The Demon Lord's core shattered and heart burned to ashes.
Aris, Head Researcher of the Magic Tower, let his complex weave of scientific runes dissolve. He turned to his comrades with a sigh of relief. "It's finally ove-"
He suddenly felt weak. An impossible, cold weakness. He looked down. A sword blade, wreathed in Pure Light, was protruding from his chest. The Flame Knight, Sir Kaelen, pulled his own flaming blade from Aris's back.
Aris collapsed, his lungs filling with blood. "Why...?"
"Your power is an aberration, Aris," Crown Prince Rian said, his face cold, his hand glowing with the binding Light. "We cannot control it."
"He is right," Saintess Elara said, her voice serene. "The world needs order. Your magic is a heresy."
Aris's eyes flew to his master. "Corvus...!"
Tower Master Corvus watched his greatest student bleed out. His eyes were cold and calculating. He did not move. "It is... a necessary sacrifice, Aris."
"Sacrifice?"
As they turned, satisfied he was dead, Aris, with his last, furious breath, fumbled for the one thing they didn't know about. The lost Elven rune he'd found in a lost village. The "Absolute Regeneration" glyph. He didn't want to use it because he didn't know what it would do to him.
He poured all his strength into rewriting the rune circles in his heart, forcing his own runes to power the Elven one. "Not... like... this..."
The rune flared. It wasn't "regeneration." It felt... like his soul was being ripped from his body. Darkness took him.
...
He woke to a feeling of pressure. He was weak, cold, and drowning.
He was a baby again.
He focused inward, past the infant helplessness. He could feel the world's mana. It was different here. It wasn't the "Pure" mana he knew. This... this was Corrupted Mana. Chaotic. Volatile. He was in the Ashen Lands.
He focused deeper. He sensed a new, unused potential inside himself. A spiritual organ. A Dantian.
"This is... the power of the dark magicians" his 40-year-old mind thought. "I'm in the Corrupt Lands. This ambient mana is chaotic, but... I have the tool. I have a Dantian. I can learn to refine this." He had a new path.
That hope lasted three days.
A woman with cold eyes, the "Main Wife," entered. She looked at him in his cot, a "maid's bastard" who had the potential she craved for her own son. She smiled, a drop of black, viscous liquid on her finger. She forced his mouth open.
Agony swirled deep in him.
It was his soul this time. He felt his "potential"—his Dantian—shrivel, burn, and die. It didn't just shatter. It was obliterated.
He woke later to a mage-doctor. "The core is gone," the doctor sighed. "The 'Shattering Poison.' It was a success. He'll never be able to refine Dark Mana. He's less than defective. He's just... empty."
He was tossed in a servant's cot and left to be forgotten, the son of a now-dead maid.
He was alone. He was in a land full of Corrupted Mana, and his filter was gone. Weeks later, as his body grew stronger, he instinctively tried to pull in the ambient mana.
It was a mistake.
Without the Dantian-filter, the raw, chaotic magic flooded his system. It wasn't just power; it was emotion. A psychic storm of unfiltered Rage, Fear, Hunger, Despair, and Hysteria assaulted his mind.
He was losing himself. His 40-year-old consciousness was dissolving in the chaos.
In a final, desperate act, his mind latched onto the only thing he knew that was not emotion. LOGIC.
He visualized the simplest scientific rune from his past life: [NAS]. (A "Containment Field" rune.)
The storm didn't stop. But the rune flared in his mind, a tiny, cold point of light. It was a mental shield. The chaos receded, just enough for him to think.
He was shaking. He was terrified and in pain.
"They... they took the filter" he thought, his infant mind clinging to the rune. "They left me with the poison. This... this rune magic... it's the only thing I have left."