"Line three has been cut. Prepare to stabilize the core."
Kyle whispered softly to the miniature communicator at his throat—a standard protocol he had repeated countless times, every syllable precise and flawless.
However, the usual concise acknowledgment from his teammates did not come through his earpiece.
All around was dead silent, except for the howling wind atop the building.
A faint sense of foreboding crept into his mind.
Just then, a voice he knew all too well—a voice belonging to his commander, the man who usually treated him like his own son—sounded. But now, it carried an eerie, malevolent chuckle. "Well done, Ghost. Your pension…your family will receive it."
Betrayal!
The word struck Kyle's mind like a bolt of lightning, shattering all his composure in an instant.
He tried to pinpoint a sniper's vantage point, but it was too late.
Boom—!
A violent explosion engulfed everything.
"Am I dead?"
He didn't know how much time had passed. Struggling, he attempted to open his eyes, only to find himself incapable of doing so.
"Young Master... You've finally woken up?"
A soft, trembling girl's voice, tinged with tears, broke the silence of his world.
Young Master?
He saw a boy's life unfold. Born blind, treated by his family as a disgrace and burden.
He saw this boy grow up amidst endless ridicule and bullying, with his only warmth coming from his father and a little maid named Amy.
He saw three days ago, how his nominal fiancée, Seraphina, in front of an entire city's guests, ruthlessly slapped a marriage annulment letter on his face, calling him "a useless waste unworthy of living in this world."
Finally, he saw this boy collapse in despair and humiliation, his heart stopping in the process.
And now, he had become this boy.
"Amy…" Drawing from that fragment of memory, Kyle forced the name of the maid through his parched lips.
The body was frighteningly weak, and even uttering those words drained most of his strength.
"It's me, Young Master!" Amy sobbed with joy, her warm hands carefully supporting him. "You've been unconscious for three days, ever since Lord Declan and the others…"
Bang!
A loud crash interrupted her words. The wooden door of the small house was kicked open with brute force, slamming against the wall and shaking loose a cloud of dust.
Heavy footsteps, accompanied by the stench of cheap alcohol and sweat, invaded the cramped space.
"My dear nephew, you're finally awake." A man's oily voice sounded, brimming with insincere sympathy. "Your father contracted a grave illness while inspecting the mines and is now bedridden. The family cannot go a day without a head. Everyone's been so worried. For the glory of the Kellan family, how about handing over the 'Heart of the Storm' to me for safekeeping?"
The man was Kyle's uncle, Declan. In his memories, this face was always adorned with a greedy and cruel smile.
The Heart of the Storm was the symbol of the family head. Surrendering it would mean completely relinquishing himself and the last of his father's loyal forces to an inescapable abyss.
Kyle said nothing, lying motionless. In his past life, he would have chosen silence in times like these. Silence was the best weapon—it allowed observation, the searching of flaws.
Seeing no response, Declan's patience quickly wore thin, and his face twisted into its true, gruesome state. "It seems you're out of your mind from illness." He waved dismissively at the guards behind him. "Hold him down and search for it!"
A burly guard smirked maliciously as he stepped forward, grabbing at Kyle's shoulder without mercy.
Kyle's combat instincts flared in an instant. His body tried to evade, block, and counter, but all these efforts were futile.
He was like a chick being plucked up, powerless against the brute force pushing him to the ground.
The back of his head slammed heavily onto the cold, hard stone floor, emitting a dull thud.
Buzz—!
Amid the blinding pain, the eternal darkness that enveloped him suddenly shattered!
Next, the entire world reassembled before his eyes in a way he could never have imagined—a dizzying cascade of sensations.
He could see!
But what he saw was not the shapes and colors of objects. It was their essence—the flowing energy within them.
A terrified and trembling Amy appeared as a warm but faint golden glow, representing pure care, flickering violently in his newfound vision.
The malicious guard was a roiling mass of dark red energy, composed of primal violence and desire.
And his ambitious uncle was surrounded by a snakelike deep purple aura, symbolizing greed and conspiracy.
This was the Energy Core of this world—the Ether. A force he had never understood before, but now could clearly perceive.
The guard, seeing him lying dazed on the ground, assumed he was petrified with fear. Sneering disdainfully, he reached out again, his movements rough and direct, obviously intending to subdue him completely.
But in Kyle's newly awakened vision, the guard's movements were laughably slow. He could clearly see the trajectory of the dark red energy, predicting the exact point of its contact, the angle of the wrist, and the subsequent force direction.
Just as the filthy hand was about to grab him, Kyle moved.
His action wasn't swift, somewhat clumsy even, as his body was yet to fully adapt to his commands. But instead of counterattacking, he simply shifted his body slightly sideways in an almost unnatural manner, subtly hooking his foot under the guard's ankle.
"What?!"
The guard's vision blurred as his confident grab found nothing but air. Feeling a faint force trip his ankle, he might have ignored it under normal circumstances. But now, his massive body lost its balance, and with a startled cry of pain, he fell forward awkwardly, stirring a cloud of dust.
The room fell into a deathly silence.
Amy covered her mouth with both hands, her eyes filled with disbelief. Declan's previously ferocious expression froze, replaced by shock and fear.
A blind man… A waste… How could he evade the grasp of a battle-hardened guard?
Kyle slowly got to his feet. Although his body remained weak and shaky, his posture was straight, exuding the sharp aura of a top-tier agent.
He gazed ahead, a cold, emotionless smile playing on his lips.
He may have lost everything, but Fate seemed to have offered him a more interesting, and perilous, form of compensation.
His eyes moved past the guard struggling to get up, locking onto the deep purple energy enveloping Declan. Within its core, he saw faint black threads of energy resonating with his father's room in the distance—the residue of poison. A slow, insidious, deadly poison.
So that's it.
Not an illness.
Murder.
Kyle raised his head. Though his physical eyes remained clouded and lifeless, Declan felt as though he were being stared down by an ancient beast from the abyss. Every hair on his body stood on end, a chill shooting from his feet straight to his scalp.
"You lied, Uncle."
Kyle's voice was soft but struck their hearts like a heavy hammer.
"My father isn't ill…"
He paused, his every word laced with undeniable conviction:
"He's dying."