The taste of iron was the last thing Cian Valerius knew, and it was a flavor he had grown to loathe over thirty years of bondage.
It wasn't the clean, heroic iron of a sword held high against the dying sun of Oros. It was the bitter, rusted iron of the "Mana-Siphoning Shackles" that had been fused into his wrists since the day the Silverian Hegemony had declared his family traitors. For three decades, Cian had been nothing more than a Vessel a living battery for the Hegemony's High Inquisitors. They didn't value his mind, his lineage, or his dreams. They only valued the purity of his mana veins, which they drained daily to fuel their floating fortresses, leaving his soul feeling like a parched, cracked wasteland.
Through the grime-streaked window of the floating fortress, The Eye of Silver, Cian watched the final act of his world's tragedy. The Abyssal Reach the oily, sentient darkness that bled from the edges of the map had finally reached the capital. The white spires of the city were being swallowed by a tide of pitch-black fog that defied the laws of light. From within that darkness, the screams of millions rose in a horrific, dissonant choir that vibrated through the very hull of the fortress.
"Is this it?" Cian whispered, his voice a dry rasp that barely carried over the mechanical hum of the siphons.
His reflection in the glass was that of a walking corpse. At forty-six, he looked eighty. His silver-white hair hung in matted clumps, and his eyes once a vibrant Valerius blue were clouded and grey. His father, Lord Alaric, was long dead, beheaded on the steps of their ancestral Bastion. His sister, Elena, had vanished into the "Hollow" decades ago during a desperate scouting mission. House Valerius was a ghost, and he was its last, pathetic shadow.
A shockwave hit the fortress. The walls, inscribed with "Supreme-Rank" protective runes that Cian had studied for years in silent agony, groaned and shattered like brittle glass. A beam of dark, corrosive energy pure Abyssal Mana tore through the ceiling. As the floor gave way and the screams of his captors filled the air, Cian felt the terrifying weightlessness of a final fall.
If there is a God left in Oros, he thought, closing his eyes as the cold wind of the Abyss rushed up to meet him, don't give me mercy. Give me a pen. Give me a sword. Give me the chance to tear the code of this world apart.
[Synchronization Complete...]
[Soul Vessel: Cian Valerius.]
[Status: Regressed (Cycle 1).]
[Warning: Physical Body is in a 'Dormant' State. System restricted to Analysis Mode.]
The smell of ozone and old, cold stone hit him like a physical blow.
Cian gasped, his lungs burning with air that didn't taste like the metallic ash of the Hegemony's dungeons. He wasn't falling. He was standing upright, his boots clicking against a polished obsidian floor. His hands were small, unscarred, and his heart nearly stopped free. No shackles. No scars. No siphons.
"Cian? Move along. You're holding up the line. The Overseer isn't known for his patience, and your father is already looking stressed."
The voice was like a ghost's. Cian turned his head slowly, his neck popping with a youthful suppleness he hadn't felt in decades. Standing behind him was a young man in the grey-and-silver livery of the Valerius house guards. It was Kael a man Cian had seen torn apart by Abyssal Horrors twenty years ago. Here, Kael looked healthy, annoying, and blissfully bored, his hand resting idly on the hilt of a standard-issue steel sword.
Cian looked around, his vision blurring as tears threatened to spill. He was in the Great Hall of the Bastion of Mourning. The jagged, snow-capped peaks of the Ironwood Fringe were visible through the high, arched windows. Above him, the fading sun of Oros cast long, amber shadows across the floor, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air.
He was sixteen again. It was the day of the Aptitude Ceremony.
"Cian."
A heavy hand landed on his shoulder. Cian stiffened, every combat instinct he'd observed and analyzed in the pits of the Hegemony screaming at him to strike the pressure point in the attacker's wrist. He turned to see his father, Lord Alaric Valerius. The man looked like a mountain carved from granite strong, stern, and utterly exhausted. In the first life, Cian had feared that look of silent disappointment. Now, he only saw a man carrying the weight of a dying border on his shoulders.
"Don't be discouraged if the Stone remains dim," Alaric said, his voice a low, comforting rumble. "A Valerius is a sentinel of the border. Whether you have the talent of a Master or the soul of a commoner, you will stand your post. The Reach doesn't care about your rank; it only cares if you flinch."
He thinks I'm going to fail, Cian realized with a sharp pang of clarity. Because in the first life, I did. I let the 'Dormant' label define me. I chose the pen because I thought I was too weak for the sword.
"Next! Cian Valerius! Step forward for the Hegemony's Blessing!" the Imperial Overseer barked.
Cian stepped forward. The Aptitude Stone sat on a pedestal of obsidian, pulsing with a rhythmic violet light. It was a relic of the Hegemony, a device designed to measure the 'bandwidth' of a human soul and assign its place in the Empire's rigid hierarchy.
As he reached out, a screen of crystalline, cerulean light flickered in his vision a HUD that only he could see.
[Divine Talent Detected: Akashic Scholar (Active)]
Description: You perceive the 'Source Code' of reality. Your mind acts as an infinite library of all things witnessed. Learning speed: $+1000\%$. Ability to 'Patch' and 'Optimize' martial and arcane techniques.
[Divine Talent Detected: Sovereign Tutor (LOCKED)]
Requirement to Unlock: Reach 'Awakened' Rank and 'Monster' Class (2 Soul Cores).
Description: The power to bridge souls and rewrite the talent ceilings of subordinates.
The world suddenly shifted. The Great Hall was no longer made of simple stone and mortar. To Cian's eyes, it was made of Information. He saw the "Source Code" of the world. He saw the stress points in the ceiling beams as glowing red fractures. He saw the mana-veins in the Overseer's body, clogged with the residue of cheap alchemical stimulants.
And then, he looked at the Aptitude Stone.
To everyone else, it was a holy relic of the First Saints. To Cian, it was a poorly optimized, archaic circuit. He saw the threads of mana swirling inside it like tangled neon wires. He saw a "Fault" in its core a conceptual blockage placed there by the Hegemony's founders to prevent it from reading souls that were too vast for the Empire's narrow definitions.
I didn't fail the test in my first life, Cian thought, his fingers brushing the cold obsidian. The test failed me. It was like trying to measure the volume of the ocean with a tea-cup.
[Structural Analysis: Critical Fault Found in Relic.]
[Would you like to 'Optimize' the flow?]
Yes, Cian thought. And give them a show they'll never forget.
He didn't just let the Stone read him. He reached into the Stone's "Code" and rewrote the resonance frequency. He pulled the latent Soul-Essence trapped within the relic and forced it to vibrate at his own Divine-grade frequency.
VROOOM.
The sound wasn't a glow; it was a low-frequency hum that made the teeth of everyone in the room ache. The purple light of the Stone turned white. Then silver. Then a blinding, prismatic gold that illuminated every dark corner of the Bastion.
CRACK.
A hairline fracture appeared on the surface of the "indestructible" relic.
The Imperial Overseer fell out of his chair, his scrolls scattering like autumn leaves. Lord Alaric reached for his sword, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and a hope he hadn't felt in a decade.
[System Notification: You have forcibly absorbed the 'Error-Correction' Soul Essence from the relic.]
[Rank Progression: Dormant - 95%]
The light died down. Cian pulled his hand back, his fingertips tingling with a raw, electric power. He looked at the Overseer, then at his father.
"The Stone is old, Overseer," Cian said, his voice calm and terrifyingly steady. "Perhaps its time is simply over. My talent is... difficult to categorize."
Cian walked past the stunned nobles. He didn't need the Stone to tell him what he was. He was the Divine Architect, and he had three days before the first scout of the Abyss arrived.