Chapter 29 Threads of Fire and Starlight

Serephina Valette du Lys I slammed my palm against the carriage door the second it sealed shut. The mana-steel didn’t creak, but my pride s

Serephina Valette du Lys

I slammed my palm against the door to my suite the second it sealed shut. The mana-steel didn’t creak, but my pride sure did, a raw, screaming wound beneath my perfectly composed facade.

“She dared,” I muttered, the word a venomous whisper.

I crossed the velvet-carpeted interior in four clipped strides, my heels hitting the thick pile of the rug without a sound. They didn’t echo, but I wanted them to. Every step should’ve thundered with my fury. Every perfect bounce of my curls felt like mockery, pristine and flawless—like always. Like her.

Aurelia Vael Taranis.

She was younger and colder. She was slower to speak, preferring silence, but always—always—somehow ahead. It didn’t matter that I enrolled first. That I’d chaired more student councils, led more academy guilds, or sat at more banquets with foreign heirs, orchestrating more alliances. No. The Tower, the instructors, the archmages—they looked at her like she was prophecy in motion, the true heir to a divine future.

And me?

They called me “vibrant.”

I scoffed, a harsh, dismissive sound. “I’m glorious, not vibrant.” Vibrant was a color for a commoner’s dress, not a descriptor for the heir of House du Lys.

With a flick of my fingers, I dropped onto the chaise’s plush velvet, summoning my feed with an impatient gesture. The Rift footage loaded immediately—clean, stabilized, utterly crystal-clear. Six official angles, each one feeding my mounting frustration.

There he was.

Zane Myles.

Advancing into hell like it was his job, unarmored. and focused, his presence a stark, singular point of defiance amidst the chaos.

I’d noticed him before, of course. Sharp cheekbones. A strong, lean build. Good posture when he wasn’t slouching to avoid attention. At first, I had simply assumed he was some modest scion playing at humility, a fleeting curiosity. That would’ve made sense within the academy’s superficial hierarchy.

But he wasn’t posturing. He hadn’t even been noticed by the grand System that categorized everyone. The guy was unremarkable, despite showing some skill and technique on his first day of classes, striking down a noble—a count’s son—in a duel to protect another student.

That alone should have put him under scrutiny. Then he faced down a Death Knight and won.

What kind of man walks toward a Wild Rift?

I couldn’t help it—the impossible moment replayed as I watched a twenty-year-old college student challenge a Death Knight in front of the entire Kingdom. He stepped forward, Willborn blade in hand, as if it were forged from nothing more than mana and grit. He took up a dueling stance; his movements were tight, smooth and efficient. He held a grim determination, a cold detachment, accompanied by absolute focus and lethal precision.

They fought; Zane was injured by death-aspected mana.

He fought anyway and found a way to deliver the final blow.

The Death Knight bowed before it dissolved into ash. That chilling, impossible bow.

I paused the feed and stared at the shimmering edge of that weapon. It wasn’t True Edge. I’ve seen every style worth memorizing—every Swordmaster’s duel, every Projection vid archived from the last fifty years. This wasn’t sword intent or compressed soulforce as understood by conventional mages. It didn’t fight the world.

It fit.

The metadata pulsed across the screen, a new classification of power flickering into existence:

Combat Signature: Unknown.
Closest Match: True Edge (92%).
Variation: Harmonized resonance.
Classification Flag: Possible Pure Edge (pending).

My breath caught, a sharp, sudden intake of air.

I’d only seen Pure Edge mentioned a handful times in all her reserach and studies the main one being a half-forgotten Tower scroll, barely translated, buried under three layers of disclaimers that practically screamed “heresy.” Pure Edge was so rare it was borderline theoretical--a perfection state of True Edge and way more powerful. It was a potential game changer but most thought it was lie dressed up as research to warn aspiring mages away from impossible dreams.

Thats what most, hell its what I thought...until now.

I tapped my crest ring, and a second projection flared to life—family-compiled. This was the true network, faster than Tower records, fed by internal analysts and court-licensed arcanists. They had already been at work.

RE: Zane Myles — Information has been updated. Through arcanists’ System analysis and divination, we believe the following to be the most accurate account of his actual abilities. The System is still refusing some data; infiltration is ongoing.

I started reading and got through the analysis. Then I read it again. And a third time.

My jaw literally dropped. I’ve read thousands of evaluations in my position as the heir of House Valette du Lys, and I have never seen anything like this and I swear I’ve seen it all. Noble brats with their bloodline-boosted stats, overpaid guild stars who’ve been polishing the same numbers for twenty years, the occasional real prodigy who makes me pause and think—all right, that’s the new ceiling.

But this…

Gods.

Zane is two years YOUNGER than me and his stats are...

“Balanced,” I whispered before I realized I’d said it out loud.

Not close-to-balanced. Not “good for his age.” Perfect. Every single stat—strength, agility, vitality, mana, control, endurance, processing—hovering in the high one-seventies. A variance so tight it felt artificial, like someone built him in a lab and forgot to give him flaws.

My eyes caught on the integration line. Soulforce Core—complete. There is no mention of fractures or instability markers, which means he didn't use any artificial enhancements or short cuts one sometimes sees The kind of purity you see once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky.

Unbelievable.

I looked at the mana capacity next. I actually leaned forward to make sure I wasn’t misreading it. Boundless. The System didn’t even bother assigning a hard cap. Just tossed up the Worldveil assimilation tag like it gave up trying to quantify him.

Was that even possible?

And there it was—buried toward the bottom.

Aura manifestation detected: Pure Edge. Stable.

Stable. That’s the word that makes my skin prickle. I’ve seen unstable manifestations of True Edge burn their wielders alive from the inside out. But a stable True Edge in someone this young? That’s like watching a street brawler casually pick up a divine honorbound blade and spin it like a toy.

I closed the report. Not because I was finished, but because the longer I stared at those numbers, the more it felt like I was seeing something I shouldn’t.

Zane Myles isn’t just talent or powerful or freaking handsome.

He’s complete.

He was twenty, two years younger than me, his stats were in the hundreds, he killed a death knight and he literally had no formal connection to any noble house.

This was going to be blood bath once people understand what they were looking at.

I leaned back slightly, not from shock, but from pure, cold calculation.

“This is ten years too early,” I whispered, my voice barely audible in the quiet suite.

Guild classification was the best measure they had to gauge someone’s overall strength, but it was also loose, as it was more a measure of raw stats and other variables than anything else. Most adventurers don’t reach stats in the hundreds until their late twenties—maybe mid-twenties if they’re REALLY fortunate, if they’ve had an SSS-class mentor and perfect inheritance access through their bloodline. Aurelia, with her specialty mana form, incredibly powerful grandfather, and centuries of pedigree, was still C-Class in the upper 90s and this was after diligently cultivating her power through every resource, shortcut, and brutal training regimen possible.

But Zane?

He was already beyond her. Quietly. At twenty. Without a crest. Without a guild. Without a System-sanctioned Path.

“This isn’t talent,” I said to the empty room, my voice filled with disbelieving awe. “This is system-breaking. This is the new age.”

The AI detection only deepened the mystery. Partial sync. Real-time threading. No casting delay. He wasn’t improvising—he was optimizing. Acting with machine precision. Reading threats like code.

And then there was the blade.

A Willborn blade which was registered, not logged with an unknown lineage. Those weapons didn’t choose lightly. They didn’t choose at all—unless they had to. Unless they recognized a will strong enough to forge a new path.

I swallowed hard. The breath felt shallow in my chest. This was bloody insane.

Zane was Unbound, he had to be. Unbound--The Kingdom's special designation for anomalies. For outliers. For threats that couldn’t be measured by the Guild’s F–SSS scale because they broke all the rules. It wasn’t a rank. It was a warning, a desingation a title so special that there were less than 10 of them.

And he hadn’t been claimed yet.

Which meant—

The game was still open.

This was no longer just about public humiliation or a minor rivalry with Aurelia. This was about something much larger. Something I remembered from years ago.

I closed my eyes for a moment, and a faint, almost forgotten memory surfaced. A dusty district, far from my gilded cage, during one of Father’s mandated “charity” visits to a struggling outer ward. I was no older than twelve, already chafing under the endless expectations, secretly fascinated by adventure, mercenaies and the common around me. And I saw him. A boy, perhaps ten years old—no uniform, no System designation—effortlessly weaving through a tangle of market stalls, retrieving a dropped charm for a screaming child, his movements a blur of effortless grace that was utterly out of place. He didn’t seek thanks, merely a quiet nod, his eyes already scanning the crowds, observant, stoic, carrying a burden I couldn’t comprehend then. He was just a boy, but even then, I saw a flicker of something more in him. Something that resonated.

I dismissed the memory. That boy was long gone. This Zane Myles was something else entirely. Yet, the memory lingered, adding a strange, personal ache to my ambition.

I rose from the chaise and crossed to the crystal mirror. My reflection didn’t flinch—my poise was intact. Curls framed my face perfectly. Lip gloss flawless. Posture crisp, every line calculated.

This wasn’t about a petty crush anymore.

This was power. Potential. Politics. Legacy. My legacy.

Aurelia had thrown her gauntlet with that ring in the most public and direct way possible. It was a good play. Designed to corner him and intimidate me.

But she underestimated me. I had other tools.

Charm. Access. Freedom. Whispers. Temptation. I could offer everything she wouldn’t touch. A life unbound by archaic House rules, a path forged by his own will.

And I would. Gladly.

I touched my comm crystal.

“Patch me through to Father. Priority channel.”

A pause. Then the crisp hum of a secure connection.

“I want formal terms drafted for a strategic recruitment offer. Political. Personal. Both.”

Another pause, this one longer. Then his deep voice rumbled: “Details?”

“Make it generous,” I commanded, my voice sharp with absolute conviction. “Make it irresistible.”

I turned back to the feed.

Zane’s face hovered on the screen. Calm. Determined.

Unclaimed.

“Your move, Taranis,” I whispered.