Soren had spent his entire life believing he was a "Sinkhole," a mistake of nature that brought misfortune to his family.
He had accepted the beatings, the starvation, and the isolation as his due for being born broken.
But he wasn't a mistake? Just a mere investment?
This level of betrayal was so absolute, so clinical, that it transcended mere hatred.
His father hadn't cast him out to protect the tribe; he had cast him out because the "filter" was nearly full.
He had been sent into the Wastes to die so that the High Shaman's harvesters could find his corpse and extract the "Purified Essence" of the "Elixir of Longevity" from his bones.
"I was never a son," Soren whispered, his voice sounding like two tectonic plates grinding together.
"I was a piece of wastepaper. A rag used to soak up the filth so a Clan Elder could keep his hands clean."
He looked at his hands; the ash-gray hair, the black veins, the violet eyes. He wasn't a child anymore. He was the evidence of a crime that spanned generations.
He was the living embodiment of the secret that has been rotting House of Ignis's from within.
Soren turned his attention back to the Courier's Vault and realised there were more scrolls within.
At first, his infernal rage prompted him to throw everything else into the hearth fire, but his maturing mind won out in the end.
He picked up the second scroll, and this time, he was expecting the backlash; however, with his boiling rage currently fueling Tranquil Poison, the seal didn't even last a single breath.
This time, the text while still written in the haggard handwriting of the High Shaman, was flowing with a nigh-unconcealable glee and familiarity towards the reader.
This was a new development that told Soren that its contents were probably being dictated to the Shaman as he wrote, making him wonder who it might just be; Chief Ignis? or Matron Elara?
--------
"To the Withered Hand of Eden," the scroll began.
The process remains stable. The 'little bastard' has survived the seeding of the final dosage. It worked; the Tranquil Poison has awakened.
As suspected, his constitution is indeed the perfect vessel. We have cast him into the Wastelands to ensure the final maturation of the poison.
The environment will force the toxins to consolidate in his marrow, and by the next moon, the boy will be dead, and the 'Purified Essence' will be ready for harvest.
Your Lordship's longevity is assured; the price of a useless brat is a small pittance for the rise of House Oman."
-------
Soren didn't scream. He didn't cry. The "Void" in his chest simply went cold; colder than the limestone, colder than a Grave-Stalker's touch.
He mechanically sank his hand into the vault and picked out the next scroll, and upon making short work of the seal, he unfurled it, his expression flat and blank as he read.
This time, the text was written in an elegant script, flowing with a terrifying calm and dignity that didn't bother with pleasantries.
It wasn't a report, but an order addressed directly to the Matron of the House of Ignis, and it read.
-------
"To Elara," it began.
"The Patriarch remains oblivious, as planned. However, the presence of his daughter's whelp remains a blemish on the horizon.
We understand the 'Tranquil Poison' is doing its work, but 'potential' is a dangerous thing.
Find the boy. Ensure his heart stops. Do not let the 'Clan's Blight' linger past the next moon.
Do this, and Kaelen's House shall rise when 'House Oman' claims its true seat in the Clan. Fail, and you all shall share the boy's fate.
Once the 'Stain' is purged, the New Eden will reward your husband with the seat of a High Vassal."
Soren stared at the words. New Eden. Eden Clan. He didn't know who they were, but he knew they were definitely the masters of his masters.
He wasn't just a tribal outcast; he was an unwanted fly in a political web the size of the wastelands itself.
Soren didn't burn the scroll. He didn't scream. With a terrifying, silent precision, he rolled the silk back up and tucked it into the waterproof pouch hung on his waist; an additional harvest he had managed to swipe of the dead Elite Guard.
It was the only thing he truly owned: the proof that Chief Ignis, deserved to burn.
Soren felt an eerie calm wash over him. He wasn't scared or panicky, instead he simply rose his head and smiled, the flickering hearth fire illuminating the inky wickedness hidden in the depths of his eyes.
Nonetheless, the fury in Soren's blood acted as a powerful catalyst, sparking a reaction between his emotional state and the Tranquil Poison.
The black threads in his wrists and neck began to glow with a dull, angry heat, pulsing in time with his racing heart.
He felt a surge of strength; unnatural and brittle, that made his vision snap into a terrifying, crystalline focus.
Since they had so benevolently placed such heavy investments on him and their plans, then he would gladly ride on their coattails, and repay them in kind whilst tracing this grand scheme back to its source.
He turned his attention to the second item he had stolen: the Elite Guard Captain's map.
He unrolled the heavy leather parchment across the limestone "workbench."
It was a masterwork of military cartography, detailing a ten-kilometer radius with the stone pillars of the tribe's border hanging at the bottom right corner.
It was marked with the "Safe Routes" of the Inner Guards, the patrol schedules, and the locations of various caches.
But it was the "Forbidden Zones" that drew Soren's eyes.
To the North, the map was stained with a series of red-inked symbols.
One in particular, located roughly three kilometers from his current ridge, was labeled with a single, chilling icon: The Brine-Pit.
Soren remembered from the ancestral scrolls, he had read that to achieve the first stage of Body Tempering; The Bloodskin, a practitioner needed to stabilize their internal pressure.
Usually, this was done with lower-grade elixirs and controlled breathing under the guidance of a Shaman.
But Soren didn't have such luxury, and the elixir within the vial in his possession was not a "lower-grade" starter.
He picked up the jade vial of Fifth-Grade Golden Body Elixir. He knew the hierarchy of the five temperings by heart:
Bloodskin: Toughening the surface and controlling coagulation.
Mudskin: Creating a layer of shock-absorbent density.
Stoneskin: Turning the soft tissue into a rigid, defensive frame.
Ironskin: Making the body impenetrable to common steel.
And Golden Body: Achieving the legendary state of invincibility; invulnerable to extreme atmospheric conditions, nigh impenetrable skin, and an inhuman healing factor.
To drink a Fifth-Grade elixir now, without the foundation of the previous four, was a death sentence.
It was like trying to contain a volcanic eruption inside a glass jar.
His veins would incinerate, his bones would shatter into white dust, and his heart would simply burst into gore beneath the pressure of the tyrannical golden energy.
Unless...
He looked back at the map, his finger tracing the icon of the Brine Pit.
The Brine Pit was a natural mineral spring, a place where high-density salts and acidic minerals bubbled up from the deep earth.
In the tribal scrolls, it was a place of execution, where prisoners were thrown to be "pickled" alive by the corrosive waters.
But Soren saw a different use for it.
If he submerged himself in the high-density mineral waters of the pit, the external pressure of the brine would act as a temporary "cage" for his body.
As the Golden Elixir expanded from within, the minerals would push from without, creating a forced stabilization.
It was a "Scavenger's Tempering"—brutal, agonizing, and highly likely to kill him, but it was the only way to survive the Fifth-Grade transformation.
"The minerals will be my Bloodskin. The salt will be my Mudskin. I will let the Wastelands build me because my father refused to." He murmured, his violet eyes reflecting the golden glow of the vial.
Soren had almost pushed the vault to the side when he realised there was something wrong with it.
It was meant to be a cylindrical container made of lead, so how come this one had a leather interior?
Then his pale-violet eyes flickered, and he saw it.
"Clever Bastards!" Soren cursed, his smile fading.
What he saw was an additional positive find to the current him, yet, instead of smiling or being happy, his heart thumped heavily.
These people; the Elders of the Eden Clan to be precise were true masterminds; extremely shrewd and cunning, and most definitely wilth a belly full of schemes.
It wasn't that the vault had a leather interior; no, it was a leather parchment, the exact size of the vault's interior.
However, it was rolled in a way that left the back exposed, but its content facing the lead interior of the vault, and tucked so nicely that it made the vault looked more high-end than normal.
Using his paring knife, Soren pried the leather parchment out, being careful not to tear it lest the content remain incomplete.
After all, he knew that whatever the content of the leather parchment was, the so-called "Withered Hand of Eden" wanted the three Elite Guards escorting it, to remain oblivious of its presence.
The level of intellect required to birth such art of secrecy was something Soren found almost Godlike.
'Who are these people?' Soren thought to himself, silently raising their level of threat within his heart.
This one lacked the formal seals of the High Shaman, but had a shimmering, iridescent leaf he didn't recognize etched at its bottom.
Upon unfurling the parchment and straightening it over the map on the limestone table, Soren realized that this wasn't a letter and was more of a guide.
This guide seemed intended for the Matron's use, for overseeing the final "Body Tempering" of the First Heir, Kaelen, since it revealed the true mechanics of the world Soren was trapped in.
Soren however, was truly glad he found this leather parchment, because it was a window to knowing the level of wisdom and intellect, its author, his enemy, wielded.
If the first was a ledger of his death, the second was a map of his survival, as its content detailed the True Three Stages of Awakening, a concept Soren had never heard of.
Soren found himself staring at a map of the human body, but it was unlike any he had seen in the Tribe's basic primers.
It didn't mark the "Mud Skin" or "Iron Skin" layers. Instead, the notes were a revelation of the "True World" that had been hidden from the tribal "trash."
-------
"Awakening is not a single gate, but a triple path," the text whispered from the page.
"To the tribes of the dirt, the Truth-Seeker Orb is a god. But the Orb is merely a filter for the weak.
The masses are given the 'Forced Awakening' via the Truth-Seeker Orb at age five—a method that shatters the soul's long-term potential for a quick entry into cultivation.
It is crude, but effective for creating soldiers.
Above them are the 'Artificial Awakenings' of the Clans and the Great Houses; only used for the elite.
For Kaelen, this 'Artificial' route is preferred; it involves using runic formations to simulate a divine touch at age ten. Only this ensures a vessel capable of holding higher Qi."
But there remains the 'Natural Awakening'—the path of the ancients; it is the rarest and most dangerous path, for it bypasses all limitations of the Truth-Seeker Orb and artificial formations."
-------
Soren's eyes moved down to the section on Body Tempering. It described the Tribe's "Iron Skin" and "Golden Body" as "crude plating"—like painting gold over lead.
The scroll spoke of Body Tempering not as a way to gain "Iron Skin," but as a process of Structural Density.
It described how the Body Tempering Elixir, when mixed with the correct catalysts, didn't just harden the skin; but "sheds" the mortal body's impurities.
It read;
-------
"True tempering is not adding layers but shedding them. To prepare oneself to withstand the Artificial Awakening, one must undergo the Five Sheddings.
The Body Tempering Elixir is the catalyst, but it requires a 'High-Pressure Environment' to trigger the molt. If the subject survives, the mortal skin falls away to reveal a structure of higher density."
-------
Soren's eyes narrowed as he looked at his own hands, and realized they were wrong. The jade vial of elixir he had stolen; the one meant for Kaelen, was here vibrating in his palm.
"So, Kaelen, the "Golden Boy," was supposed to receive the best tempering while I am to rot and be harvested." Soren muttered, his violet eyes flashing with a cold, predatory light.