The night within the Bastion of Mourning had become a suffocating thing. Every corridor seemed to vibrate with the suppressed mana of the Inquisitor Guards. They stood at every junction, their silver masks reflecting the dim torchlight like the eyes of predators waiting for a lapse in discipline. For the Valerius family, the castle was no longer a home. It had become a cage designed by a master architect of fear.
Cian Valerius lay on his bed, his eyes wide open in the darkness. He was not sleeping. He was using his Akashic Scholar talent to map the patrol routes of Baron Vane's men. Every three minutes, a pair of grey armored boots would click past his door. Every ten minutes, a pulse of detection mana would ripple through the walls, a sensory net designed to catch anyone attempting to use high level magic or escape the grounds.
He is thorough, Cian thought, his mind projecting a glowing blue blueprint of the guest wing. Vane isn't just looking for corruption. He is looking for any sign of hidden strength that could challenge the Hegemony's narrative of our decline. He wants a clean, quiet erasure.
Cian waited until the precise moment the mana pulse subsided. He slipped out of his bed, his movements as fluid and silent as a ghost. Because he possessed the Monster Class and two soul cores, his physical weight felt different, as if he were anchored to the world by a more profound gravity. He moved to the window, opened it without a sound, and stepped out onto the narrow stone ledge.
The drop was sixty feet to the jagged rocks below, but Cian didn't look down. He focused on the geometric lines of the masonry. He saw the "Source Code" of the gravity affecting his body. By subtly shifting his mana flow, he made himself lighter, his boots gripping the stone with unnatural traction. He scaled the outer wall toward Elena's chambers, a task that would have been a suicide mission for his previous self.
He reached her balcony and slipped inside. Elena was already awake, sitting on the edge of her bed with her sword across her lap. Her face was pale, and the silver glow of her recently patched mana was flickering erratically. She looked like someone holding a volatile explosive and trying not to sneeze.
"Cian!" she whispered, her voice tight with panic. "I can't hold it back. The mana he gave me... the Supreme rank breath... it wants to flare out. When Baron Vane looked at me today, I felt like my skin was on fire. If he probes me during the drills tomorrow, he will see everything."
"Quiet," Cian said, placing a hand on her shoulder. The blue thread of the Sovereign's Link manifested instantly, connecting their hearts. "I am here to give you the shroud. In the Hegemony, they call it the 'Veil of the Void.' It is a forbidden technique used by assassins to bypass Saint rank detection. I learned the logic of it during my time in the dungeons."
He didn't mention that he had seen the technique performed on hundreds of prisoners during his first life, deconstructing its failures until he understood the perfect version.
"The problem you have," Cian explained, his voice projecting directly into her mind through the link, "is that your mana is too pure now. It is like a bright light in a dark room. To Vane, who is a Saint, your soul looks like a beacon. To hide it, we aren't going to suppress the light. We are going to build a room around it."
[Sovereign Tutor: Initiating Advanced Transfer.]
[Technique: Veil of the Void (Patched Version).]
[Complexity: High. Success Rate: 100% due to Divine Link.]
Cian began to guide her. He used his own Monster Class mana to draw the pure, silver energy within Elena's veins back toward her core. He showed her how to leave the outer layers of her mana channels empty. Then, he taught her the most dangerous part: the "Dead Mana" technique.
"Take the stagnant, spent essence in your lungs," Cian commanded. "Instead of expelling it, I want you to coat your primary channels with it. Create a layer of 'nothing' between your core and your skin. To Baron Vane's probe, your body must appear as an empty vessel, a hollow shell with only the faintest flicker of talent."
Elena gasped as she followed his instructions. It was a counter intuitive process, one that felt like suffocating her own soul. She had to meticulously craft a shroud of "stale" energy that looked exactly like the weak, Master rank talent she was supposed to possess.
[Knowledge Transfer in Progress: 45%... 70%... 95%...]
[Warning: Maintaining the 'Veil' requires 15% of the student's total mana capacity at all times.]
"It feels... cold," Elena whispered, her eyes glowing with a dull, grey light as the shroud settled over her. "I can barely feel my own strength. It's like I'm trapped behind a thick glass wall."
"That is exactly how it should feel," Cian said. "To the world, you are once again the struggling daughter of a failing house. You must maintain this even when you are fighting. You must move slower, strike with less precision, and allow your breath to sound labored. If you show even a hint of the 'Primordial Heart-Core Breath,' Vane will execute us on the spot."
Cian pulled back, the blue link snapping. He felt a wave of exhaustion hit him. Teaching a high level concealment technique to an Awakened warrior while under the nose of a Saint was a feat that pushed his two cores to their absolute limit.
"One more thing, Elena," Cian said, his expression grimmer than she had ever seen it. "Tomorrow, during the audit, Vane will try to provoke you. He will use his Saint rank pressure to see if your 'Veil' cracks. No matter what he says, no matter how he insults our father or our name, you must not react. If you flare your mana, we die."
Elena nodded, her jaw set in a hard line. "I understand, Cian. I will be the ghost you need me to be."