Lucan stood in the center of the village, waiting.


    He expected gratitude.


    Instead, he saw fear.


    The people of Eldermere did not look at him with relief. They looked at him like he was a monster.


    The village elder stood before him, his ceremonial robe weighed down with beads of Aether, his expression grim.


    Beside him, Madam Yelna, the village healer, held Seraphina’s weak and trembling form, her eyes full of suspicion.


    “You should not be here,” the elder said at last, his voice heavy with judgment.


    Lucan frowned. “I saved her life.”


    “You did something unnatural.”


    A murmur spread through the gathered villagers.


    “He touched death and pulled her back.”


    “That is not the way of Aether.”


    Lucan’s patience thinned. “I used science, not magic. I restored her breathing. You people—”


    “You mock our ways?” Yelna snapped, eyes burning with anger. “You speak of ‘science’ as if it is above the gods?”


    Lucan gritted his teeth. They don’t understand.


    “Tell me,” the elder said, his gaze sharp. “Where did you learn such things?”


    Lucan hesitated.


    And that was all they needed.


    “Seize him,” the elder ordered.


    Lucan turned to run—but rough hands grabbed him.


    Pain exploded in his ribs as a wooden club struck him. He gasped, knees buckling.


    Another blow—his vision blurred, the shouts of the villagers turning into a distant roar.


    His master’s Aethergem necklace was torn from his neck.


    Then came darkness.


    Lucan awoke to cold stone beneath his back.


    Pain flared through his body. His wrists were shackled, his head pounding from the blows.


    He exhaled slowly, forcing himself to assess his surroundings.


    A dungeon. A containment chamber—runes carved into the walls, designed to drain Aetheric energy.


    But he had no Aether to drain.


    Which meant they had placed him here out of fear, not necessity.


    “You’re awake.”


    Lucan turned his head.


    An old man sat in the corner, his eyes gleaming in the dim glow of the runes. His frame was frail, his hair long and white, but there was a sharpness to his gaze—a mind that had not yet rotted.


    “Who are you?” Lucan asked, his voice hoarse.


    The man chuckled. “A prisoner, like you. And the last man who tried to escape Eldermere.”


    Lucan’s breath stilled.


    The old man’s voice lowered, turning cold.


    “This village… it is a trap. A parasite. Every traveler who comes here—they never leave.”


    Lucan frowned. “They kill outsiders?”


    The man smiled darkly. “Not at first.”


    He gestured to the runes carved into the stone walls.


    “They don’t just kill.” His voice was a whisper now. “They harvest.”


    Lucan’s heart pounded.


    “They strip people of their Aethergems. They drain the energy slowly, over weeks, months. The weak are used as laborers, but those with strong Aether?”


    The man exhaled.


    “They are bled dry. Their essence fed into the village’s wells, its fields, its people.”


    Lucan’s stomach tightened.


    He had spent his whole life studying the balance of magic and power. But this—this was not power.


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    This was cannibalism.


    The air in the cell was thick with dampness, the faint blue glow of Aether runes casting shifting shadows along the stone walls. Lucan sat still, his mind racing, pulse pounding in his ears.


    Escape. He needed to escape.


    He glanced at the iron door, at the flickering sigils meant to contain those with Aethergems. Except he had no Aethergem. No power. No way out.


    Before he could speak, the old man across from him leaned forward.


    “There is something else,” he murmured, his voice barely louder than the drip of water from the ceiling. “Something far more important than your escape.”


    Lucan narrowed his eyes.


    The old man studied him, as if measuring the weight of his existence, as if seeing something Lucan himself did not yet understand.


    “I have been waiting for someone like you.”


    Lucan frowned. “Waiting? For what?”


    The man’s expression didn’t change.


    “For the one who will finish what we started.”


    Lucan stiffened.


    The old man shifted, moving closer so that the dim glow illuminated more of his face. The scars. The hollowed cheeks. The sharpness in his gaze that had not dulled, even after years of captivity.


    “My name is Veylan,” he said, voice steady. “And long ago, I was a citizen of the Industrial Empire.”


    Lucan froze.


    That name.


    A kingdom that no longer existed. A civilization buried by history, its ruins spoken of only in whispers—a fallen nation that had dared to challenge the rule of mages.


    Lucan had read the stories. Aether-powered machines. Great mechanical cities. Towers built not with spells, but with ingenuity.


    And then—war.


    A war that ended in fire.


    Veylan’s eyes gleamed in the darkness.


    “I was part of the last resistance,” he continued. “My family spent centuries trying to free our prince—your master—from the clutches of the Mageocracy.”


    Lucan’s breath caught.


    His master. The man who raised him.


    A man of impossible wisdom, of knowledge that defied the laws of the world. A man who had never spoken of his origins, never shared the truth of where he had come from.


    Lucan had always wondered. Always questioned.


    Now, he had his answer.


    His master was not just a prisoner.


    He was a lost heir.


    A silence stretched between them, heavy with meaning.


    Veylan’s voice was sharp, filled with conviction.


    “We created a power the Mageocracy feared,” he said. “Aether, not as a spell—but as a force that could be controlled.”


    Lucan’s mind raced.


    This was more than just history. More than just the past.


    This was his inheritance.


    Veylan exhaled, his gaze unwavering.


    “The world believes only mages can wield Aether.”


    Lucan’s hands tightened into fists.


    “They are wrong,” Veylan said softly.


    Lucan’s heart pounded.


    He had spent his entire life watching from the outside—a man with no magic, surrounded by those who shaped the world with theirs. He had always been the observer, the one who wrote and learned but could never touch.


    But now—


    Now, he saw it. A different path. A new power.


    Something beyond magic.


    Lucan lifted his chin, fire in his gaze.


    “Teach me.”


    Veylan’s lips curled into a slow, knowing grin.


    "With pleasure, boy."


    The darkness of the prison cell seemed heavier now, pressing down on them like a suffocating shroud. But in the center of that suffocating void, a spark of something ancient was being reignited.


    Lucan and Veylan sat on the cold stone floor, surrounded by scraps of rusted iron, shattered wood, and frayed wiring pulled from the broken remains of their prison. They had no forge, no anvil, no precise tools—but they had knowledge.


    Lucan’s hands worked tirelessly, twisting metal into shape, weaving conduits along the frame of what would soon become his first invention.


    Veylan watched with quiet reverence.


    "You work fast," the old man murmured.


    Lucan didn’t respond, his focus absolute.


    For years, he had written about magic—studied its laws, analyzed its forms. He had spent a lifetime watching mages bend the world to their will, while he stood powerless.


    But here, in the depths of this prison, he was about to do something even greater.


    He was about to break the rules.


    The foundation of the gauntlet was crude—a simple frame of salvaged metal, bent and reshaped into something that resembled a bracer, covering the length of Lucan’s forearm and extending over his knuckles like a mechanical claw. The interior was lined with a network of wires and filaments, stolen from the remnants of the prison’s containment devices.


    But it was missing something.


    The core.


    Lucan glanced at the stolen Aethergem, cradled in his palm.


    It was small—fractured—but still alive. Its faint glow pulsed like a dying ember, struggling to sustain itself.


    This was the heart of magic, the power that had dictated the fate of kings and empires.


    Lucan set the gem into the gauntlet’s core, locking it in place.


    For a moment, nothing happened.


    Then—


    The air shifted.


    A pulse of energy rippled outward, causing the walls to tremble.


    The gauntlet hummed, the engravings along its metal surface glowing with stolen power.


    Lucan’s breath hitched.


    For the first time in his life, he felt it—the raw pulse of Aether, not as something foreign, but as something he could touch.


    Veylan let out a slow, measured breath. “Beautiful.”


    Lucan flexed his fingers.


    The gauntlet moved with him, seamlessly responding to his motion, as if it were an extension of his own body. The strength behind it was unnatural—his arm no longer felt like his own, but something more.


    A new kind of power.


    His fingers curled into a fist.


    Aether surged through the metal—not wild, not chaotic, but controlled. Contained. Harnessed.


    This was not magic.


    This was engineering.


    The world had always believed that only those born with Aethergems could wield power.


    Lucan had just proven them wrong.


    Lucan exhaled slowly. The glow of the gauntlet cast long shadows against the walls, the runes along its plating shimmering with untapped potential.


    This was no ordinary machine.


    This was something that should not exist.


    “This is what the world fears,” Lucan murmured, staring at his creation.


    Veylan chuckled. “Then make them fear it more.”


    Lucan turned toward the iron prison door.


    The Aethergem in his gauntlet pulsed, sensing his intent.


    Heat coiled at his palm.


    Lucan lifted his arm.


    And fired.


    Aether surged through the gauntlet, the gathered energy releasing in an explosive burst. A stream of fire and force erupted from his palm, colliding with the door in a flash of molten metal and roaring heat.


    The iron shattered.


    A shockwave ripped through the cell, sending dust and debris spiraling into the air. The containment runes flickered and died, their energy severed by the sheer force of the blast.


    Silence.


    Then—a slow, metallic groan as the ruined door fell forward, collapsing into the hallway beyond.


    Lucan’s breath was steady. His hand still burned with lingering heat, the glow from his gauntlet fading, but not extinguished.


    It had worked.


    His first machine. His first weapon.


    And he was just getting started.