I don't know how long it's been.
Seconds? Minutes? Days?
Time slips through my mind like dust through broken fingers.
The pain—
It was there once. Blinding, all-consuming. Like knives gouging my nerves and fire searing my soul. I remember screaming.
I think.
But now—
Silence.
No light.
No voice.
No air.
No mana.
Nothing.
Just black.
Endless, endless black.
And I… I float. Or maybe I fall.
Or perhaps I'm simply not.
This place…
This isn't a cave.
This isn't the core.
This is something else.
A place outside of reality. A rift where no god dares to breathe.
No existence. No purpose. No memory.
Just the cold serenity of the void.
And strangely, it feels… peaceful.
Like the world has finally gone quiet.
No more whispers.
No more expectations.
No more betrayal.
I want to stay here.
I want to exist here.
Not in the world that called me failure.
Not in the world that cast me aside.
Not with Elira, her eyes avoiding mine.
Not with my sister's sneers.
Not with my father's silence.
Not with the fortress walls that watched me bleed.
Why go back?
Back to suffering?
Back to a name that meant nothing?
Back to a war I never chose?
Let it all rot.
Liana. Daren. Nicholas.
Even Noctharion.
Even the truth he told me—what does it matter now?
I was a child, once. I reached out with trembling hands, hoping for warmth.
All I got were thorns.
They told me pain makes you stronger.
But they lied.
Pain doesn't make you stronger.
It just teaches you how to hide the pieces when you start to break.
And I did.
So many times.
And now... now there's nothing left to shatter.
No more screams to give.
This place welcomes me.
Its darkness doesn't threaten — it embraces.
Its silence doesn't judge — it understands.
Maybe this is what I've always longed for.
Not freedom.
Not power.
Not revenge.
Just stillness.
Just an end.
Just peace.
Noctharion stared at Kael's body sprawled across the ground, unmoving.
"As expected," he muttered. "He failed."
There was never a chance, really. A child like Kael — weak, fragile, uncertain — couldn't possibly survive the pressure of a Dark Core. Not this one. The mana it contained wasn't ordinary. It was ancient. Toxic. Alive.
And yet… Noctharion had allowed it. No — he had pushed him toward it. Whispering promises. Stirring desperate hope.
Because deep down, a part of him had wondered — what if?
What if this boy, this anomaly bound by two souls and born of betrayal, could do the impossible?
But hope was foolish.
And now, Kael's soul was slipping deeper into the dark.
Not the darkness mortals speak of — the absence of light.
No.
This was the true darkness.
The first darkness.
The one that existed before creation, before time, before even the gods dared dream.
A primordial void that devours everything — light, sound, thought, meaning. Even identity.
And now, it was devouring Kael.
Noctharion felt no guilt. He never had. The lives of others had always been little more than variables in a grand equation — curiosities to be observed and discarded.
Kael was no different.
The boy had served his purpose.
And Noctharion? He was dying.
"One week," he whispered, feeling the pulse of his own fading essence. "One week left. Who would've thought the Great Noctharion would rot away like this?"
But then, the world shifted.
The air trembled. The core pulsed violently.
He turned back to Kael.
The boy's body — once limp — had begun to stir. His mouth was open, breathless, yet mana poured into him like a storm funnel. The Core, that volatile nexus of forbidden energy, was being devoured.
Not absorbed. Devoured.
His body drank it in like a starving beast, like a pit with no bottom.
"Impossible," Noctharion whispered. "That's not… that's not mana absorption."
The mana was too potent, too wild. Even an SSS-ranked mage would've turned to ash trying to contain it. But Kael… Kael's body wasn't rejecting it.
It welcomed it.
Hungered for it.
Noctharion's eyes narrowed, something ancient stirring in his chest — a familiar sensation.
Curiosity.
He stepped forward, gathering the shadows around him. He extended his will, manipulating the dark mana like threads of silk, piercing through the boy's body — and then deeper, into the storm that raged inside.
Kael's consciousness lay open. His soul adrift.
A vessel — fragile, unstable.
And yet...
It endured.
Noctharion entered.
And what he saw inside made even him pause.
He saw it.
Two forces. Opposing. Eternal.
Light and darkness—once dormant within Kael's frail body—now surged forth, clashing in violent chaos.
Before, they'd merely coexisted. Locked in stillness. Trapped in a fragile equilibrium inside a vessel too weak to contain them. That delicate balance had stopped Kael from accessing either affinity—each force canceling the other's reach.
But now…
Now, darkness had awakened.
The moment Kael began absorbing the core, something snapped. A primal spark had ignited deep within him. The darkness he carried—ancient and deep—grew restless. Hungry. Alive.
It surged, no longer content to sleep. It howled for dominance, flooding every corner of his being like an unleashed storm. But the light… it did not yield. It rose in equal fury, resisting, retaliating. Each force lashed out at the other, tearing through the boy's insides like wild gods seeking the throne.
His body convulsed.
Two primordial forces—the first elements born of creation—fought within him. Neither willing to kneel. Neither capable of surrender.
This was no awakening.
It was annihilation.
And Kael… he was the battlefield.
"Stop it…" Noctharion muttered, his voice hoarse with disbelief. His ethereal form floated beside the core, watching the scene unravel. "Stop… this madness."
He didn't understand why he cared. He shouldn't.
This boy meant nothing to him—just a vessel. A mistake. A flicker of life stumbling into power too vast to grasp. But now, as he watched Kael's body rip itself apart, something stirred. A whisper from the past. A memory of something once lost.
I have to stop this.
He reached out with his will, summoning the darkness.
Obey me.
He was Noctharion—the Black Flame. The Final Abyss. Darkness had always listened.
But not this time.
The darkness didn't even flinch.
It ignored him—as if he were dust. As if it had found a new master.
Noctharion's expression cracked. His will hardened. He poured every ounce of his essence into severing Kael's bond to the core.
Still nothing.
For the first time in over a thousand years… he was losing.
Losing to a human boy.
He laughed—a cold, bitter laugh that echoed in the silent chamber.
"A dragon… losing in his own domain," he rasped. "How amusing…"
But there was no humor in his voice. Only despair.
The battle within Kael's body intensified. The light and the darkness showed no signs of stopping. His flesh trembled. His veins glowed with opposing forces. If this continued—if balance wasn't restored—his body would shatter.
And then Noctharion saw it—something that should not exist.
A silhouette within the boy's soul.
A throne with no king.
An empty crown.
"No…" he whispered. "This… this can't be."
Kael wasn't just a vessel.
He was something else.
Something new.
The moment the throne appeared,
The battlefield fell silent.
The world that had been shaking, screaming, tearing apart—
Stopped.
The mad clash of light and darkness, two ancient forces battling like rabid beasts inside Kael's body, came to an abrupt halt.
They froze.
Then—
They began to shrink.
Smaller. And smaller.
As if... afraid.
As if they feared being seen.
Like frightened children hiding from a cruel parent, both forces recoiled, trembling in the face of a presence they couldn't comprehend.
And then, Noctharion saw it.
The Empty Throne.
His vast consciousness, forged from eons of darkness, felt something it had never known.
Not awe.
Not reverence.
Terror.
Raw. Crushing. Humbling terror.
He had faced gods. Killed kings. Consumed continents in shadow.
But this…
This throne—this silence—this thing…
It made him feel like an insect before a god.
Even though he was only a sliver of consciousness inside the core, his form trembled. His soul screamed for him to kneel, to retreat, to obey.
And then—
The world trembled.
From the void behind the throne,
Two eyes opened.
Dark purple. Ethereal. Burning.
They did not blink. They simply... watched.
And as they looked—
Everything shook.
Light, proud and unyielding, bowed its head. It pulled back with calm dignity, like a knight before a sovereign.
Darkness, wild and ruthless, slithered back as well. Not beaten—tamed.
Like a hound recognizing its true master.
There was no more war between them.
No more madness. No more struggle.
Balance.
Light made no move to stop the awakening of darkness.
Darkness no longer tried to devour the light.
They returned—still and quiet—into Kael's body. Together.
And in that silence, Noctharion trembled.
He didn't understand what he was witnessing.
Didn't know if it was real.
Didn't want to know.
Because the truth was clear:
That existence ruled over both light and darkness.
Without lifting a hand.
Without speaking a word.
It simply watched.
And now—
It was looking straight at him.