Chapter 47 – The Other Forbidden One
POV: Aric
The wind carried the scent of burnt mana — sharp, metallic, and bitter. The forest clearing ahead was torn apart, trees splintered and scorched by recent magic. Aric stepped carefully across the blackened ground, his senses sharpened. The air itself trembled with unstable mana signatures. Someone had fought here… someone powerful.
From the shadow of a fallen tree, a voice spoke — low and edged with cynicism.
> "You shouldn't be here, boy."
Aric turned. A figure emerged from the smoke — a young man not much older than him, wrapped in torn robes lined with silver runes. His eyes glowed faintly, the same distortion Aric sometimes saw in his reflection after drawing too deeply on his mana.
Aric steadied himself. "You're a Taboo."
The stranger smiled thinly. "So are you."
The air between them crackled. No hostility yet — but the energy was volatile, uncontained.
> "They sent me to watch you," the man continued. "To see if the rumors were true. The boy whose mana doesn't follow the System's pattern."
Aric's grip tightened. "And what if they are true?"
> "Then you're a threat."
The man raised his hand. Sigils flared to life, forming a spectral chain of light that lashed forward — fast, precise, divine-grade binding magic. Aric barely moved in time, redirecting the strike with a burst of condensed mana. The shockwave rippled through the clearing, sending leaves and ash spinning.
The other Taboo smirked. "Impressive. You've already learned to bend it. But tell me… can you defy it?"
Aric didn't answer. His mind raced — Daren's words from the night before echoed: "Even the gods are pawns." If that was true, then this man was just another piece on the board.
He shifted stance, drawing mana not from the System's usual channels but from the air — raw and unstable, but unclaimed. His aura flared blue-white, unfiltered.
> "You shouldn't be able to do that," the stranger hissed. "That's forbidden!"
"Then I'm exactly what they fear."
Their magic clashed again — not divine against divine, but System-born obedience against unauthorized will. Aric's blast wasn't refined, but it carried a force the System couldn't calculate. The chain shattered, scattering light across the clearing like falling stars.
The stranger staggered back, disbelief in his eyes. "You… you really are outside its flow."
Aric lowered his arm, breathing hard. "No. I'm just learning to exist beyond its rules."
For a moment, silence reigned. The stranger's defiance melted into something like pity.
> "They'll come for you, you know. The moment the System feels that deviation… it hunts."
Aric's eyes hardened. "Let it."
The other Taboo smiled faintly, a trace of sorrow in his tone.
> "Then maybe you'll last longer than I did."
Before Aric could respond, the man's form flickered — his mana signature collapsing. The System reasserted itself, and the Taboo's presence was erased, as if the world itself refused to remember him.
Aric stood alone in the smoldering clearing, chest heaving. The hum of the System returned — calm, indifferent, as though nothing had happened. But Aric could still feel the distortion in the air, the faint echo of rebellion.
He whispered to the emptiness:
> "You can erase him from memory… but not from truth."
As the forest stilled, a quiet certainty settled over him.
This was only the beginning.