For the rest of the world, carrying the blood of the Ten Families—the Ten Pillars—was a privilege akin to godhood.
When a noble turned eighteen, their soul would resonate with Aether, manifesting into a physical form. This "Soul Weapon" was the purest reflection of a person's character, potential, and lineage.
The legends were filled with blades of roaring fire that split the heavens, or warhammers that crushed mountains.
Vane stared at the reflection of his own soul resting on the wooden table.
His pale face was shadowed by messy, midnight-black hair. His physique was slender, almost sickly. Yet, his jawline was sharp and chiseled—an undeniable inheritance from his father.
But his most striking feature came from his mother: abyssal, lifeless black eyes that seemed to swallow anyone who dared to look into them.
Those very eyes were now locked onto the dagger on the table. Its hilt was wrapped in rotting leather. Its blade was coated in a thick, repulsive layer of brown rust.
Eighteen years, Vane thought, grinding his teeth.
The blood of Valerius, of the invincible King Vorian, flows through my veins. I should have had a sword. I should have had flames. But this is my soul? A rotting, rusted, useless lump of iron.
"Don't look at it like that," a soft voice said.
Vane looked up. His mother, Elara, was chopping vegetables at the kitchen counter. She had porcelain-pale skin and raven-black hair cascading over her shoulders.
Despite the coarse, permanently stained linen dress she wore, she moved with an aristocratic grace she couldn't hide. Fine, tired lines traced her face, but the ancient sorrow in her deep purple, almost witch-like eyes was more prominent than anything else.
"How else should I look at it?" Vane muttered, turning the dagger with his long, slender fingers. Flakes of rust fell onto the table.
"I am the son of King Vorian. Is this the weapon of the son of a man whose soul summons storms? A rusted toy."
Elara set her knife down. She slowly approached the table and took her son's hands in hers. They were cold, yet full of warmth.
"Rust consumes metal, Vane. But sometimes... it is a protective shell, hiding the true reality beneath."
The kitchen door creaked open. Kael, the old steward who had lived with them for ten years and taught Vane how to hold a sword, stepped inside.
With his thinning gray hair, slightly hunched back, and deeply wrinkled face, he looked like the same harmless, tired old man as always. He carried a tea tray.
But in that very second, the rusted dagger—newly bound to Vane's soul—trembled.
A cold shiver ran through Vane's chest. It wasn't just a sense of danger. It was the perception of pure, unadulterated malice.
As Kael reached for the teapot, his hunched back suddenly straightened.
The mask of the docile grandfather melted away in milliseconds. It was replaced by the face of a killer, lips drawn into a thin line, gray eyes staring like ice.
His left hand slipped inside his robe.
"Kael?" Elara asked.
A thin assassin's dirk, coated in a viscous green liquid, appeared in Kael's hand. The blade carved a deadly arc straight toward Vane's throat.
"The Queen sends her regards," the man whispered.
This man taught me how to ride a horse, Vane thought as time slowed to a crawl. He bandaged my knee when it bled. And now...
Elara intercepted with superhuman speed.
Kael's poisoned dirk plunged deep into Elara's chest. Vane's scream blended with the thunder cracking outside.
His mind entirely blank, Vane ran on pure instinct, swinging his rusted dagger at Kael.
Kael raised his own blade to parry with a mocking sneer. He fully expected the rusted iron to shatter on impact.
But the moment the blades clashed, the impossible happened.
There was no metallic clang. Instead, an eerie, vacuum-like silence swallowed the room. The rusted dagger didn't just repel the kinetic force; it devoured the Aether coating Kael's blade.
A chilling, abyssal pull erupted from the rust, sucking the life force straight out of Kael's arm like a black hole.
Kael's wrist snapped inward at a grotesque angle, stripped of all its strength. The momentum drove the assassin's own poisoned blade straight into his shoulder.
As the man staggered back in agony, the frail, noble boy inside Vane died forever.
In his place, a cornered, savage beast awakened.
Vane lunged at the assassin. He drove the rusted dagger into the man's neck. Again. And again.
The weapon wasn't sharp enough to slice cleanly; it only crushed bone and mangled flesh. Kael's hot blood splattered across Vane's face, but he didn't stop. He didn't stop until the man stopped breathing completely.
Covered in blood, Vane rushed to his mother's side. The light in Elara's deep purple eyes was fading fast.
With trembling hands, she grabbed Vane's collar.
"You must... go to the Palace..." she rasped. "The box under the floorboards... The ring is there. Do not trust your father... He will not protect you..."
Elara's eyes fixed onto the ceiling, and her body went entirely limp.
Under the pouring rain, Vane buried his mother in a muddy grave, digging until his hands were torn and bleeding. He didn't shed a single tear.
The colossal void inside his chest had already been replaced by a cold, calculated thirst for revenge.
He returned to the house, smashed the floorboards, and found the small wooden box his mother had mentioned.
Inside was a massive signet ring carved from pure Aether crystal, bearing the crest of the Valerius Empire. King Vorian's personal seal.
Beside it lay Kael's blood-soaked coin pouch. Vane took the dead man's money, tied the ring to a string around his neck, and set the farmhouse ablaze.
It took him three days to reach the capital, Aethelgard. He traveled hidden inside the steam wagons of coal merchants, covered in soot and rust. By the time he arrived, the black smog spewing from colossal brass chimneys had already choked the sun out of the sky.
When he reached the massive, steam-piston-driven gates of the Royal Palace, the guards thought he was a beggar and moved to shove him away with their spears.
He was caked in dried blood, mud, and soot. Vane tore the string from his neck and thrust the Aether crystal ring right into the guards' faces.
Resonating with the Vorian blood in Vane's veins, the ring unleashed a blinding golden light.
The mocking grins on the guards' faces vanished instantly. They dropped to their knees in sheer terror.
The 'Law of Blood' was absolute: Any member of the lineage bearing the crest, even dressed in rags, had to be safely escorted to the Throne Room.
Flanked by two heavily armored guards, Vane walked down the palace's colossal, gold-embroidered, red-carpeted corridors. The surrounding nobles stared at the muddy, filthy youth with profound disgust.
Just then, an entourage appeared from the opposite end of the hall.
Surrounded by four elite Aether-guards in golden armor, she walked. Clad in a gown of blood-red and black silk.
Queen Isolde.
Her beauty was freezing, and her gaze was as venomous as a viper's.
The entourage halted as they leveled with Vane. The Queen's eyes drifted to the mud on Vane's face, the dried blood, and finally, to the ring hanging from his neck.
In that instant, she understood why Kael hadn't returned. The target was alive.
A thin, condescending smile curved the Queen's lips. "You are soiling the floors of my palace, boy."
Vane's hand twitched instinctively toward the rusted dagger beneath his cloak.
This woman sent Kael, the voice screaming in his head roared. My mother's blood is on her hands. I could draw the dagger and plunge it into her throat right now.
His heart hammered against his ribs as if trying to break free. She was only two meters away.
But Vane's pitch-black eyes subtly shifted to the four elite guards standing behind her. Their hands were already beginning to glow with crackling Aether flames. In the fraction of a second it would take to draw his blade, they would reduce him to ash.
If he acted on his rage, his mother's sacrifice, and every ounce of pain he had endured to get here, would amount to nothing.
If I try to kill her now, it's nothing but suicide, his rational mind whispered, pouring ice water over his burning hatred.
I am powerless. Right now, I am nothing but a bug. But if I avoid being crushed today... one day, I will rip that crown off her neck, along with her head.
Vane pulled his hand away from the hilt. His fingers were trembling, but he clenched his jaw shut.
He slowly lowered his head, executing a flawless, submissive nobleman's bow.
"Forgive me, Your Grace," Vane said, his voice cracking slightly but layered in an ice-cold calmness. "I shall get out of your way."
The Queen narrowed her eyes at Vane. Failing to see the explosive outburst of rage she had expected disturbed her slightly. Without uttering another word, she walked past him in utter arrogance.
When Vane straightened his posture, the colossal brass doors of the Throne Room stood right before him.
Inside, it wasn't his mother's revenge waiting for him, but his father's ruthless chessboard. And Vane had just begun to learn how pawns survived:
Never let them know what you are thinking.