The pursuit began almost immediately. Caleb, huddled beneath a gnarled oak, heard the distant baying of hounds and the muffled shouts of men. Celia was leaving nothing to chance. She wanted him gone, erased from the Vance legacy, his existence scrubbed from memory. The thought spurred him to move, even as exhaustion gnawed at his bones.
He ran with the disciplined precision his sword training had taught him, dodging roots and weaving through undergrowth. But he was without Essence, without the innate power that separated mere men from true threats in Eldoria.
The night stretched on. He crossed a shallow creek, his breath ragged, then pushed deeper into the wilderness, praying the water would break their scent. But the hunters were relentless. A twig snapped too close behind him.
He drew his hunting knife, the only weapon he had managed to take, its dull blade a pitiful defense against trained soldiers.
"Mother," he panted, speaking through gasps to the small cage tucked under his arm, "why can't she leave me alone? I am no longer an heir. I am no threat. Isn't it enough that she had me disowned? Does she truly need me dead?"
Three men stepped from the shadows, clad in the black and crimson livery of House Vance's guard. Their leader, a scarred veteran named Roric, held a short sword infused with Crystal Drops, its blade sparking faintly with energy.
"Lord Darius sends his regrets, boy," Roric said coldly. "But Lady Celia insists on… thoroughness."
Caleb fought. He fought with the desperation of a cornered animal, every stroke of his blade carrying the weight of survival. His knife darted and parried with startling skill, born of endless drills. He wounded one man, disarmed another, his movements quick and precise. But they were three against one, and worse, they were Essenced. Their strikes carried shocking energy, their armor reinforced with unnatural resilience.
A blade cut across his side, searing pain ripping through him as sparks flared. Caleb stumbled, his tunic quickly soaked in blood. The world dimmed at the edges. He fell to his knees. The soldiers closed in, their faces grim, their swords raised to end him.
Then it happened.
A blinding silver light erupted from the cage at his side. Luna. The Moonhorn Rabbit, always quiet, now shone like a star. Her spiraled horn pulsed with an ancient, otherworldly glow, flooding the clearing with brilliance. The soldiers recoiled, their eyes wide.
Caleb could only stare. "Luna… what are you?"
The creature he had thought of as a companion revealed her truth. She pressed her radiant horn to his wound, and an ocean of soothing energy swept through him. Pain ebbed. Flesh knitted. Warmth surged back into his limbs. His vision cleared, sharper than ever before.
Then, with a final cry, Luna's light grew brighter still. A stream of pure essence poured from her horn and sank into Caleb's chest. He felt it fill him, saturating his blood, weaving into his very soul.
The guards regained their nerve and lunged. But Caleb rose, transformed. A silvery glow rippled across his skin. When Torin's blade came down, Caleb raised his hand. The energy bent the sword's path, deflecting it harmlessly aside.
He stumbled upright, his body aching but alive, his veins humming with new power. He looked down. Luna lay motionless, her glow gone, her small body still and cold. She had given everything to him.
A roar ripped from Caleb's throat, raw grief twisted into fury. He surged forward. His knife shimmered with silver light, each strike guided with uncanny precision. He did not fight with brute force but with impossible accuracy, his blade slipping through gaps in their armor as though drawn there by instinct. The soldiers cried out, cut and disarmed, their confidence shattered.
Roric clutched his bleeding arm, horror dawning in his eyes.
Caleb stood over him, voice hoarse but burning with new strength. "Tell her. Tell Celia the hollow vessel now burns with a different fire."
The soldiers fled, leaving Caleb swaying in the silence. His chest heaved. His gaze fell back to the ground, to the small body that had once been his only friend. He knelt, tears cutting paths through the grime on his face.
In the days that followed, he buried Luna in a quiet grove, building a cairn of river stones to mark her resting place. Each night he trained, testing his newfound power. He learned to heal small wounds, to sense the rhythm of the forest's life around him, to steady his heart with its flow.
It was not the fire his family worshipped, but something else—something deeper. The irony was bitter. House Vance had prized flame, but he had been given life.
And so Caleb embraced the name he had chosen for himself. Caleb Ignis. A fire not of destruction, but of resilience, born from sacrifice.
When he finally walked toward the nearest Hunter Guild outpost, it was with no name, no family, and no past. But within him burned an essence his enemies could never take. He would never be a hollow vessel again.