The Vancroft Training Court was an amphitheater of gray stone and ancestral pride. High above, the family crest a thundercloud pierced by a jagged obsidian sword was carved into the mountain face, overlooking the hundreds of disciples and family members gathered below.
To the young children standing in the center of the court, this was the most important day of their lives. It was the day they would transition from mere mortals to cultivators. But to Kyros, as he walked down the stone corridors, it felt like visiting a graveyard. He knew exactly which of these uncles would betray the family in twenty years, which of these cousins would be slaughtered in the first wave of the Celestial Purge, and exactly how many of these 'traditions' were nothing more than shackles designed to keep them weak.
He stepped into the bright morning light of the court.
"Kyros! You're late," a booming voice echoed.
Lord Valerius Vancroft, Kyros's father, stood at the head of the Awakening Altar. He was a mountain of a man, draped in furs and heavy iron-reinforced robes. In his previous life, Kyros had idolized this man. He had spent decades trying to earn a nod of approval from him. Now, looking at Valerius, Kyros only saw a man whose cultivation technique was riddled with three major flaws—flaws that would eventually lead to his heart-collapse during the siege of the Vancroft Estate.
"The time was calculated," Kyros said calmly, coming to a halt before his father. "I am here."
Valerius frowned. He was used to an eager, energetic son who bounded into the court with a wooden sword and a wide grin. This child before him moved with the terrifying stillness of a deep-sea predator. "Your tone is... strange, Kyros. Are you nervous? The Core Awakening is a natural process. The Vancroft blood is strong. You will likely manifest a Grade 3 or 4 core, just as I did."
"Natural flow is for those who accept the limits of nature," Kyros replied.
An Elder standing nearby, a withered man named Silas, scoffed. "A ten-year-old speaking of the limits of nature? Position yourself on the Altar, boy. The sun is at its zenith. The mana is most potent now."
Kyros stepped onto the obsidian platform. In the center sat the Awakening Stone, a jagged shard of meteor-glass that hummed with a low, resonant frequency.
In his first life, Kyros had placed his hands on this stone, closed his eyes, and allowed the stone's energy to jumpstart his mana veins. It had felt like a warm rush of fire, carving out a circular core in his solar plexus. It was the 'Standard Path.' It was safe. It was easy.
It was also a trap.
The Celestials had seeded these Awakening Stones across the lower realms millennia ago. They didn't just help cores form; they 'standardized' them. They ensured every cultivator's mana resonated at a frequency that the Celestials could eventually override. It was like building a house with a master key that only the landlord held.
Kyros reached out. His small fingers brushed the cold surface of the meteor-glass.
"Begin the resonance!" Elder Silas commanded.
The stone flared with a violent violet light. A surge of external mana lunged toward Kyros's palms, intending to invade his body and shape his core.
Correction initiated, Kyros thought.
Deep within his chest, the Monolith Heart pulsed once.
The silence that followed was absolute. Instead of allowing the Stone's energy to enter his veins, Kyros reversed the flow. He used his own internal pressure, fueled by the cold logic of the Chrono-Covenant, to suck the mana out of the stone with the force of a collapsing star.
"What is he doing?" Valerius stepped forward, his hand going to the hilt of his blade. "The energy... it's being drained too fast!"
Kyros didn't hear them. He was inside his own body, looking at the 'blueprint' of his soul. In the center of his spirit, where a round, glowing core should have been forming, Kyros began to build something else.
He didn't want a sphere. A sphere was a bubble it could be popped. He wanted a Monolith.
He took the violet mana from the stone and compressed it. He stripped away the 'Celestial Frequency,' refining the energy until it was colorless, cold, and incredibly dense. He began to stack this energy into four sharp pillars around his dantian.
The pain was excruciating. It felt as if four iron stakes were being driven through his abdomen. A normal ten-year-old would have screamed until their lungs gave out. Kyros didn't even twitch. His heart didn't race. The Monolith Heart simply processed the pain as a sensory variable and discarded it.
Variable: Pain. Status: Ignored.Variable: Mana Purity. Status: Insufficient. Increase Compression.
The Awakening Stone began to crack. The violet light turned to a frantic, flickering red.
"Kyros, let go!" Valerius shouted, sensing the instability. "The stone is going to shatter! Silas, stop the ceremony!"
"I can't!" Silas cried, his face pale. "He's... he's locking the energy! I can't break the connection!"
The pillars in Kyros's spirit were nearly complete. He wasn't forming a core; he was forming a Foundation of Ruin. This was a technique he had discovered in the forbidden 'Tomb of the First Egoist' during the fourth century of his previous life a method that required a heart of stone to even attempt.
The four pillars slammed into place. In the center, a dark, heavy mass began to solidify. It wasn't a core that produced mana; it was an anchor that commanded it.
Foundation: Grade Zero.Status: Established.
Boom.
The Awakening Stone exploded.
A shockwave of cold, pressurized air rippled outward, knocking the younger disciples to the ground and forcing the Elders to shield their eyes. Shards of meteor-glass embedded themselves in the stone floor.
When the dust settled, Kyros was still standing on the Altar. His clothes were singed, and a trickle of blood ran from his nose, but he looked as if he were merely standing in a gentle breeze.
Valerius rushed forward, his eyes wide with a mix of terror and confusion. He grabbed Kyros by the shoulders. "Kyros! Are you alright? What happened? The stone... it was a high-grade catalyst. It should have been impossible to break."
Elder Silas hurried over, his trembling fingers reaching for Kyros's wrist to check his pulse and his new core. He closed his eyes, focusing his senses.
Seconds passed. Silas's brow furrowed. Then his eyes snapped open, filled with shock.
"Well?" Valerius demanded. "What is his grade? Is it a Grade 5? A Grade 6?"
Silas looked at the Lord of the Vancroft estate, his voice shaking. "My Lord... he... he has no core."
A gasp went through the crowd. In a world where your core grade determined your worth, having 'no core' was the ultimate death sentence. It meant you were a 'Hollow'—a waste of space who could never cultivate.
"That's impossible," Valerius whispered, his grip tightening on Kyros. "I felt the energy. He drained the stone dry!"
"I don't know what to tell you, Lord Valerius," Silas said, stepping back. "There is no rotating core in his dantian. There is only... emptiness. A cold, heavy void. He has failed the awakening."
Kyros looked up at his father. He saw the flicker of disappointment, the sudden shadow of shame that crossed Valerius's face. In his first life, this look would have destroyed him. He would have spent years desperately trying to prove he wasn't a failure.
Now, Kyros felt a faint sense of satisfaction. Good.
If they couldn't sense his foundation, they couldn't track his progress. To the rest of the world, he was now a 'variable' that had been discarded. And in the game of grand calculation, the variable that no one watches is the one that wins the war.
"I am tired," Kyros said, his voice as flat as the stone floor. He pulled away from his father's grip. "I will go back to my room."
"Kyros, wait" Valerius started, but the boy was already walking away.
Kyros didn't look back. He could feel the four pillars within him already beginning to draw in the ambient mana of the world, not through the 'natural' channels, but by forcefully bending the atmosphere to his will.
He didn't have a core. He had a Monolith. And once it was fully fed, he wouldn't just be a cultivator. He would be the one who decided who was allowed to breathe.
As he walked past the whispering crowds, a single ethereal butterfly, glowing with a faint blue light, landed on his shoulder. Kyros didn't swat it away. He didn't even look at it. He simply kept walking, his mind already calculating the resources he would need to steal from the family treasury tonight.
The first variable had been corrected. The Vancroft tradition was dead. Now, the real work began.