The "rowdy kids" in the Knight Division dormitories had quickly learned a painful lesson: ranking first in the exams wasn't just a matter of luck. After a single night of Lucien "negotiating" the house rules—which involved several roommates being pinned to the floor before they could even draw a breath—the room was deathly silent.

  Lucien slept like the dead, his Equilibrium maintaining a low-level sensory perimeter even in slumber.

  “GET UP!”

  The door slammed open. “FIRST-YEARS, ON YOUR FEET! MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!”

  His roommates were already standing at attention, waiting for him to lead the way.

  The first-year class was summoned to the Engraving Grounds. They walked through a valley, and when they arrived, before them stretched a vast sacred landscape carved into distinct elemental zones—each one pulsing with its own aura, its own temperature, and its own unique atmosphere. Lucien has heard of it before, but he has never seen it in person.

  The Empire’s magical foundation is divided into five "Biomes of Power," elemental shrines designed to force a resonance between a student’s soul and the magical ink.

  Fire (The Sunforge): A scorched obsidian plateau under a constant column of golden sunlight. It is the most physically demanding path, testing the "will to burn" through extreme heat and pain.

  Water (The Still Mirror): A perfectly still, silent lake that defies wind and gravity. It evaluates mental clarity and emotional control, reacting only to those with a crystalline, calm spirit.

  Wind (The Open Sky): A ring of stone pillars where gravity feels light and sentient winds twine like serpents. It measures spiritual agility and the ability to maintain an internal anchor amidst constant motion.

  Earth (The Deep Root): A moss-covered hollow with crushing gravity and a rhythmic subterranean thrum. It demands absolute stability, rejecting any student whose spirit wavers or shakes.

  Neutral (The Inner Sanctum): A gray stone amphitheater acting as a magical void. Lacking elemental flair, it provides a cold, pragmatic environment to test the unclassifiable or exceptionally rare against pure energy.

  The contrast was jarring. In his previous life, the First Vein had been opened in a damp, lightless basement by a man named Levi—a "coot" whose breath smelled of cheap ale and whose needles were more suited for leather than human skin.

  It had been a crude, agonizing procedure done to satisfy the survival needs of his teacher’s mercenary group. Levi had been one of his teacher’s old acquaintances—a man whose "surgical" precision involved a rusty needle and a prayer to whatever god wasn't listening. He had engraved the entire mercenary group in that same dingy hole, the air thick with the smell of copper, sweat, and the raucous, inappropriate laughter of the men.

  Lucien felt a sharp, unexpected pang in his chest. He missed them. He missed the chaotic antics, the rough camaraderie, and the way his teacher would cuff him on the back of the head for being too serious. But he couldn't let sentiment cloud his vision. He had come here to prevent the end of the world, a purpose that demanded he be a cold, calculating instrument of change.

  Yet, as he prepared for the engraving, that purpose felt like it was fracturing.

  Now, Lucien stood before the Five Pillars of the Soul, a sacred landscape that felt more like a physical manifestation of the gods than a school ground. The sheer scale of the elemental zones was breathtaking, a "Biome of Power" for every path a soul could take.

  As he prepared for the engraving, Lucien’s mind drifted back to the memory of his teacher. He could almost hear the man’s voice, rough and gravelly, echoing through the silence of the Sanctum.

  "Life is precious, after all."

  It was a phrase his teacher uttered after every lesson on lethality—a paradox he had beaten into Lucien’s bones. You didn't have to be a saint, and you didn't have to spare the man trying to slit your throat, but you also didn't need to be a butcher. If an opportunity existed to let someone live, you took it. His teacher believed that humans can change for the better, and he was always an excellent judge when it came to that, but Lucien was not. He couldn't say the same for himself. Seeing the goofy boy, he couldn't help but think, can this boy really change?

  The conflict in Lucien’s chest tightened like a physical weight.

  How could he reconcile this? In the future, Ray Melborne was a calamity—the Ashborne, a monster who would eventually stand atop a mountain of corpses, including Lucien's own. But right now, Ray was just a boy, sweating and struggling to find his place in a world that clearly terrified him.

  Can I kill a version of a man who hasn't committed his crimes yet? Lucien wondered. If I strike him down now, am I saving the world, or am I just murdering an innocent child because I'm afraid of a ghost?

  He felt the Equilibrium within him shift, not through his command, but in response to his internal turmoil. He had come back to change the future, but his teacher's motto was proving to be a far more difficult "vein" to master than the one currently being etched into his spirit.

  Lucien just kept looking at Ray. The boy was miserable. He looked like a fraying wire—all frantic, jolting energy and shallow, hitched breaths that barely made it past his throat. He watched Ray’s finger tremble as he pointed at the shrines, noting how the boy’s shoulders were bunched so tightly they were practically touching his earlobes.

  It was a pathetic display. Ray looked less like a noble and more like a cornered animal, realizing his time for slaughter had come.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Look at him, Lucien thought, his eyes narrowing as they tracked a bead of cold sweat rolling down Ray’s temple. He’s panicking before the needle even touches his skin. He looks like a stiff breeze could shatter him into a thousand pieces.

  There was something profoundly irritating about the way Ray’s jaw worked—clenching and unclenching in a desperate, rhythmic grind. He was a mess of "human" weakness: the wide, darting eyes; the way his weight shifted as if his feet were searching for a way to bolt; the crack in his voice that signaled a total lack of internal anchor.

  Lucien felt a familiar, cold weight settle in his stomach. It was hard to reconcile this twitching, hyperventilating wreck with the monster he remembered—the man whose voice had carried the weight of a god and whose hands had dismantled an Empire without a single tremor.

  The world is going to end because of a kid who can't even exhale properly, Lucien mused bitterly. He adjusted his stance, his gaze shifting from Ray’s pale face to the terrifying intensity of the Sunforge.

  “RAY MELBORNE TO THE SUNFORGE.”

  Ray was led toward the Sunforge, the scorched obsidian plateau. Even from a distance, the heat shimmered off the ground in waves, and the golden column of sunlight looked heavy, as if it were physically pinning the candidates to the earth.

  The Engraver’s robe flared with protective sigils, but they looked like paper shields against the Sunforge.

  “Present your back,” the man intoned.

  Lucien watched from the shadows of a pillar, his eyes narrowed to slits. Ray sat with a posture that screamed 'victim' rather than 'candidate.' When the metal stylus dipped into the molten red ink, Lucien felt the air pressure in the valley drop. It was a localized distortion—the kind that preceded a catastrophe.

  Then, the stylus touched Ray’s skin.

  WHOOM.

  A pillar of golden fire didn't just surge; it hunted. The beam twisted a full meter off its axis to slam into Ray’s spine. Lucien felt the heat blister the air, but more importantly, he felt the Tilt. The world wasn't balancing this energy—Ray was inhaling it.

  Ray’s scream was raw, but the fire it triggered was wrong. It wasn't the vibrant orange of a Fire Vein; it was a bleached, blinding white, bleeding veins of grey ash that drifted off his skin like burnt paper.

  “Stabilize the channel!” the Engraver shrieked, panic cracking his voice.

  Lucien gripped the stone pillar so hard his knuckles turned white. The molten lines on Ray’s back were spiraling downward—collapsing stars pulling soot through his nervous system.

  Ray was hyperventilating, his eyes glazed. A shockwave of ash burst outward, heavy and gray, forcing even the high-born Melbornes to recoil. Only Elaine leaned forward, her eyes dancing with a terrifying, clinical fascination.

  The Sunforge roared, the flames rearing like a beast trying to swallow its master. The stylus moved with a life of its own, carving jagged, unnatural arcs across Ray’s flesh at a speed no human hand could guide.

  “HELP ME CONTAIN IT!” the Engraver screamed as two other masters rushed in to anchor the boy to reality.

  Then came the snap. A soundless impact. A pulse of white fire that turned the world negative.

  The Sunforge didn't just dim—it died. Every flame in the fire site was extinguished instantly, as if Ray’s body had vacuumed the heat out of the atmosphere. The only thing left was a haunting, snowfall of ash drifting over the soot.

  Lucien stared at the empty basin, his heart cold as ice. He just witnessed the birth of the Ashborne.

  “NEXT CANDIDATE — LUCIEN D’ROSELLE!”

  Lucien’s feet moved mechanically toward the Neutral shrine.

  “D’Roselle! Your resonance is Thunder,” the lead Engraver called out, gesturing toward a complex array of silver conduits. “We have prepared the Skybreach transition specifically for your—”

  Lucien stopped. He looked at the altar, then at his own hands. The lessons of his past and the horrors of his future were a violent storm inside his chest. He knew what he had to do to survive, but he also knew what his teacher would say. Life is precious. Even a life that might one day end his own.

  “…I decline.”

  “You may not decline!” The Engraver stepped forward, his face flushed with a mixture of confusion and brewing rage. “All first-years must receive their Origin Vein or face immediate—”

  Lucien lifted a hand, a gesture so dismissive it was an insult to five thousand years of tradition. “No,” he said quietly. “I won’t have this engraved.”

  A ripple of shock tore through the ranks of the students. The whispers were like a swarm of hornets. “Is he insane?” “Does he want to get expelled on the first day?” “Can you even say no to the Ceremony?!”

  “Boy,” the Engraver snarled, stepping into Lucien’s personal space. “Step onto the platform. Now.”

  Lucien’s eyes grew colder than the winter air. Equilibrium hummed beneath his skin, not as a tool for combat, but as a wall of absolute indifference. “I said no.”

  The atmosphere around him bent—not violently, but subtly, as if the very atoms of the valley hesitated to touch him. The Engraver's hand stopped inches from Lucien's shoulder, unable to find the leverage to force him. Finally, the herald cleared her throat, her voice trembling. “…Candidate D’Roselle… refuses the ritual.”

  “You cannot advance in the Knight Division without a Vein!” the Engraver snapped, spittle flying. “You will be a commoner without power! A waste of space!”

  Lucien sighed. The man was right—he couldn't watch Ray if he was cast out of the gates. He needed the status. He needed the proximity. He scanned the crowd, his eyes landing on a small, raven-haired figure standing with the Melborne siblings.

  An idea, dark and deliciously calculated, popped into his head.

  “I will take the engraving,” Lucien announced, his voice carrying a new, sharp edge.

  He began to walk. He didn't head for the altar or the Skybreach transition. He walked toward Elaine.

  Right now, she was just a brat with a cold face and a sharp tongue. But Lucien knew her better than she knew herself. He knew she would become a superpower. He knew she would be his teacher's greatest ally. And most of all, he knew she valued one thing above all else: Loyalty.

  Then—silently, deliberately—Lucien D’Roselle dropped to one knee.

  The sound of his knee hitting the grass was the only noise in the valley. He reached out and took her small, gloved hand in his.

  “My lady,” he said, his voice resonant and clear. “I will only let you engrave me.”

  Lucien relished the moment. In his previous life, Elaine was a woman who could predict a dozen moves ahead; very few things in the world could surprise her. But now? Her eyebrows were raised high, her icy composure shattered, and her eyes were wide with genuine, unadulterated shock.

  Lucien looked in the direction of the infirmary where they took Ray.

  "I'll watch him," Lucien whispered to the empty air. "If he turns... if that goofy mask ever slips... I'll do what needs to be done. But until then, I'll let him live."