The cellar breathed.
That was the first thing Liam noticed.
Not metaphorically—literally. The air moved in slow, damp pulses, as if the stone itself exhaled. Each breath carried cold deep enough to bite through cloth and skin alike, settling into bone with quiet patience.
Water dripped somewhere in the darkness.
Once.
Twice.
The sound echoed far longer than it should have, stretching thin until it blurred into silence again. There was no rhythm to it. No comfort. Just proof that time was still passing without him.
Liam sat with his back pressed against the wall, knees drawn loosely toward his chest. The stone was slick with moisture, cold enough that it burned after a while. His wrists ached where the ropes had been cut earlier—cut, not untied. A small mercy that somehow made it worse.
Alright, his mind murmured distantly. This is where I'm supposed to break.
The thought didn't come with panic. Or dread. Or even resignation.
Just… acknowledgment.
He let his head fall back against the wall and closed his eyes.
Nothing happened.
No surge of power.
No awakening.
No miraculous warmth spreading through his veins.
There was just his breath—thin, shallow—and the quiet realization that something fundamental was missing.
Mana.
Not suppressed.
Not restrained.
Gone.
Liam inhaled slowly, then exhaled, focusing inward the way the body remembered doing. It wasn't something he knew how to do—it was something this body had always done. Mana circulation wasn't a skill here. It was a reflex. As natural as breathing.
And yet—
There was nothing to feel.
No current beneath the skin. No warmth threading through channels. No familiar pressure in the chest where the core should have sat, steady and alive.
Only absence.
A hollow where something essential should have been.
"…Okay," Liam murmured into the dark. His voice sounded wrong—too small, swallowed by stone before it could settle. "That's… not ideal."
The understatement hung there, pointless but comforting in its familiarity.
He shifted slightly, testing his limbs. They moved when he told them to, though stiffness pulled at his joints. Hunger gnawed faintly at the back of his mind, distant but persistent. Thirst too. Not urgent yet—but present.
He'd lived with worse discomforts.
This was different.
This was structural.
He brought a hand to his chest and felt the pendant resting there, warm against his skin despite the cold. The chain was old, the metal dulled by time and wear. The charm itself—a wolf, carved simply, its edges worn smooth from years of touch.
As his fingers closed around it, a memory surfaced unbidden.
Firelight.
A small room, its walls close and familiar. The smell of wood smoke and oil. His father kneeling before him, hands rough and shaking as he fastened the chain around his neck.
"Whatever happens," the man had whispered, voice strained tight with something dangerously close to fear, "do not lose this."
Young fingers clutching the pendant instinctively.
"Why?" a boy's voice had asked.
His father hadn't answered. He'd only pulled him into a tight embrace and held on a moment longer than necessary.
The memory dissolved.
Liam opened his eyes.
"…Right," he murmured. "Let's see what you left me."
If there was a problem, he needed to understand it.
And understanding meant looking directly at the thing that was broken.
He focused inward again—more carefully this time.
The internal landscape revealed itself instantly.
The mana core sat where it should have, nestled near the center of his chest, anchored to pathways that spread throughout the body like a living network.
Except it wasn't whole.
It wasn't sealed.
It wasn't even damaged in a way that implied recovery.
It was shattered.
Cracks spiderwebbed through it, not shallow fractures but deep, structural breaks. Entire segments were missing, as if something had been torn out violently and never replaced. The remaining fragments pulsed weakly, unstable, barely holding shape.
This wasn't an injury.
This wasn't exhaustion.
This was absence.
The kind that didn't heal with time.
"…Oh," Liam whispered.
The word carried no drama. Just recognition.
Still—habit was hard to kill.
He tried anyway.
Carefully. Gently.
Circulate.
For a single heartbeat, something responded.
A flicker of warmth sparked along one pathway. A memory of motion. Of flow. The body remembered what it was supposed to do and tried—earnestly, desperately—to comply.
Hope flared despite him.
Then everything collapsed.
Pain detonated in his chest with violent suddenness. The fragile trickle of mana surged wildly, slamming into broken channels that couldn't contain it. The fragments of the core screamed in protest as pressure spiked catastrophically, tearing through weakened pathways before rebounding inward.
Liam screamed.
The sound tore itself from his throat, raw and animal. His body convulsed violently, muscles locking as agony ripped through his chest and spine. He pitched forward, coughing violently as blood surged into his mouth, thick and metallic.
He spat blindly onto the stone floor, dark splattering against damp gray.
The pain didn't vanish all at once.
It receded slowly, cruelly, leaving behind a deep, hollow ache that throbbed in time with his heartbeat. His vision swam. His ears rang.
He slumped forward, forehead resting against his knees, shaking.
"…I understand," he rasped.
The words scraped out of him, barely audible.
Forcing mana wouldn't fix this.
It wouldn't strengthen him.
It would kill him.
Not instantly—not cleanly. Slowly. Painfully. By tearing him apart from the inside as his own body tried to do what it no longer could.
He swallowed hard, throat burning, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. It came away smeared red.
He stared at it for a long moment.
"No second attempt," he muttered hoarsely. "Not unless I'm feeling suicidal."
A weak huff of air escaped him—half laugh, half breath.
The humor fell flat, swallowed by the cellar.
Silence returned.
It pressed in on him, heavier now.
Minutes passed.
Or hours.
Time blurred, stretching and folding in on itself without reference. Hunger crept closer, no longer distant. Thirst burned sharper. His body shivered intermittently as cold worked its way deeper.
He shifted, trying to find a position that hurt less. Nothing helped for long.
Thoughts began to wander.
Earth memories drifted in uninvited—his apartment, the monitor glow, the half-finished cup of water he never reached. For a while, he clung to them, replaying small details obsessively.
Then he stopped.
Those memories felt… wrong now. Too distant. Like recalling a show he'd watched once instead of a life he'd lived.
This body was real.
This pain was real.
This world didn't care what he remembered.
He pressed his back against the wall again, drawing his knees up, arms wrapped loosely around them.
Okay, he thought quietly. No mana. Broken core. Cellar. Probably a slave. Definitely disposable.
The situation didn't improve by naming it.
But it clarified one thing.
If strength ruled this world—and everything so far suggested it did—then someone like him wasn't just weak.
He was worse than dead.
A dead slave was a loss.
A living one with no mana was a burden.
Used for labor until they broke. Or left to rot where they couldn't cause trouble.
The inner cellar suddenly made a kind of sense.
A place for things that didn't matter enough to execute.
He exhaled slowly through his nose.
"…Figures," he murmured.
His fingers brushed the pendant again, more out of habit than hope. The wolf rested warm against his skin, its presence oddly grounding. Not glowing. Not reacting.
Just… there.
Solid.
Real.
"…You'd better be something," he told it quietly. "Because I'm out of options."
For a moment—just a moment—he thought he felt something beneath his fingers. Not power. Not mana.
Pressure.
A faint, steady weight, like something listening.
It didn't respond.
It didn't activate.
It didn't save him.
But it didn't feel empty either.
Liam closed his eyes.
In the darkness of the inner cellar, with a shattered core and a body that would never wield mana the way it was meant to, Liam Lockwood did the only thing he could still do.
He endured.
In a world ruled by strength, he had inherited a broken body, a destroyed core, and a promise forged from desperation.
And somehow—
He was still alive.