The rhythmic clacking of the train wheels suddenly felt deafening in the narrow, dimly lit corridor. Revan maintained his blank expression, but beneath his calm exterior, his mind was racing.
'My father? Lord Valerius von Alstaire?'
Revan knew the lore of his family from the game wiki. He knew his father was once a respected military commander, a man who had brought honor to the Alstaire name before their inevitable, catastrophic fall from grace. But Revan had no emotional attachment to the man. He had inherited the body, the name, and the pathetic physical stats, but not the memories of a loving parent.
Still, hearing Dain mention him with such heavy familiarity threw Revan off balance.
"I am afraid I do not know what you mean, Marshal," Revan replied evenly, keeping his hands relaxed at his sides.
Dain snorted, a harsh sound that scraped against the quiet. He took another step forward, his towering frame completely blocking the corridor.
"Your father had the exact same habit," Dain said, his freezing eyes piercing through Revan's carefully constructed mask. "Prowling around in the dark. Sticking his nose into places it didn't belong. Asking questions that were better left unasked."
Dain leaned in slightly, the faint smell of old tobacco and gun oil radiating from his heavy greatcoat.
"Valerius was a brilliant commander. A loyal friend," Dain continued, his voice tightening with a suppressed, ancient anger. "But he was a fool when it came to politics. He thought honor could shield him from the vipers in the capital. He was wrong."
Revan narrowed his eyes slightly. This wasn't in the game's lore. The wiki simply stated the Alstaire family went bankrupt due to "bad investments and political missteps." It was a generic background story for a trash-tier character. But Dain was painting a very different picture.
"If my father was a fool, Marshal, then his mistakes died with him," Revan said, his tone carefully neutral. "I am merely a servant of House Vespera. I have no interest in the politics that ruined him."
Dain stared at him for a long, suffocating moment. He looked at the perfectly tailored servant's uniform, the dark circles under Revan's eyes, and the complete lack of aristocratic pride in his posture.
A flash of genuine pity—mixed with deep disgust—crossed the veteran's scarred face.
"You really believe that, don't you?" Dain muttered, shaking his head slowly. "You think serving that spoiled little witch will keep you safe from the storm. But you're standing on the exact same tracks your father did, boy. You're just waiting for the train to hit you."
"Marshal—"
"Go back to your room, Revan," Dain cut him off, his voice returning to a cold, authoritative bark. He turned his back, dismissing Revan completely. "And stop crawling around on the roof. The next time my guards catch a shadow moving near the cargo, they have orders to shoot on sight. I won't save you twice."
Dain walked away, his heavy boots echoing down the corridor until he disappeared into the security carriage.
Revan stood alone in the dim light, his jaw clenched tight.
'Man, I really hate my life.'
He sighed heavily, turning around and retreating into his small, windowless quarters. He was stuck on a moving train heading into a death trap with a cargo of illegal magic bombs; he had far bigger problems right now than dealing with a dead father's political baggage.
The next morning, the tension on the Z-Class Express Train thickened, suffocating everyone on board.
They were approaching the Ashenmoor Corridor.
Revan stood in the corner of the dining carriage, a silver pitcher of water in his hand, observing the breakfast table. The atmosphere was vastly different from the night before. The polite, venomous banter had vanished.
Cassian Voss was quietly buttering his toast, his perfectly symmetrical smile replaced by a hard, calculating line. Professor Mirael was no longer excitedly rambling about mutated flora; she was intensely reviewing a stack of complex mana formulas, her brow furrowed in deep concentration.
Even Lyra, the "maid," moved with a rigid stiffness, her hands staying suspiciously close to the hidden daggers under her apron.
But the most drastic change was Sylvia.
The Ice Queen sat at the head of the table, her breakfast completely untouched. She was staring out the reinforced glass window at the bleak, gray landscape blurring past them.
"We are three minutes away from the first perimeter," Marshal Dain announced as he entered the dining carriage. He was in full combat gear, a massive, unadorned broadsword strapped to his back. "I suggest everyone prepare themselves. The transition will be... unpleasant."
Cassian wiped his mouth elegantly with a napkin. "Will it truly be a complete blackout, Marshal?"
Revan watched Sylvia.
Her shoulders, usually perfectly relaxed in their arrogant posture, were tight. Her hands were folded on her lap, but Revan, who had spent years studying her micro-expressions, saw it.
Her knuckles were white. She was clenching her fists.
'She's afraid.'
The realization hit Revan like a bucket of ice water. Sylvia von Vespera, the prodigy who could crush a man into paste with a flick of her wrist, was genuinely afraid.
Screeeech!
The train suddenly violently jerked, the iron wheels screaming against the tracks as if hitting an invisible wall. The crystal chandeliers above them flickered wildly, then died completely. The magical heating system built into the floor instantly shut down, plunging the carriage into freezing temperatures.
They had entered the Dead Zone.
Revan felt it immediately. It wasn't just the cold. It was a suffocating, oppressive weight pressing down from all sides, like the air itself had turned into lead. For a Warrior who only needed to circulate Aura inside their own body, it felt like moving underwater—heavy, but manageable.
But for a Mage? It was absolute torture.
A sharp gasp broke the silence.
Revan's eyes snapped to Sylvia. The Ice Queen was slumped forward, her hands gripping the edge of the mahogany table so hard the wood groaned. She was gasping for air, her pale face turning an alarming shade of gray. The oppressive space was violently rejecting her existence, forcing her immense mana to stay trapped and choked inside her own veins. The terrifying aura she usually radiated was completely gone.
She was just a sixteen-year-old girl, choking on her own trapped power.
"Lady Sylvia!" Cassian half-rose from his seat, his eyes flashing with a predatory gleam. He was assessing her weakness, calculating how vulnerable she truly was.
"Sit down, Lord Voss," Dain barked, his hand resting on the hilt of his broadsword. The Marshal was unaffected; as a pure physical fighter, the Dead Zone barely hindered him. "The initial shock will pass. Her internal circuits are just adjusting to the suppression."
Revan stood perfectly still in the corner, his heart pounding against his ribs.
Revan's hand instinctively drifted toward the hilt of the mundane steel sword Volkar had forged for him.
'Whoever planned to attack this train... they know this. They know this is the exact moment she is completely defenseless.'
As if answering his dark thought, a deafening explosion ripped through the air, shaking the entire train violently.
The dining carriage tilted dangerously to the left. The sound of tearing metal and screeching iron drowned out everything else. Cups and plates shattered against the walls.
"Brace!" Dain roared, drawing his massive sword.
Through the window, Revan saw it.
The warning signals on the tracks ahead hadn't just been ignored; they had been deliberately destroyed. And standing on the ridge overlooking the narrow pass, silhouetted against the gray sky, were dozens of figures clad in black armor.
The train wasn't just under attack. It was being derailed.
***
The world fractured into a symphony of screaming iron and shattering glass.
The immense kinetic energy of the Z-Class Express Train hitting the sabotaged tracks sent the entire dining carriage launching into the air for one horrifying second. Then, gravity violently reasserted its grip.
The carriage slammed down on its side, tearing through the frozen, dead earth of the Ashenmoor Corridor.
Inside, it was absolute chaos. The opulent mahogany tables splintered into deadly projectiles. The velvet curtains tore, and the crystal chandeliers exploded, raining razor-sharp shards everywhere.
Through the sensory overload, Revan's instincts—honed from years of surviving impossible odds in his past life—took over completely.
The moment the train tilted, he forced his Aura to circulate. The oppressive weight of the Dead Zone tried to crush his energy, but Revan didn't try to project it outward. He compressed it inward, wrapping it tightly around his muscles and bones like an internal armor of iron.
He lunged across the tilting floor toward the head of the table.
Sylvia was completely paralyzed. The shock of the suppression had already broken her focus, and now, the violent crash was about to throw her directly into the path of a massive iron stove sliding from the adjacent kitchen.
Revan grabbed her by the waist, using his Aura-enhanced strength to jerk her out of the chair, and threw them both behind the reinforced structural pillar of the carriage.
CRASH!
The iron stove obliterated the space where Sylvia had been sitting a fraction of a second ago, embedding itself deep into the mahogany wall.
The train dragged against the earth for another agonizing hundred meters before finally grinding to a violent, shuddering halt.
Silence fell over the carriage, broken only by the hiss of broken steam pipes and the howling, freezing wind pouring in through the shattered windows.
The carriage was resting entirely on its right side. What used to be the wall was now the floor.
"Status!" Marshal Dain's voice roared through the smoke and dust. The scarred veteran pushed a massive piece of debris off his chest as if it were made of cardboard. He hadn't sustained a single scratch.
Cassian Voss coughed, elegantly dusting off his ruined, expensive suit. He was standing on the new 'floor', his breathing perfectly steady. Revan noticed the faint, shimmering distortion of high-density Aura receding under Cassian's skin.
'He used Aura to anchor himself during the crash,' Revan noted coldly, his arms still shielding Sylvia. 'Lyra is missing. No, wait—'
A shadow shifted above them. Lyra dropped down from what used to be the ceiling. The cheerful, clumsy maid was gone. In her hands were two wicked, curved short swords, and her eyes were flat and devoid of emotion.
"Perimeter breached," Lyra reported, her voice entirely different—crisp, professional, and lethal. "Hostiles approaching from the western ridge. At least three dozen."
Revan looked down at Sylvia.
The Ice Queen was no longer a threat. She was slumped against the debris, her pale face smudged with soot and blood, eyes wide with a vulnerability she had never allowed anyone to see. In this dead air, the prodigy of House Vespera was nothing more than a liability.
"Protect the cargo!" Dain barked, drawing his massive broadsword. "Voss, Lyra, secure the front! Do not let them reach the VIP!"
Before anyone could move, the shattered glass of the ceiling windows burst inward.
Five figures clad in matte-black armor dropped into the overturned carriage. Their faces were hidden behind featureless iron masks. They didn't speak. They moved with the terrifying, synchronized efficiency of trained killers.
"Die!" Dain roared, his broadsword sweeping in a brutal, wide arc.
The heavy blade, driven by pure, monstrous physical strength, sheared through the thick armor of the first two assassins as if they were made of wet paper. Blood sprayed across the velvet curtains.
Lyra became a blur of motion. She slipped under a thrust from the third assassin, driving her short swords upward into the unprotected joints beneath his armpits. The man collapsed without a sound.
Cassian didn't draw a weapon. He merely sidestepped a downward strike from the fourth assassin, raised his pristine white-gloved hand, and struck the man's chest. The sickening CRACK of shattering ribs echoed loudly, and the assassin's chest caved in completely.
'They are all monsters,' Revan analyzed, keeping himself perfectly still in the shadows of the pillar. 'But they are making a mistake. They are focusing on the immediate threats.'
The fifth assassin hadn't engaged Dain, Lyra, or Cassian.
Using the chaos as a cover, the fifth killer had slipped past the frontline. His featureless iron mask locked onto the shivering form of Sylvia von Vespera. He raised a hooked blade, stepping silently over the debris, closing the distance in the blink of an eye.
Sylvia saw him. Her pale violet eyes widened. She instinctively raised a hand, her lips moving to chant a spell, but nothing happened. Only a pathetic, choked gasp escaped her lips.
The sword swung down toward her neck.
CLANG!
Sparks illuminated the dim carriage.
The assassin's arm jolted back, the sheer force of the parry vibrating up to his shoulder.
Sylvia blinked, the freezing wind whipping her silver hair.
Standing between her and the assassin was Revan.
He didn't look like the subservient, exhausted boy who poured her tea. His back was straight, his stance perfectly rooted, and in his right hand, he held a mundane, unadorned steel sword. Volkar's creation caught the dim light, its edge completely unchipped despite clashing with the assassin's heavier blade.
The assassin recovered quickly, lunging forward with a deadly thrust aimed at Revan's heart.
Revan didn't retreat. He didn't waste energy on flashy movements.
He breathed in, feeling the heavy, suffocating weight of the Dead Zone. 'In a world where magic is dead...'
Revan stepped inside the assassin's guard, pivoting his hips to let the thrust slide harmlessly past his shoulder.
'...steel and technique are king.'
With a terrifying, surgical precision, Revan whipped his blade in a tight, upward flick. The steel tip found the exact millimeter of space between the assassin's iron collar and the helmet.
It slid through flesh and bone with a sickening slide.
The assassin froze, his eyes widening behind the slit of his mask. Revan pulled the blade out in one smooth motion, letting the lifeless body crumple to the floor. He flicked the blood off his sword with a sharp snap of his wrist.
Silence descended upon their corner of the carriage. Revan turned his head slightly, his dark eyes meeting Sylvia's.
"Stay behind me, my lady," Revan said, his voice calm and utterly devoid of fear.