The cave smelled of iron and rot. Piles of beast corpses, mauled and scattered, carpeted the ground like grotesque trophies. Their blood had long since clotted, forming black stains that shimmered faintly in the pale glow of the Nether Codex's runes.
The MC stepped carefully over a broken fang the size of his forearm. His senses—sharpened by the wolf bloodline—told him something still lingered here. Not a beast. Not Codex's whisper of opportunity. Something else. Something faint, like a dying ember in an endless dark.
Lira walked behind him, clutching a rusted dagger with white-knuckled hands. Her eyes darted from shadow to shadow, but she said nothing. She trusted him—or at least, she trusted his strength. That trust weighed on him heavier than the blood on his hands.
Then he saw it.
In the corner of the cavern, slumped against the jagged wall, was a man armored in rusted plates. His chest rose and fell in shallow, ragged breaths, blood trickling from dozens of wounds. His hair was silver and matted with sweat, yet his back remained straight despite the agony coursing through his body.
For a moment, the MC thought he was already dead. But then the man opened his eyes.
Eyes like burning coals. Eyes that had seen wars and sworn oaths.
"You…" The voice was faint, yet it carried a soldier's weight. "…those eyes. The Empress's blood. You are her son."
The MC froze. His mother. No one spoke of her. Not in the Empire, not in whispers, not even among his siblings who clawed at the throne. She had been erased—like her existence was a crime. To hear her name implied here was like hearing thunder in a silent graveyard.
His throat tightened. "Who are you?"
The man gave a broken chuckle that ended in a cough, spattering blood onto his armor. "I… once commanded legions under her banner. I swore an oath to protect her line. And now… fate brings me here, to a forsaken cave, to see the last flicker of that bloodline crawl out of exile."
The MC's chest burned with conflicting emotions—rage, grief, suspicion. Why had his mother left nothing behind for him but shame? Why had she allowed the others to mock him as a cripple? Why had she died without protecting him?
The old general must have seen the storm in his eyes, because his hand—shaking, bloodied—reached toward him. Not to grab, but to offer.
"Listen well, young prince. Your mother… she saw through the Empire's rot. She knew your siblings would turn on each other, devouring the throne with greed. She prepared… something. A legacy. A weapon. For you."
The MC's heart pounded. Codex stirred inside him, its runes flaring faintly, as if hungry for what the general spoke of.
"Where?" His voice came out raw. "Where is it?"
The general smiled weakly, a soldier's grim satisfaction lingering in his cracked lips. "Patience. Survival first. You are young, untested, but not broken. She entrusted me with this token."
His trembling fingers pressed something into the MC's palm. Cold. Smooth. A piece of jade etched with lines too intricate to be random. It pulsed faintly when his skin touched it, and at once the Codex within him thrummed like a living heart.
Lira gasped softly behind him. "What… is that?"
The MC ignored her. His gaze stayed fixed on the dying man, on the weight of history crumbling before him. "Why me? Why give this to me, when I am the weakest? The discarded?"
The general's voice faltered, barely more than a whisper. "Because the strongest… are shackled by their pride. But the forsaken… the broken… they learn hunger. And hunger, boy, is the truest power of all."
The words cut into him deeper than any blade. Hunger. Yes. He knew hunger. Hunger to survive. Hunger to prove them wrong. Hunger to make the world regret discarding him.
The general coughed again, his body shuddering. The light in his eyes dimmed, but still, he forced out one final command.
"Survive. Grow. Return one day… to the Empire's heart. Make them remember her name. Make them remember your name."
His head fell back. His body did not slump in weakness, but in the stillness of eternal rest. The armor that once gleamed with valor cracked, and then—impossibly—the general's corpse crumbled into ash, scattering like a whisper carried away by the cave's breath.
All that remained was the jade token glowing in the MC's palm.
For a long time, silence ruled the cavern.
Lira finally broke it, her voice trembling with awe. "That man… he believed in you. Without hesitation."
The MC closed his fist around the jade, his mind a storm. Belief? He didn't know if he deserved it. He didn't know if he even wanted it. But he knew this: the path ahead was no longer just survival. This token, this Codex, this inheritance—everything was pulling him forward.
Codex's whisper slithered through his thoughts, smooth and cold:
"Hidden Legacy detected. Key fragment secured. Path coordinates available."
The MC's lips curved into something between a snarl and a smile. His blood boiled with a new fire. His siblings wanted him erased. His Empire branded him forsaken. But here, in the shadows, a dead general had rekindled his destiny.
He stood, tucking the jade token close to his chest. "Come, Lira. We have no time to waste."
"Where are we going?" she asked, her eyes wide.
He glanced back at the ashes, then forward into the dark tunnels of the borderlands.
"To survive. To grow. And when the time comes—" His voice dropped, low and burning. "—to take back everything they stole from me."
The jade pulsed in his hand like a heartbeat, guiding him onward.
The token's glow did not fade. Instead, its light pulsed rhythmically in his palm, steady and deliberate, like a second heartbeat grafted onto his own. Each pulse carried a strange weight—a pressure that sank into his bones and whispered of secrets buried deep beneath the world.
The Codex stirred violently inside him. Its runes flared, bleeding phantom light across his vision, as though the jade had awoken something in its endless pages.
"Fragment accepted. Pathway aligned. Awaiting directive…"
The voice was neither eager nor hesitant. It was… patient. For the first time since his awakening, the Codex felt less like a parasite and more like a coiled beast waiting for his command.
The MC tightened his grip on the jade until its edges bit into his flesh. He welcomed the sting—it grounded him against the tide of emotions threatening to pull him under.
The general's last words echoed like hammers in his skull: Survive. Grow. Return.
Return to where? To the Empire that cast him aside? To the siblings who sneered as he bled? To the throne that had already judged him unworthy?
His teeth clenched. Rage flared inside him, hot and bitter. He wanted to scream into the cavern until the stones themselves shattered. Yet, under that rage, another feeling crept in like a slow poison—doubt.
Had his mother truly left something for him? Or was this another cruel jest of fate? Why trust in a legacy when she hadn't been there to shield him from mockery, from exile, from death?
Lira's soft voice broke his spiral. "You're shaking…"
He looked down. His hand trembled as though the jade itself was burning him from the inside. The girl's eyes were wide, full of both fear and something else—hope. Hope that terrified him more than any beast.
Hope demanded responsibility.
"I don't want his belief," the MC muttered, more to himself than to her. "I don't want anyone's faith. Not yet."
"But you have it," Lira said quietly, stepping closer despite her fear. "From him. From me. Whether you asked for it or not."
He met her gaze, searching for mockery, for pity—anything he could cut down with anger. Instead, he found sincerity, raw and fragile, like glass daring to face a storm.
The MC turned away, unable to meet it for long. He shoved the jade into his cloak and straightened his back. Whatever storm brewed inside him, the world would not see him bend.
The cavern grew colder. The ashes of the general had scattered across the floor, a gray dust carried by faint currents of air. He knelt briefly, almost against his own will, and pressed his hand to the spot where the man had died.
For a heartbeat, he hated himself for doing it. For honoring a man who had sworn himself to a woman who had abandoned him. But another part of him—the part still tethered to faint scraps of memory, to the warmth of a mother's hand before it vanished forever—needed it.
"Your oath is done," he whispered. "Mine begins now."
The Codex pulsed violently, and for an instant, he swore he heard faint echoes of voices—soldiers shouting, banners flapping in wind, steel clashing against steel. The token and Codex had resonated together, and he felt history itself brush against him like a shadow.
Then it was gone.
He rose to his feet, his expression carved from stone. "Come, Lira. We're done here."
But as they walked toward the mouth of the cavern, the jade's glow flickered, projecting faint lines across the stone wall—runes shaping themselves into a crude map.
Lira gasped. "It's… pointing somewhere."
The MC studied it, his pulse quickening. A location, hidden by time, revealed only to him through this legacy. Perhaps the ruins the general had spoken of. Perhaps more.
And perhaps… a trap.
The Codex hissed faintly in warning: "Coordinates unstable. Interference detected. Proceed with caution."
He almost laughed at the irony. Since when had caution ever kept him alive?
He pressed onward, stepping out into the night air beyond the cavern. The sky was a vast sheet of darkness, stars swallowed by clouds. The borderlands stretched endlessly, jagged hills and barren wastes bathed in pale moonlight.
The ashes of the general clung faintly to his boots, carried with him as he walked. And with each step, the jade beat against his chest, echoing the promise of revenge that now burned brighter than his own heart.