The blood on the basement floor had stopped streaming. Iver stood over the maid’s body, his breathing slow and even. For a moment, a cold thread of doubt slipped through his mind.
’Could i have persuaded her? Could i have forced an oath, or leveraged her loyalty to keep my awakening a secret.’ he thought but he discarded the thought as soon as it surfaced.
Trusting a servant’s silence was putting a leash on his own neck. In a world driven by power, a secret known by two was no longer a secret. More than that, staying tethered to House Vorne’s watchful eye would have made escaping to Nilheim impossible. The maid was simply a variable he had to eliminate sooner or later.
He focused inward, feeling the weight of his newly awakened Basilisk spirit core. Unlike ordinary beast/spirit cores, his carried a heavy, oppressive force, a natural reservoir of paralyzing gaze and corrosive, green black miasma.
Then he felt it, a sharp icy burn etched deep into his spine. As he focused on the blood red rune blooming beneath his skin, a sudden wave of instinctual knowledge flooded his mind. He didn’t need months of trial and error to figure out how to use the maid’s stolen power. The rune downloaded the skill’s precise spirit flow, breath mechanics, and spatial awareness directly into his consciousness.
’I guess every reincarnator gets his silver spoon, it seems the limit placed for everyone doesn’t work for me, as i can steal others people’s power by killing them’.
Runes provide information to user’s on how to use their power. To break through tier’s, one absorbs cores by placing them before him and meditating.
With a thought, Iver activated the skill. His heartbeat softened to a faint flutter, his body heat sank to match the chill of the basement, and his spirit signature flattened to nothing. Iver stepped back into the shadows and held still.
’Even a high tier tracker would struggle to find me in this room.’ He couldn’t be certain. He had no one left to test it on.
...
For the next week, Iver remained at the isolated estate. He used the time to solidify his Tier 1 spiritual core, balancing his raw Basilisk energy with the refined stealth of his stolen rune.
Every few days, wrapped in Presence Erasure, he slipped into the forest along the north west border. Just across the mountain line lay Nilheim the chaotic, lawless continent where exiles, outcasts, and mercenaries gathered away from the Radiant Empire’s reach. It was the one place where an outcast like him could grow without a target on his back.
In his third week of scouting, he found what he needed, a corrupt, low tier hunter who preyed on refugees near the border. The man was filthy and rough built, and impossible to miss.
Iver tracked him back to his camp. Moving like a ghost through the brush, he stepped up behind the man and drove a thin iron blade through the base of his skull. The hunter dropped without a sound.
’No matter how many times I do this, it feels like something essential is missing,’ Iver thought, staring down at the body. ’I should feel guilty. Instead it’s as if something is eating away at the feeling, or holding it down.’ he dismissed the thought.
Dragging the heavy corpse through the snow back to the estate, Iver placed the body in his own quarters. He dressed the hunter in his tunic, disfigured the face beyond recognition using his corrosive miasma , and arranged the scene alongside the maid’s remains in the main hall.
His final task was the fire. Iver hiked two miles north into the jagged ridges, searching until he located a territorial, red scaled Fire Salamander.
’There it is, now time to provoke it’, Standing at the cavern’s edge, he let loose a sharp wave of his Basilisk gaze striking the beast’s mind with sheer, hostile pressure.
Enraged, the monster roared and gave chase. Iver sprinted back toward the estate, staying just far enough ahead to keep the beast locked onto his presence.
The moment he cleared the estate’s tree line, he activated stealth and melted into the dark canopy. The blind, furious salamander crashed straight through the wooden doors of the manor. Spitting torrents of wild, untamed fire, it tore through the halls, igniting the dry timbers into a roaring inferno.
From a high branch half a mile away, Iver watched the flames swallow the sky. ’That part is done, i hope the plan works well, even if it doesn’t, i would’ve been long gone by then’.
To any investigator House Vorne sent from Castle Regulus, the scene would speak for itself, a tragic, routine monster attack that burned the disgraced child and his caretaker to ash.
Iver turned his back on the blaze. With his past burnt away, he set his gaze south toward Ravencrest. Free from all chains, he stepped out of the shadow of Requiem and into the wide, brutal expanse of Nilheim.