An hour passed.
Maybe two.
Soren's eyes were still open.
He should be sleepless from happiness, right?
Married to the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. A wife who looked as if she had stepped out of a painting.
Any normal man would be lying awake with a stupid grin on his face.
So, was Soren normal? Yes.
Then, was he sleepless because he was like those normal men? Wrong!
He was sleepless because he had already figured out the truth.
It had been circling his mind since the ceremony ended, since both families had looked so relieved to sign those papers and leave them at the house like they were disposing of garbage.
The Morvain family freed itself from its broken jewel, a burden they no longer had to carry.
And his own family?
They finally got rid of their embarrassment.
The son who never fit in, never measured up, never stopped being a disappointment from the moment he was born.
Two birds, one stone.
Marry them off to each other and forget they existed.
Soren remembered his father's last words to him at the courthouse.
"You're free now, Soren. Live your own life. We won't interfere."
Free?
What a joke.
They called it freedom, but the meaning was clear.
They were both abandoned, plain and simple.
"..."
Soren stared at the dark ceiling. His family had abandoned him long ago, always ignoring him, shuffling him aside, and even pushing him out of the frame in every family photo. He'd made peace with it years ago.
But Ethea...
Soren turned his head slightly, looking up at the bed where she lay.
'Did she realize it too?'
Was that why she acted like that earlier? Not because of him specifically, but because she'd finally understood what had happened?
Just a few months ago, she was the revered Ice Empress, adored and celebrated by everyone. Guilds had offered fortunes to recruit her, princes and young masters had flooded her with marriage proposals, and her family had proudly paraded her around like a trophy. Now, those exact same people had dumped her in an empty house with a stranger, explicitly telling her to disappear.
That kind of fall...
Soren couldn't even imagine what that felt like.
First, he had never experienced that kind of life; he had always been at the bottom.
Second, it wasn't wise to judge others without putting yourself in their shoes.
Finally, what happened, happened.
They shouldn't dwell on it now.
At the very least, they had a roof over their heads. Their families hadn't literally thrown them out onto the streets, and while this house was almost empty and freezing, it was still a shelter.
'Yeah, let's be grateful...'
There were countless people out there starving, fighting over scraps just to find a corner out of the wind. Compared to them, this was a luxury.
Soren turned his head slightly, glancing toward Ethea again.
'Alright then.'
He let the reality of the situation settle in before making his decision.
'Since I married her, I'll support and protect her till the end of my life.'
This wasn't a romantic vow.
This was... just a personal decision.
An ordinary man's promise to fulfill his duty as a husband.
She was his wife now, for better or worse, but he'd signed the paper and made that promise.
And unlike his family, unlike hers, he didn't make promises he didn't intend to keep.
Whatever happened from here on out, he'd see it through.
"..."
The thought brought him an odd sense of relief.
It felt like he'd finally found solid ground after hours of floating in uncertainty.
Soren let his eyes close again.
His breathing slowed, and the tension in his shoulders eased. Sleep pulled at him gently this time, no longer held at bay by racing thoughts.
Eventually, darkness took him.
Then, in the depths of his consciousness, something stirred.
A pulse.
It bypassed his senses entirely and resonated in the core of his being.
Soren's unconscious mind registered it distantly, like a dreamer hearing thunder from far away.
The pulse came again, stronger and more focused this time.
And then, cutting through the void of sleep like a voice speaking directly into his soul, came words that weren't words, thoughts that weren't his own.
[...]
[Conditions have been met.]
[Awakening initiated...]
A heartbeat of silence.
Then everything ignited!
Pain tore through Soren as something fundamental inside him was violently dismantled and rebuilt at the same time. His back arched off the mattress, hands clenching into white-knuckled fists as a strangled gasp died in his seizing lungs. A split second later, a torrent of blistering heat flooded his veins, instantly chased by a freezing chill that warred for dominance, both elements burning through his system with equal intensity.
'W-What... What is hap-pening...'
His thoughts scattered, reformed, and scattered again as something slowly began to take shape in his chest. Where nothing had existed moments before, a brand-new core of energy blazed into life at the center of his chest, expanding with a pressure that drove the pain to a staggering peak.
Then, just as suddenly as it had started, the agony cut out completely.
Soren lay gasping on the futon, his entire body drenched in cold sweat while his heart hammered against his ribs. His vision swam with lingering afterimages of light, but slowly, his ragged breathing began to steady. In the silence that followed, a final message echoed through his mind.
[Awakening complete.]
[You have awakened: Investment Authority!]
"..."
The messages faded.
Soren lay there, chest heaving, staring at the ceiling with wide eyes.
His mind raced as he tried to process what had just happened.
Awakening? Investment Authority?
None of it made sense.
He had undergone the awakening ceremony at fifteen, like everyone else, even running through the testing process a few more times. Yet the results had been entirely clear: no Core, no Talent, no Ability, no potential. He was a dud, lacking even an ounce of potential.
Seven years had passed since then. People didn't just spontaneously awaken in their twenties; it didn't work that way, at least in the world he knew.
And yet...
Snap!
Soren's eyes shot open wider.
His head whipped toward the bed on pure instinct, and his pupils constricted to pinpricks.
A masked black figure hovered over Ethea's sleeping form. And in one gloved hand, a blade catching the faint moonlight, already descending toward her throat.
"!"
Soren's body exploded from the futon.
He crossed the distance between the floor and the bed in a single heartbeat, a speed he'd never possessed, one that shouldn't have been possible.
Crash!
His shoulder slammed into the figure's torso before the blade could fall another inch.
Boom!
Both bodies hit the wall hard.
"UGH!"
"AGH!"