To a normal ten-year-old, the concept of family was a shield. To Kyros Vancroft, it was an inventory list.
The moon hung low over the Vancroft estate, casting long, skeletal shadows across the stone walkways. It had been less than six hours since the Core Awakening Ceremony, and already the atmosphere in the manor had shifted. The servants moved with a quiet, pitying efficiency when they thought he was looking, and a dismissive laziness when they thought he wasn't. The "failed" young master was no longer a priority.
Kyros sat on the edge of his bed, his eyes closed. He wasn't sleeping. He was monitoring the four pillars of his foundation. They were humming, hungry for a specific type of catalyst that the ambient air simply couldn't provide.
Variable: Resource Acquisition. Priority: Critical.Constraint: Zero Budget. Solution: Asset Relocation.
In his first life, Kyros had been a dutiful son. He had waited for his allowance, requested permission for every scroll, and felt a deep sense of guilt if he ever took more than his share. That boy had died five centuries in the future. The man who remained knew that the Vancroft treasury was currently housing an item that would eventually be thrown away during a spring cleaning in three years a decision that had set back his previous growth by an entire decade.
He stood up. His small feet made no sound on the hardwood floor.
The Vancroft Treasury was protected by three layers of security: the physical iron-bound doors, the rotation of the 'Black Hawk' guards, and the Ancestral Warding Formation. To any other ten-year-old or even a seasoned adult cultivator it was an impenetrable fortress.
To Kyros, it was a puzzle he had already solved once before.
He exited through the window, scaling the stone masonry with the practiced ease of a mountain cat. He didn't use mana to move; his current reserves were too low to risk detection. Instead, he used pure kinetic efficiency, placing his weight exactly where the structural integrity was highest.
He reached the shadow of the Treasury's eastern wall. Ten meters ahead, two guards stood near the main archway. Their armor clinked as they shifted weight, their breath misting in the cold mountain air.
Variable: Guard Rotation 04. Timing: 02:14 AM.
In his previous life, during the Vancroft Fall, Kyros had been forced to study the manor's security logs to find out how the traitors had entered. He knew that at exactly 2:15 AM, the guard on the left, a man named Hodor, would suffer from a brief, chronic coughing fit a lingering injury from a frost-wolf hunt.
3... 2... 1.
Hodor doubled over, muffled coughs racking his chest. His partner instinctively reached out to pat his back, their eyes momentarily diverted from the shadow-line of the wall.
Kyros moved.
He was a blur of dark fabric, crossing the ten-meter gap in less than two seconds. He didn't head for the door. He headed for the ventilation grate three meters up the wall. With a silent leap, he caught the edge, slid through the narrow gap, and dropped into the secondary staging room.
The air inside the Treasury was stagnant, thick with the scent of old iron and preserved medicinal herbs. Kyros landed in a crouch, his obsidian eyes scanning the darkness.
The Ancestral Warding Formation hummed beneath his feet. It was designed to detect any unauthorized mana-signature above the 'Awakened' level. This was the genius of Kyros's "failure." Because he had no core, he had no signature. To the formation, he was as invisible as a common house rat.
He moved past the main hall, ignoring the rows of gold coins and the glittering high-grade mana stones. Most cultivators would have been blinded by the wealth. Kyros didn't even glance at them. Gold was a variable of the merchant; he was a Sovereign of the Law.
He walked past the 'Rare Weapons' section, ignoring the shimmering silver blades and enchanted bows. He headed for the very back of the room, to a section labeled: Anomalies and Unrefined Dross.
This was where the family threw things they couldn't identify or things that had 'failed' to resonate with standard cores.
His Monolith Heart pulsed, a cold resonance drawing him toward a wooden crate in the corner. He reached inside and pulled out a jagged, dull-gray shard of metal. It was heavy unnaturally so and looked like a piece of a rusted plowshare.
To his father, Valerius, this was a 'Dull Void-Iron Shard,' a useless byproduct of a failed weapon-forging.
To Kyros, this was a fragment of a World-Anchor.
In the future, the Celestials would reveal that these shards were the only materials capable of grounding a soul against the pressure of the High Heavens. In this era, they were considered trash because no core could process their density.
Variable: Catalyst Found. Integration: Immediate.
Kyros didn't wait to return to his room. He sat cross-legged on the cold floor of the treasury. He placed the gray shard between his palms.
"Natural cultivation is an act of begging the world for power," Kyros whispered, his voice a ghost in the dark. "The Monolith is an act of taking it."
He didn't try to 'absorb' the shard. He commanded his Four Pillars to collapse their pressure onto the metal.
The shard fought back. A normal cultivator would have had their hands pulverized by the feedback. Kyros's Monolith Heart simply absorbed the vibration. His face remained a mask of marble. The pain was just data. The resistance was just a hurdle.
The shard began to glow with a faint, dying ember of red light. Then, with a sound like a cracking bone, it shattered—not into pieces, but into liquid essence. The gray liquid surged into Kyros's palms, traveling up his arms and slamming into his dantian.
The four pillars of his foundation groaned under the new weight. They began to turn from violet mana-structures into solid, gray-iron bastions.
Foundation Grade: Zero (Incomplete).Integration Progress: 12%.
A surge of raw, unrefined power rippled through Kyros's small frame. His muscles tightened, the fibers knitting together with newfound density. His eyes flared with a cold, metallic light before fading back to obsidian.
He stood up, the discarded husks of the shard crumbling to dust between his fingers. He felt... heavier. Not in a way that slowed him down, but in a way that made him feel like he was part of the earth itself.
He heard a faint click from the hallway.
"I'm telling you, I heard a sound from the Anomaly section," a voice whispered.
Kyros didn't panic. He didn't even breathe faster.
Variable: Detected. Response: Redirection.
He didn't head for the grate. Instead, he moved toward the 'High Grade Medicinal' cabinet. He shattered a low-quality 'Scent-Masking' vial on the floor, allowing the pungent aroma of mint and vinegar to fill the air. Then, he moved back into the shadows behind a large ceremonial shield.
Lord Valerius entered, followed by Elder Silas. Valerius's face was etched with exhaustion and a lingering touch of bitterness.
"There is nothing here, Silas," Valerius said, his voice echoing in the chamber. "The wards haven't tripped. You're seeing ghosts."
"The resonance was off, my Lord," Silas insisted, his eyes scanning the room. He walked toward the Anomaly section, his gaze stopping on the crate Kyros had just emptied. "The Dull-Iron Shard... it's gone."
Valerius looked at the empty crate and sighed. "Perhaps a servant moved it. Or perhaps it finally disintegrated. It was junk, Silas. Why are we even here? I should be with Kyros. He... he is a Hollow. Do you know what the other families will say at the Spring Summit?"
Kyros watched his father from the shadows. He saw the way Valerius's shoulders slumped. He felt no sympathy. To Kyros, Valerius's reputation was a secondary variable—unimportant to the final result.
"He is your son," Silas said softly.
"He was my legacy," Valerius corrected. "Now, he is a liability. If he cannot cultivate, he cannot lead. I will have to name his cousin, Marcus, as the heir apparent by the end of the month."
Kyros didn't blink. Marcus. The man who would eventually sell the Vancroft location to the Celestials for a seat in the Outer Heavens.
Variable: Marcus Vancroft. Status: Scheduled for Correction.
"Let's go," Valerius said, turning his back on the room. "The smell of vinegar in here is giving me a headache. The servants must have spilled a cleaning vial."
The two men exited, the heavy iron doors groaning shut behind them.
Kyros waited for exactly three hundred seconds. Then, he emerged from behind the shield. He walked to the center of the room, his eyes reflecting the moonlight filtering through the high vents.
He had the catalyst. He had his camouflage as a "Hollow." And he had just confirmed his father's impending betrayal of his lineage.
He exited the treasury as silently as he had entered. As he climbed back into his window, the sun was just beginning to touch the horizon, painting the mountain peaks in shades of blood and gold.
Kyros sat back on his bed, his hands resting on his knees. He could feel the World-Anchor essence slowly being processed by his pillars. He was still weak, still small, and still trapped in a failing house.
But for the first time in five hundred years, the calculation was finally trending toward victory.
Goal: Sovereignty.Current Status: Initialized.
He closed his eyes and began to cultivate. He didn't need the sun. He had the Monolith.