The second level of the Vault was not some great library or senescent hall filled with scrolls.
It was a barren ring of scorched earth well below the Vault, surrounded by rusted sigils and broken runes. Blue braziers along the perimeter cast dancing shadows, giving more smoke than flame.
Only initiates with "permission" were permitted to train there.
Lucien was not.
But Kaela did anyway.
"You're not supposed to use magic," she said bluntly, tossing him some water "But I've seen you. Seen how the Vault behaves around you. How your nightmares distort the walls."
Lucien held the stone. "I don't know."
"Focus stone. It'll hurt if you push too hard, but if you don't push at all, it'll hurt too much."
Alone.
She left him.
He looked at the water.
It warmed. Then heated. Then burned. But the moment he dropped it, it chilled instantly.
He closed his eyes.
He remembered the pain. The hunger. The hallucinations within from the Vault. The whispers. The flash of himself standing in black.
And he spoke the single word that came to mind.
A word he did not know he knew:
"Veleron."
The ground split open under him.
Not a surge of power but a gentle quiver. A spark. The braziers dulled and became a deep purple hue. And on the glyph-stone in his palm, delicate tendrils of black smoke wriggled out like veins.
He took a harsh breath. The stone burst.
And something inside him. awakened.
She was already in the shadows, already perceiving.
"You shouldn't have been able to do that."
Lucien's hands were trembling as he raised his face. "Then why could I?"
Kaela stepped closer, her eyes fixed. "Because whatever you are, Lucien… you're not human."
The silence hung in the air.
Lucien did not answer. Could not.
He was aware only that the had responded.
And it wasn't through with him yet.
Lucien's next body ached.
Every day was the same: battered earth, burning braziers, stillness and the sound of his own ragged breathing catching in his throat as magic belligerently refused to obey.
But change was imminent.
Where he could previously not grasp the Focus Stone, now he could simply will sigils into existence without them disintegrating.
Kaela left him grim scrawled scrolls in the dirt no titles, simply blood-stained schematics and ancient injunctions.
Training Sequence I: Physical Endurance
Lucien was taught that magic began in the mind.
But his body was weakening.
He practiced between attempts fists bloody, flesh torn, lifting boulders and sprinting across charred ground until he collapsed. Mental exhaustion was no problem if the body couldn't keep pace.
"A mage who topples after a single spell is a corpse with panache," Kaela said.
So Lucien went on. Pushups slowed to a crawl by his arms collapsing. Meditation beside dripping stalactites. Sitting quietly in ice-cold water, regulating his breathing.
He did not become stronger.
He toughened. Training Sequence II: Basic Magic – Threading the Elements
The first spell he was taught was not elegant.
It was Sanfer a tiny fire-thread used to ignite campfires.
"Concentrate on friction, heat, intent," read the scroll. "The spark is in rage tempered by design."
He flunked twenty-seven times.
On the twenty-eighth, there was a wisp of smoke rising from his palm, curling up his fingers like a snake.
It burned. He blistered.
But it was his.
At last, he figured out how to tie that thread onto things he hurled. A rock, burning in midair. A wooden spike, draped in flames.
Not powerful.
But personal.
Training Sequence III: Mental Resistance
Kaela pulled him in deeper once more. Through a sealed doorway into a room with broken mirrors and broken masks.
"Sit down. Don't move. Don't speak. Whatever you see, isn't real."
Lucien did.
And the Vault showed him all that it thought would break him:
His mother, laughing, chained.
Kaela, heart-pierced.
Himself, scales as black as coal, laughing while the world burned.
Each illusion tried to speak, pull, break.
Lucien held firm.
When he came out, he was drenched in sweat, nose bleeding, teeth clenched.
But he had endured.
And Kaela said only:
"Good. Now you're ready for real spells."
The scorch marks were deeper this time.
Lucien did not wince now when his skin burned. He learned to breathe through pain, to channel fear as fuel. Kaela ceased to give warnings. She just left darker scrolls torn, ink-stained, some written in languages that slithered on the lips.
This night's scroll had no words.
Only a symbol: a serpent swallowing its own tail drawn in crimson.
The spell required silence, intent, and a drop of blood.
Lucien bit into his own palm and let it fall onto the stone ring.
He focused on his shadow not as a reflection but as a thing with weight and memory.
"Timia… Velthir… Bind," he breathed.
His shadow twisted.
It stripped away from the ground, like wet paper. It whipped around like a tendril circling about a training dummy Kaela had left standing over there. The shadow wrapped around it, constricting wood until it splintered.
Lucien dropped to the ground, gasping.
The tether had drained him in seconds.
But he smiled.
He could bind now.
Intermediate Spell II
The second scroll described a warding glyph. "For repelling lesser spirits or deflecting projectiles," Kaela had written.
It took four hours to properly inscribe. Each line had to be gouged into the dirt with his nail. If a curve was off by too much, it fizzled. Twice it backfired, striking him into the cavern wall.
But on the third try…
A runic circle blazed to life below him pale blue, buzzing.
He hurled a fire-thread at himself.
It hit the barrier and rebounded into the wall.
Warding success.
But he coughed up blood from the backlash. The sigil had fed on his life force.
Intermediate Spell III (Failed)
This wasn't from Kaela.
It was from the Vault itself.
A whisper behind the mirror. A scroll left in his quarters with no sign. A spell to seal one's memories, hiding pain… or truth.
Lucien had no idea what the runes did.
But he went ahead and tried it anyway.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on Ruderlym.
Her voice. Her hand reaching for his. Her death.
> "Vel… Atrum… Dormir…"
Pain. A scream. His own.
He blacked out.
When he woke, he remembered less but felt more.
And in the corner of his mind… something else was awake now.
Watching.
She entered the chamber after his third day without sleep.
"You've started touching spells even the Elders won't teach."
Lucien didn't argue. He just stared at his scarred hands.
Good," she said coldly. "Because if the Kingdom ever finds out what's in you, they won't teach you either. They'll burn you."
Lucien looked up.
His voice was calm. Cold.
"Then I'll burn first."
THREEMONTHSLATER
Lucien's scars on his hands were now calluses.
His clothes no longer whole or brand new. His eyes duller, sharper, older. The Vault had reshaped him: body harder, mind quieter, magic more precise.
But he was still weak.
Not by strength, but by contrast to Kaela, to the Elders, to the horror he knew lay beyond. His spells drained him. His body ached after each occurrence. He could bind, shield, burn but at a cost.
He was no warrior.
He was a survivor.
He scowled at his face in the rough slab the Vault used as a mirror.
"You don't belong here," it breathed.
Lucien didn't flinch.
"Then why am I still standing?"
He moved back, shadow wavering wildly behind him as if it didn't wish to be parted.
"Three months," Kaela snarled, pushing a blade at his feet. "Time to shed spells."
Lucien looked up.
"You want me to fight?"
"No. I want you to learn how to lose… without dying."
She attacked.
The blade came at him fast. He barely raised a warding sigil and it cracked under pressure.
She slammed him into the dirt.
"Good. Pain is memory. You're still too slow."
Lucien spat blood.
"I'm still breathing."
Kaela actually smirked.
Lucien now meditates every night.
Not for peace but to quiet the whispers.
They've increased in volume.
Some bribe with power. Others scream. Some call out his name.
But one…
One voice laughs.