Forty-eight hours.
For a normal person, two days was plenty of ti to pack a bag, say goodbye to relatives, and perhaps write a will if they had a bad feeling about a trip. For Revan, forty-eight hours was a countdown to hell.
Two days before House Vespera’s express train departed for the Borderlands, slicing through the Ashenmoor Corridor and piercing the heart of darkness where magic—and logic—simply ceased to function.
Revan’s first priority after leaving the East Tower wasn’t packing. It was survival. And to survive where magic died, he needed sothing sharper than his sarcasm.
The iron door of Volkar’s forge in the Undergallows groaned loudly, as if protesting Revan’s return. The wall of heat, thick with the sll of soot, rust, and molten iron, hit him imdiately. 2
In the center of the room, the giant was swinging his massive hamr against a glowing ingot. The rhythmic pounding stopped as Volkar looked up, his bright amber eyes narrowing as he assessed Revan.
"I thought you’d be dead in a ditch by now," Volkar’s deep rumble echoed over the roar of the furnaces.
"Disappointing, I know," Revan replied casually, stepping inside. "Unfortunately, fate enjoys my suffering far too much to let die that quickly."
Volkar snorted, setting his hamr down. "So, what brings the little shadow back? Don’t tell you’ve already found a way to ruin another blade."
"I’m not that reckless. Well, maybe a little," Revan crossed his arms, wincing slightly as the movent pulled at his newly closed wounds. "The cheap, standard-issue Academy sword I borrowed shattered into fragnts against an assassin’s Aura last night. I am completely disard."
Volkar raised a thick eyebrow. His experienced eyes scanned Revan’s posture. "And now you want another masterpiece to destroy?"
Revan offered a thin smile. There was no hiding anything from the old warrior. "I need sothing different today. Not an Aura-conductive blade. Not a magical artifact. And definitely not sothing that relies on Mana transfer. I need good, solid, purely physical steel."
Volkar stared at him. "A weapon without magic conductivity? Only an idiot or soone planning a trip to a Dead Zone asks for a piece like that."
"Let’s just say I’m packing for extre weather."
Volkar stared at him for a long mont before turning toward a tarp-covered rack in the corner. He pulled the canvas back and retrieved a longsword sheathed in plain black leather. He tossed it; Revan caught it with ease.
Heavy. That was Revan’s first thought. The blade was solid, cold, gray steel. No runes, no Orichalcum core. Just the perfect, brutal balance of relentlessly forged iron.
"Double-folded carbon steel," Volkar explained, crossing his massive arms. "It won’t channel a spark of your Aura. You’ll be fighting purely with muscle and bone. But in exchange, that blade won’t shatter even if you smash it against magically reinforced armor. Just don’t expect it to glow."
"Perfect," Revan sheathed the sword, feeling its reassuring weight settle at his hip. ’In a Dead Zone, the only things you can rely on are steel and luck. And my luck has never been reliable.’
"Get out of my forge," Volkar waved a calloused hand dismissively. "If you don’t co back alive, I’m selling your debt to the loan sharks in the lower city."
"You’re too kind, Master Volkar."
***
By the ti Revan returned to the Academy grounds, the afternoon sun was high. Valtheris Academy carried on as usual—haughty, bustling, and entirely indifferent to his existence.
His next destination was the main library archives. If he was taking a train ride through hell, he needed to know the route.
Sitting in a dusty, forgotten corner, Revan turned the pages of a thick, leather-bound to titled Cursed Topography: Mapping the Dead Zones of the Unification Era.
His eyes scanned the dense text, searching for the keyword ’Ashenmoor’. Dead Zones weren’t natural phenona. They were scars. Centuries ago, during the Unification War, weapons of mass magical destruction had been used with such brutal intensity that they permanently ruptured the leylines in those areas. Within a Dead Zone, Mana couldn’t flow. It couldn’t be shaped. To a Mage, entering one felt like being thrown to the bottom of the ocean with concrete tied to their feet.
Revan found a paragraph that made his blood run cold.
The express rail route through the Ashenmoor Corridor intersects seventeen distinct Dead Zones. The longest continuous stretch, colloquially known as ’The Silent Stretch,’ requires a transit ti of exactly forty-seven minutes.
Revan exhaled harshly, rubbing his face with his hands.
Forty-seven minutes. Almost an hour.
An entire hour where Sylvia von Vespera, one of the most terrifying mages on the continent whose Gravity Magic could crush a Master-rank warrior into paste, would be reduced to a vulnerable, ordinary human. Whoever planned this transport schedule—or whoever planned to attack it—knew exactly what they were doing.
He read the next paragraph, and a strong urge to bash his head against the heavy oak table washed over him.
Historical records indicate the most severe anomaly within ’The Silent Stretch’ occurred twelve years ago. A Royal Military convoy transporting high-grade supplies vanished without a trace mid-transit. No bodies, no wreckage, and no distress signals were ever recovered.
"Fantastic," Revan muttered cynically.
***
Walking back to his dormitory, Revan’s stomach finally demanded attention. He detoured toward the cafeteria, intending to grab whatever leftovers didn’t require making eye contact with the nobles.
However, as he passed the main notice board in the west corridor, a cluster of students was gathered, whispering excitedly.
Revan rarely cared about aristocratic drama, but a familiar na caught his attention.
"...actually summoned to Instructor Valen’s office..." a blonde student whispered, his eyes wide with the gleeful schadenfreude that only academy students possessed.
"I heard the suspension is for six months. The Caldris family didn’t even send a letter of defense. They’ve completely abandoned him!" another student chid in.
Revan slowed his pace. He glanced toward the notice board. Pinned dead center was an official parchnt from the Academy Disciplinary Committee.
Student Erison van Caldris, hereby issued a Level Two Suspension for repeated acts of violence. Arena access revoked. Probationary period: 6 months.
Revan felt a very faint, almost imperceptible smile touch his lips.
So, Elara had actually gone through with it. The timid girl who used to tremble while holding a salad tray had marched right up to Instructor Valen with dical evidence of Revan’s deep lacerations and puncture wounds.
A tiny prick of guilt tugged at the corner of Revan’s conscience. He knew full well Erison had absolutely nothing to do with the stab wounds and slashes on his back. Those were the handiwork of The Garden’s assassins in the alley. Erison was just a convenient idiot who had tornted the "Revan" so frequently that he made the perfect scapegoat.
Revan rubbed his chin, dismissing the guilt with cold pragmatism.
’Better him than the truth,’ he thought. Erison had coasted on his family na for far too long anyway, acting like a tyrant despite being the disappointnt of Duke Alaric’s bloodline. Sacrificing him to cover The Garden’s tracks was just efficient resource managent.
***
The night before his departure, the silence of his dorm room felt heavier than usual.
His small leather bag was already packed and sitting by the door. A few changes of clothes, so ergency dical supplies, and his new, magic-dead steel sword.
He sat on the edge of the mattress, staring out the window at the crescent moon hanging in the night sky.
Suddenly, without warning, the obsidian coin in his pocket flared with heat.
Revan reached into his trousers and pulled out the black coin bearing the wilting flower wrapped in chains. It pulsed softly against his palm, radiating a warmth that slowly began to cool. Just one pulse.
Revan rolled the coin between his fingers, his eyes narrowing.
This wasn’t the first ti. The coin had pulsed when he was in Elara’s lab that morning—when he was alone with her. And now, it pulsed again while he was isolated in his room.
The pattern wasn’t random.
’Soone is watching ,’ Revan realized, pressing his thumb against the engraved flower. ’And they aren’t just watching. They know exactly when I’m alone. They know when my guard is down.’
The violet-eyed woman from the alley... who was she really? And how did her intelligence network penetrate so deeply, bypassing even the wards of Valtheris Academy?
Realizing that dwelling on these questions tonight would yield no answers, he decided to force the thoughts from his mind and get so sleep. Revan placed the coin on his nightstand, closed his eyes, and leaned back against the wall.
***
Dawn broke, painting the sky in dreary shades of gray.
Valorheim Central Station was a colossal structure of wrought iron and frosted glass. The hiss of pressurized steam and the sharp wail of locomotive whistles cut through the freezing morning air. On a secured, private platform separated from the comrcial lines, the Z-Class Express Train idled like a slumbering steel beast.
Revan stood on the platform, dressed in his immaculate black servant’s attire. The frigid air turned his breath into white plus. He stared toward the front of the train. Thick, pitch-black smoke billowed from the locomotive’s chimney, rising into the pale morning sky like a giant spine piercing the clouds.
He adjusted his black gloves, waiting for Sylvia’s arrival. But before he heard the familiar click of his mistress’s heels, a heavy, rhythmic, military tread approached from the direction of the security carriages.
Revan turned his head.
Standing at the far end of the platform was a broadly built man wearing a faded military greatcoat bearing the royal crest. The man looked as though he had been chiseled directly from granite—solid, weathered, and immovable.
But what made Revan’s breath catch in his throat wasn’t the uniform. It was the face.
A deep, jagged scar slashed diagonally across the man’s face, starting from his left temple, cutting down past his eye, and ending at his jawline. It was the kind of wound that should have killed a man three tis over.
The scarred man stopped walking. His sharp, freezing eyes locked onto Revan’s.
Two seconds.
They stared at each other for rely two seconds through the drifting steam. Yet, in that brief exchange, Revan didn’t see the blank indifference of a stranger. He saw sothing far more dangerous.
’Recognition.’
The man recognized him. Or, more accurately—judging by the slight narrowing of his eyes as he assessed Revan’s posture—the man recognized soone when he looked at Revan.
Before Revan could analyze the look any further, the scarred man broke eye contact and stepped up into the security carriage without a single word.
Revan stood rooted to the spot, his heart suddenly hamring against his ribs with an intensity that had nothing to do with the impending Dead Zones.
This conspiracy had just beco infinitely more complicated. And the express train to hell was about to depart.
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