Chapter 3- No Candles

Chapter 3: 3- No Candles

The black glass walls hummed with a low, vibrating energy, sealing them in a soundproof box of death.

Without the freezing girl pressing against his back, the furnace in Sol’s chest roared back to life. His blood felt like boiling tar.

He swayed slightly, blinking through the red haze of his fever, his knuckles white around the handle of his rusted cleaver.

Across the cage, the noble boy was trying to put his mask of superiority back on.

He wiped his trembling, blood-stained hands on his pristine coat and gripped his silver dagger.

He dropped into a perfect, practiced fencing stance.

He had been tutored by masters in the inner city for years, fed on rich meats and clean water, waiting for this exact night.

"Don’t fight it," the noble boy said, his voice cracking slightly before he forced it to steady. "The system made its choice. You’re just a slum rat. It’s either you or me."

Sol didn’t say a word. He just lowered his center of gravity, keeping the chipped cleaver angled.

"I’ll remember to light a candle for you after I wake up," the noble added, trying to sound like a merciful lord.

Then, he lunged.

The boy was fast. Too fast for a starving, fever-ridden butcher.

He closed the distance in a blur of fur and silver, thrusting the dagger with textbook precision.

Sol tried to parry, but his muscles were sluggish from the boiling heat in his veins.

The silver blade bypassed his guard completely, slicing a clean, shallow line across Sol’s left thigh.

Sol grunted, stumbling back as hot blood ran down his leg.

The noble smirked, finding his confidence.

He circled, keeping his distance, darting in to score another quick, stinging cut on Sol’s forearm. It was a game of attrition.

The noble was fighting a duel, planning to bleed Sol out with a thousand perfect, shallow cuts.

Sol realized immediately that if he kept playing the noble’s game, he was going to die here.

So he stopped being a duelist. He went back to being a butcher.

Sol deliberately let his left arm drop, leaving his chest wide open. It was a sloppy, amateur mistake.

The noble’s eyes lit up. He saw the opening and took it, lunging forward with all his weight behind the silver dagger, aiming straight for Sol’s heart.

Sol didn’t dodge away. He stepped into the strike.

At the very last fraction of a second, Sol twisted his torso.

Instead of piercing his heart, the silver dagger plunged deep into Sol’s left shoulder.

The blade tore through muscle and slammed directly into the scapula with a sickening crunch.

The silver dagger wedged tight into the thick bone, stopping the momentum instantly.

Sol let out a ragged, agonizing gasp, but his right hand shot out like a vice. His blood-soaked fingers wrapped around the noble’s wrist, locking him in place.

The noble boy froze. The smug confidence vanished from his face, replaced by pure, unadulterated horror.

This wasn’t how the fencing tutors said it would happen.

The rat was supposed to fall. He wasn’t supposed to impale himself just to close the distance.

"Let go!" the noble shrieked, his voice pitching into a panicked sob.

He yanked his arm, desperately trying to pull the dagger free, but the blade was stuck fast in Sol’s bone, and Sol’s grip was like iron.

"No candles for you," Sol whispered, the boiling fever radiating from his skin.

He raised the heavy, rusted meat cleaver high into the air.

The noble screamed, putting his free hand up to block.

Sol brought the cleaver down with the full, brutal weight of his body.

It wasn’t a clean strike and surely it wasn’t elegant.

The heavy, chipped iron bit deep into the noble’s collarbone, shattering the bone and sinking into the chest cavity with a wet, heavy thud.

The boy’s scream abruptly cut off. His eyes rolled back, and his knees gave out.

Sol ripped the cleaver free, letting the dead weight of the noble drag the silver dagger out of his shoulder.

The boy collapsed into the freezing mud, joining the carcasses of the dead slum teenagers he had hidden behind.

Sol dropped to one knee, clutching his bleeding shoulder.

His lungs burned, and the fever in his chest was threatening to completely consume his mind.

He had survived.

Breathing heavily, Sol leaned against the cold black glass of his cage and looked through it.

In the adjacent pit, the massive slum thug was lying dead on the dirt, his throat crushed.

The freezing girl was sitting on top of him, her blue-tinted hands still wrapped tightly around her bloodied iron pipe.

She looked up through the glass. Her hollow, freezing eyes met Sol’s burning ones.

Above them, the colossal Silver Eye stared down, and the system chimed one final time.

CONDITION MET: 5 Survivors Remain.

THE PRICE IS PAID.

STATUS: Somnium Conquered.

AWAKENING PROTOCOL INITIATED, You are now a Level 1 Cultivator. You shall gain your Gift, BUT BE WARNED, No powers come without a Cost..

WAKE UP!

The single word echoed in Sol’s mind like a physical blow.

The black glass beneath him instantly shattered into a million pieces.

The blood, the mud, the dead noble, and the colossal Silver Eye all vanished, swallowed by a sudden, rushing void.

Sol plummeted through the dark.

The agonizing fever in his chest finally broke its banks. It wasn’t just a sickness anymore, it was an ignition.

Deep inside his chest, his violently awakening heart condensed the heat, forging a defective, burning core.

At the exact same moment, in the void falling beside him, the freezing girl’s body fully surrendered to the lunar frost, her veins turning to absolute ice.

Gravity violently reasserted itself.

Sol slammed into the freezing mud of the waking world.

He opened his eyes, gasping his first, scorching breath of air as a Level 1 Cultivator. He once again saw the panel appear, this time confirming his Gift and his Curse.

The frosted glass materialized in the pitch-black void of his vision.

The elegant silver text was warped, glitching with a violent, glowing golden hue as his body actively fought the system’s interface.

ALERT: UNREGISTERED PATH DETECTED.

STATUS: Level 1 (Flesh and Bone)

[GIFT AWAKENED: The Sun’s Believer.(GROWING)

The Moon’s power rejected by hatred. You are a conduit for the forgotten sky. You may control basic thermal energy, ignite flames, and absorb Lunar Shards with zero risk of Bestial Mutation, further powers may be unlocked.]

[CURSE ACQUIRED: Stare into the Sun.

The Silver Eye has burned away your mortal vision. You shall remain in absolute, unending darkness unless you are actively channeling your Gift. Your body and core are affected by heat when cultivating or using your powers, overheating may cause death!]

The panel shattered into golden sparks, and the total darkness returned.

Sol froze. A cold spike of pure terror pierced through the boiling fever in his chest.

Blindness.

In the slums, a blind scavenger was dead within a day. A blind butcher was worse than dead, he was useless to the Harvest Houses.

If he couldn’t see, he couldn’t work. If he couldn’t work, he wouldn’t eat.

The system hadn’t just given him power; it had crippled him.

The sheer, suffocating weight of the dark pressed against his eyes, making his breathing turn ragged and desperate.

Unless actively channeling your Gift.

Sol grit his teeth, fighting down the panic.

He reached inward, feeling the heavy, violent throb of the defective core beating in his sternum. He didn’t know how to do magic, but he knew what a furnace felt like.

He mentally pushed the heat outward, forcing it to bleed into his veins, into his eyes.

Thump.

Instantly, the darkness fractured. A pulse of fiery orange and deep red washed over his vision, illuminating the world in a completely different way. He wasn’t seeing light or shadows anymore. He was seeing heat.

He saw the cold, blue outline of the freezing alleyway walls. He saw the fading, purple warmth of his own blood on his torn shirt.

And right next to him, huddled under a frozen tarp, he saw a glowing, yellow-orange silhouette of a terrified nineteen-year-old boy.

"Sol?" Rix’s voice trembled in the dark, sounding incredibly small. "Sol, you’re... you’re smoking. Your skin is literally smoking. And your eyes are glowing, did... did you break?"

Sol slowly pushed himself up from the mud.

His muscles screamed, his shoulder violently aching where the phantom dagger had pierced him in the Somnium.

To maintain his sight, he had to keep the heat flowing, which meant the fever in his blood was a constant, exhausting drain.

But he wasn’t hollow. He had a core.

And he could eat the Moon’s shards without turning into a monster.

He turned his blind, glowing, heat-filled eyes toward the terrified scavenger.

"No, Rix," Sol rasped, his voice sounding like grinding ash.

"I didn’t break. Keep your hands off my boots."