Twenty-seven hours. That was how long Archivist Theron's hidden study held. Arlan spent them in a cycle of painful healing, forced meditation, and grim planning.
The basic med-kit and his own resilience had done their work. The bone-knit salve had set his ribs, though they remained tender. His mana had crawled back to a precarious 1250 points, and the violent cracks in his core lattice had been patched, not healed, leaving it at 78% stability—functional, but fragile.
Personal Status - Arlan Thorne (Recovering)
Order: 3rd
Rank: 9 (Peak-Late) - Bottleneck: At Threshold
Mana Capacity: 1250/4500
Core Stability: 78% (Temporary Repairs)
Physical Condition: Healing Fractures, Moderate Mana Burn, Lingering Soul Fatigue.
Sundered Shield Fragment Bond: 4.5%
It was far from ideal, but it was enough to move. To fight if he had to. To run, most definitely.
Theron returned as promised, his wrinkled face tense. "They're doing sector sweeps. Psionic diviners. They'll reach this wing by nightfall. It's time."
Arlan stood, testing his weight. A dull ache, but no sharp pain. "Thank you, Archivist. I won't forget this."
"Don't thank me. Just survive. And if you ever get the chance… tell Vance the card catalogue is in perfect order and she can stuff her digital database." The old man handed him a small, folded piece of vellum. "A map. Of the sub-basements. The old ones, from the first founding. Parts even the architects forgot. It's incomplete, but it's more than anyone else has. The entrance I've marked… it's in the boiler room of the Alchemy wing. A maintenance shaft behind the primary mana-convector. It's… unpleasant."
Arlan took the map, tucking it into his stolen uniform. "Unpleasant" was his natural habitat now.
He left the hidden study, the bookcase swinging shut behind him, sealing away his brief sanctuary. The Library Annex was silent as a grave. He moved through the towering shelves, his senses extended, the Umbral Shroud a faint, energy-conserving cloak around him.
He encountered no one. The academic spires were under a different kind of lockdown—a curfew, with students confined to dorms and most faculty to quarters. Only security and the search teams moved freely.
Avoiding the main corridors, he navigated through a labyrinth of lecture halls, storage closets, and disused atria. He passed a large window overlooking the central plaza. It was a garrison. Academy guards in full combat gear. Accord Null-Suits, their presence now brazen. And floating in the center, her face a mask of cold authority, was Iliana Vance. She was addressing a group of senior proctors and a few stern-looking individuals in the robes of Great Family elders.
Damage control and consolidation, Arlan thought. She was spinning the narrative, securing her power base.
He saw Kieran was not there. Recovering, no doubt. The memory of severing his foot brought no thrill, only the cold satisfaction of a threat neutralized.
He turned from the window and continued his ghost's journey to the Alchemy wing.
The boiler room was a cathedral of industry—hissing pipes, glowing mana-converters, and the deep thrum of contained power. The heat was oppressive. He found the primary mana-convector, a pillar of crystal and brass three meters wide, humming with enough energy to power a small town.
Behind it, as Theron's map indicated, was a grime-encrusted metal panel. No lock, just decades of neglect. Arlan pried it open with a whisper of spatial force, revealing a vertical shaft descending into absolute darkness. A rusted ladder was bolted to one side. The air that wafted up was cold, damp, and carried the faint, foul scent of stagnant water and older, more primal things.
Unpleasant.
He climbed down without hesitation.
The descent took longer than he expected. Fifty meters. A hundred. He passed offshoots and tunnels, but he kept going down, following Theron's scrawled directions towards the "Foundational Strata."
Finally, his feet hit solid, uneven stone. He ignited a tiny, heatless ball of Voidfire in his palm, its amethyst light devouring the darkness rather than pushing it back. He was in a natural cavern, but one that showed signs of ancient, crude modification—smoothed walls, support columns carved from stalagmites.
This was old. Pre-Academy. Pre-modern civilization, perhaps.
Theron's map ended here with a notation: "Here there be memories. And worse."
Arlan moved forward. The cavern opened into a larger chamber. And there, he stopped.
It was a tomb. But not for bodies.
Arrayed around the chamber were pedestals of black stone. And on each pedestal rested a Core.
Not mana cores, but crystalline recordings—soul imprints, memories solidified. They glowed with soft, dying light—blue, green, red, gold. Dozens of them.
In the center of the chamber was a larger dais. And on it lay a skeleton, not in a heap, but arranged with ritual care. It was clad in the rotted remnants of robes that might once have been fine. Clutched in its bony fingers was a long, slender case made of a wood so dark it seemed to drink the light from his Voidfire.
Arlan approached the dais cautiously. His own core gave a strange pulse, a resonance not with the memory crystals, but with the dark wood case.
He reached out and touched it.
The wood was cold, impossibly so. There was no latch. He willed it to open, and with a sigh, the lid swung back.
Inside, resting on velvet turned to dust, was a sword.
It was not ornate. It was simple, elegant, and deadly. The blade was a dull, non-reflective grey, like brushed steel, but it seemed to have depth, as if looking into a still pool. The hilt was wrapped in black leather, the crossguard a single, unadorned bar of the same grey metal. There was no pommel gem, no engraving. It was a tool for killing, refined to an absolute degree.
As his fingers brushed the hilt, a flood of information, not from the System, but from the sword itself, pierced his mind.
Aethelbrand. The Nameless Edge. Forged in a star's collapse, quenched in void-ice, bound with a law of severing. It does not cut matter. It severs connection—the bonds between atoms, between soul and body, between cause and effect. It was the weapon of a Shadow-Walker, a hunter of Gods.
And with the name came a final, fading whisper from the skeleton: "For the one who walks the path of breaker, who would break chains both seen and unseen. Take it. And remember the price of cutting what cannot be undone."
Arlan's hand closed around the hilt. It fit his grip as if molded for it. The weight was perfect—substantial, yet effortless to lift.
The moment he lifted it from the case, the memory crystals around the chamber flared to life. Images, emotions, echoes of lives flooded the room.
He saw the one who had been the skeleton—a man moving through shadows that were not shadows, his blade parting not flesh, but the threads of spells, of loyalties, of life itself. He saw him fighting beings of light and void. He saw him making a final stand, not against an enemy, but to contain a breach—a rift into a place of screaming colours. He saw him succeed, at the cost of his own life, his memories and the memories of his comrades sealed here as a warning and a legacy.
Aethelbrand was not just a weapon. It was a key. A symbol. And a burden.
A notification, this time from his personal, divine system, flashed.
Divine Contract Update: Artifact of Cognizance Acquired - Aethelbrand (The Severing Edge). Synchronization with Bearer of Null Intent detected. Bond initiated.
Warning: Wielder is marked by the Law of Severance. All cuts made are eternal. All bonds broken cannot be remade.
Arlan held the sword before him. He gave it a slow, experimental swing. It moved through the air without a sound, leaving a faint, grey afterimage that lingered for a second before fading.
It was the perfect weapon for his intent. To Break. To Negate. To Sever.
He sheathed it in a makeshift baldric made from his uniform's belt. The weight on his back was a comfort.
He turned to leave this tomb of forgotten heroes. He had what he came for, and more. A direction. The "inheritance ground" Theron had unwittingly led him to was not just a hiding place; it was a armory for the war he was stepping into.
As he moved back towards the shaft, a final, collective whisper from the memory crystals followed him, a chorus of ghosts:
"The Gate stirs. The lock is rusted. The key is now in hand. Prepare, Shadow-Walker. The real battle is not for a school, or a city, or a world. It is a war against reality itself."
The Gate. The concept echoed something deeper in his contract, a vague, ultimate purpose. He pushed it aside. One world-ending crisis at a time.
He had a sword, a map of the deeps, and a belly full of cold fire.
It was time to stop being prey.
He began to climb, not back towards the light and the hunters, but sideways, into the deeper, older tunnels of the foundational strata. He would disappear into the earth's memory, heal completely, master his new weapon, and break through the bottleneck that was crushing his spirit.
And when he emerged again, he would not be Arlan Thorne, the fugitive anomaly.
He would be the shadow with a severing blade.
And Iliana Vance, the Silent Accord, and all the Great Families who stood with them would learn the true meaning of the word break.