The courtyard, once a place of disciplined order, became a slaughterhouse in seconds. The Shadow-Stalkers didn't move like animals; they moved like ink dropped into water, blurring from one spot to another with a predatory grace that defied physics.
Captain Allen was a whirlwind of silver steel. He parried a set of obsidian claws that would have sheared Matthew's head off, the impact sending a shower of sparks into the grey mist.
"Stay behind me, Matthew!" Allen roared, his voice strained. "Don't breathe the fog—it's concentrated mana. It'll burn your lungs!"
Matthew scrambled backward, his heart drumming against his ribs. He felt useless. The training dagger in his hand felt like a toothpick against creatures that could shrug off halberd strikes from the gate guards. He watched as two Sun-Guards rushed forward to assist, only to be decapitated by a tail that whipped out like a serrated wire.
The largest of the Stalkers, a brute with three eyes glowing like dying coals, circled Allen. It waited for the precise moment the Captain turned to parry a second attacker. With a sickening crunch, the brute lunged, its jaws clamping down on Allen's shoulder, bypassing the reinforced plate armor as if it were parchment.
"CAPTAIN!" Matthew screamed.
Allen let out a guttural cry of agony. Blood, dark and thick, sprayed onto the white marble. Even as his collarbone shattered, the Captain didn't let go of his sword. He drove the blade upward into the Stalker's chest, forcing the beast to retreat, but the damage was done.
Allen collapsed to one knee, his left arm hanging uselessly at his side. The silver glow of his mana—the light that marked him as a high-tier Knight—was flickering, dying out like a spent candle.
The three-eyed Stalker shook off the wound, its smoky form knitting back together. It ignored the wounded Captain, its gaze fixing on Matthew. It sensed it now—the same resonance it had hunted in Oakhaven.
The monster leaped.
Time slowed. Matthew watched the creature's maw open, revealing rows of translucent, needle-like teeth. He felt the coldness of the mist entering his chest. He thought of his mother's silent face in the ash. He thought of his father's broken body.
I am weak, he thought. They died for a boy who can't even hold a knife straight.
The shame was hotter than the fear. It started at the base of his spine—a tiny, frozen spark that suddenly shattered.
Inside Matthew's chest, where every human was supposed to have a steady, pulsing Mana Core, there was nothing but a silent vacuum. But as the Stalker's claws reached for his throat, that vacuum roared.
"ENOUGH!"
The word didn't come from his throat; it erupted from his very soul.
A shockwave of pure, colorless energy exploded outward from Matthew's chest. It wasn't the golden light of his father or the blue shield of his mother. It was a distortion—a ripple in reality that turned the mist into frost and sent the Shadow-Stalkers tumbling backward.
Matthew felt a searing heat behind his sternum. It felt like a sun was being forced into a thimble. His vision turned white, then a deep, piercing violet.
A sensation he had never felt before—a cold, mechanical precision—took over his limbs. His "Core," usually dormant and empty, began to spin with a violent, hungry centrifugal force.
Matthew didn't think. He didn't use a stance. He simply moved.
He was no longer the clumsy boy from the market. His body felt light, stripped of the weight of grief and gravity. He closed the distance to the three-eyed Stalker before the creature could even right itself.
He plunged the small training dagger into the monster's skull. Normally, the iron would have snapped against the creature's hide. But Matthew's hand was wreathed in a flickering, dark-violet flame—mana so dense it was visible to the naked eye.
The dagger sank in like it was cutting through water.
The Shadow-Stalker didn't just die; it imploded. The dark energy that composed its body was sucked into the wound, channeled directly into the violet spark in Matthew's chest. His Core wasn't just producing power—it was devouring it.
Matthew stood over the dissipating pile of ash, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The violet light in his eyes slowly faded, leaving him trembling and hollow.
"Matthew..." Allen gasped from the ground, his face pale from blood loss. He was staring at the boy with a mixture of awe and absolute terror. "Your... your core. That wasn't... that wasn't a standard awakening."
Matthew turned, his legs giving out. He fell to his knees beside the Captain, the training dagger falling from his nerveless fingers. The iron was no longer black; it had turned a translucent, ghostly white, drained of its essence.
"I don't know what happened," Matthew whispered, his voice cracking. "I just wanted it to stop."
As reinforcements finally flooded the courtyard and the remaining Stalkers fled back into the shadows, Matthew felt the darkness claiming him. He had awakened, but the price of that power was a hunger he didn't yet understand—and a target that was now painted even more clearly on his back.