…After Ebenholz and Rosalie sent out their shadows into the void, the room fell into silence once more save for the gentle beeping of machines, the drip of fluid, the sterile hush of medical magic at rest.
A flicker.
A twitch beneath the white sheet.
Eyes, fogged and slow, peeled open. The light overhead was a blur, stabbing at his skull like glass. A dull weight pressed against his face. A mask oxygen? No, something heavier. A breather with enchantments, maybe. His lungs ached beneath it, like they were being held hostage just to keep going.
Vant.
He was awake. Or maybe halfway there.
Each inhale burned like a forge. The anesthesia was supposed to hold him under for weeks months, even. He remembered the doctor saying that, back when everything still made sense. But his body, that twisted joke of nature, had always rejected painkillers. It was as if his nerves had made a pact with the gods of agony to never let him forget he was alive.
His chest throbbed. His side felt like fire stitched into skin. His arms were riddled with IVs, his veins like battlegrounds. One of the bags above him caught his eye blood, labeled with his name. He remembered prepping that himself.
"Just in case," he had joked.
Being Overcored wasn't enough no, he had to be born with RH Null blood too. Golden blood, they called it. Life-saving for others. For him? Just another curse. Like his whole body was a rarity people admired until they saw the price tag.
His neck strained as he turned to the side. Empty operating room. No one. White tiles. Magic runes still glowing faint blue. He tried to move again just a small motion, a twitch.
Pain spiked through his skull like a dagger made of lightning.
"Ugh…"
That single sound, soft and hoarse, was all he could manage.
And yet
Something clicked in the room.
A chime, mechanical. A rune sparked. Sensors had detected it.
He was no longer just the aftermath of a tragedy.
He was awake.
The sound came muffled voices garbled like whispers through thick glass. Footsteps. Cloth. The sharp rustle of haste. The sterile slam of equipment being moved, of heels hitting tile. White coats surrounded him, hands glowing with scanning sigils, magical readings dancing through the air.
He blinked. Blurry. Shapes. Masks. Mouths moving.
Words came in… but they didn't land. Everything sounded like it was underwater.
Wait.
Underwater.
His thoughts snapped into panic.
No.
No no no.
Not again.
His body seized only in thought. Muscles too torn, stitched, drugged to move.
How long?
His stabilizer… his core-anchoring device… It wasn't on him.
He's been without it.
His eyes shot wide, and his lips parted, barely forming the rasp.
"D… Doc…"
A breath. That simple word made his chest scream.
"How… long… was I out…?"
He forced his hand up an inch, trembling like a leaf, fingers twitching desperate.
"Show me…" his throat cracked, "fingers. Hours, show... them. If days... just…"
His lips trembled, "don't mind me... being a dust any… second now… I can't hear a thing quickly!"
The doctor, stunned, exchanged a glance with the nurse.
A beat.
Then he raised both hands
Ten fingers.
Ten.
Ten hours.
Vant's eyes flared open. Shit.
That can't be right.
It only takes fifteen minutesfifteen. That's all it takes for Overcored fractures to start showing. Bones splintering. Veins hardening. Mana turning volatile. Organs
Why wasn't he exploding from the inside out?
Why did they all look so… calm?
Why was there no red alert?
No containment?
Why the hell wasn't he dying right now?
He looked to the left.
Ahh. That's why.
Blood.
Still bleeding.
But not red glowing. A deep shimmer, like glitter caught in lamplight. His own blood pulsed with mana, leaking slow and thick, the color warped by power it was never meant to hold. It dripped in quiet defiance of cauterization, the doctor's attempt to seal it failing. Mageweave gauze had been stuffed in, barely holding the magic from lashing out.
His shoulder.
That's all that remained of his left arm.
Tubes coiled into it, slowly sucking blood from the mangled stump.
So that's why the symptoms were delayed.
How fortunate.
Losing an arm bought him time.
He gave a weak scoff.
Figures.
But something… felt wrong.
A memory twitched no, shoved its way to the front of his mind.
The stolen crumpled paper he once pulled from his father's desk, hidden under old grimoires and forbidden logs.
The truth.
The revelation.
Overcore.
The reverse of mana deficiency. A mutation so rare it had been recorded once.
The Wizard King.
Where mana deficiency made mages helpless by having cores that devoured their own magic, Overcore did the opposite.
It turned the user into a mana generator. A self-charging battery that only grew stronger the more mana was drained.
Wounds, spells, rituals, bleeds it didn't matter.
Take mana from an Overcored, and it comes back. Stronger. Faster.
An endless loop.
A sick joke of nature.
The body heals damage faster than it's dealt. The soul replaces mana faster than it's stolen. And eventually, the body... breaks.
Because it was never meant to hold infinite power.
Drain...
His pupils shrank.
That's what the blood tubes were doing.
They weren't helping.
They were draining him. Feeding the cycle.
"Stop " he tried, lips cracked and dry.
Too late.
CRACK!
A nurse dropped a tray
A metallic clang that echoed with dread.
All eyes turned.
A thin, glowing white crack had bloomed across Vant's cheekbone.
Delicate. Hairline.
But unmistakable.
The first Overcore fracture.
He blinked.
Ah yes.
My luck.
Time was ticking.
He was the bomb now.
His throat rasped, weak but clear:
"Just end it… please."
Blood splattered against the breather mask, a wet, sickening spray thick and luminous. It painted the plastic in a shimmer of red and gold, choking his breath. The doctor cursed under his breath and ripped the mask off, blood soaking his gloves. Vant gasped sharply, like someone drowning just beneath the surface, tasting air like it was fire.
Outside the operating room, the once-calm hallway had become a blur of movement. Shadows darted. People rushed.
Ebenholz and Rosalie stood frozen.
They had felt this feeling before.
The cold that pierces the heart.
The pause between breaths.
Something was wrong again.
Terribly wrong.
More doctors ran nurses screamed something about "a reaction" and "containment."
Rosalie clutched Ebenholz's sleeve tightly, her voice a whisper but firm.
"Ebby… the device "
It struck like a hammer.
Ebenholz's eyes widened.
The Magic Pipe.
Vant's core regulator. His lifeline.
Not just for mana circulation.
Not just for suppressing surges.
It was the only thing that could stabilize an Overcored being.
And it wasn't there.
He turned on his heel immediately, robes flaring behind him, his voice booming down the hallway.
"WHERE IS THE PIPE?! WHO THE HELL MOVED IT?!"
Rosalie's radiant hair shimmered, her pupils sharp as blades, already conjuring a spell to teleport. Her lips moved in a silent prayer but not to God.
To Vant.
Hold on.
Just hold on.
As Ebenholz's shout echoed down the hall, a nurse stumbled forward, trembling, hands cupped around something like it was cursed.
A broken device.
The Magic Pipe snapped clean in two.
The runes were scorched. The core housing was cracked. Mana leaked from it like blood from a slit throat.
Ebenholz's heart sank. Not just into his chest it plummeted. Past his gut. Down into the deepest pit of despair he thought he'd buried long ago. His mouth parted, but no sound came. He just stood there, staring at the device that had kept his son alive for years.
Behind him, he felt the brief, feather-light gust of wind Rosalie teleporting away.
Going to retrieve the spare at home.
But how long would it take?
Seconds felt like eternities now.
He ran. Sprinting past the nurses, ignoring protocol, ignoring the protests he shoved open the door to the operating room.
"L-Lord, you can't !"
"VANT! Listen to me, son! Listen!"
Nothing.
Just the dull sound of breathing machines.
Beeping.
Water in his ears.
Vant's eyes blinked slowly, as if trying to stay in this world. A tremor in his hand. A twitch of his lip.
The nurse grabbed Ebenholz's shoulder gently, but firm.
"My Lord… he can't hear you. He's submerged. Mana flooding the nervous system. His hearing gone until stabilization."
Ebenholz turned to her slowly.
"Do I look like I care?" His voice cracked like thunder.
And then
"Dad?"
A whisper. So small. Barely human.
Ebenholz snapped toward the bed, kneeling beside him, his throat tight.
"Yes. I'm here, Vant. I'm right here."
The boy's eyes fluttered. He smiled weakly, tears slipping down the side of his face.
"Let it go…"
A breath.
"Let it go… I'm tired of this. Dad… please… just let me go."
Ebenholz broke.
There was no thunder in his chest anymore.
Only the sound of something shattering.
"I will not."
Never. Never.
Ebenholz grasped Vant's frail hand and pressed it against his forehead, his breath trembling, his body rigid with defiance. Abyssal magic pooled in his veins, rushing outward like a tidal wave as he activated a mana drain spell, leeching away his son's overflowing energy.
Yet it was useless.
No matter how much he took, the mana returned faster. It fed upon itself, multiplying like a hydra growing two heads for every one severed. It was infinite.
Gritting his teeth, he layered another spell. Dread Hex.
Immediately, the air shifted dense, suffocating. Every mage in the room felt their mana slow, like syrup instead of a rushing stream. Some clutched their chests, others stumbled back in alarm as their reserves froze in place, refusing to replenish.
The realization struck them all at once.
This wasn't for them.
This was for Vant.
One by one, the nurses and doctors fled past the spell's radius, escaping before they, too, became helpless before the abyss.
Ebenholz stayed. He had to.
Vant's mana still surged still ignored the debuff.
Another spell.
Wither Flow. Mana circulation decayed.
Curse of Lethargy. Arcane pathways dulled, slowed.
Hex of Arid Veins. The very essence of magic became an arid wasteland within the body.
Each spell made the air colder, heavier, more cursed.
A normal mage would have died just breathing it in.
Yet Overcore laughed.
Laughed at him.
Laughed like a madman who felt no pain, even when subjected to the most brutal, sadistic torture a mage could ever endure.
"Please! PLEASE, JUST PLEASE! Stay with me! STAY WITH ME!!!"
And still, it was not enough.
Vant coughedbut no crimson came forth.
Only blue.
A luminous, glowing blue.
It dribbled from his lips in thick rivulets, staining the white sheets beneath him, so bright it could be mistaken for liquefied starlight.
No.
Not blood.
Mana.
Pure, undiluted, concentrated mana so rich that it had overtaken the very color of his lifeblood.
His son was not bleeding anymore. He was spilling magic itself.
Ebenholz's breath hitched.
This was it.
The Wizard King's final stage.
The ancient texts had described this very sight. How, at the very brink of Overcore collapse, a mage's body ceased to be flesh.
It became a vessel of raw arcane force.
Blood turned to mana.
Bones turned to ether.
The heart pulsed with more magic than an entire country could ever hope to wield.
And then the collapse.
The texts never detailed what came after.
Because nothing was left to record it.
Ebenholz bit down on his tongue, the taste of iron flooding his mouth.
The cracks were reaching Vant's eyes.
His son's pupils shone too brightly now like twin dying stars.
His nose bled glowing mana. His breath came in short, ragged gasps.
His body was no longer a body.
He was seconds away from turning into pure, uncontrolled, world-ending magic.
Vant screamed.
And Ebenholz screamed with him.
BANG!!!
Rosalie barreled into the room, the door crashing open behind her.
The moment she crossed the threshold, the weight of the layered curses slammed into her body thick, suffocating, oppressive. It was like walking through a world where time itself had slowed, where every breath came with the resistance of drowning in tar.
But Radiance Magic defied decay.
She pushed forward, step by agonizing step, her heels dragging across the sterile floor.
Her chest tightened. Her head pounded. Each movement was like wading through a collapsing star.
But it didn't matter.
Nothing mattered.
Because her son was dying.
Rosalie reached the bedside, barely able to breathe.
And then she saw him.
Her boy.
Her baby.
Her world.
Vant lay there, barely human anymore. His body flickered, pulsing like a heartbeat of unstable light, cracks of raw magic crawling up his skin, consuming what little of him remained.
His chest rose in shallow gasps, his throat convulsing on each breath.
But what made her heart break beyond repair was the look in his eyes.
There was no fear.
No desperation.
No resistance.
Just resignation.
Like a man who had been drowning for far too long and had finally decided to let the ocean take him.
Like someone who had fought against a tide so relentless that surrender felt like a mercy.
He did not struggle. He did not flinch. He simply waited.
Waited to be erased.
The way a broken man waits for sleep, knowing he'll never wake up.
Rosalie's fingers trembled as she pulled out the Magical Pipe the device, their salvation, the only thing that could stabilize him.
She pressed it to his lips.
Vant shook his head.
No.
It was soft. Weak. But absolute.
His lips barely moved, but she understood.
He was so tired.
Tired of the pain.
Tired of the hospitals.
Tired of the magic eating him alive every second of his existence.
For all his life, he had lived chained to a power that would never let him rest, never let him be free.
Now, finally, he had his chance.
To let go.
To make peace.
To disappear.
To be done.
His body shuddered.
A fresh wave of blue blood spilled from his lips, glowing like liquid sapphire.
Rosalie's breath caught. She couldn't She couldn't
Her hands cupped his face.
Her fingers brushed through his damp, sweat-matted hair.
Her own body trembled from the sheer, unbearable ache pressing down on her soul.
And then her voice, breaking, fragile, pleading.
"Vanty, my boy please.
Just please.
Don't do this to your mother.
Please, Vant."
Ebenholz was already weeping.
His forehead pressed to Vant's arm, his shoulders shaking violently.
He couldn't even speak.
Because there were no words.
Because this wasn't supposed to happen.
Because no parent should ever have to beg their child to keep living.
Because no child should ever want to die.
Vant closed his eyes.
A breath.
A decision.
And then
He opened his mouth.
Just wide enough for Rosalie to place the Pipe.
As Vant exhaled, expelling every last shred of air in his shattered lungs, he inhaled.
The Magical Pipe hummed to life, its enchanted mechanisms roaring into action.
It latched onto his Overcore like a vice, dividing not draining the magic, fragmenting it into harmless, dissipating particles.
It was a battle of mechanics versus anomaly.
The Overcore, relentless as ever, pulsed, surged, fought back but it found nothing to fight.
There was no theft.
No forceful extraction.
No feedback loop that triggered its mad spiral of regeneration.
Only the quiet, methodical disassembly of its excess power.
It didn't understand.
It couldn't.
And so, it faltered.
The rampant mana production slowed.
The cracks along Vant's skin stopped.
The glowing blue bleeding ceased.
His body, for the first time in what felt like an eternity, was still.
Rosalie let out a gasping sob.
"Yes! Yes! Baby, that's it!"
She clutched at his face, her thumbs rubbing soothing circles against his clammy skin, pressing kisses onto his temple, his forehead, his hair.
Ebenholz, shaking, his hands still trembling from the aftershock of channeling so many curses, let the last of his magic unravel.
The debuffs collapsed.
The room previously thick with suffocating weight, decay, entropy eased.
Rosalie slumped forward, hands still tangled in Vant's hair, her tears mixing with the mana-saturated floor.
She didn't care.
She could barely breathe past her sobs.
Vant, her boy her sweetest boy
He was still here.
Alive.
Barely.
But alive.
Ebenholz wiped at his face his composure shattered, his breath still uneven.
Then, grimly, he glanced at the walls.
Every surface glistened with the raw, exposed aftermath of Overcore.
The walls, the ceiling, even the very air was rich with unstable mana, thick enough to crystallize.
This place was now a breeding ground for magic.
They needed to move.
Now.
If it weren't for Ebenholz's abyssal magic, there would have been a mass evacuation.
That much the hospital would whisper about for decades. The mana density, the curses, the air so thick with raw arcane charge it could kill a lesser mage on contact.
Once Vant was finally relocated still breathing, still dangerously radiant the magic pressure dropped enough for the hospital to resume basic function.
And strangely, eerily, the rest of the operation went... smoothly.
His mangled shoulder, now dull and dry instead of bubbling mana, cauterized on its own, as if Overcore itself had folded back in obedience.
No healing magic. That was strictly forbidden.
So they went old school needle, thread, cold steel, gauze soaked in alcohol and prayer.
And Vant?
He was awake the entire time.
Not because he wanted to be.
But because the moment he slept, the Magical Pipe would no longer function.
And the Overcore would wake again.
So he endured it.
The stitching, the cutting, the syringes, the pulling.
He didn't scream.
Didn't flinch.
Didn't care.
At this point, he just wanted it done.
The world already made it clear it didn't want him.
So he didn't offer it the satisfaction of a single noise.
Later, as the chaos calmed and the staff left him in silence, Ebenholz casually paid the damage costs: one million gold coins.
A number that would break the backs of merchant lords.
For the Darkven household?
Just another pocket drop meant for children's seasonal spending.
Now the room was quiet.
A private suite, sanitized by spell, sealed by contract, and watched over by guards dressed more like mages than soldiers.
Vant sat upright, bound by layers of mageweave gauze, his left side nothing but wrapped void.
His only hand shakily lifted the Magical Pipe, and he inhaled.
Blue light bloomed through the transparent tubing.
Then
He exhaled.
A soft stream of glowing blue smoke curled lazily into the air, spiraling toward the sterile ceiling, lighting the room in brief, dreamlike hue.
The sun rose outside the window, casting the first honest rays of dawn.
It reflected on the glass, on the bandages, on the tears dried on his cheeks.
He didn't smile.
Didn't sigh.
Just stared at it.
Expression blank.
Only his eyes moved quiet, exhausted, unblinking.
As if still unsure if this was real.
Or just another fever dream before the final crack.
Vant closed his eyes.
Slowly.
As if even that small motion risked setting off another tremor in the fragile machinery of his body.
The Magical Pipe rested in his lap now, glowing faintly like a dying star. His remaining hand clenched over his thigh, the knuckles whitening with effort. With pain. With something he couldn't name anymore.
How long?
How long would he live like this?
Like some ticking arcane bomb, a walking Overcore, a nuclear reactor on steroids hidden inside soft flesh.
He wanted to scream. Not from the pain he was used to pain. But from the truth that kept circling in his skull, like a vulture that wouldn't leave.
"You're a miracle."
"You're gifted."
"You're cursed."
All the same sentence dressed up in different clothes.
He would've killed to be magicless.
To deal with Magism the social, political, spiritual burden of being a non-mage in a mage-ruled world.
He could've lived a hard life.
A small life.
But a peaceful one.
Instead...
He was born a calamity with a pulse.
The only other recorded Overcore, the Wizard King, lived until his forties.
Forty.
That was nothing.
Barely a quarter of a mage's average lifespan.
Not even a third of what he should've had.
And Vant wasn't just a mage he had fairy blood, elven blood.
If things had been normal, he'd live three hundred centuries or more hell he could be an immortal if he liked, fresh-faced and vibrant while ten generations came and went.
But now?
He wouldn't see forty.
He might not even see twenty.
He felt the weight of that number.
Twenty.
A decade and change.
He couldn't even remember most of the first half of it.
His hand trembled on his lap, clutching into a fist. Not from weakness. From despair. From the cold realization that life was no longer about dreams.
It was about delaying detonation.
Minute by minute. Hour by hour.
A quiet life? A love? A future?
He would trade everything just to feel normal.
But instead, he had this bandages, pain, glowing blood, and a pipe that barely kept him stable.
This wasn't living.
This was survival on borrowed time.
He brushed his hair back
the motion too poised, too tired for a seven-year-old.
But then again, Vant hadn't been seven since the day he was born.
In a world where children played with toy wands, Vant was solving fifth-tier magic theorems in crayon handwriting.
In a world where nobles prayed to give birth to mana-rich heirs, his very existence was an act of war against nature itself.
He knew the truth.
Everyone wanted to be him.
No one could survive being him.
They envied his infinite mana.
They whispered of his first-ever magic attribute
Annihilation Magic.
A form that even the Codex Arcanum had never recorded. Not lost.
Unwritten.
Unimagined.
Born with him.
His bloodline was already legendary:
Mother: Wielder of Radiance Magic, a divine attribute thought lost its last echoes watered down into mere "Light Magic."
Father: The fifth generation Abyss Mage of House Darkven, and possessor of Havoc Magic raw, wild destruction.
His sister, even, bore Equinox Magic, the same rare attribute of the legendary Wizard King, Merlin Pendragon.
And then came him.
Vant, the walking mutation.
A child whose very existence rewrote the magical lineage of the Towers.
A child of Annihilation, birthed from the unholy dance between gravity and havoc.
A paradox child from a blessed bloodline.
Descendant of the Wizard King himself.
So what?
"Prodigy."
"Genius."
"Gifted."
"Blessed."
"Legacy."
Meaningless.
He would throw every crown they gave him into the abyss.
Every divine prophecy, every scholar's awe, every noble's expectation.
Because none of them saw the curse.
None of them saw the toll.
How divinity had blindfolded him, making him a spectacle while it slowly robbed him of his peace.
But even in that moment, breathing blue smoke into a sterile recovery room, something shifted.
A trail of light blue, soft yet searing streamed from his right eye like a comet's path.
It shimmered with intent. Not magic.
Resolve.
He smiled
not with hope, not with joy.
But with defiance.
Fine then.
"I'll fight this fate of mine."
He wouldn't just live his life to the fullest.
He would exceed it.
Transcend it.
More than "fulfilling."
More than "complete."
He would live so powerfully, so unreasonably, that fate itself would have to stop and rewrite its own rules.
Because if he was a ticking time bomb
then he wouldn't waste the explosion.
He wouldn't die for himself.
He would die for a cause only he could birth.
Not a tragedy.
Not a miracle.
A revolution in flesh and blood.
And this quiet hospital room?
This wasn't the rest.
This was the prologue of his damned miserable life.