Chapter 4: A Fallen Star

Some where far beyond from Kaiser's world

The ceiling of the infirmary was a fractured map of cracks and water stains. For three days, it had been Lucian’s entire world.

He tried to draw a breath, but his lungs felt like they were packed with powdered glass. The "Tempest Slash" hadn’t just defeated him; it had unraveled him. In the center of his chest, where his mana sphere had once pulsed with the pride of a Slayer, there was only a hollow, freezing void.

He was now acripple.

Click. Click.

Heavy boots echoed against the stone floor. Lucian didn’t turn his head. He knew that rhythm—the approach of a predator circling a carcass.

“A Viremont who cannot hold mana is not a son,” a voice boomed, cold as a funeral bell.

Lord Albrecht Viremont stood in the doorway. He didn’t step inside. The sheer pressure of a Spear bearer radiated from him, a crushing weight that made the bandages on Lucian’s chest soak through with fresh blood.

“Father…” Lucian rasped, weak, broken.

“Do not use that word,” Albrecht’s eyes were pits of absolute shadow. “A father raises a successor. I built a tool, and that tool has shattered. Next week, you will be stripped of the name Viremont. You will be cast out with nothing but the rags on your back. Consider it mercy that I do not kill you myself for the shame you brought to my table.”

The cloak of his presence swept past the doorway as he left. Seven days to disappear. Seven days to survive as a commoner. Seven days to die.

Lucian’s gaze drifted to the side table. A surgical knife gleamed coldly in the dim light. Clean. Quick. Irrevocable.

His trembling hand hovered over the blade. Just one cut, he thought. One last defiance… one last chance to die a Viremont.

Then the air curdled.

The knife disintegrated in his fingers, reduced to fine, black ash. Lucian recoiled. And then, the light began to bleed.

A crimson ripple opened from the air . Then another. They pulsed faster and faster, weaving into a rectangular sheet of shifting  blood that floated before him.

The crimson glow pulsed, forming a translucent screen before Lucian’s dazed eyes.

[Will you accept the Throne of ???]

Lucian blinked. His fevered mind struggled to comprehend the glowing text. It isn’t magic. It isn’t a spell. It isn’t human.

[YES / NO] [TIME LEFT: 09… 08…]

“Is this… a hallucination?” he muttered, vision blurring. “Raellis… did you poison my mind too?”

The red light throbbed like a heartbeat that didn’t belong to him. The numbers ticked down.

[03… 02…]

Lucian’s pride, black and furious, flared in spite. I refuse to die in the dirt.

“I accept.”

Lucian Viremont had just traded his broken mana for a crimson nightmare. And the nightmare was just getting started.

A/N : Lucian has accepted a power that doesn't belong to him. But while the 'Chosen One' begins his rise, what happened to the 'Anomaly' who shattered the rules in the cave?