Elara Wintercroft broke the oppressive silence, her voice, normally as smooth and melodic as a winter stream, now taut with a disbelief that bordered on outrage. She gestured with a sharp, elegant finger toward a datapad glowing beside the holographic display, its screen a dizzying scroll of analytical data.
"Theron, is this report truly accurate?" she demanded, her gaze fixed on her husband. "Someone from the Sump... someone who has never been touched by the grace of an Aegis Academy, never been registered with the HAC, possesses an Aether Core Purity of this magnitude? It defies everything we know. It shouldn't be possible."
Theron's sharp, grey eyes remained locked on the looping recording of the two Sump strays. "My head of security does not embellish, Elara. You know this. Even without scanning them, Magnus could feel it radiating from their very bones. Their Aether Purity is, at a minimum, low-tier C-Rank, and his instincts scream that it is most likely far, far higher. They are not just Talented. They are true anomalies."
He spoke the word "anomalies" with a gravelly weight, as if tasting something foreign and fundamentally wrong. His knowledge of the Sump was exhaustive, a product of the cold, detached disdain a king holds for his sewers. It was a cesspool, a necessary blight at the bottom of Zenith City's otherwise perfect structure, a place where the world's ambient Aether was thin and stagnant, like polluted water.
"It is a foundational law of our world," Theron continued, his voice a low rumble that seemed to vibrate with the very authority he wielded. "The environment dictates potential. The Sump's ambient Aether is so scarce that it actively strangles genetic expression at its root. For a child to be born there with even a twenty-five percent Aether Core Purity would require a divine miracle. The abysmal quality of Talents, the chronic lack of nutritional resources, the constant, grinding environmental stress... it is a perfect crucible for breeding mediocrity, for ensuring the bottom remains the bottom."
He finally turned, his glacial gaze meeting his wife's. "Even if two C-Rank heroes from the Apex were to slum it and conceive a child in that gutter, the fetus would be starved of the necessary cosmic energy. It might be born with thirty percent purity, perhaps thirty-five at the absolute, desperate limit, but it would be a pale, pathetic shadow of its potential. Yet these two... this Orion and this Lyra... their purity rivals that of our own Elysia, a child nurtured from conception in the richest Aether streams in the province."
The question hung in the chilled air, a paradox that gnawed at their ordered, powerful minds: How was any of this possible?
"We've been running traces since Magnus's first report," Theron said, answering her unspoken question. "We have cross-referenced every database, official and clandestine, in Zenith City. This Orion and this Lyra have a single, ghostly point of data: a birth registration filed in a forgotten Sump clinic eighteen years ago. No listed parents. No school records, no medical files, no criminal history. It's as if they simply materialized out of thin air that day and left no other footprints in the world until they appeared on our doorstep."
Elara's brows furrowed, her sharp mind, a weapon in its own right, racing through a thousand impossible scenarios. "Could they have come from another city? Another province? B-Rank, or even... A-Rank?"
Theron considered it, the gears of his strategic mind turning. He shook his head. "Unlikely. Any inter-province travel by a Talented individual, especially one hailing from a higher-ranked territory, is meticulously logged by the Hero Association of Cascadia. Their movements are not tracked minute-by-minute, but their points of entry and official destinations are. According to the HAC's central server, not a single registered visitor from another province has so much as set foot in the Sump for over two decades."
Deep in thought, Elara crossed her arms, her gaze drifting back to the hologram. They were proud, yes, and confident in their station, but they were not foolish. They had not built the Wintercroft empire by dismissing anomalies that so flagrantly spat upon the known rules of their world.
As she watched the recording loop again, she saw their daughter, Elysia, step into the frame at the end, her posture betraying a shocking degree of acceptance as she led the two siblings deeper into the Wintercroft estate.
Her eyes narrowed, and a cold edge that could frost glass crept into her voice. "Theron. I just noticed something. Please tell me our daughter didn't simply invite them into our home."
Theron let out a short, humorless snort, a sound like an ice sheet cracking. "The last report from the maids was that Elysia took those two, along with Lisanna Vance, directly to the Glacier training facility."
"She what?!" The temperature in the grand study plummeted, delicate frost patterns blooming on the obsidian desk as Elara's Aether flared with pure, unrestrained indignation.
Theron remained impossibly calm, a mountain unmoved by his wife's frigid blizzard. "That girl is as hard-headed as the two people who raised her. She even threatened my head guard, reminding him that his primary directive is to follow her orders above all else. His hands were tied. And after witnessing that display of raw, world-breaking power," he gestured to the vaporized shields in the hologram, "there was little he could say against her assessment of their potential."
"Potential be damned!" Elara snapped, rising from her chair, a queen incensed. "That is no reason to invite undocumented strangers—Sump rats, of all people—into our private, family-only facility! To be alone with them! Have all our years of teaching her about caution, about propriety, about the dangers that lurk behind smiling faces meant nothing?"
Theron sighed, a rare crack in his stoic facade. "Arguing with her now is like arguing with a glacier, my dear. You know how she is. It is better to reserve judgment until we meet them ourselves tomorrow. She will not be convinced otherwise until we do."
Elara clicked her tongue, but the fire in her eyes subsided, replaced by a resigned look of frustration that so perfectly mirrored her daughter's own stubbornness. She sank back into her chair. "That girl. She is a constant headache."
"Indeed," Theron agreed, but a serious, calculating glint, the look of a predator spotting new, powerful prey, entered his eyes. "But she has, inadvertently, brought us an opportunity. We cannot simply let them go now. These two have seen far too much of our inner workings, and the potential they harbor is too vast, too volatile, to be left to chance. Tomorrow, you and I will speak with Lord Vance. Together, we will make the proper, strategic decision on what is to be done with them."
Elara let out a final, disdainful snort. "I certainly hope this won't be a complete and utter waste of our time."
...
As the black of night bled into the hazy, chrome-reflected dawn of a new day, the Glacier training facility looked less like a state-of-the-art combat gym and more like the epicenter of a localized war. Shards of twisted, gunmetal-gray alloy from dozens of destroyed puppets littered the ferrocrete floor like the husks of fallen titans. Massive patches of the ground were scarred with starburst-shaped craters still radiating a faint, otherworldly heat, while others were coated in a layer of frost so deep it shimmered with captured rainbows under the facility's lights.
In the center of this maelstrom of destruction stood Orion. He swept his gaze across the beautiful chaos he had orchestrated, his breathing perfectly even, his Aether Core thrumming with a vibrant, seemingly inexhaustible energy. There was no trace of drowsiness in his eyes, no sign of fatigue in his posture. His body was a perfectly tuned engine of cosmic power, roaring and ready for more.
The same could not be said for the women.
Lyra, the human hurricane, was sprawled flat on her back, arms and legs spread-eagled in a posture of total, blissful exhaustion. Her body was sheened with a thin layer of sweat, but a wide, deeply satisfied smile was plastered on her face, the expression of a predator who had feasted to her heart's content.
Nearby, Lisanna was slumped against the base of the control panel, her fiery red hair a stark, beautiful contrast against the cool metal, her seemingly endless well of solar energy finally, completely, run dry.
Beside her, ever the proud noble even in the depths of sleep, lay Elysia. Her head was tilted at a graceful angle, her silver hair spilling across the floor to mix with Lisanna's, a breathtaking portrait of exhausted elegance.
Orion took a moment to reflect on the night's gains. The training hadn't just gone well; it had been transformative, a quantum leap forward for them all.
Lyra had achieved a terrifying new level of proficiency. Her control over her Lethal Vibrations was no longer just a raw, explosive tantrum of power; it was refined into a symphony of destruction. Every cell in her body seemed to hum with a latent, dissonant power. She could now coat her limbs in a shimmering, visible aura of high-frequency Aether particles, enhancing her physical abilities to a monstrous degree.
A single punch, as demonstrated on the final Peak Bronze Steel puppet, didn't just dent its reinforced chassis—it sent a cascade of destructive resonance through its entire structure, a fatal frequency that caused it to implode into a shuddering, compacted heap of scrap metal.
The streams of kinetic force she could project were no longer simple blasts; they were focused lances of molecular disruption that tore through opposing Aether attacks with contemptuous ease, unraveling them on a conceptual level. Orion estimated she was already knocking on the door of the B-Rank, if not standing firmly on its threshold—a ludicrous, unheard-of jump in power for a single night's work.
Elysia and Lisanna's progress was more subtle but no less profound. By focusing their Aether Senses on Orion's "blueprint"—his perfect, intuitive control gifted by the System—they had bypassed years of painstaking trial and error. They had been given the answer key to the wolrd of Aether and had learned to manipulate higher, denser forms of their respective Aether without the intense concentration it previously required.
Elysia could now manifest an Ice Spear so condensed it was nearly black, a sliver of supreme cold that absorbed all light. Its tip was so profoundly cold it caused atmospheric nitrogen to liquefy and drip from its edge. It was a weapon that could have instantly and silently killed the four D-Rank thugs who had dared to accost her.
Lisanna, meanwhile, had learned to conjure a massive greatsword of hard-light, its edges honed to a monomolecular level, a blade of solidified starlight capable of shearing through armor and Aether shields as if they were nothing more than paper.
As for himself, Orion's gains were twofold. His fundamental control over both Cryokinesis and Photokinesis had been refined to an artist's level. More importantly, he had taken the first true steps on the path of fusion.
It was still a preliminary stage, a flickering, unstable union of opposing cosmic laws. But he could now, for a split second, create a spear of pure light wreathed in an aura of supreme ice—an attack that simultaneously burned and froze its target with paradoxical energies.
The potential was limitless. Even without a perfect fusion, he felt an unshakeable confidence that he could face an average B-Rank hero and not just survive, but utterly dominate. It was an astonishing leap in power.
His gaze softened as he looked over at the sleeping women. Lyra, the wildcat who tried her best to get on his nerves, looked as peaceful as an angel in her slumber.
Lisanna, the bubbly sunbeam, resembled a serene fairy from a forgotten tale.
And Elysia, the ice princess, exuded the quiet charm of a proud yet gentle queen.
A warmth that had nothing to do with Aether spread through his chest. He didn't want to wake them.
Spotting a storage locker in the corner, he walked over. As expected of a high-end Wintercroft amenity, it was stocked with thick, thermal blankets and plush pillows.
He gathered an armful and approached Lisanna first. He gently draped the warm blanket over her and slid a pillow beneath her head, adjusting her position so she wouldn't wake with a stiff neck. In her sleep, Lisanna murmured something incoherent, and a bright, beautiful smile bloomed on her face as she snuggled into the sudden warmth.
He did the same for Elysia, carefully wrapping the blanket around her elegant shoulders. The sudden comfort made her eyelids tremble and her brow furrow for a moment before her expression smoothed out into one of peaceful contentment, a soft, beautiful smile gracing her enchanting face.
Finally, he came to his sister. He carefully lifted Lyra—she was surprisingly light for someone who could punch through solid steel—and carried her closer to the other two. He set her down gently, tucking her into her own cocoon of blankets and pillows. As expected, Lyra simply let out a faint snore, turned over, and pulled the covers tighter around her face, lost to the world.
Orion stood for a moment, looking down at the three of them, a rare, genuine smile touching his own lips. The path to power was a cold and lonely one, but perhaps, just perhaps, it didn't have to be.