The morning light that filtered through the dark clouds was gray and muted, offering little warmth to the cold stone room.

  Arthur sat on the edge of his bed, staring down at his own chest. His hands hovered over the thick linen bandages wrapping his torso. There was an agonizing itch beneath the wrappings, a deep crawling sensation he recognized from his past life as the final stages of cellular repair.

  But it had only been a few days since the Alpha werewolf claws had practically caved in his ribs.

  Slowly, Arthur unrolled the linen. The blood soaked poultice fell away, hitting the floor with a dull thud. He looked at his skin; it was pale, unblemished, and entirely whole. There wasn’t even a ridge of pink scar tissue. He pressed his fingers hard against his ribs, expecting the sharp, blinding agony of a fractured bone. But to his surprise, there was nothing. Only the steady, strong rhythm of his heartbeat.

  Arthur traced the smooth skin, his brow furrowing in deep concentration.

  “This is just impossible...” he muttered.

  Flesh does not mend this quickly on its own, he thought.

  Could it be a side effect of unsealing my core, or is it linked to the void mana I absorbed? Arthur fell deep in thought, trying to piece things together, but he couldn't form any proper conclusions as he lacked information about this strange phenomenon. Though he knew one thing with absolute certainty: if the estate physician saw this, it would raise too many dangerous questions.

  Moving methodically, the young heir picked up a fresh roll of linen and tightly re-wrapped his perfectly healthy chest. “I would need to fake pain for a little while,” he sighed.

  With his secret secured, he closed his eyes and turned his focus inward, wanting to recreate the hyper-concentrated blue spark from last night.

  Arthur visualized the conduit in his right index finger; drawing upon the intent of pure combustion, he invited the mana to flow.

  Sputter. A weak, pathetic wisp of black smoke leaked from his fingertip, accompanied by a wave of sharp nausea that twisted his stomach. He opened his eyes, a cold sweat breaking out across his forehead.

  At the same time, high above the wardrobe, the majestic owl averted its eyes as if struggling not to laugh.

  Arthur didn’t curse or strike the floor in frustration this time. Instead, he closed his eyes again and began to systematically isolate the variables of failure.

  Pathway integrity? He mentally checked the micro-vessel in his arm. It hadn’t ruptured, and the wiring was fine.

  Intent? His mental visualization of the combustion process had been flawless.

  Fuel?

  He turned his focus inward, probing the center of his chest where his core rested. It felt entirely hollow; the dense pool of energy he had tapped into last night was reduced to a faint, irregular pulse.

  The realization settled over him, frustrating but perfectly logical. He had treated his mana like a permanent energy source, assuming the flow would simply answer his call. Alas, he was operating on a nearly dead battery. He could engineer the internal circuitry perfectly, but if the central power source was dry, the machinery simply wouldn’t run.

  Arthur let out a long, tired breath. There were no shortcuts here; he would have to build his endurance slowly, draining and refilling his core to expand its capacity through grueling daily repetition.

  Pushing himself off his bed, he walked toward the bathroom to rinse the metallic taste of nausea from his mouth. As he splashed cold water on his face, a deep, rhythmic boom rattled the glass of his bedroom window.

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  Down in the valley, thick plumes of black smoke were rising into the gray morning sky; the air smelled of sulfur, lye, and boiling water.

  The deafening boom of the blast furnaces echoed off the sheer canyon walls. Lord Roderick Ashborn stood on a raised iron grate, his silver hair tied back tightly, his face streaked with black soot and grease. He was watching the massive cooling troughs below, completely ignoring the suffocating wall of heat radiating from the open forge doors.

  “The ore is stabilizing, my lord!" the chief forge master yelled over the roar of the fires. The massive, barrel-chested man wiped a thick layer of sweat from his brow, gesturing to the heavy iron tongs lifting a glowing, white-hot ingot from the water. “The lye wash succeeded! The impurities crack right off the surface!”

  Roderick stepped closer, his crimson eyes narrowed against the intense glare. As the ingot cooled, the color deepened, settling into a dark, mesmerizing violet-black.

  True Umbral Iron.

  “It is pure,” Roderick murmured, the crushing weight of the past few weeks briefly lifting from his broad shoulders. He turned to the Forge Master, his expression hardening again. “How much can we produce before the royal messenger returns? We have only five days now.”

  “The men are working in shifts, my lord. They are exhausted, and their hands are blistered, but seeing the pure iron has given them fire. We are also stripping the local forests bare just to harvest enough charcoal to keep the furnaces at this temperature.”

  “Do whatever it takes,” Roderick ordered, his voice echoing with absolute authority. “Buy the timber on credit from the eastern merchants if you must. Double rations for the men. And just keep the fires burning at all costs.”

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Master Smith nodded and went back to work, while the lord continued monitoring the situation. Time was tight, and every second mattered.

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  Back within the quiet, cold stone walls of the estate, Arthur dressed on his own today in a simple dark tunic and trousers; Layla’s had the day off. He left his room, intending to join the breakfast table as usual.

  As he passed the arched windows overlooking the indoor courtyard, he paused. Aria was there, bathed in the pale morning sun. She wasn’t casting fire today; instead, she was moving through a series of slow, physical martial stances.

  Arthur stepped into the archway, watching quietly. She finished a complex sweeping motion and exhaled, her crimson eyes opening to lock into his.

  “Oliver!” she said, her rigid posture softening instantly as she quickly grabbed a cloth to wipe her face. “You shouldn't be walking the halls so early. The physician said—"

  “I needed to stretch a bit,” Arthur interrupted gently, offering a polite smile. “The bed was starting to feel like a cage.”

  Aria walked over to him, her gaze lingering carefully on his bandaged chest. “Does it still hurt?”

  “Only when I breathe,” Arthur lied smoothly, holding his torso slightly rigid to sell the performance. He gestured toward the courtyard. “Your forms look very precise. You practice them every morning?”

  “Yes,” Aria tossed the cloth aside, a small blush briefly appearing on her cheeks. “My father insists that a mage who cannot defend themselves without mana is just a target waiting to be hit. Once your core runs dry, your fists are all you have left.”

  Arthur nodded in agreement.

  “Your breathing is remarkably steady for someone with compromised lungs, Young Master.”

  Arthur turned. Marcus stood a few paces down the corridor; his hands tucked neatly into the sleeves of his gray robes. His sharp, amber eyes were fixed intently on Arthur.

  “Good morning, Marcus,” Arthur said politely. He didn’t tense; it was natural for the High Mage to be this observant. “I am feeling a little better today. The poultices are doing their work.”

  Marcus’s gaze drifted slowly down to Arthur’s chest, analyzing his posture, then back up to his face. “Indeed. The resilience of youth is always a fascinating thing to witness. Do not push yourself too hard, Oliver.”

  “I won’t, sir.” Arthur replied with a respectful nod.

  As Marcus walked away to join his daughter, Arthur continued toward the dining hall. The brief exchange had been perfectly polite, but it reminded him that in the Ashborn estate, his every breath is being monitored.

  Arthur was entirely reliant on second-hand reports about the family’s standing. An engineer could not fix a failing structure without inspecting the foundation himself. If he wanted to gather real data about the true state of this territory, he couldn’t do it inside these walls. He needed to see the city with his own eyes.

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  An hour later, Arthur slipped out through a side door near the kitchens, pulling the hood of a plain dark cloak over his silver hair to avoid drawing any unnecessary attention.

  From the high windows of his bedroom, the settlement below the estate had looked like a sprawling, quiet village. But as Arthur walked down the long road, the true scale became apparent; what he saw from up there was only the outskirts of the city. The estate sat high on a fortified, rocky plateau, physically separated from the surrounding lands—a towering symbol of authority from a bygone era looking down on its subjects.

  It took him nearly thirty minutes of steady walking to reach Ashford City.

  The moment his boots hit the uneven cobblestones, the reality of the world hit him. The air didn’t smell of pine and crisp mountain wind; it smelled of wet ash, rotting wood, and the sharp smell of unwashed bodies.

  Arthur kept his head down, navigating the cramped, winding alleys. The architecture was a testament to a long, agonizing decay. Once-proud stone buildings were crumbling, their roofs patched with rotting timber and cheap tar. Lintels sagged heavily over doorways, and the ironwork on the streetlamps was eaten through with rust.

  This wasn’t the result of a sudden sabotage. The Ashborn family had been bleeding power, wealth, and influence for over half a century, and the city that relied on them was quietly starving to death.

  Buildings leaned against one another like exhausted soldiers, and gaunt faces stared blankly from shadowed doorways. A merchant with hollow cheeks yelled half-heartedly over a cart of bruised, freezing root vegetables.

  At the edge of the street, a little girl stood on the tips of her worn boots, her fingers barely reaching the rim of the merchant’s cart. Her hair was thin and uneven, as if it had been cut with a dull knife. She wasn’t begging; she was just staring at a cracked turnip. Not with greed, not even with hope. Just quiet calculation.

  The merchant noticed her eventually. His jaw tightened, and for a long moment, their eyes met—hunger and helplessness locked in silent negotiation. Then he looked away, turned the cart, and rolled it farther down the street.

  The girl didn’t cry. She didn’t call after him; she simply lowered herself back onto her heels and stepped into the shadow of a crumbling wall, disappearing as if she had never been there at all.

  Arthur’s jaw tightened. He wasn’t a lord yet, and he certainly wasn’t a savior, but this was the foundation of his family’s power. Without a thriving city and a healthy workforce, the Ashborns would eventually collapse, regardless of how much pure iron they pulled from the earth.

  “Thief!!! Please stop her!”

  The shrill, desperate scream shattered the grim silence of the street.

  Arthur snapped his head around. A frail woman had been thrown roughly to the muddy cobblestones, her meager basket of vegetables scattered across the street. Darting away from her was a hooded figure, clutching a small, worn leather coin purse. Based on their height and stride, the thief was a teenager.

  The surrounding citizens just watched, their eyes dull and apathetic. A few even turned away; nobody moved to help. Deep, generational desperation had bred a profound selfishness in the populace.

  Arthur didn’t think. He simply acted.

  He bolted after the hooded figure. As his boots hit the uneven stones, he expected his frail, thirteen-year-old body to protest and stumble over the sudden exertion and the long walk. Instead, his unsealed core flared entirely on its own.

  He didn’t formulate an incantation, nor did he try to mathematically map a circuit. The adrenaline spiked, and his core reacted to his desire to move, dumping mana directly into the pathways of his lower body.

  Arthur felt an intense, sudden lightness in his legs. The fatigue vanished instantly, replaced by a strange, kinetic heat thrumming through his calves and thighs.

  The ground blurred beneath him, his strides eating up the distance between him and the hooded figure.

  Ahead of him, the thief glanced over her shoulder. Her eyes widened beneath her hood in genuine shock as she saw a young boy in a dark cloak closing the distance between them quickly.

  Realizing she couldn’t outrun him on a straight path, she sharply veered off the main street, her boots skidding in the mud as she dove into a narrow, twisting labyrinth of dark alleyways.

  Arthur gritted his teeth. His breathing finally began to catch in his throat as he plunged into the shadows after her.

  (To be continued...)