The academy's mana fields were calm. No alarms stirred. No stars flared. In Dorm Six, Third Floor, the boy known as The Godbearer slept on a bed of parchment and fading candlelight, his body slack from days of study, his soul momentarily at peace.
But peace had a price.
And someone had just paid it in gold, silence, and ambition.
High Arcanist Velmire, a court mage of Solarion, cloaked himself in a spell of Narrow Realities, a technique that allowed him to phase through walls undetected by most magical senses. In his hand, a null-lock dagger—its edge carved from void crystal, designed to sever divine resonance just long enough to disable a crest's defenses.
He didn't want to kill Vanila.Just keep him.Quiet.Forever.
He whispered a phrase only the royal court used:
"When stars burn too bright, we cage the light."
And then—
The null-lock struck.
It didn't wound Vanila—it only touched the crest.But that was enough.
The black sigil cracked, and in a blink, the Cores within him stilled, falling silent like moons eclipsed. The orbit broke. Power dimmed.
Vanila's breath slowed.
His eyelids fluttered.
And then… time bent.
The Poor Time Chamber was a prison not built of stone, but of stolen moments. A cell that did not age, that had no hunger, no sound, no clocks. Just slowness—a place where the passage of time stretched so far that minutes outside were years inside.
Vanila was dropped into its heart, unconscious.
And time slowed him to near stasis.
He floated in the air, body cocooned in a thin veil of mana, chest rising once every few hours. His hair drifted like he was underwater. His crest barely pulsed.
To the outside world, he was missing.
To Vanila, he was asleep inside a single moment.
Outside, Velmire returned to court.
"The boy is secure," he reported to the cloaked High Circle."He sleeps within the slowness. No will, no memory.No risk of divine disruption. The gods remain… quiet."
They nodded. No questions. Only approval.
In the kingdoms beyond, whispers continued. Rumors of his presence at Dormis Arcana faded to myth. Other stories replaced him.
The world moved forward.
But in the frozen chamber between seconds, the boy they feared most lay still. And within the black crest, something ancient watched in silence.
Not a Core.
Not a god.
Will.
Raw, buried, patient Will.
It did not flare. It did not rage.
It simply waited.
Because even time itself must eventually move.