The human body is an instrument of habit. If you subject it to enough torment, it stops treating the pain as a threat and begins to treat it as an environment.
Three months had passed since Kaiser first pulled raw ambient mana into his empty meridians. His nightly routine was no longer a desperate experiment; it was a grueling, militaristic schedule. Every night, he pulled fifty threads of mana through his right arm, and fifty through his left.
His internal pathways were no longer empty flesh. They were a mass of dense, overlapping micro-scars. Calluses forged on the inside of his veins. He had brutalized his own biology into submission, forcing it to carry the weight of the raw, unfiltered energy the Void Eyes so desperately craved.
It was a crisp, sunlit morning, though the heavy curtains of the North Tower were drawn tight to protect Kaiser's supposedly delicate constitution.
"Posture, Young Master. Even a bird with broken wings must know how to sit on the branch."
The voice was dry, carrying the rustling, papery texture of old parchment.
Sitting across from Kaiser at the small wooden table was Scholar Elias. He was an elderly man sent by the Duke, draped in the heavy, formal grey robes of the Imperial Academy. If Kaiser was to be a pawn in a future political marriage, the Duke decreed, he could not be a complete illiterate. He had to know the geography, the noble houses, and the histories of the world he would one day be sold to.
Kaiser sat slightly slumped in his chair, his hands resting limply in his lap. Beneath the black silk blindfold, his breathing was perfectly measured.
Through his Absolute Senses, Kaiser was dissecting the old scholar.
Elias possessed a fascinating mana signature. It wasn't aggressive like the guards, nor was it fluid like Master Hemlock's healing water. Elias's mana felt incredibly rigid, structured, and geometric. It hummed with the precise, methodical ticking of a clockwork mechanism.
An Aether-Scribe, Kaiser deduced, having read about them in his mother's books. Mages who specialize in memory, record-keeping, and minor mental-affinity spells.
"Let us review the borders of the Human Empire," Elias instructed, tapping a long wooden pointer against a thick parchment map unrolled on the table. "To the immediate North, beyond the Frost-Peak Mountains, lies what territory?"
Kaiser let a few seconds of dull silence pass. He made himself look hesitant.
"The... the Elven Kingdom, Scholar Elias," Kaiser answered, his voice small and frail.
"Correct," Elias sighed, though his heartbeat conveyed an utter lack of expectation. "The Kingdom of Sylvria. A realm of dense, singing forests and high-tier elementalists. They despise our Empire, and we despise them. A war is inevitable, which is why your father, the Duke, guards the northern vanguard. And what of the South?"
"The Beastman Tribes," Kaiser murmured.
"Passable," Elias said, adjusting his spectacles. The friction of the glass against his skin sounded like a loud scrape to Kaiser's ears. "And the far East?"
Kaiser paused. He knew the answer perfectly. He had heard the guards whispering about it during their drunken card games. But a frail, isolated eight-year-old shouldn't be too sharp.
"I... I do not remember, sir."
"The Void Wastes," Elias corrected sternly. "A dead land. No mana. No life. Only the remnants of the ancient cataclysms. It is a place of absolute darkness, much like the curse you carry in your skull, boy."
The old man's words were cruel, but his heartbeat remained entirely flat. It wasn't malice; it was clinical detachment. Elias viewed Kaiser not as a child, but as a defective piece of imperial property.
"Now," Elias continued, closing the map and leaning forward. "Knowledge of geography is useless if the mind cannot hold it. Your father wishes to know if the curse has degraded your cognitive functions. I am going to cast a minor resonance weave. It will not hurt, but I will know if you are truly comprehending my lessons, or merely parroting them."
Kaiser's internal focus instantly sharpened into a razor's edge.
A mental probe, Kaiser realized.
He listened as Elias drew a small amount of geometric, clockwork mana from his core. The scholar raised his index finger.
Above the table, between the two of them, Kaiser "heard" the Spell Matrix forming. It was incredibly delicate—a web of interlocking, high-frequency vibrations designed to bridge the gap between Elias's mind and Kaiser's surface thoughts. It was a truth-seeking spell, specifically tuned to detect the erratic brainwaves of a liar or an idiot.
If Elias's spell touched Kaiser's mind, the scholar would not find the dull, fragile brain of a dying boy. He would hit the impenetrable, terrifyingly active consciousness of a twenty-eight-year-old grandmaster who was simultaneously processing the biometric data of every living soul within a two-mile radius.
The illusion would shatter.
"Look toward my voice, boy," Elias commanded softly, pushing the invisible matrix forward.
Kaiser could not shatter this spell with his wooden sword. Elias was staring right at him. He had to absorb the probe without letting it see the truth.
If he wants to see a cracked vessel, Kaiser thought coldly, I will show him the shards.
As the delicate web of mental magic touched the invisible barrier of Kaiser's skin, Kaiser performed an act of supreme internal puppetry.
He didn't block the magic. He welcomed it in.
But the moment the spell entered his nervous system, Kaiser artificially fragmented his own surface thoughts. He suppressed his hyper-awareness. He took his vast, calculating consciousness and buried it deep within the dark, starving gravity of the Void Eyes, a place Elias's weak magic could never hope to reach without being instantly annihilated.
At the surface, where the spell was reading him, Kaiser projected pure, static trauma.
He visualized the agonizing, tearing pain of pulling raw ambient mana through his scarred veins. He projected the cold, hollow emptiness of his long days in the dark. He simulated the frantic, chaotic brainwaves of a deeply terrified, slow-witted child who was constantly overwhelmed by the noise of the world.
Elias's spell hit the false surface.
Kaiser heard the old scholar's breath hitch. Elias's rigid, clockwork mana signature suddenly faltered, completely overwhelmed by the profound wave of simulated misery and dull, fragmented comprehension that Kaiser was feeding into the matrix.
"By the Gods..." Elias whispered, pulling his hand back as if he had touched a burning stove. The spell matrix instantly dissolved into chaotic, fading hums.
Kaiser let his head droop slightly, his mouth falling open in a perfect mimicry of exhaustion. "Did I... did I do well, Scholar?"
Elias stared at the boy. The cold, clinical detachment in the old man's heart was suddenly replaced by a heavy, sickening pity. The spell had shown him a mind that was barely holding itself together, a fragile consciousness drowning in darkness and fear, capable of memorizing facts but utterly incapable of complex, threatening thought.
"Yes," Elias said softly, his voice losing its papery dryness. "You did well, Kaiser. That is enough for today."
The scholar packed his maps with hurried, jerky movements. He did not want to stay in this depressing tower a second longer than necessary. He bowed stiffly to the blindfolded boy and practically fled the room.
The heavy oak door shut.
In the silence of the North Tower, Kaiser slowly lifted his head. The dull, slack-jawed expression vanished instantly, replaced by a chilling, predatory calm.
He retrieved his vast consciousness from the depths of his mind, letting his Absolute Senses expand back out to their two-mile radius. He tracked Elias's rapid footsteps descending the spiral stairs. He listened as the scholar walked across the courtyard and entered the Duke's eastern wing.
Two hundred yards away. Through five stone walls. Kaiser tuned his hearing perfectly to the Duke's study.
"...he is utterly broken, Your Grace," Elias's voice echoed in Kaiser's mind, trembling slightly. "The boy's mind is a wasteland of fear and dullness. He can memorize a map, yes, but there is no spark. No ambition. No threat. He is exactly what he appears to be: a tragic, crippled shell."
"Excellent," the Duke's heavy, rumbling voice replied. "Then he will serve perfectly. The Elven King values peace treaties sealed in blood. A harmless, blind Duke is the ultimate unthreatening hostage to offer them when the time comes."
In the North Tower, Kaiser reached out and gently ran his fingers over the edge of the wooden table.
He was safe. The final layer of his disguise was complete. The greatest minds and the strongest warriors of the Warborn estate had peered into his body and his mind, and all of them had walked away convinced he was nothing but a fragile pawn.
They had handed him the ultimate weapon: total invisibility.
A hostage to the Elven Kingdom, Kaiser mused, a cold, phantom smile touching his lips.
He thought of the singing forests Elias had described. A realm of high-tier magic and ancient physics. It sounded like an ocean of new frequencies just waiting to be mapped.
He stood up from the table, sliding his wooden training sword out from beneath his chair.
He had successfully hidden the predator in plain sight. Now, there was nothing left to do but wait, train in the shadows, and quietly forge his veins of glass until they were strong enough to hold the power of a god.
Swish.
The wooden sword cut through the air, stopping perfectly, silently, one millimeter from the stone wall.