pulled out a small, exquisite pouch woven from silver thread. She unfastened the top and let the contents spill onto the rotting wooden table nearby.
Three small, perfectly spherical crystalline stones clattered against the wood. They pulsed with a soft, hypnotic light—one red, one blue, and one earthy brown.
Kaelen's breath hitched.
Beneath the iron Ring of the Mundane, the Null Singularity violently shuddered. A wave of primal, agonizing hunger roared through Kaelen's veins. His Void Perception locked onto the stones. They weren't raw, unrefined ores like Gorm sold. They were perfectly condensed, high-purity Beast Cores.
"Mid-Grade Rank 2 Beast Cores," Elara said, watching Kaelen's face intently, trying to read his reaction. "A Fire Lizard, a Frost Serpent, and an Earth Bear. On the open market, these three stones could buy this entire slum and still leave enough to purchase a minor lordship."
Kaelen forced his face to remain an emotionless mask, though it took every ounce of his willpower to suppress the violent urge to lunge forward and swallow the cores whole.
"Why are you showing me this?" Kaelen asked, his voice deliberately slow and even.
Elara crossed her arms. "I am a merchant, Kaelen. I deal in investments. Yesterday, I saw an unawakened boy with zero mana completely bypass the physical limitations of the human body and slaughter three armed men in six seconds. You are an anomaly. A ghost."
She leaned forward, her amber eyes burning with calculated determination. "The Azure Sky Sect has blocked the main gates, looking for some 'Cursed Omen'. My family's shadow-guards are sweeping the perimeter, looking for me. If I try to leave Oakhaven alone, my mana signature will be detected by the Sect's arrays within seconds, and my family will drag me back to marry that bloated, sadistic Imperial Prince."
"So you want an escort," Kaelen summarized, calculating the variables.
"I want a ghost," Elara corrected. "I have a cloaking artifact that can hide my aura for exactly three hours. I need someone who can navigate the Whispering Woods—the smuggler's routes—without triggering the magical wards set up by the Empire. Someone who can kill silently, quickly, and leave absolutely no magical trace behind. I need you."
Kaelen looked at the three glowing cores on the table. If he consumed them, the pure, uncorrupted energy would push his Null Singularity right to the edge of Peak Phase Rank 0. He needed them. But getting involved with a runaway noble meant painting a massive target on his back.
"Three cores isn't enough to risk the wrath of the Azure Sky Sect and the Vaelen Merchant House," Kaelen said coldly.
Elara smiled, a genuine, brilliant merchant's smile. It was the first time Kaelen had seen her look truly dangerous.
"I didn't say these were your payment," Elara said softly. "These are just the down payment. The retainer fee."
She pulled out a golden, rune-engraved medallion from her pocket. "If you get me out of Oakhaven and safely to the neutral territory of the Free City of Aethelgard, I will grant you unrestricted access to a Vaelen minor vault. You will have more beast cores, weapons, and resources than a Rank 4 cultivator could use in a lifetime."
It was a devil's bargain. A suicidal mission in exchange for the very fuel his dark evolution demanded.
Kaelen closed his eyes. In the darkness of his mind, he saw the silver-haired maiden from the carriage. He saw the cold, insurmountable gap between them. To close that gap, to survive the inevitable war that his very existence would trigger, he couldn't stay in Oakhaven forever. He had to step into the wider world. He had to eat.
Kaelen opened his eyes. They were completely devoid of warmth.
"We leave in three days," Kaelen said, standing up. The Abyssal Lead bracers dragged heavily on his arms, but his spine remained perfectly straight. "Until then, you stay hidden. If you get caught before then, I don't know you."
Elara let out a long breath she didn't realize she was holding. She nodded, leaving the three glowing beast cores on the table. "Deal. Three days."
She pulled her dirt-smeared cloak back on and vanished into the freezing night, leaving Kaelen alone in the dark.
Kaelen walked over to the table. He reached out with his heavy, lead-bound hands and picked up the red Fire Lizard core.
He didn't admire it. He didn't try to cultivate it using traditional methods. He simply took off the iron ring on his left hand.
The void awakened.
Kaelen crushed the crystalline core in his palm. Instead of shattering, the pure red energy melted, instantly sucked into the microscopic black hole in his chest. A terrifying, burning heat flooded his veins, immediately clashing with the extreme, crushing gravity of the Abyssal Lead bracers.
Pain, glorious and transformative, ripped through his body.
"More," Kaelen whispered to the empty shack, his gray eyes glowing with a faint, abyssal darkness as he reached for the second core. "I need more."
The Zero was starving. And the world was about to become his banquet.