There were rules.
Lucien had written them in goldleaf ink—laws etched on the curved walls of the Hall of Memory:
"The Starcore amplifies perception and motion through resonant harmonics. But it cannot create mass, cannot intercept kinetic force. Energy without weight cannot block what is real."
But the more I trained, the more something felt… wrong.
Not wrong like a lie.
Wrong like an incomplete truth.
Because if energy could reshape molecules—alter phase states and frequencies—why couldn't it interact with mass?
Why couldn't it defend?
---
I returned to the old observatory, where Lucien had once dismantled an orbital blade mid-fall using only harmonic redirection. There, I sat, watching the shattered stars above through glass fractured long ago by war.
That's where it struck me.
Energy couldn't block because it had no frame.
But what if it didn't need mass to defend?
What if it only needed form?
A pattern. A shape.
A will.
---
I ran simulations for hours, using the Starcore to project force-fields around thrown pebbles. Every time, they passed through like mist.
But when I shaped the field not as a static bubble—but as a spiral tension ring, cycling outward in resonance—something changed.
The pebble slowed. Then stopped.
Vibrating mid-air.
Like it was caught in a web spun from time and intention.
Not blocked by mass—but redirected through constant rebalance.
I called it:
Vector Coil Shielding.
---
Lucien's rules weren't wrong. But they were first draft physics.
The Starcore couldn't resist with force.
But it could reshape motion.
Like catching a bullet not with armor—but by whispering to it mid-flight:
"I know where you're going. Let me show you another way."
I pushed further.
Tried hex-spiral shapes.
Fluid lattices.
Even a mirrored shell that reflected force back into itself—I nearly tore the observatory apart with that one.
Eventually, I found one that breathed with me.
It wasn't a wall.
It was a veil.
Responsive. Living. Intelligent.
It shimmered when I focused.
And vanished when I didn't.
But when I willed it—truly willed it—
It became as solid as steel.
---
The next time I faced a combat simulation, I didn't dodge.
I stood still.
A plasma spear surged at me—
And cracked like glass against my will-shaped shield.
The simulation glitched.
I didn't.
---
Lucien would have called it impossible.
But I had written my own law now.
"Energy doesn't need mass to defend. It only needs a shape. And shape is the language of the will."
I decided to improve my self before the form test
The credits from my last mission were enough to upgrade the neural implants. Nothing major—just improved Starcore feedback response and reflex prediction. But that wasn't what mattered.
What mattered was what I found after.
Buried deep in the Royal Citadel's black archive, behind three layers of biometric locks and a sentient firewall that whispered riddles of death—I found Hyau.
Not just a weapon.
A legacy.
---
"The Sword of the Cursed God."
The name alone felt like a wound in my mind.
Hyau—the ancient middle name given to every Veyrax heir born of Lucien's bloodline.
But not spoken aloud since the First Sundering.
Most thought it was ceremonial. A forgotten relic.
But the truth was darker.
Hyau was real.
And it breathed.
---
The sword wasn't forged.
It was grown—from Starcore essence condensed into a blade through a forbidden process known as Lament Binding. Lucien himself sealed it after the first Veyrax emperor—his own clone-son—used it to end the Rebellion of Thorns by severing time.
Literally.
Hyau does not cut flesh.
It cuts causality.
---
When I touched the containment glass, the sword shivered.
It was shaped like obsidian fire—jagged, hollow, and curved like a fang carved from silence.
And yet, when I activated my resonance field to study it, it responded.
Not just to the Starcore in me—
But to my blood.
---
The weapon's mechanics were alive. Not just reactive like other resonance-tech, but conscious. Its core held a micro-singularity looped around a memory engine—what the ancients called a God-Core.
Its abilities were terrifying:
Temporal Severance – a cut that erased a moment from existence, like it had never happened.
Reverse Echo – the ability to replay a strike in reverse, causing the same damage from an opposite angle.
Bloodlink Awakening – unlocked only by Veyrax blood, allowing partial bonding between user and blade spirit.
But the greatest cost wasn't energy.
It was sanity.
Every use of Hyau pushed the wielder closer to a mirror-world of themselves—twisted by intent, corrupted by possibility.
It wasn't just a sword.
It was a test.
---
I closed the file. Looked back at the blade behind glass.
Lucien had locked this away for a reason.
But he also left a key.
My name.
Kael Hyau Veyrax.
The cursed heir.
And now… I had a choice.
Would I wield the sword of the Cursed God?
Or would I become it?
---
I stood before Hyau for hours.
My palm hovered over the glass, Starcore humming quietly within me. The cursed sword pulsed in sync with my breath—like it was waiting. Like it knew.
But I didn't touch it.
I couldn't.
Lucien didn't hide it because it was too powerful.
He hid it because it was too easy.
A weapon that let you erase reality with a swing? That's not strength. That's surrender.
And I wouldn't build my legacy on someone else's nightmare.
So instead, I walked away.
And began forging my own weapon.
---
The outer city of Veyrax was noisy and scattered, filled with data-junkers, rogue smiths, black-market exo-armor traders, and ancient AI philosophers coded into rusted vending machines. This was where I found him—an old metallurgist named Jorn Vexus who once forged gravity lances for planetary sieges. Now he ran a food stall that sold "hot ions on a stick."
He didn't ask why I wanted to forge a blade using ferro-pyroplasmic core dust and MagTherm plasma nodes.
He just grunted, tossed me a synth-apron, and said:
> "You burn it, you pay for it."
And we began.
---
The forging process took seventeen days.
First, we constructed a layered blade structure using nanocarbon-tungsten alloy, bound with molecular anchor mesh to stabilize the disintegration field. Then, I embedded a compressed magnetoplasma coil that could be activated by the pulse of my Starcore, letting the blade generate intense magnetic shearing alongside superheated plasma filaments.
Basically?
It would disrupt molecular bonds through vibration, heat, and field interference—all in a single slice.
In the wrong hands, it could slice a tank in half.
In the right hands, it could cleave through a walker-class fortress mecha.
We called it:
Reflamax – Claw of the Dragon.
---
When I held it for the first time, it was heavy—not in weight, but in intention.
Unlike Hyau, Reflamax didn't whisper or call to me. It didn't breathe.
It roared.
Whenever I ignited the plasma-edge, the blade turned silver-red, humming with heat and distortion. Air shimmered around it like glass cracking from invisible pressure.
Jorn watched me swing it into a block of layered armor steel.
It didn't slice.
It melted through.
The metal didn't fall apart—it evaporated along the line of the cut.
He let out a low whistle.
> "That's not a sword, boy. That's war."
---
But there was a flaw.
A big one.
Reflamax's power cost was immense.
Every swing drained 42% of my Starcore reserves, and that was with minimal resistance. In combat, using it for more than three strikes would burn through every reserve cell I had—and leave me wide open.
It was the price of wielding a dragon's fang.
Too strong to use casually.
Too volatile to carry in missions.
Too personal to throw away.
So I sealed it.
---
Underneath the new training facility, I built a vault chamber—shielded with resonance-null walls and set with quantum locks. Only I could open it.
I left Reflamax there, embedded in a pedestal of cryo-forged obsidian. The plasma core slept, silent, waiting.
And I whispered:
> "When the time comes that I can no longer hold back—
you'll be the last scream they hear."
---
I walked away from Hyau.
I sealed Reflamax.
Two paths—one born of legacy, one born of will.
And I chose neither.
Instead, I began learning how to shape the world without depending on the edge of a blade.
The true battle wasn't against the machines or the mercenaries or even the cursed gods.
It was against my own limits.
---
But deep inside, I knew the truth:
Someday…
I would have to draw them both.
---
They say the Flash Cut is the fastest sword technique in the Veyrax lineage.
But most never learn the truth about it.
To many, it's a move. A slash so fast it can cleave lightning in half and leave no wound behind until your body realizes it's been split. They imagine it as a single, perfect attack—taught in silence, practiced in shadows.
But the deeper I delved into Veyraxian texts… the more I realized they were wrong.
Flash Cut isn't a move.
It's a passive state of being.
---
It began with a meditation taught only to bloodline heirs—something called the Blade Reflection. You don't swing a sword to perform Flash Cut. Instead, you dissolve the idea of "swinging" entirely.
You stop being the wielder.
You stop being the weapon.
You become the motion.
Flash Cut happens when your sword passes through the world with no resistance, no delay, no thought. Not just fast—instantaneous, like light.
Or at least, that's the theory.
In reality?
Even the best—those who've reached High Form 7—can only achieve speeds near Mach 100, barely a phantom of the real thing. Ghost Strike users like the Swiftsword Assassins can outpace them in short bursts, but lack the control.
Only Form 9 masters can approach half the speed of light, and Form 10—the mythical state—allows a wielder to strike at over 90% lightspeed, shattering causality in a blink.
But here's the curse of Flash Cut:
The faster you go…
…the more it eats you alive.
---
Most users don't survive more than five full applications of Flash Cut. Their muscles tear. Nerves burn. The feedback from reality trying to catch up twists their perception, sometimes irreversibly. Some go blind. Others lose their sense of time.
Flash Cut requires more than skill. It demands sacrifice. And above all—energy.
Lots of it.
For normal swordsmen, even the first stage draws on years of stored kinetic force. They wear gravity suits. Use exo-crystals. Borrow seconds of borrowed time.
But me?
I had Starcore.
---
It's not that I could master Flash Cut easily. In fact, it took me dozens of simulated breakdowns and near total collapse of my limb systems before I realized the secret: Starcore doesn't just give energy—it adapts to your intention.
So I trained Flash Cut not by chasing speed…
…but by chasing stillness.
When the world is still, your blade becomes the only thing in motion.
And when your blade is the only thing in motion—reality bends around your will.
---
But with that clarity came something else:
A deeper philosophy hidden in the old texts of Lucien:
> "The sword is not a weapon. It is a question."
"And every slash is a single word of your answer."
Flash Cut isn't about speed or killing.
It's about resonance.
When you swing with Flash Cut, you're aligning your will with the fundamental vibration of matter. The better your intent matches your motion, the less resistance you meet—and the faster you move.
A child swinging out of fear will never activate it.
A killer swinging in rage will collapse under it.
Only someone whose spirit and sword are the same… can achieve it fully.
---
And that brought me to the next revelation:
> Anything can be the sword.
A strand of hair. A broken belt. A word. A breath.
If your intention cuts, and your motion flows,
then it doesn't matter if you wield steel or silence.
Flash Cut isn't about form—it's about focus.
It's not the sword that matters.
It's the moment you decide to cut.
---
But the gift is not without cost.
Even with Starcore sustaining me, the first time I reached 72% lightspeed, I lost vision in my right eye for 3 minutes. My heart flatlined for 6 seconds. My brain recorded the entire battle before it actually ended.
Time had become warped around my blade.
I stood victorious—and terrified.
Because I finally understood why Flash Cut is feared even more than it's revered:
It doesn't just cut your enemy.
It slices through reality itself—and leaves a scar in you.
---
So now I train not to become faster…
…but to become clearer.
I practice the still cut. The breathless cut. The invisible cut.
And slowly, I rise through the Forms.
Not to reach Form 10.
But to reach the point where the blade and I are one without having to move at all.
Because the true Flash Cut… doesn't need speed.
It needs truth.