The carriage wheels clattered against uneven stone, the sound dull and repetitive, like someone tapping the same bruise over and over.
Aden sat in the center seat with shackles heavy on his wrists and ankles. Two imperial knights sat across from him, armor rigid, eyes forward. No one spoke. No one even looked at him.
Fine by him.
He stared out the barred window beside him. The night blurred past: empty streets, torch posts, dark corners of the capital that he had only ever heard about. Everything felt distant, muffled, like his mind was wrapped in cotton.
His thoughts drifted anyway.
How did it all turn out like this.What was the point of fighting off the hounds.What was the point of saving Claire.If every damn thing still landed exactly where the book said it would.
The book.That stupid thing.
What even was the purpose of it?
The carriage stopped.
The knights got out first, dragged the doors open, and yanked him to his feet. The imperial prison towered above them like a stone spine jutting out of the earth. Cold. Quiet. Unwelcoming.
Aden was marched through the gates, past the common cells, where rows of prisoners pressed their faces to the bars to watch him pass. Whispers rippled through the hall.
"Is that him?""That's the Vasco kid?""No wonder they brought the knights."
Aden ignored them.
When the guard at the end prepared to shove him into a cramped cell, the captain stepped forward.
"Not here," he said.
Aden raised an eyebrow. "What, special treatment?"
The captain didn't answer. He just gripped Aden's arm and guided him down another corridor, quieter and colder. The air felt heavy here, like the walls were listening.
They stopped at a larger holding cell, isolated from the rest. Iron bars, reinforced floor, nothing inside except a bench and dim torchlight.
Perfect.
He was pushed inside, the door locked behind him.
Aden sat down slowly, cuffs rattling against the bench. The silence thickened around him. With nothing to look at besides stone and shadows, his mind wandered back to the one thing he didn't want to think about.
His fate.
Everything was lining up exactly like that cursed book had said. No matter what he changed, he still ended up here. Same chains. Same accusations. Same outcome
He leaned his head back against the wall and let his thoughts drift where they didn't want to go.
His core.
If it wasn't damaged, he could have escaped.Before the guards arrived.Before Lora showed up.Before the knights dragged him out in chains.
Eight years.Eight years of living with a damaged core that barely held together.
His mind drifted over the power scale he had memorized since childhood.
Third-rate knights, the weakest category, barely more than armed civilians.
Second-rate knights, the average soldier standard.
First-rate knights, the ones who could finally sense aura. Reaching this rank alone took most people their whole lives.
Then elite knights.
People who could actually use aura in their blades. Hard to reach. Rare. The rank Aden had earned long before anyone his age should have.
After that came the unofficial rank often whispered in training halls.
Black Knight.
A middle state between elite and gladiator, where aura control became fluid and natural, though not fully realized.
Then Gladiator Knights.
The monsters of the battlefield.
Aura fused with their bodies, weapons shaped from pure energy.
At the top stood Swordsmasters.
Apex fighters.
Forces of nature in human form.
Men like Ed Vasco.
Beyond that rank were monsters, a true force of nature called a Trancendent, a rank no mortal could simply reach.
The Difference between each ranks are great, some even maybe the difference between the Heaven and the Earth.
Aden's jaw tightened again.
He should have been climbing those ranks.
Instead, he was being carted off like trash.
If I were whole, even that squad of hounds wouldn't have mattered. I would have leveled them before they even touched me.
The thought stung more than he liked.
He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling a small pulse of anxiety he hated. "What was the point of even reading it," he muttered. "What was the point of any of it."
He shut his eyes.
Fine. If he was stuck in this mess, he might as well use whatever the book shoved into his brain.
He focused.
The information inside him stirred like cold water rippling under ice.
Images surfaced.Fragments.Scenes.
He watched the immediate events play out inside his mind like a reflection on broken glass: the trial tomorrow, the same questions, the same verdict, the same imprisonment.
His fate was sealed.
So far, everything was a match.
But he pushed deeper.
He felt something shift. A faint pull. A thin strand of light weaving through the darkness, guiding him to another event he had not looked at before.
He followed it.
The deeper he went, the more the world around him faded. The cell dissolved. The torchlight winked out.
Everything turned black.
Not the natural black of night.A complete, suffocating void.
Aden stood in nothing.
"What is this," he whispered.
A presence formed in front of him.
Humanoid.But wrong.Wrong in the way a nightmare is wrong even before you understand it.
It stepped closer.
Glowing red eyes stared at him, unblinking, cutting into him like knives.
Aden froze. His breath caught. His body refused to move.
The figure tilted its head slightly, watching him with an unnatural stillness.
Then the void snapped shut.
Aden jerked forward, slamming back into his body in the dim prison cell. His hands gripped the bench, heart pounding.
"What the hell was that."His pulse hammered in his ears. "That thing was not from the book."
Before he could process it, someone knocked.
A heavy metal clank.
The door to the hall opened. The captain from before stood outside the cell.
"You have a visitor."
The captain stepped aside.
Another man walked into view.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Black coat trimmed with silver. A familiar face carved with strict lines and years of hardened service.
Ghislain Vasco.
His father's right hand.
He looked at Aden with a small sigh, shaking his head once.
"Long time no see," Ghislain said.
Aden stared back at him through the bars.
"I thought they didn't allow visitors."
Ghislain smiled, humorless.
"They don't."