Lyon pushed the door open with the slow, deliberate confidence of someone accustomed to entering rooms as their rightful owner.
Lilian stood inside waiting for him, arms folded, in the middle of an argument with Kellen. Their voices cut off instantly when Lyon stepped through, and Kael followed, his head bowed, a molten, searching rage simmering beneath his ribs.
The room felt wrong the moment Kael crossed the threshold.
Two beasts lay in reinforced cages along the far wall. Their bodies twitched in lethargic jerks, their eyes glazed and staring through Kael as though seeing something distant, something they had already surrendered to. But the beasts were not the true source of his stalled breath.
In a separate iron enclosure sat two humans. They were alive, but they were hollow.
Their eyes were empty, still in the way only shattered things could be, staring straight ahead, not reacting, not blinking when the light shifted across their faces. They were not people so much as mannequins arranged to resemble them. Their souls had been extinguished. Their hope devoured.
The man closest to the bars turned his head just enough for Kael to meet his gaze. Defeat stared back. Not pain. Not fear. It was the quiet, final acceptance of someone who had already been unmade. A warning. A mirror. The future Lyon expected of Kael: a compliant doll wrapped in human skin.
Kael swallowed a rising wave of nausea. His Compendium, usually a reservoir of cold logic, pulsed with a spike of pure, disruptive Contempt. His analysis stalled, overloaded by the raw violation of Life Law. I will never become that. I will break before I bend. The cold, absolute moral horror of the scene hardened his resolve into a fresh coil of determination in his gut.
He did not realize he had stopped moving until Lyon began speaking.
"I found him in the back courtyard," Lyon said, his tone calm but carrying a faint thread of reprimand. "According to him, he needed stone for some trinket work he learned recently."
Kellen's jaw tightened. Some of his anger was directed at Lyon. Some at Lilian. But enough of it landed on Kael to sting.
"Thank you for retrieving him," Kellen said curtly. He turned toward Kael. "I have not placed a single restriction on you, Kael. I would like to continue it that way. But if you keep vanishing without permission, you will be monitored. You are too important to be left unsupervised."
Kael kept his expression low, ashamed. Inside, he seethed. Kellen's mask is slipping. He may not be Lyon, but he wants the same chains. Just more politely. Even as the political tension rose, Kael's eyes returned to the hollow man, the unblinking gaze a constant rebuke.
Lilian's voice cut through the tension. "Did you hurt the initiate, Magus Lyon?"
Lyon did not flinch. "Some discipline will do the boy good. Now he understands he should not disappear without supervision. For his own safety."
Kellen nodded, too quickly. Too easily. Kael felt something inside him twist. Kellen is not opposed to Lyon punishing me. Not at all. Their methods differ, not their goals.
Lilian's face turned red, not with shouting fury, but with a cold, collected storm that made the air grow still. "He is not bound to this kingdom," she said quietly. "And I do not recall him signing any contract making him a prisoner in anything but your imagination. Both of you exceed your authority. And both of you forget your place."
Silence detonated between the three adults.
Kellen stiffened as if slapped. Lyon's eyes narrowed into needles. "You do not have authority over us, Magus Lilian," Kellen said, the emphasis making Kael flinch though he did not understand why it mattered so much.
Lilian's lips curled, not in mockery, but in pride. Then she rose. Not with a spell. Not with a chant. Not with any detectable mana at all. Her body lifted a full meter off the ground, as though the world itself bent to her weightlessness.
Kael's mind went crystalline. The pressure wasn't a force; it was a fundamental shift.
Kellen choked on a breath. Lyon stumbled a half step back. Kael saw something in Lyon's eyes he never thought possible. Fear.
Kellen whispered, his voice cracking, "An Archmage…? Impossible. When did you advance and why was I not informed?"
Lilian's smile thinned. "And why," she asked sweetly, "would the ruling council deem you important enough to be told anything?" Kellen blanched.
The air became a dense fluid. The Law of the room shifted. Lyon and Kellen didn't struggle; they simply ceased to have a will that Lilian permitted.
"As you can see," Lilian continued, floating with unforced grace, "I hold absolute authority here. You do not. What was it you told me earlier? That power is king, and weakness a crime? Consider the dice rolled."
She lowered her hand. "I would prefer not to inform the full High Council about this little incident. So refrain from harming my student again, unless you wish to bear consequences you cannot imagine."
Kellen's throat bobbed. Lyon clenched his jaw, his face a mask of thwarted, murderous intent. Even as the pressure began to lift him, Kael watched Lyon's eye flicker down to his wrist. His finger twitched against the silver band on his bracer—a gesture too quick for anyone but Kael, whose senses were keyed to mana.
"Now leave," Lilian said.
The air shivered. The world seemed to exhale, and an invisible pressure lifted Kellen and Lyon clear off their feet, gently, inexorably, before ejecting them from the room. The door slammed shut behind them.
The soul binding had pulsed when Lyon's finger twitched. It was a minor surge, a spike of cold, subtle mana that Kael instantly recognized as a check from the tracker. The pain of the binding forced the words Yes, Master from his throat, even in silence, but the shadow of the hollow humans hardened his resolve. Lyon wanted a slave. Kael knew he would be a Devourer.
Lilian slowly descended, her expression softening as her feet touched the ground. She did not look at Kael, instead taking a long, deep breath—the first hint of strain she'd allowed to show.
Kael finally exhaled the breath he had been holding.
"You are safe now, Kael," she said, her voice cooling back into elegance.
Safe? Maybe. But for the first time since the Academy claimed him, Kael understood one thing with absolute certainty: He needed to become more powerful by hook or by crook, and let nothing stand in his way.
The moment the door sealed shut, Lilian turned toward him. Not the perfect healer. She looked, finally, like who she truly was. An Archmage.
"Sit," she said softly.
Kael obeyed at once.
"I am sorry you had to witness that," she said, walking toward the cages. "But some rats needed to be reminded of their place. They forget that the only power they possess is the one I allow them to use."
She walked toward the iron cages, her expression sharpening as she looked at the hollow humans inside.
"But enough of the unimportant things. Let us focus on what matters." Her eyes fixed on him. "Kael, I believe you can change the healing arts of this kingdom forever. And I intend to give you the strongest foundation any healer has ever had."
Kael swallowed. "Thank you teacher."
Lilian gestured to the two living mannequins in the cage. "To heal, you must understand the thing you are healing. Truly understand it. The butchers in the army see meat to be patched." She gestured dismissively. "Their idea of healing is stuffing raw life mana into a wound and hoping the soldier does not die from the shock, and worse, they leave the patient with a grotesquely healed scar that often locks their joints."
The contempt in her voice felt like another presence in the room.
"And that," she pointed directly at the prisoners, "is why they are here. Raw materials."
Kael's gaze snapped from the humans to the beasts. The ethical violation is a sickening knot in my stomach. I must dismantle this system one day.
"Who are they?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper.
Lilian's tone shifted to casual indifference. "Criminals. Deserters. The kingdom deems their lives forfeited. Better they serve a purpose in a healer's training than rot forgotten in some dungeon. Now, to your question: Why you?"
Her eyes flashed with the truth. "I need you because you are the only one who can advance the healing arts beyond the limitations of this kingdom's crude methods. Methods that kept me stagnated for a lifetime."
He remained silent.
"Patience, Kael. First we learn to walk, then we run." She tapped her bracer. A faint shimmer of light rippled outward, and a memory stone slid into her palm. It glowed a sickly green, necrotic.
"This," Lilian said, speaking with a reverence that surprised him, "is the most detailed anatomical legacy ever left behind by a necromancer. It contains the raw, cold truth of the body."
Kael felt his pulse quicken. "And now," Lilian said softly, "you will inherit it."
She pressed the stone to his forehead.
The world fractured.
When the necrotic green stone met Kael's skin, the silence was swallowed by a crystalline ping that resonated in the deepest marrow of his bones. He was no longer Kael. He was a disembodied consciousness grafted onto a century of cold, obsessive anatomical study.
He stood in a cavernous hall, a cathedral of bone. Before him, suspended in the void, was The First Lesson: a human skeleton. The structure hung, a puzzle of leverage. His mind instinctively calculated the torque on the fibula—and he understood where it would fail first. The compulsion to know, to categorize, to rebuild perfectly, surged through Kael's soul.
The knowledge swarmed through Kael's mind in a flood.
[Input Received: Human anatomy legacy. CP gained 500]
[Compendium Analysis: Assimilating Human Anatomy Legacy. Cost 300 CP.]
The memory deepened. Kael stood in the necromancer's earliest days. He felt the necromancer's obsessive precision as he scraped, measured, and catalogued every ridge and hollow. Every break revealed how structure failed under pressure.
The Compendium observed coolly. A spike of ice behind his eyes—the Compendium redrew the image of the bone he was viewing, showing a path of superior mana infusion.
The years of study continued. Finally, the memory unraveled. The cavern faded.
Kael snapped back into his own body and collapsed onto the cold stone floor, chest heaving. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his muscles trembled with the phantom exhaustion of a hundred years of anatomical study.
Lilian sat across from him, her posture relaxed but her eyes sharp with evaluation.
"The flood will fade," she said softly. "The stone imprints knowledge into the soul itself, and as you are at foundation rank, trying to accept another before you've stabilized this one would cause soul collapse. It's why the Academy generally restricts students to one major legacy per advancement."
Kael nodded faintly, his mind reeling. She believes the rule.
A fierce, secret thrill cut through his fatigue. The Compendium, silent to Lilian, confirmed his unique reality:
[Compendium Function: Legacy data stored in compendium and not in host's soul. Restriction bypassed. CP Remaining: 200.]
Lilian rose gracefully. "The knowledge is a map, Kael. But you must learn to walk the territory. We are in no hurry." She paused, a glint of genuine, focused excitement in her eyes. "Enough talk. Let us see what you learned."
Lilian did not wait for Kael to fully recover.
The exhaustion from the legacy transfer still clung to him—an ache in the spine, a heaviness in the limbs, the disorienting aftertaste of being submerged in another mind for a hundred years—but her urgency allowed no pause.
"We begin with foundation," Lilian said, already striding toward the reinforced cages. "The human body is too complex for your first mistakes. A beast's life is simple. And cheap."
She stopped before a massive, low slung mountain boar aspect—a creature part flesh, part earth elemental. Its cracked shale hide shifted with each slow breath.
She didn't cast a spell.
Her right hand carved a quick, razor clean gesture through the air.
Kael didn't see the strike.
He heard the outcome.
A wet, unmistakable snap.
The boar bellowed, the sound strangled by the silencing wards, and collapsed onto three legs. Its rear left knee bent backward at an angle living things were never meant to bend.
Lilian stepped back as if she had merely moved a chess piece.
"Heal the bone."
Kael froze for half a heartbeat—revulsion prickling across his skin.
But hesitation was pain, and pain was instability.
He forced the horror down, letting the cold analytical mindset slide over him like a second skin.
Not a beast. Not a crime. A cadaver. A training model.
And this was the first chance to test the legacy now carved into his soul.
He knelt, pushing his hands through the iron bars. His fingers hovered over the ruined joint before he pushed life mana forward.
At once he felt it:
Life mana wasn't obedient.
It wanted to spread, wanted to grow, wanted to live.
Trying to focus it was like trying to thread a needle in a river.
He attempted the technique he had seen in the necromancer's memories—precise, minimal, shaped like a surgeon's breath. But his execution was crude. The pulse he sent into the bone was too wide, too forceful.
The fragments twitched and ground together.
The boar grunted, legs trembling.
Lilian's expression didn't shift.
Her voice flowed like calm water.
"Too fast. Too rough. Life mana responds best when your intention aligns with knowledge. When you understand the structure, the shaping becomes effortless."
She placed her own hand over the wound.
A filament of mana—thin as silk, sharp as tempered steel—slipped into the leg. Through his arcane sight Kael watched the broken bone edges lift, align, touch, fuse. Perfectly clean. Perfectly fast.
The boar stood, testing the leg.
Lilian didn't give Kael time to admire the technique.
She touched the opposite leg—
Snap.
Another break.
Another grotesque angle.
"Again."
Kael swallowed, stepped in, and closed his eyes. Sight distracted. The legacy didn't give him images—it gave him structure.
He imagined the bone not as a wound, but as a schema: the mineral lattice, the marrow's channels, the arcane rivers winding inside the bone like living runes.
He channeled again.
This time tighter. More disciplined.
The Compendium didn't speak—it pulled at him.
A psychic jerk whenever his mana wavered.
A tightening whenever he widened the flow too much.
He corrected, adjusted, honed.
The bone shifted with resistance… but aligned.
Still slow. Still imperfect.
The soul binding around his spirit added a constant cold drag that made everything harder, heavier.
"You're still rushing," Lilian murmured. "Knowledge is not skill. You have the former. Earn the latter."
She healed the leg with effortless grace—
and broke it again.
Time blurred.
Break. Heal.
Break. Fail.
Break. Adjust.
Break. Improve.
Kael lost count of the attempts.
Sweat beaded across his forehead.
His fingers trembled.
His mana channels burned with overuse.
But the Compendium guided, correcting tiny inefficiencies.
And Lilian's eyes shone—bright with fascination.
Initiate healers took weeks to align a bone.
Kael was doing it in hours.
Finally—
he healed the structure cleanly.
Through his infused vision he saw deeper: the bone, though aligned, was brittle—damaged by repeated trauma.
He instinctively pushed life mana deeper, using the spiraling infusion technique Lyon had once demonstrated on the stone slab.
The brittle lattice brightened.
Then Kael noticed something else—
the beast's blood was filled with particulate impurities: mineral flecks, stagnant mana pockets, tiny coagulated nodes.
Without thinking, he inscribed a phasing rune through arcane mana and pushed it into the bloodstream, commanding—purge.
Impurities bled from the beast's system like dust dissolving into mist.
Lilian stared, mouth slightly parted.
Kael pushed deeper. His arcane vision sharpened—focusing on smaller structures he had never perceived before. Tiny "nodes," smaller than any cell or particle, moving like motes of intention.
Curiosity overtook caution.
He infused life mana into the first node.
It shattered.
Into four.
Each new structure glowed with life mana—already active, already duplicating.
Before Kael could recoil, the process accelerated.
Nodes split.
And split again.
And again.
Within seconds the creature's entire body was a lattice of over infused, unstable structures.
The boar glowed—
a blinding bloom beneath its skin—
and detonated.
Flesh.
Stone.
Shale like hide.
All vaporized in a shockwave of uncontrolled life mana.
The explosion rocked the chamber.
Silencing wards screamed.
The cage shuddered.
Kael stumbled backward, ears ringing.
Lilian's eyes were wide with something between awe and horror.
He had meant only to heal.
He had accidentally rewritten the beast's entire internal architecture—
—and triggered a catastrophic chain reaction.