Lilian leaned closer to Kael, her gaze not on his pale, strained face but directed deep into the spectral feed from her specialized healer's lenses. What she saw made her breath catch, the air suddenly thin in her lungs.
Mana was siphoning—not in floods, but in thin, perfectly controlled streams threading through the boy's veins, vanishing into the humming mass of the Compendium. She would never have noticed it without the high-resolution lens feed.
At first, instinct screamed at her: Terminate. She had no idea where the energy was going, or what the Compendium was doing. As a professional, she was responsible for the patient's well-being, and this unknown variable was terrifying.
But then she saw the work.
Tiny, perfect tendrils—finer than a single strand of hair, alive with purpose—were winding through his bloodstream, gathering the deep-seated impurities one by one. They didn't destroy them; they collected them.
Her mind stumbled over the observation. Why collect them? Why not just burn them out like I do? The answer hit her instantly, sharp and unwelcome: she'd never even seen those microscopic flaws because she'd never been able to create mana that thin.
The shame was a metallic taste on her tongue.
For the first time in years, Lilian felt real, burning shame. She was the kingdom's top healer, the woman nobles begged for, the biggest fish in the smallest pond. Yet this newly awakened boy, this patient, was using her own art with a precision she couldn't dream of. Was the Compendium truly that powerful? Or had she just been fooling herself all along?
Then came the deeper realization: the process was too clinical, too rhythmic. It was her method. The exact steps she had codified and given to Kael in a memory stone, now refined into something cold and mathematical. Her own technique, played back to her like a flawless, devastating echo.
The memory stone. The one he'd absorbed.
Her stomach twisted with a potent mix of resentment and awe. "He's perfecting it," she murmured, the words barely audible. "He's perfecting me." She wanted to cut the connection, to destroy the reminder of her limitations, but a different force held her fast.
Curiosity. That burning, desperate hunger for understanding that had fuelled her entire life flared to life. She craved mastery like a person craves water in a desert. This wasn't a rival; it was a blueprint for God-tier technique.
She shook herself, shoving the shame down, and began to copy him.
Her first tendril collapsed the moment it formed. The next scattered like dust. The third burned out like smoke. Too much mana. She slowed, then slowed again, reducing the flow until it was a barely perceptible trickle. Still wrong.
Every time she failed, every time her clumsy efforts shattered against the backdrop of the Compendium's flawless action, the shame deepened. She was a master struggling to complete a child's puzzle. She felt utterly inadequate.
Then she saw the truth—the Compendium was not releasing mana directly. It compressed it first. Concentrated, refined, and then shaped.
Lilian mimicked that new rhythm: focus, compress, release. A single, fragile tendril formed, trembling like a newborn thing. It held.
A gasp of breathless, raw victory escaped her. She did it.
She guided the filament into Kael's bloodstream and targeted an impurity. She destroyed it with a clean hit, but the vein around it quivered, leaving a ring of microscopic cracks. Too crude.
So that was it. That's why he collects them first.
Her awe drowned the last vestiges of shame. She watched the Compendium's tendrils draw the impurities together, wrap them into a dense sphere, and then crush them from within—contained, perfect, and leaving no trace of damage.
She tried again—one tendril, then two, then three—and felt her control grow with each attempt. She was no longer performing a memorized procedure; she was learning the underlying physics of her art.
Lilian's hands hovered over Kael's chest, her breathing synchronized with the Compendium's silent hum. The rhythm of the perfect technique had become a second heartbeat. She wasn't copying anymore. She was dancing with it.
The more she mirrored the Compendium's flow, the more her own Aspect began to resonate. Her mana flowed through her body as if it had found new, cleaner paths to travel. She was being refined from the inside out, her instincts honed by the presence of true perfection.
Then it happened. As she began a complex seven-point weave, Kael's siphoned mana—the power source for the Compendium's script—faltered and almost sputtered out.
Lilian froze. "Wait—no," her voice cracked. "What happened?"
The Compendium did not continue the mana manipulation for that area, nor did Kael resume siphoning the necessary power. The work came to a sudden, clinical stop.
Lilian quickly finished the weave using her own mana. The sudden silence was deafening. She realized they had only completed the internal organs and major tendon attachments—the areas Kael had told her he had analysed the memory stone for.
The profound realization settled heavily in her chest: the Compendium was limited by Kael's knowledge. It couldn't perform a procedure until Kael had fully absorbed and internalized the corresponding memory and technique.
She felt both upset and immensely thankful that they had stopped. She was utterly exhausted from channelling mana through her mind-gate, but the art she had learned in these few minutes was priceless.
Lilian manipulated the remaining tendrils, completing the final procedure on the major bones and deep tissue. The impurities were so thoroughly cleansed, Kael should have no issues with future infusions.
She looked at Kael's still, pale face. No one must ever know the extent of his Aspect, or what it can do. If the crown found out, they wouldn't risk this asset; they would lock him away and feed him techniques, all in the name of the "greater good."
She had thought there was nothing left for her to be passionate about, but this changes everything. She had learned more in one hour than in ten years of study.
Lilian leaned closer to Kael, her gaze not on his pale, strained face but directed deep into the spectral feed from her specialized healer's lenses. What she saw made her breath catch, the air suddenly thin in her lungs.
Mana was siphoning—not in floods, but in thin, perfectly controlled streams threading through the boy's veins, vanishing into the humming mass of the Compendium. She would never have noticed it without the high-resolution lens feed.
At first, instinct screamed at her: Terminate. She had no idea where the energy was going, or what the Compendium was doing. As a professional, she was responsible for the patient's well-being, and this unknown variable was terrifying.
But then she saw the work.
Tiny, perfect tendrils—finer than a single strand of hair, alive with purpose—were winding through his bloodstream, gathering the deep-seated impurities one by one. They didn't destroy them; they collected them.
Her mind stumbled over the observation. Why collect them? Why not just burn them out like I do? The answer hit her instantly, sharp and unwelcome: she'd never even seen those microscopic flaws because she'd never been able to create mana that thin.
The shame was a metallic taste on her tongue.
For the first time in years, Lilian felt real, burning shame. She was the kingdom's top healer, the woman nobles begged for, the biggest fish in the smallest pond. Yet this newly awakened boy, this patient, was using her own art with a precision she couldn't dream of. Was he simply a prodigy, or was the Compendium a crutch so powerful it could turn a fledgling into a master overnight?
The process was too perfect, too rhythmic. She recognized the foundation—her codified method—but it had been refined past human limits.
The memory stone. The one he'd absorbed.
Her stomach twisted with a potent mix of resentment and awe. "He's perfecting it," she murmured, the words barely audible. "He's perfecting me." She wanted to cut the connection, to destroy the reminder of her limitations, but a different force held her fast.
Curiosity. That burning, desperate hunger for understanding that had fueled her entire life flared to life. She craved mastery like a person craves water in a desert. This wasn't a rival; it was a blueprint for God-tier technique, and Kael was the one holding the pen.
Replication and Shame
She shook herself, shoving the shame down, and began to copy him.
Her first tendril collapsed the moment it formed. The next scattered like dust. The third burned out like smoke. Too much mana. She slowed, then slowed again, reducing the flow until it was a barely perceptible trickle. Still wrong.
Every time she failed, every time her clumsy efforts shattered against the backdrop of Kael's flawless action, the shame deepened. She was a master struggling to complete a child's puzzle. She felt utterly inadequate.
Then she saw the truth—Kael was not releasing mana directly. He compressed it first. Concentrated, refined, and then shaped.
Lilian mimicked that new rhythm: focus, compress, release. A single, fragile tendril formed, trembling like a newborn thing. It held.
A gasp of breathless, raw victory escaped her. She did it.
She guided the filament into Kael's bloodstream and targeted an impurity. She destroyed it with a clean hit, but the vein around it quivered, leaving a ring of microscopic cracks. Too crude.
So that was it. That's why he collects them first.
Her awe drowned the last vestiges of shame. She watched Kael's tendrils draw the impurities together, wrap them into a dense sphere, and then crush them from within—contained, perfect, and leaving no trace of damage.
She tried again—one tendril, then two, then three—and felt her control grow with each attempt. She was no longer performing a memorized procedure; she was learning the underlying physics of her art.
The Shared Beat and The Limit
Lilian's hands hovered over Kael's chest, her breathing synchronized with the silent hum of the Compendium. The rhythm of the perfect technique had become a second heartbeat. She wasn't copying anymore. She was dancing with it.
The more she mirrored Kael's flow, the more her own Aspect began to resonate. Her mana flowed through her body as if it had found new, cleaner paths to travel. She was being refined from the inside out, her instincts honed by the presence of this unparalleled practitioner.
Then it happened. As she began a complex seven-point weave, Kael's siphoned mana—the power source for his movements—faltered and almost sputtered out.
Lilian froze. "Wait—no," her voice cracked. "What happened?"
Kael did not continue the mana manipulation, nor did he resume siphoning the necessary power. The work came to a sudden, clinical stop.
Lilian quickly finished the weave using her own mana. The sudden silence was deafening. She realized they had only completed the internal organs and major tendon attachments—the areas Kael had told her he had analyzed the memory stone for.
The profound realization settled heavily in her chest: He must have hit his limit. The Compendium was clearly assisting, correcting, and guiding, but Kael was the one performing the feat, and his sheer exertion had finally given out, limited by his endurance and incomplete analysis.
She felt both upset and immensely thankful that they had stopped. She was utterly exhausted from channeling mana through her mind-gate, but the art she had learned in these few minutes was priceless.
Lilian manipulated the remaining tendrils, completing the final procedure on the major bones and deep tissue. The impurities were so thoroughly cleansed, Kael should have no issues with future infusions.
She looked at Kael's still, pale face. No one must ever know the extent of his Aspect, or what he can do. If the crown found out, they wouldn't risk this asset; they would lock him away and feed him techniques, all in the name of the "greater good."
She had thought there was nothing left for her to be passionate about, but this changes everything. She had learned more in one hour than in ten years of study.
Lilian slumped forward, breathing hard. Sweat ran down her temples, stinging her eyes, but she didn't dare blink. Kael's vitals steadied. The light dimmed. She was smiling.
The Compendium's light was gone, the rhythmic hum finally silent. Lilian's hands, which had just performed the finest micro-surgery imaginable, now simply fell onto Kael's chest, heavy and shaking. She didn't have the strength to lift them away.
The sheer, draining effort of the last hour felt like ten years of constant, high-level channeling. She had spent a lifetime treating healing as an intellectual challenge; this had been an athletic sprint that emptied her deepest mana reserves. The mana channeled through her specialized Mind-Gate—a source usually reserved for intricate, high-level theory work—had left her skull throbbing with an ache that felt deeper than bone, a physical price she hadn't paid in decades.
Slowly, she forced herself to sit up and, with trembling fingers, she peeled the spectral lenses from her face. The feed of shimmering internal work vanished, replaced by the mundane reality of the dim chamber. Kael lay utterly still, his breathing shallow but even. His body was now the cleanest piece of architecture she had ever created.
She felt her very Concept of Healing surge forward, a definitive step closer to the next Rank. She hadn't believed such an advance was possible in her lifetime. This knowledge—this power—would change the very structure of the Kingdom.
Let those fools on the Council look down on me, she thought, a fierce, cold ambition replacing her exhaustion. Just because my Aspect is tied to healing and lacks combat applications. I will love to see their expressions when I join their ranks and show them a healer can sit on those lofty seats as well.
She stood, bracing herself against the cold stone table. The fatigue was overwhelming, yet underneath it bubbled a joy that made her feel nineteen again, standing over her first successful surgical repair. She, Lilian Vance, had found a flaw in her own perfect world and had begun to correct it. She was no longer plateaued.
A familiar sting of guilt pierced her euphoria. She knew she was using Kael more than he was using her. She promised herself she would teach him everything she knew—but even that commitment was rooted in the selfish desire to protect her "source of perfection."
The fear, however, was a cold, sharp claw that clamped immediately down on the euphoria. Kael was not a patient; he was a secret. He was the key to her personal progression, and to the advancement of all Healing Arts.
If the Crown finds out... The thought was a dagger. They wouldn't see a boy. They would see an infinitely scalable, self-perfecting resource.
She looked at Kael's calm, sleeping face, his pale brow smooth. He was the most dangerous, most powerful asset in the kingdom, and he didn't even know the extent of it. They would seize him, lock him away, and feed him techniques until he broke.
Lilian reached out and gently brushed a damp strand of hair from his forehead. It was a gesture of fierce, protective ownership.
"We continue this when you wake, student," she whispered, her voice rough with exhaustion. "But first, you analyze."
She turned and stumbled toward the exit, ignoring the throbbing pain in her head. She had work to do. She had to draft a new, deliberately flawed version of the remaining bone and deep-tissue technique for Kael to analyze next. She had to ensure her source of perfection remained safe.
Her art demanded it.
Kael's consciousness was a flickering lantern in a vast, cold cavern, becoming more aware with a jolt of raw sensation. When his eyes finally snapped open, they locked onto Lilian—her movements taut, her eyes burning with focused intent as she completed the final incantation. He felt the residual paralysis spell crumbling from his limbs, not in a gentle thaw, but a jarring, internal crackle.
He never wanted to be subjected to such controlled pain and horror again. A memory—cold, analytical, and lodged outside his own mind—whispered that without the Compendium acting as a shield for his sanity, he would have broken, a shattered vessel unable to contain the torrent of the cleansing.
Then he felt the true price. He no longer possessed the raw, messy cluster of memories associated with the boy named Kael. The Compendium had not just shielded them; it had logged them all into its own perfect, silent database. Without the device's link, he was hollow, a ghost wearing a human body. He could recall knowing what human emotions should feel like—joy, fear, simple fondness—but he could not recall ever truly feeling them himself.
The Compendium retreated. The humming, omnipresent analytical engine didn't vanish, but it loosened its grip on his consciousness, releasing the finely tuned control it had maintained over his mana circulation. The world rushed back in a jarring flood of sensation: and the first thing he felt was a scent so foul, so deeply acidic and organic, that his gorge rose and he wanted to vomit his guts out. This was quickly followed by the dull, systemic throb of physical exhaustion that made every nerve end scream.
He tried to recoil from the stench, only to feel it—a cold, wet, black sludge adhering to his skin, clinging to him like a second, diseased hide. A cold, sharp realization pierced through the fog: He was the cause of the smell.
"Calm down, Kael," Lilian's voice was a rough, brittle whisper. "The sludge you see is the proof. Every impurity, every flaw in your nascent Core, has been cleansed from you." He felt the light, final pressure of her hand as she stroked his forehead.
Lilian's face swam into his vision—beautifully crafted, yes, but now pale and damp with sweat, yet alight with a dangerous, barely contained euphoria. The meticulous order she usually maintained had fractured. She looked utterly exhausted, like she hadn't slept for days. For the first time, Kael saw the formidable woman truly disheveled.
"Wait a moment," Lilian whispered, her voice hoarse from exertion, a testament to the raw energy she'd poured into the ritual. She steadied herself, her eyes darting toward the heavy chamber door. "Kael, no one must know what truly happened here. I secured this room with powerful anti-divination wards for a reason. If Kellen asks anything, you must feign ignorance. I will handle the rest."
Kael felt the lingering stiffness in his throat, but his mind, now free of the Compendium's direct control, was already moving at a calculating speed. Lying. It was a necessary discipline now.
Lilian continued, leaning in close, her eyes wide and fervent. "Tell everyone the procedure went as expected. As I planned it. You must pretend it was usual. Do you understand, Kael?"
She doesn't know.
The truth hit Kael with the searing clarity of a newly formed mana circuit. She had become fiercely protective, but was it for his sake or her own advancement?
She does not know the Compendium had taken over. She does not know the corrections were guided perfection, not his will. She genuinely believed that he—the raw, newly awakened boy—had executed the procedure with impossible, genius-level precision. She thought he was the one who had simply hit the limit of his endurance, not the Compendium hitting the limit of his analyzed knowledge.
This misconception was priceless. He had to keep this illusion. If she thought the Compendium was merely a genius automation device, she might not be as protective of him as she would be of the aspect itself. But if she thought he was the unique prodigy, the irreplaceable conduit to her own advancement, she would protect him fiercely, defending her prize.
Kael gave the faintest, most disciplined nod he could manage.
Lilian released a shaky breath. "Good." She gave his shoulder a fierce, protective squeeze that was half ownership, half genuine fear for her experiment. "The procedure took longer than necessary. I don't want Kellen getting suspicious, so I need to find him immediately. Do not move. Do not speak."
She turned and stumbled toward the exit, the cost of her breakthrough heavy in every weary step. The thick, warded door closed behind her with a heavy, final thud.
Kael was alone. The paralysis spell was still dissolving around his limbs, leaving him heavy and slow—a conscious mind trapped in a leaden body. He was still calculating his next move when the outer door hissed open again, too soon.
He just wanted to be cleaned and rid of this nasty smell.
The door opened, and Kael could see someone coming in the room. It wasn't Kellen or Lilian.
Lyon stepped into the room and choked violently, instantly covering his nose with a shaking hand. Kael noted the details instantly: the quick, furtive movements; the beads of nervous sweat on his brow; the way his eyes flitted to the ceiling corners before settling on Kael with barely concealed hatred. Lyon was acting extremely nervous, a fox caught in a dangerous place.
Kael lay terrifyingly still, watching. He saw the small, blue shimmering sealed liquid vial clutched in Lyon's hand. Lyon approached Kael's cot, his gaze sweeping over the immobilized boy, confirming Kael was still recovering from the spell and his brutal treatment.
"Vile creature," Lyon spat, the words heavy with venom. "Even helping you is dirt work. People like you should be killed on sight, but I will correct that mistake now." He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a low snarl. "Killing you peacefully is a kindness you do not deserve."
My patron sends his regards you are a variable that we cannot afford to let loose.
Kael was stunned. He knew Lyon hated him for being a poor orphan, but this was a personal, murderous vendetta. Why would he want to kill me? Kael struggled internally, fighting the dissolving spell, but he was still utterly unable to move.
With a slight, metallic click, Lyon attached the vial to a magical artifact used to deliver potion directly in the body. The clear, viscous liquid disappeared into the band's reservoir, and instantly, several fine tendrils pierced his wrist. The poison was transferred directly into his veins.
Lyon straightened up, ran a shaky hand through his hair, his face a mask of disgust. He cast Kael a fleeting, chilling smirk, then nodded once, an act of perverse finality, before turning and slipping back out the door just as quickly and furtively as he had come.
Kael lay there, body still heavy, mind reeling, calculating the toxin's path. Then the pleasure so intense hit him. It was a euphoric moment of so much joy that scared him more than any pain will.
Kael knew no more.