The warmth of his parents' embrace lingered long after the tears had dried. Arin sat with them in their dimly lit home, the only source of light being a flickering lantern hanging from a cracked beam. The silence was comfortable, sacred. His mother kept glancing at him, touching his shoulder, brushing the hair away from his face—as if to make sure he wasn't an illusion. His father, though silent, kept his gaze fixed on Arin, the usual sternness in his expression replaced by a profound weariness.
Arin sipped slowly from the bowl of soup his mother had managed to make from the last of the dried vegetables. It tasted like ash, but he swallowed it gratefully.
"Where did you go?" his mother finally asked, her voice shaking. "You were gone for days. We thought... we thought the worst."
Arin looked down at the wooden floor. The images of the black lightning, the searing pain, the silence that followed—it all felt like a dream now. But the dried blood on his skin and the faint burns on his arm reminded him it wasn't.
"The RedHorn," he said, voice low. "I went after it."
His father exhaled sharply.
"You idiot," he muttered. "You should have waited. That forest is cursed."
"We needed the money."
The silence returned, this time heavier.
"Don't you ever risk your life like that again," his mother whispered, reaching for his hand. "Even if it's for us. Especially if it's for us."
Arin didn't respond. He couldn't.
That night, sleep evaded him. Lying on the rough mattress, staring up at the rotting ceiling, he replayed everything in his head. The mission. The failure. The lightning. The baby deer. And the way the snake skin had turned to charcoal.
Something had happened to him. He felt it in his bones.
Morning came with the usual chaos of the slums. Voices shouting, children crying, the stink of waste and burning coal filling the narrow alleyways. Arin stepped outside, eyes adjusting to the light. He had wrapped a torn cloth around his burnt arm, hiding it from view.
As he made his way toward the pawn shop, hoping to get a few coins for the cracked RedHorn he had managed to pull off the rabbit's corpse, he passed by the training grounds.
Dozens of aspiring mage cadets were sparring, their magic cores blazing with elemental power. Fire. Wind. Stone. Even water. Each registered, each recognized by the State Magic Authority. Each blessed with the ability to awaken their cores.
Unlike him.
He was still unregistered. Still unable to access a status window. Still a nobody.
But he had survived the forest.
"I don't need a core to prove I exist."
His hand tightened around the horn fragment in his pocket.
He had no intention of staying weak forever.
Let the world look down on him. Let the noble-born sneer and the elites laugh.
He would rise.
Even if he had to claw his way to the top with bare hands and broken bones.