The wind in the Sancturm's northern tower always carried voices.
Lucian had trained there for years, long before he was called the Lightbringer. Back when he was only a name with no title. A boy with too much fire and too little control.
He stood now in that same tower, alone, staring at the marble floor where his master once drew glyphs with chalk and fire.
He remembered.
---
"Your strength means nothing if your soul fractures under weight," Master Elrin had said, carving a rune into Lucian's palm with his bare nail.
Lucian had bled, but didn't flinch.
Elrin smiled. "Then maybe you're ready."
That was the first time he heard the word Balance.
Not power. Not obedience. But balance.
A truth he held onto… until now.
---
Lucian dropped to his knees and traced that same rune into the marble. Not with chalk.
With his own blood.
The glyph shimmered, rejecting him. His energy had changed. He was no longer the boy of balance. No longer the man of rules.
And the Sancturm knew it.
The marble cracked beneath his fingers.
---
That night, he dreamed of fire.
Elrin stood before him, unchanged by time.
"You were never meant to serve them."
Lucian reached for him—but his hand passed through smoke.
"You taught me to protect," Lucian whispered.
Elrin's eyes were sad. "And what do you protect now?"
He didn't answer.
---
He awoke at dawn to alarms.
Another breach. Eastern wing.
Lucian didn't wait for orders. He moved.
The corridors were chaos—flames erupting from enchanted walls, guards scattering as shadow-forms cut through the air. Mirror assassins.
Only one kind of relic allowed that.
Lucian knew. Because he had it.
Someone had stolen from the vault.
He wasn't the only one breaking rules anymore.
---
He reached the breach first.
One assassin turned.
It wore his face.
The crowd froze.
Lucian drew his blade.
The fight was brutal. Blades shimmered, magic twisted through air. Mirror-Lucian grinned like a specter of his guilt. But the real Lucian moved with fury—and ended it with a single thrust.
The body shattered like glass.
Silence fell.
Behind him, whispers.
"Was that… him?"
"Is he fractured?"
"Can't be trusted."
Lucian stood still. Didn't speak. Didn't deny.
He just walked away.
---
Later, in his chamber, Lira patched the cut across his chest.
Neither spoke for long minutes.
She finally said, "They're afraid of you."
Lucian looked at her. "Are you?"
She didn't answer immediately. Then—
"I'm afraid of losing the version of you that smiled when no one else was looking."
Lucian closed his eyes.
He didn't say it aloud, but it rang in him:
> That version died the day I heard her scream.
---
At the Sancturm's archive, Thorne stood beside Valen.
"He's unraveling."
Valen nodded. "Or becoming something else."
Thorne grunted. "We should've ended him sooner."
Valen turned. "We still can."
They both stared at a black scroll sealed in a glass cylinder.
The title read: Protocol Fall — Lightbreak.
---
Lucian stood at the balcony of the Sancturm's highest tower that night.
Below him, the world he had bled for.
Above him, the stars that once whispered destiny.
Within him, silence.
And a single, bitter truth:
> Balance is a lie told to blades too dull to cut deeper.