Thump.

  The wagon hit a deep, jagged rut in the road, tossing Elian's light frame against the cold iron bars. The impact jarred a memory loose—a fragment of a life that felt like a movie he'd watched once and barely remembered.

  He saw the training courtyard. His eldest sister, Liora, was eighteen then, standing in a circle of suspended water droplets. She was a woman grown in the eyes of the Kingdom, her movements fluid and authoritative. With a focused hum, she began to move her hands, and the droplets didn't just float; they spun into a complex, rotating sphere that refracted the sunlight like a diamond.

  "Concentrate, Elian," she had said, her voice soft but firm as she looked down at her ten-year-old brother. She wasn't mocking him; she was genuinely trying to pull the spark out of him. "The flow is there. You just have to find the frequency."

  The memory blurred into another. His elder brother, Cezar, was fifteen, his body steaming in the cold morning air as he finished a thousandth sword strike. His Aura wasn't a world-ending explosion, but a steady, golden glow that coated his blade like a second skin. He had stopped, wiping sweat from his brow, and tossed a wooden practice sword to Elian.

  "Don't just swing with your arms," Cezar had grunted, his eyes showing a brief flash of brotherly pride when Elian managed to parry a slow strike. "Put your soul into the edge. That's where the power comes from."

  They had been talented, the pride of the Valerius line, and they had spent years trying to pull their youngest brother up to their level. But when the Awakening Ceremony returned a "Hollow" result, those years of effort became a sunk cost. The pride in their eyes hadn't turned to hatred; it had turned to a quiet, devastating realization that he was a broken gear in a machine that required every part to work. They hadn't fought for him when the Patriarch passed the verdict. They had simply... accepted the logic.

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  "Damn them all to the pits!"

  The rasping, angry voice of Talin snapped Elian back to the grey reality of the wagon. The Dwarf was gripping his shackles, his knuckles white. He was staring at a passing carriage in the distance—one draped in the silks of a minor merchant lord.

  "Nobles, Merchant Princes, High-born... it doesn't matter the race," Talin spat, his voice thick with a lifetime of resentment. "They see us 'Hollows' as nothing but coal for their furnaces. They take a man's craft or a boy's future and put a price on it like it's salted pork. Ten Solars! They think because we lack the 'spark,' we lack a soul. If I ever get my hands on one of those bloody bastards who rule from their high towers..."

  Elian sat perfectly still. He felt the weight of his secret like a stone in his stomach. His moonlight-silver hair, though matted with dirt, was the undeniable mark of the Valerius—the very "bastards" Talin was cursing.

  Stay quiet, Kaito's mind whispered.

  He was no longer a legend on a mountain. He was a twelve-year-old boy in a world where power was the only currency. If these slaves found out he was the "defect" son of a Great House, he wouldn't just be a slave—he'd be a target for every ounce of their redirected rage. He pulled his hood lower, hiding the pale skin that spoke of a life of privilege.

  As the wagon rolled on, Elian began to analyze his situation with a cold, pragmatic detachment. The "Nutuber" adventurer in him wasn't mourning a lost family; he was assessing a failed expedition.

  Revenge? The thought crossed his mind, but it was clinical. On Earth, Kaito had been a businessman as much as a climber. He knew that when a product failed to meet its specifications, the company cut its losses.

  The Valerius did 'betray' me, he thought, his eyes narrowing as he watched the grey, metallic trees pass by but in a world where monsters can level cities and Aether is life, a Hollow is a liability. My family spent years trying to fix a 'broken' tool, and when they couldn't, they sold it to recoup the cost.

  It was a brutal, efficient ecosystem. He didn't need to love them, and he didn't need to hate them. He just needed to figure out the "Logic" of this world and exploit it. He looked at the rusted collar around his neck.

  I was at the top and fell to the bottom, Elian mused, the rhythmic click in his chest pulsing once, twice. It felt like a glitch, a persistent error in his "Hollow" heart. Fine. The view from the bottom is clearer anyway. No maps. No expectations. Just the climb.