Chapter 27: Power of Failure of a Mage [1]
"Made it in ti?"
Ley repeated it like it was the funniest thing he’d heard. A dry laugh left him as his eyes moved over Lucas slowly, top to bottom, the way you look at sothing you’ve already decided isn’t worth serious attention.
Beside him Kine’s laugh was louder, less controlled, the laugh of soone genuinely entertained by the situation.
Talon didn’t laugh.
He just smiled. Slow and settled, adjusting his grip on Sylvia without looking at her.
"Well," he said, his voice carrying that practiced smoothness that made everything sound like it had been rehearsed. "If it isn’t our dear little brother." His head tilted slightly. "It’s been a while. Tell
— how have you been surviving out here all on your own?"
Lucas didn’t answer him.
His eyes had gone straight to Sylvia the mont he stepped into the clearing and they hadn’t moved yet. Unconscious. Completely still.
Then his gaze moved. One at a ti. Kine. Ley. Talon.
’Perception.’
________________
[SYSTEM INFORMATION]
________________
[Analyzing — Kine Ironhart]
[Strength: 44]
[Mana: 75]
[Magic: Fire]
[Age: 16]
________________
________________
[Analyzing — Ley Ironhart]
[Strength: 47]
[Mana: 75]
[Magic: Fire]
[Age: 16]
________________
________________
[Analyzing — Talon Ironhart]
[Strength: 50]
[Mana: 80]
[Magic: Fire]
[Age: 17]
________________
The numbers settled into his chest like stones dropping into still water.
All of them above him. Every single one. Even Kine, the weakest of the three was sitting at stats Lucas hadn’t reached yet. His hands tightened around Shadowfang’s hilts.
’I can’t take down even the weakest one cleanly. Not in a straight fight.’
His eyes went back to Sylvia.
"What did you do to her," he said. Low. Controlled. But underneath the control sothing with an edge.
The laughter stopped.
Kine’s expression shifted, the amusent pulling back into sothing colder and more familiar. He took a step forward, chin up.
"What did we do?" he repeated, his voice going quiet in the dangerous way. "Look at you." He let the words sit for a second.
"When exactly did you start talking like that?" His eyes dragged over Lucas slowly. "Have you forgotten how to address your seniors? Your brothers?" The last word carried sothing specific in it, not affection, not even contempt, just the cold assertion of hierarchy.
"Or has that pathetic little confidence of yours grown enough to make you forget your place?"
Ley cracked his knuckles. The sound was deliberate. He stepped up beside Kine with the easy comfort of soone moving into a familiar position, and the smile that ca to his face was the one Lucas rembered from the marble floor when he was eleven years old.
"Seems like it," Ley said. Casual. Almost bored. "Guess we’ll have to fix that." His eyes settled on Lucas and didn’t move. "It’s been a while since we properly reminded you of what you are. Maybe it’s ti you rembered what happens when trash tries to act like sothing more."
The words hit him and then they hit sothing older.
For a fraction of a second the forest disappeared.
The ground changed. The air went suffocating and close and familiar in all the wrong ways. The mories ca back the way they always did, not gradually, just suddenly there and overwhelming as real as the mont they happened. The cold marble. The shoe polish on his hands. The sound of laughter that had nowhere for him to go to escape it.
His breathing went uneven. His vision blurred slightly at the edges.
’No. Not again. Not now. Not—’
And then Sylvia appeared in his mind.
Not dramatically. Just — her face. The way she had looked at him in the waiting room after the exam when she said the word friend like it was simply true.
The way her hand had closed around his wrist in the corridor when Kine and Ley were standing over him and she had said let’s go, Lucas without looking back. The way she had used a prohibited ability that could get her expelled and hadn’t hesitated for a second.
Sothing snapped into place.
His eyes widened for a fraction of a second.
Then hardened.
’No.’ His jaw set. ’Not this ti. Those mories don’t get to control . Not now. Not ever again.’
He raised his arm and bit down. Hard.
The pain arrived imdiately and completely sharp and real and present, dragging him out of the past and back into the clearing, back into his own body, back into right now. Blood welled up and the tallic taste filled his mouth and he felt every nerve in his arm screaming.
Ley was staring at him with his brows pulled together, the mockery replaced montarily with sothing that looked almost like confusion. "What the—" He blinked. "Did he just bite himself?"
Kine let out a short laugh, shaking his head. "Has he lost his mind?" He tilted his head, eyes catching the blood still dripping from Lucas’s arm. "Still the sa coward at heart. Hurting himself because he’s too scared to face us properly."
Lucas ignored both of them. His breathing steadied. Vision cleared. He looked up.
’System. What happened to Sylvia. Analyze it.’
[Status Analysis — Sylvia Silvercrest]
[Condition: Unconscious]
[Cause: Butterfly Mist — Ironhart Clan Technique]
[Effect: Golden particulate disrupts mana circulation, inducing forced unconsciousness]
’How do I wake her up.’
[Solution: External mana stimulation]
[Minimal mana infusion can restore disrupted flow and return consciousness]
’Got it.’
He moved.
His feet pushing off the ground and his body committing to the distance between him and Talon, Shadowfang’s twin blades leaving green trails in the air behind him.
"You’ve got so nerve," Kine reacted first. His arm ca up and a fireball ford in his palm in an instant, roaring as it shot forward.
Lucas didn’t slow.
His wrist turned, one blade cutting a clean precise arc that t the fireball at its edge, not blocking it, redirecting it, slicing through the montum and sending it upward while the green arc from the swing continued forward, carrying the motion all the way through toward Kine.
Kine leaned back and dodged it, the arc passing close enough to his face that he felt the wind of it. Sothing flickered in his expression. "So you fight with daggers," he said, and his voice had lost so of its certainty without him seeming to notice.
Ley folded his arms, filling the gap with the contempt that ca naturally. "Of course he does. That’s what you rely on when you’ve got nothing else, cling to scraps of steel and pretend like you are an Academy’s mage." His voice was sharp and practiced, each word placed with the precision of soone who has spent years knowing exactly where things hurt. "Pathetic."
Lucas stopped.
Not because the words landed. Because he had heard them, felt them try to find purchase, and felt them fail.
His grip was steady on Shadowfang. Blood still dripping from his arm. Three people in front of him with better stats, stronger magic, and years of believing he would never be worth anything standing behind them like armour.
He looked at them.
"Yeah," he said. His voice ca out low at first, finding its footing. "I don’t have magic. Not now." A pause. "Maybe not ever."
He raised his gaze and it was steady and it was clear and it was the opposite of the boy on the marble floor.
"But even without it—" his voice rose, not with anger but with sothing that had been building across days of grinding in the dark, of fighting alone, of choosing to stand up every single ti soone told him to stay down, "—I will get stronger. I’ll prove it. To you. To everyone." His hands tightened around the hilts, the green trails flickering. "That even If I don’t have magic, I can still be one of the Strongest."
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