The bone-chilling winds of the borderlands swept in like thousands of icy blades, flaying the skin.
Nicholas Albert stood before the crumbling city gates, the walls on either side choked with ice and snow. His thin, gaunt hands gripped the edges of a tattered cloak. Behind him, the rhythmic thud of hooves grew fainter and fainter as the carriage retreated into the distance.
The howling wind and the distant cries of wolves bled together into a mournful, lonely symphony—a requiem composed just for him, like a sentence passed long ago.
From that moment on, he knew he had been discarded.
"Nicholas Albert, the third son of a legendary mage lineage, yet born without a single spark of mana..."
The cold, detached voice of the Captain—the man tasked with ensuring Nicholas reached the place where he "belonged"—still echoed in his mind. There had been no mockery, no hatred, not even pity. There was only utter, soul-crushing contempt.
The House of Albert stood at the pinnacle of the Arcanor Empire, a family where every child was born with the innate talent of a magical prodigy. Yet he, Nicholas Albert, was a stain that could not be washed away.
No mana. No value. Therefore, no reason to exist.
He had been exiled by his own flesh and blood to the farthest reaches of the empire—the Northern Border. A place where men died every day, if not from hunger, then from disease.
Nicholas let out a soft, faint laugh.
It was a laugh filled with an uncanny calm, as if he had been waiting for this very moment.
"If you think I'm going to die here..."
"...then you are dead wrong."
No one knew that within this body branded as "trash" resided a different soul entirely.
A man who had once lived in a world without magic, where knowledge and technology were sharper than any spell. A man who had already tasted death once before.
And this time—
Nicholas Albert slowly raised his head, his gaze reflecting the iron-gray skies of the borderlands.
He would not die.
He would not submit.
He would survive.
And he would return.