Noctus stumbled into his room and fell onto the bed without bitterness or grace. The mattress swallowed him whole and the world narrowed to the scent of old linen and the steady ache behind his eyes. He had given everything in the arena—blood, a piece of himself, the last of his Hunter's Judgement—and now he had nothing left but the raw knowledge that he had survived.
Morning came gray and patient. A servant knocked and announced his presence in the hall with the same neutral cadence every announcement had. Noctus rose like a man pulled by a string and walked to the dais as if moving through someone else's dream.
Duke Ardyn's verdict was deliberate, measured, his voice the kind that belonged to a court rather than to a father. "You may be a disgrace, but you have the will to move forward," he began. "You may keep the Ignisar name, but what you have brought upon our family is not erased. You will be banished—sent to the castle at the outskirts of the empire. There, you will live with the Ignisar name but without the comforts of the main house. You shall retain the right to run for the headship in time."
The words landed like repeated small blows. Noctus felt the old, terrible echo—how closely this new life mirrored that ancient thread he had seen in the Tree. He froze for a second, startled. The memory of being banished and dying in the other timeline intruded, bright and sharp: an assassin's shadow, the knife's clean end. The possibility hung between the syllables of the Duke's decree and made his throat dry.
Ardyn continued, not for comfort but for politics. "Even placed on the outskirts, your blood speaks. You remain Ignisar by name and by right. Grow into it, or disappear."
Noctus did not answer. He accepted what was given. He stepped down from the dais and moved through the corridors, feeling the weight of every eye that watched him. As he passed the hall doors, Drake emerged behind him, not scowling, not mocking—only precise, clipped, almost clinical.
"You don't have skill," Drake said. "You don't have talent. You don't have the mindset. But you have willpower, and you have boldness. You are weak, but your strikes have weight. Do not forget the blood that runs in you."
Noctus looked at his brother and bowed his head. "Thank you, brother," he said softly.
Drake offered no reply. He left with the kind of indifference that felt almost kinder than open contempt.
Alone in his room later, after the servants had cleared and the house resumed its normal pattern of muffled life, Noctus opened his system. It unfurled like a second skin, clinical and merciless, dumping his details into his eyes with cold precision. He read through it as if scanning a ledger—every fact a tally against time.
Name: Noctus Ignisar.Age (body): 15 (Reborn, soul age: unknown).Soul Cores: Dual :
Fire Core (Divine Path, Elemental Realm — Low).
Time Core (Cursed Path, Fractured Realm — Mid).Emotions: Confused, Guarded, Determined, Numb.
Skills:— Fireball (Tier 1 basic offensive; weak destructive power. ).— Fire Whip (Tier 1; short-range; moderate control.).— Fire Dome (Tier 1 Defensive; fragile.).— Tyrant's Rage (Tier 2 Sword Technique — Martial):— Hunter's Judgement (Neutral Skill — Tier 1): increases perception and reflexes; Duration: 20 minutes; Cooldown: 5 hours; Effect: dulls emotional fluctuation; note: usable by any affinity.— Chronos Dissolution (Cursed Skill — Partially Unlocked): temporarily dilates time in radius; current effective radius: up to 5 meters (augmented by Eyes of Chronos)). full unlock requires a higher Time Core rank.
Artifacts & Inventory:— Eyes of Chronos (Rank: ???) • Enchantment A — Time's Supremacy: Passive; enhances time-related effects by 500% (current measured influence: allowed Chronos Dissolution radius increase and lowered strain by a marginal factor). • Enchantment B — Timeline Seeker: Active; perceives possible alternate timelines.— Black Jian
Name: ???
Rank: ???
Enchantments: Unbreakable, ???, ???, ???, ???
Requirement is not fulfilled
— Quests: Main Quest (Survive Coming-of-Age Ceremony) — Complete (Progress: Reward Tier 1 Skill claimed).
Noctus read and re-read the list slowly, taking note of cooldowns and the little exceptions that mattered. Hunter's Judgement would buy him twenty minutes of heightened perception, and only twice per day without insane cooldown stress. Chronos Dissolution could save a life in a single breath—but that breath would cost him his body.
He leaned back and closed his eyes. That vision from the Tree of Time, the alternate path, still burned behind his eyelids—the sharp certainty of dying three days after exile. The system's reward—one question—glittered like a trap he refused to snare himself on. He understood now: the being behind the prompt did not want him dead yet. That was a dangerous kindness. Better to keep the question until a time when an answer could be used to split a blade.
While Noctus schemed in shadows, news of the duel and its impossible outcome had traveled fast through the whisper-networks of noble houses. At the House Marivelle estate, Sofia smiled thinly as a servant reported the result. "So he passed? Interesting," she murmured. "To the outskirts, is he? Perfect." Her fingers tapped a slow rhythm on her chaise. "An 'accident' there would please me, and it would avoid the open conflict."
The court's politics were never far beneath the surface; plans moved like slow insects under a rock—quiet and deadly.
The next morning, they escorted Noctus to the castle at the outskirts. It was not a ruin but not the heart either; broad stone, old ramparts, a courtyard that smelled of sea-breeze and wild grass. It had the size and dignity of a marquisate, but everything there felt slightly removed, as if the place itself had been set aside like an island.
Noctus settled into his new rooms with a watchful calm. He kept to himself, he inspected the windows and gate lines, and he mapped exits with the meticulousness of a man who expected to run. He did not move like a boy lucky enough to be spared; he moved like a man who had just negotiated a reprieve.
He walked to the training ground, pulled his blade free, and began the slow, patient work he had used to quiet his mind in the chamber. The motions were crude at first—muscle memory from a former life and forgotten drills—but practice straightened them into more honest strokes. After an hour he stopped and drank, thinking in small, efficient bursts.
Back in his room, he opened the system's Shop again and let the cursor run through the list like a hungry eye. Useful artifacts flickered past—protective coats, truth knives, consumable enhancers—but most required tiers and reserves of Aura he did not possess. They were options for another life.
A servant knocked and handed him a letter sealed with the Ignisar crest. The Duke's sigil, heavy with official weight. Inside, a simple line: you are qualified to attend the Sanctuary Academy; term starts in three months.
Noctus read it twice. Three months. His birthday—his coming-of-age—was in just a month. The dates clustered like teeth in a jaw. The system's main quest had been about surviving the coming-of-age ceremony; the Sanctuary's gates swung open three months later. Opportunity and hazard braided together.
He sat at the table in silence. Memories of birthdays in his past life rose—none celebrated, nothing warm—only absence. In this life, a ceremony loomed that could set him up for training and perhaps for safety in the capital: Sanctuary was the place for future generals and legends. But Sanctuary also meant exposure, scrutiny, and enemies in cloaks who watched weaknesses closely.
His jaw tightened. He thought of the Tree and the alternate timeline again. If he walked out weak, history had offered him no mercy. If he stayed silent and built power, perhaps he could make a different thread—the one where he did not die three days after banishment.
He closed the system and lay his head on the table. The single unspent reward stared at him in his mind like a promise: a single question. He could ask about the identity of the system's owner, enquire whether the Tree's visions were immutable fate or mere probability, demand the path to break the chain—anything.
He told himself he would not waste it. He would save the question for the hour when a single answer could buy him more than curiosity—when one line of truth could mean survival.
Outside, the wind moved cold over the ramparts and sent stray leaves across the courtyard. Noctus Ignisar sat in a room that smelled faintly of iron and ink, feeling very small and yet oddly precise. The world had offered him an edge, a wound, and a name. He had a plan and a three-month clock until Sanctuary. He would train until his shoulders burned and his eyes watered. He would manage his cooldowns and his hunger and his fragile time-sight..