---
The city of Arkaris breathed under a blanket of twilight mist. Lamplight shimmered on rain-slick cobblestones, casting elongated shadows across alleys where whispers of old magic still lingered. Somewhere deep beneath this restless city, in a forgotten ruin beneath the Scholar's Hall, Lucian Vale stood before a sealed chamber—one lost to time, buried beneath layers of magical deterrents and bureaucratic ignorance.
It wasn't listed on any map.
It wasn't marked by any glyph.
But Lucian had found it.
Not by chance—but through threads of hidden knowledge stitched into every ledger, whispered in contracts traded in silence. They all pointed here—to the Sanctum of the First Architect, a place where the ancients once experimented with raw Arcane Framework.
The place pulsed with potential.
The chamber door was a monolithic slab of black stone, its surface unmarred by runes or symbols. Lucian pressed his palm against it.
The stone drank his mana greedily.
At first, nothing happened—until the vibrations began. A low hum surged through the ground, and a crack spidered down the center of the slab. The door didn't open. It dissolved.
What lay beyond was not a room.
It was a void.
An absence of everything—and yet a presence of something so ancient, so vast, that even Lucian's Knowledge Comprehension could barely interpret it.
He stepped inside.
The air was thick with an unfamiliar density, each breath felt like pulling air from the depths of the sea. But Lucian did not hesitate. His curiosity outweighed his caution. This place was untouched by time, unbound by the laws of magic he knew. It was a place of origin—the birthplace of creation itself.
---
Beyond Understanding
There was no light. No air. No time.
Lucian walked through the void as though it were a dreamscape. But the deeper he ventured, the more the surrounding space seemed to fold and twist into itself. The very fabric of reality was disjointed, and even his senses seemed to warp under the weight of the pure, untamed essence in the air.
Then, a voice emerged, not spoken aloud but reverberating through the very core of his mind, older than any whisper of magic he had ever heard.
"You seek the gift of origin."
Lucian's heart skipped a beat. The words were both alien and familiar, their meaning profound and vast. He did not answer immediately. This voice was not one of the mundane, not of the Arcane Framework or even the divine; this was the voice of something beyond, something that existed before the framework of reality itself had solidified.
Still, Lucian's resolve remained unshaken. He was here not by whim but by necessity. To gain true power, he needed to create—to shape reality itself.
"I seek control," Lucian's voice echoed in his mind. "Not just the power to borrow, but the power to create. I seek the ability to shape the very essence of existence."
There was silence.
And then, the voice spoke again—this time quieter, almost as if it was acknowledging a shift in the flow of time.
"Then you must create what was never given."
Before Lucian could process these words, a shape began to form before him—a swirling core of pure conceptual energy, beating like a heart in the center of the void. It was the Creation Essence.
It was no object. No tool. It was pure potential, a manifestation of everything and nothing. It pulsed with energy, an infinite wellspring of possibility, a force so ancient that it was beyond comprehension. The very air around it seemed to hum with life.
Lucian reached out.
And the moment his fingers brushed the swirling core, the void shattered.
---
Awakening
Lucian gasped, stumbling backward as the ground beneath him seemed to break apart. He was no longer in the void, but in a chamber bathed in blinding white light. The Creation Essence had fused with his soul. He could feel it—not as a spell, not as a skill—but as a law written into his very being.
Creation.
It hummed beneath his skin, a constant thrum of possibility. It was the heartbeat of existence itself, the very foundation of all things. Every molecule of air, every grain of sand, every drop of water now bowed to his will.
Lucian raised his hand—and instinctively focused.
A blade appeared. Not conjured. Not summoned. Created.
Not imitation—but origin. He didn't just call it into being; it was born from the very essence of his desire. The blade shimmered with a light that seemed to echo through time itself.
He shifted his will again—and the blade dissolved, reshaping into a sphere of pure elemental wind. Then flame. Then crystal. Each form was perfect—each creation was born with purpose.
Then, a book appeared before him, its pages blank. He reached forward, and the words began to write themselves. It wasn't just a spell; it was an act of creation.
Lucian realized with sudden clarity that he was no longer just manipulating the world around him. He was rewriting it.
"This is beyond skill," Lucian whispered. "This is authorship."
He was the origin—the architect of all things.
---
Back Above
He emerged from the ruins hours later, stepping back into the underbelly of Arkaris. The night had deepened, but everything looked different. Crisper. Brighter. Every spell he passed, every enchantment etched into the stone walls—they all paled in comparison to what now surged within him.
He was no longer just a broker.
He was a creator.
And he would use this power not for war, but for balance—to construct a world where debt could no longer enslave those without names.
But first—he would test it.
---
The Proving Ground
Deep within the city slums was a gang of power-leechers—parasites who used fractured Skill Lending runes stolen from Lucian's older clients. They corrupted his magic, twisted it, turning it into violence and extortion.
Lucian stood at the edge of their den. The gang had been growing bolder, feeding off of the very people Lucian had sworn to protect. The balance he had worked so hard to maintain had been shattered by these pests.
He was done waiting.
He closed his eyes, and with a single thought, he focused.
Then, he spoke—not words, but a concept.
Wall.
Stone erupted from the ground, encasing the exit behind him, sealing it with an impenetrable barrier.
The gang leapt to their feet, weapons drawn.
"Who the hell—!?"
Lucian extended a hand, and a sphere of light burst into being. It illuminated the room with an unnatural glow, casting long shadows against the walls. He didn't need to draw a weapon.
He created one midair.
A flail, forged from gravity threads and iron crystal. It hovered before him, vibrating with suppressed force.
The gang attacked.
Lucian willed the floor beneath them to shift—rising into jagged spears that caught two of them mid-lunge.
A third cast a flame bolt toward him.
Lucian opened his palm. A mirror formed before him, not just a reflective surface, but a distortion of reality. The bolt hit the mirror, and in a flash of light, the flame was reflected back with doubled intensity.
The man screamed as the blast engulfed him.
Three remained.
Lucian frowned, unimpressed. "Let me show you something new."
With a simple gesture, Lucian unmade their stolen skills—one by one, watching the false enchantments unravel like frayed rope. He didn't need to force them to forget. He rewrote their very essence, stripping them of the magic they had so carelessly stolen.
Then, he rewrote their fates.
Not to make them stronger, but to bind them—to a contract only he could terminate.
"You want to use my legacy?" Lucian said coldly, his voice reverberating with the weight of his newfound power. "Then pay for it."
He walked away, leaving them groveling in the dirt, stripped of their ill-gotten strength. Their skills, their power, their very essence now belonged to him.
---
The Shifting Wind
By sunrise, whispers were already spreading across Arkaris.
A man had sealed off a den with walls that weren't there before.
A flail had appeared midair and shattered enchanted armor.
A contract had rewritten itself.
A creator walked among them.
Lucian Vale? He wasn't hiding anymore.
This was his city.
And he would reshape it—one thought at a time.
---
End of Chapter 13