Chapter 9: The Shadow's Tithe
The transition from "Caelum Failure" to "Heir-Apparent" was not a climb; it was a violent upheaval. Rowan returned to the Solar Spire not as a student, but as a target. The Embassy Ball had established his power, but it had also stripped away the protection of being underestimated.
Rowan stood in his room, his chest bare, watching the gold and silver lattice beneath his skin pulse in the darkness. The energy he had siphoned from Theron Ironbound was heavy—thick with earth mana that felt like swallowing stones.
"You're not digesting it," Seraphina's voice came from the balcony. She stepped inside, the moonlight catching the silver needles in her hair. She looked at his chest, her violet eyes tracking the jagged lines of the lattice. "Your core is holding the energy, but your 'arteries' are still too narrow. If you don't refine it, the earth mana will petrify your nervous system."
"I know," Rowan grunted, his jaw tight. "It feels like lead in my veins."
She walked toward him, her cool presence acting like a balm to the feverish heat of his skin. "Sit. We need to reach Soul-Bind Level 1: Full Sync. If I can act as the filter, we can convert that raw earth into neutral essence."
The Midnight Extraction
As Rowan sat on the edge of the bed, Seraphina placed her hands on his shoulders. The contact was electric. Through the Empathy link, Rowan felt the sudden rush of her concern—a sharp, cold spike of emotion that mirrored his own physical pain.
"Focus on the 'Eternal Edge'," she whispered, leaning in until her forehead touched his. "Don't just suck the mana in. Let it flow into me, let me clean it, and then pull it back."
The process was agonizing. The dense, brown earth mana was dragged out of Rowan's core, scraping against his freshly formed arteries. It flowed into Seraphina, who winced as her silver light turned a muddy bronze. She was taking his burden, purifying it through her own 5th-Circle circuits, and sending it back as pure, crystalline energy.
Slowly, the "stones" in Rowan's veins began to melt. His golden eyes flared, and for a moment, the room seemed to lose its gravity.
"Wait," Rowan whispered, his senses suddenly sharpening.
Through the Empathy link, he didn't just feel Seraphina. He felt a disturbance in the ambient mana of the room. A cold, oily presence was sliding through the shadows under the door.
The Porcelain Assassin
"Get back!" Rowan lunged, pushing Seraphina toward the balcony just as the floor beneath them erupted in black, needle-like spikes.
The man in the porcelain mask—the same figure from the bridge—materialized from the corner of the ceiling. He was no longer a smoky illusion. He was a Shadow-Adept, a specialist in the dark arts of assassination.
"The Duke sends his final regards," the assassin hissed, his voice like tearing silk. "He likes the 'New Heir' concept, Rowan. But he likes a dead legend even more."
The assassin moved with a fluidity that surpassed even Rowan's Flash-Step. He wasn't running; he was merging with the darkness, appearing and disappearing in the blink of an eye. He threw a handful of "Soul-Eater" daggers—blades forged from cursed iron that ignored physical armor.
Rowan didn't have his sword. He stood in the center of the room, his bare skin glowing with the newly refined energy from the Soul-Bind.
"Seraphina! The light!" Rowan roared.
Understanding him instantly, Seraphina clapped her hands. She didn't fire a spell; she simply released a massive, blinding flash of Primal Silver Mana.
The room turned into a sun. The shadows vanished, and with them, the assassin's concealment.
The masked man stumbled, caught in the middle of a transition between shadows. Rowan didn't hesitate. He used Flash-Step to close the gap in a fraction of a second. He didn't use a fist; he used his palm, activating the Vacuum Core at point-blank range.
"Let's see how much shadow you can lose," Rowan growled.
The Vacuum didn't just pull mana this time. It pulled the very concept of the assassin's power. The black mist that made up the man's cloak was sucked into Rowan's palm. The porcelain mask cracked, revealing a face twisted in absolute terror as his life force was siphoned away.
"Who... what... are you?" the assassin gasped, his body beginning to wither into a husk.
"I'm the mistake my father shouldn't have made," Rowan replied.
With a final surge, Rowan didn't just drain him; he inverted the flow, sending a jagged spike of the refined Earth Mana he had just taken from Theron directly into the assassin's heart.
The man didn't just die; he turned to stone, falling to the floor and shattering into a thousand grey fragments.
The Blood Pact
Silence returned to the Solar Spire, broken only by the heavy breathing of the two students. Seraphina stood by the balcony, her hands trembling slightly.
"My father didn't send him," she said, looking at the stone dust on the floor. "And if your father sent a Shadow-Adept... it means he's testing to see if you're worthy of being his weapon or his replacement."
Rowan walked over to her, his hand reaching out to steady her. The Gold and Silver Lattice on his arm was now permanently etched, a shimmering mark of their bond.
"I'm neither," Rowan said, his voice cold. "I'm the person who's going to burn that Duchy to the ground."
Seraphina looked at his hand, then up at his golden eyes. She didn't pull away. Instead, she took his hand and pressed it against her own heart.
"The Senate will move against us tomorrow," she warned. "They've called for an 'Emergency Ranking Match.' They're going to pit the entire Gold Class against you at once. It's a legal execution disguised as a test."
Rowan looked out over the Academy, toward the distant mountains where the Caelum Duchy lay.
"Good," Rowan said. "I was getting tired of fighting them one by one."