Lucian rubbed the sleep from his eyes, blinking at the crowd still gathered in front of his house. His gaze shifted to the table, then back to the people watching him with a mix of curiosity and uncertainty.
"Form a line," he said, his voice calm but firm. "I'll call you one by one. As you can see, I don't exactly have a palace here, so I'll be taking only thirty students. I intend to pour my full effort into each of you. If you're not serious about getting into the academy next year, don't waste my time."
The murmurs quieted. Some exchanged looks. Others adjusted their posture, suddenly standing a bit straighter.
Lucian turned and stepped into the bedroom, returning a moment later with a worn notebook and a pen. One by one, he began calling names and writing them down. A few hesitated when they saw how young he was, barely older than the students themselves.
"You doubt me?" he said, meeting the gaze of a parent who didn't seem to be convinced. "Only someone who's seen God can guide you to Him. Trust me."
It wasn't logical at all but oddly enough, it worked. The line moved faster after that.
Within an hour, the registration was complete. The crowd slowly dispersed into the night until the lane fell silent again.
Lucian leaned back in his chair, letting out a long breath. "That went smoother than I expected. Now, I just need to make his notes."
He stretched once, then rolled up his sleeves and got to work.
Compared to the brutal medical exams of his past life, the entrance requirements here were child's play. He wrote quickly and methodically guides, breakdowns, and annotated diagrams. Page after page stacked around him in neat piles. The glow from the strange light in his chest faintly pulsed slightly and the fatigue was soon gone.
By midnight, he was done.
Every lesson was scheduled. Every subject was covered. Key concepts were highlighted, and reference books had been marked for further study.
He in the span of a few hours, created what most teachers might struggle to compile in weeks.
After a simple dinner, he glanced at the clock. He still didn't feel tired. Not even slightly.
With a shrug, Lucian dropped to the floor and began his workout.
"No time to slack off these three months."
Lucian tied the cloth tighter around his wrists and stared down at the floor,
"I didn't have much hope before… but now? With the mysterious recovery, I can burn through all my limits so I better use it to the fullest."
A week passed in a blur.
In the early morning haze, Lucian stood shirtless in the small garden behind his cottage. A thick wooden beam rested across his shoulders, and he exhaled sharply before dropping into a slow one-legged squat.
His body that was once frail and thin, now was a lot more toned. His muscles curled beneath his skin, his frame was much broader and denser. He didn't look bulky but rather lean, carved, and honed.
In just seven days, he'd made more progress than most people managed in months.
Thanks to his miraculous recovery ability, he had turned his routine into a brutal, relentless cycle of four hours of sleep, two hours for tutoring, one hour for meals and basic necessities… and the rest was pure physical grind. He trained until he collapsed, then healed, then trained again.
The only downside?
Food.
He was eating like a beast.
"I've already burned through one gold coin just on food," he muttered, tossing the heavy log into the corner of the yard.
"At this rate, I'll drain my entire academy stipend just on food."
He let out a breath, wiping the sweat from his brow.
Thankfully, the six gold coins he'd managed to save from tutoring might just be enough to reach Solmere. Without them, he wouldn't even make it to the city gates.
"Well, it's worth it, every coin was well spent. Without them.. there's no way I'd ever reach this level in such a short time."
He rolled his shoulders, already noticing the bulging muscles.
"My consumption will decrease over time as I don't really feel my stamina and strength shot up like before. The first gains are always the fastest, It'll slow down now" he whispered, heading back inside.
After a quick shower, he slipped into a clean white long-sleeved tunic, tied loosely at the chest with a cord, and pulled on a pair of brown trousers. And walked out of his house towards the church.
Today was the day of awakening.
As he approached the church a group of children no older than eleven, gathered near the chapel gates, their faces painted with anticipation and anxiety. Lucian, who stood a head taller than all of them, silently joined the back of the line.
Soon, the doors creaked open.
From within stepped out a man in his late fifties, dressed in flowing white robes. His silver hair framed a kind but disciplined face, and in his hands, he carried a thick white tome, decorated with designs made of golden threads.
The children straightened immediately.
"Father Victor," some whispered.
Victor Robbert, High Priest of the local Church, smiled warmly as opened his arm and pointed towards the entrance.
"Come inside."
They followed in hushed silence, their footsteps echoed across the smooth stone floors of the empty chapel.
The rows of pews stood still, while faint beams of colored light streamed in through stained-glass windows.
At the front of the chapel stood a majestic statue carved of white marble. It was a man with noble and unearthly features, one hand raised high clutching a sword pointed skyward and the other holding balanced scales. Though the statue was stone, its eyes shimmered faintly, catching the light in a way that made them seem alive. The God of light and order, Valthar
As Lucian met the statue's gaze, his breath caught in his throat.
Even carved from lifeless marble, the god's presence was suffocating, an overwhelming pressure that made it hard to look directly at it.
Lucian watched as Father Victor came to a halt before the statue. With a solemn expression, the old priest clasped his hands over his chest, bowed slightly, and murmured a soft prayer. The children, instinctively, lowered their heads in unison, their voices fell silent.
When the prayer ended, Father Victor opened his tome, raised one hand, and with a motion, a translucent, glowing magic circle shimmered out from the book's pages and floated gently down in front of him.
He spoke in a low and resonant tone,
"Serath-noré Valtharé, mi'zal ven'orun, e'las tu'reth sul vinar." Then he pulled a small vial filled with blue liquid from his pocket without hesitation, he uncorked it and poured it into the circle. The moment the liquid neared the circle, it vaporised into luminous mist that spread through the circle before being fully absorbed by it.
Taking a measured step back, the priest turned to the gathered children and spoke in a calm, reassuring tone.
"Step forward kids, one at a time. Always keep your mind empty. Do not let any kind of feeling cloud your thoughts. Some may feel a sting and some may feel nothing at all. But do not worry, the light sees all, and it will guide you through."
A boy from the front of the line stepped nervously into the circle. As soon as he was at the centre of it a faint red rays flickered from the runes wrapped around him in a subtle glow and it was over in seconds.
"Good. Now come here and place your hand on this," Father Victor said, flipping to a blank white page in his tome.
The boy pressed his palm to the parchment. A moment later, letters began to appear, gliding across the page like they were being written by an invisible hand.
-> John Kemp
-> Talent - Fire Magic (Low Grade)
The boy's face fell the moment he read it.
"It's alright," said Father Victor with a warm smile.
"It's an offensive-type affinity and very straightforward. You'll find your way just fine."
Lucian remained quiet at the back of the line, observing.
'As far as I remember, most kids from outer districts never awaken anything worth celebrating. Talents are inherited, and mutations, though they happen, in 9 out of 10 times they tend to worsen what's already there. If you've bad parents then good luck bro you're cooked, I don't how severely cooked I'll get, but I doubt it'll be that bad. The recovery light, I'm sure it's connected to my talent somehow.'
He glanced down at his own hand.
'Support types are rare so they are always in high demand and low risk. I wouldn't really mind standing at the back, buffing others while they charge ahead. No danger, no spotlight but still get rewarded. That's a deal I can live with.'
One by one, the children entered the glowing circle and awakened their talents. The air shimmered faintly each time, magic stirring in different colors as faint light spilled across the chapel floor. Most of the results were ordinary, swordsmanship, farming, speed, water magic, earth magic, nearly all of them were low-grade with only a couple of mid-grades among the group.
When Lucian's turn came, he stepped forward slowly. The moment he crossed into the circle, the magic reacted violently. Light surged upward in a golden column that swallowed him whole. A strange warmth flooded his body, spreading from his chest to his fingertips, and it felt as though sunlight itself had melted into his blood.
Something deep within him shattered, not a sound he could hear, but he could feel it, like chains snapping all at once his unseen limits as if broken.
His muscles tightened and reformed, The thin frame of a malnourished orphan shifted, his chest and shoulders broadened, his limbs gained definition.
Streaks of pale gold threaded through his brown hair. Wisps of radiant energy coursed through his veins and gathered above his head, slowly swirling into the beginnings of a circular, halo-like shape.
Then suddenly.
A sharp pain assaulted his chest, struck like a blade through his heart, knocking the breath from his lungs. Lucian crumpled to the ground, clutching his chest.
From beneath his body, crimson rays seeped upward through the circle, clashing violently with the golden light that surrounded him. The mixture of colors pulsed in chaotic waves and then his consciousness was slowly ripped away, swallowed into complete darkness.
When he opened his eyes he stood alone in a world with no sound or any colour, a darkness so absolute it seemed to swallow his very existence. There was no ground beneath his feet, no horizon in sight, and only the sensation of floating in an endless void.
"What..again?" he muttered under his breath. "Why is it always like this? everytime I get moved to somewhere dark, now wait, soon a crimson moon will pop up for sure."
With small steps, he moved forward. After only a few steps, his foot splashed into something warm. It was thick and sluggish and clung to his skin.
"What's this? There's no way it's water" Lucian thought, trying to lift his foot to check.
Before he could lift it, a stench hit him.
Sulfur, rotting flesh, and iron mixed into a vile odor that filled his lungs and burned his throat.
"Ughhh.. huuurrghhh… bleeghhh!"
He gagged violently, coughing and spitting as bile rose up, yet the smell clung stubbornly, as if it had soaked into his very being.
His knees buckled, and he collapsed onto the uneven ground. The texture beneath his palms was strange, it wasn't rock nor soil. It was soft, almost yielding. His fingers pressed deeper, and realization struck too late.
The surface twitched.
Lucian's breath caught. The thing under his hands wasn't the earth at all. It was a lifeless face, cold and torn to shreds.
He jerked backward in horror, eyes darting around as the darkness peeled itself apart. A faint crimson light seeped in from above, revealing a grotesque hill that stretched into the blackened sky. A mountain of dismembered bodies, piled endlessly atop one another. Human torsos, twisted limbs, and monstrous shapes of creatures he couldn't name, all fused together in an ocean of death that reeked of despair.
And high above that macabre mountain, two eyes opened. The same eyes he had seen before coming to this world.They burned like dying stars, swirling galaxies of madness that pierced through the dark. The very sight of them made Lucian's heart pound violently, every instinct in his body screaming that he should not be seeing this.
The thing tilted its head toward the heavens and let out a cry.
It wasn't a sound but rather devastation. A roar that shook the fabric of this twisted reality, making the ground writhe like a living thing. The air shattered like glass. Even the void itself seemed to recoil from that voice.
Lucian tried to run but his body didn't move. He tried to scream but no sound came out.
Instead, he felt it.
His body dissolved in an instant, reduced to a fine mist of blood that hung in the void before being dragged back together, only to be torn apart again. Over and over, thousands of times in what felt like seconds, his existence unraveled and reformed without pause. There was no pain, just an endless, suffocating exhaustion. His mind couldn't comprehend what was happening, couldn't even think, there was only destruction and reconstruction, a ceaseless cycle that stripped away everything human in him.
Lucian's once-bright eyes dulled to some lifeless glass. The light that belonged to a living being no longer existed in them, his pupils quivered, dilated unnaturally wide, like a beast staring into the abyss just before his imminent death.
And then… silence.
The entity stopped. Its burning gaze turned downward, and slowly, crimson light bled across the sky. A massive moon materialized above with a harsh glow.
For the first time, Lucian truly saw the land beneath it.
A sea of corpses stretched as far as the eye could see. Hills upon hills of broken, disfigured remains of human and inhuman alike, sprawled across the lifeless plain. Rivers of dried blood carved through the landscape like veins on a corpse. The stench alone was enough to rot sanity.
Lucian stood frozen, unable to speak, unable to breathe.
Then the ground beneath his feet suddenly trembled.
From the earth, massive black spires tore upward with a deafening roar. Thirteen of them, jagged and molten, clawed their way out of the corpse-littered ground. The stone glowed faintly with veins of lava, radiating an oppressive heat that burned even from afar.
One by one, the dead began to stir, breaking apart. Flesh, bone, and blood turned to dust, rising into the air and spiraling toward the spires. The pillars pulsed with sinister light as it drank it all greedily.
Lucian could only watch, wide-eyed and trembling, as the blood-red moon above cast its light on this nightmare made real.
But suddenly,
Slash.
A sound ripped through the void, carrying with it a force that made the very air scream.
"AAAHHHH!" Lucian cried out, clutching his ears as he collapsed to the ground. A white-hot ringing filled his skull, his vision spinning wildly. It felt as though his entire head had been blown apart by that single sound.
Through gritted teeth, he forced his trembling body to look up.
And what he saw made his blood run cold.
The crimson moon hanging above the wasteland, so massive it dwarfed the spires below, had been cleaved in two, a perfect, surgical split running straight down its center. The halves convulsed and shattered, bursting into a thousand blazing fragments that ignited as it fell, streaking downward like a hellish rain of crimson meteors.
Lucian's breath caught. His heart pounded as if it would burst from his chest.
Then, instinctively, he glanced down at his own hands.
Blood.
Razor-thin lines carved across his flesh like invisible knives. The cuts ran deeper, spreading rapidly, slicing through his muscle and bone without resistance.
"AGHHHHHHHHHHH!"
The scream tore from his throat as his body betrayed him. His arms split apart into neat sections, cubes of raw flesh falling away like butchered meat. His legs followed, then his torso, his vision fracturing as even his face began to slice apart.
In mere seconds, Lucian was shredded into a storm of minced flesh, each fragment suspended in the crimson light, carved apart with impossible precision.
"What… did I do… to deserve this?" he whispered his voice trembling, before his eyes slid shut and he plunged once more into an endless darkness.