As the sun dipped lazily toward the horizon, casting long streaks of amber light through the hallways, Jacob stumbled slowly into his room with Arthur at his side, each step a small battle against gravity, his legs trembling so violently that without Arthur's steady grip around his waist, he would have crumpled onto the floor several times over.

They reached the centre of the room before Arthur instinctively angled toward the bed, but Jacob shook his head weakly, forcing out the words between gasps for air.

"The… bathtub," he panted, clutching at his chest as he fought to steady his breath. "In my drawer… Knight's Glory… bring it… then get food."

Arthur stared at him for a long second, the look he gave Jacob one of thinly veiled disbelief, an expression that clearly questioned his sanity more than his strength. He didn't speak, but the concern on his face said enough: You should be lying down, not soaking in some enhancement bath after pushing your body past its limits.

But Jacob didn't explain. He just met Arthur's look with one of quiet resolve, not loud or dramatic, just firm, as if there were no room for debate. His chest continued to rise and fall with ragged intensity, but his eyes didn't waver. There was no desperation in them, just the unspoken message that he had made a decision and intended to follow through with it.

Arthur sighed, a long, reluctant exhale that said more than any argument could and continued guiding Jacob toward the bathroom. Once there, Jacob filled the tub, water sloshing in uneven waves as he leaned over and collapsed into it the moment the level was high enough to cover his body. His head barely remained above the surface, neck tilted back, eyes half-lidded as he floated.

A few minutes later, Arthur returned carrying a small, dark glass bottle filled with the shimmering lavender liquid, Knight's Glory, a potion that Jacob had spent a small fortune acquiring in bulk, enough to last at least a month if rationed properly.

Without a word, Arthur uncorked the bottle and emptied the contents into the bath, the water briefly bubbling before calming again. Then, just as he turned to leave, he paused in the doorway and glanced over his shoulder.

"You know," Arthur said, his voice quiet but steady, "it's a lot more effective to drink Knight's Glory than to just bathe in it."

The room was filled with a faint herbal scent, sharp and strangely metallic. Jacob closed his eyes and let the diluted energy soak into him, the cool sensation beginning to crawl across his bruised skin like a tide slowly rising. He let out a shallow breath that might've been a chuckle and managed a faint smile.

"I know it would be," he murmured, voice rough but calm. "But… I don't like pain."

Arthur gave a small nod, the kind that came more from understanding than agreement, and stepped out, closing the door behind him with the softest click.

The moment he did, Jacob's composure cracked.

He doubled over in the tub with a harsh, tearing cough, and with each exhale came small flecks of blood that stained the water in faint ribbons of red. His body began to tremble beneath the surface, his muscles twitching involuntarily as the effects of the potion began to set in more fully, no longer masked by his earlier adrenaline.

Knight's Glory was not a gentle remedy. When consumed, it worked by violently breaking down and rebuilding the user's muscles, bones, and internal systems, accelerating growth through controlled destruction, but at the cost of immense, agonizing pain. Warriors who drank it endured its effects for the sake of rapid strength gains, often screaming through the process.

Jacob had chosen the slower method, not because it was more efficient, but because it hurt less. By dissolving the potion in bathwater, its potency dropped significantly, and the process of muscle regeneration slowed to a crawl.

But if the user had weakened themselves to the brink, if they had pushed their body close to collapse, then even the watered-down version could bite deep, the weakened cells becoming more receptive, more eager to latch onto any source of strength, even one that came in diluted form.

And Jacob had made sure to be weak, so weak that his muscles could hardly hold his weight, so depleted that even this lesser version of the potion struck him like fire seeping into his bones.

He had expected discomfort. He had even braced himself for pain. But the reality was something far more consuming. The cool sensation had lasted only a moment before being replaced by a deep, spreading heat, as if every fibre of his body had been set alight from within. His skin crawled. His limbs jerked. His breath came in shudders.

The water had turned a deep, murky red, faint swirls of blood dispersing in slow spirals around Jacob's trembling body as he remained submerged in the tub, his breath ragged and his nerves stretched thin like fraying string.

He could feel it, deep within his limbs, in the very marrow of his bones and the tight coils of his muscles, something moving, twisting, breaking, and knitting itself back together again. It wasn't a natural process. It was raw, violent, and unrelenting.

Then the screams began, at first loud, startled, instinctive, and then desperate, guttural howls that tore themselves from his throat without restraint or awareness.

He thrashed in the tub, water sloshing over the sides, droplets spattering across the cold tile floor. His body convulsed, overcome by waves of pain that seemed to come from every direction at once. His mind slipped briefly into blackness, and for a moment, there was silence.

But it didn't last.

He awoke suddenly with a gasp, his lungs seizing, and the screams returned with renewed strength, as though his body refused to accept even the momentary mercy of unconsciousness.

It continued like that, cycles of agony and brief stillness for what felt like hours but was no more than ten minutes. When the potion's effects finally wore off, when the unnatural reconstruction stopped and his body no longer felt like it was being torn apart from within, he simply lay there, arms limply splayed at his sides, his breathing shallow and uneven.

"Never again… never again," he muttered, barely above a whisper. His voice was dry, hoarse from the screaming, and his throat burned with every syllable.

There were no permanent runes that could nullify pain, but there were potions that dulled sensation temporarily. He'd ignored them, thinking he could endure it just once. He was wrong. Completely and painfully wrong.

He thought of the debt he had already incurred to buy the month's supply of Knight's Glory and exhaled heavily. He wasn't going to ask his parents for help. Not out of pride, exactly, though pride played its part, but because he still felt a large amount of guilt.

He would sell some things instead. Anything he didn't urgently need. Just enough to buy a few pain-dulling potions to take the edge off next time. Because what he had just experienced… that wasn't something he could afford to repeat.

Slowly, carefully, he began to rise from the bath, his entire body aching in strange, unfamiliar ways. The once-clear water now resembled thin blood, and as he opened the drain, he watched it swirl down with a distant expression, twisted, almost sickly, as if even the memory of the pain clung to him for a few lingering seconds.

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"Never again," he repeated, more firmly this time, as though the words alone might ward off the experience returning.

He grabbed a towel, dried himself with mechanical movements, and stepped out into the room. The scent of food greeted him the moment he crossed the threshold, warm, savory, and faintly herbal. He turned toward his desk and found a plate sitting neatly beside a bowl of steaming soup, a quiet offering left behind by Arthur.

Jacob sat down slowly, legs stiff, and picked up his spoon with the exaggerated care of someone who had learned to be cautious of every movement. He took his time eating, small bites, slow chews and though the food was simple, it felt earned. As he ate, he reached for the ever-present book resting at the corner of his desk: Lazarus's tome on runecraft.

The book had become something of a fixture in his room, always close at hand, something he could return to in quiet moments like this, not because it was immediately useful to him, he still couldn't draw conventional runes and didn't expect that to change anytime soon, but because it kept him engaged, kept his mind occupied with concepts just out of reach.

What fascinated him most wasn't the diagrams or technical instructions, but the meditative method Lazarus had included toward the back, a structured technique for gradually absorbing mana into one's core.

It clearly wasn't Lazarus's true method, more likely a diluted version, simplified for beginners or students he didn't trust entirely, but it was still immensely valuable.

With patience and consistency, Jacob could slowly increase his internal mana pool. And with enough time, some years, he might refine its quality enough to push himself toward the next rank.

It wasn't an exciting path. It wasn't fast. But it was steady.

There was a reason why all the Pillars were old, unusually, impossibly old by ordinary standards, and it wasn't simply because strength came with age; it was because age was the only thing that could afford the time required to climb so high.

Jacob's father, despite his commanding presence and fearsome reputation and youthful figure was six hundred years old, and even then he was considered young among the other Pillars, barely more than a fledgling in comparison to some of the ancient figures who had held their seats for centuries before his birth.

Advancing in rank, true advancement, not the temporary boosts granted by potions or artefacts, took time. Not just effort or talent or strategy, but a sheer, inescapable span of years.

Moving from rank ten to rank nine alone could take two full years of uninterrupted training, and that was for someone with the right method, resources, and commitment. A genius might manage it in one. But beyond that? From nine to eight, from eight to seven, the time multiplied.

And no matter how brilliant or disciplined a person was, no matter how advanced the meditation method they had access to, they couldn't force their way through the natural barrier that existed, not without consequence.

It wasn't a question of technique. It wasn't that stronger meditation methods didn't exist, they did, scattered across lost texts, hoarded by powerful factions, whispered about in legends. The problem was much simpler, and much more frustrating: the human body, the human soul, could only absorb so much mana at a time.

To put it into perspective, take the method Jacob was considering, Lazarus's method, the one detailed in the worn book he kept by his desk. If he used it properly and devoted himself entirely to its practice, he might be able to absorb ten units of mana per second, give or take.

But even that was far from the true limit. The most a human could naturally absorb, regardless of the method used, was fifty units per second.

That was the ceiling, the biological and spiritual cap that humanity had been cursed, or perhaps simply designed with.

Other races had it easier. Some could absorb hundreds, even thousands of units of mana per second, and it showed. They advanced faster. They reached higher ranks with less strain. They broke barriers humans couldn't even dream of touching.

Because of that, humans took longer, much longer, to rise in power. And because of that limitation, humans had a natural ceiling: rank zero. That was the end. For them, it was the peak. But for other races? Rank zero was just another checkpoint, a stage they could surpass with enough time and power.

Those who managed to do so, those rare individuals who transcended even that usually became the monarchs of their kind, figures whose names shaped the future of entire nations.

So, for humans, advancement came with set, unbending timelines. Unless you had an artefact to cheat the process, or a lineage with unnatural resistances, you couldn't skip steps. And even those came with drawbacks.

If Jacob had chosen the path of a knight, he might have had access to something like the Skydrid meditation method for aura cultivation, one of the most efficient techniques ever developed for humans, and nearly perfect in its balance of speed and stability.

But that option wasn't open to him. He was a mage. And the Skydrids had never developed a mana-based method suitable for mages.

Still, he read.

He didn't use the meditation method yet. Not because he doubted its effectiveness, or because he lacked the discipline to begin, but because a quiet, persistent part of him believed, or at least hoped that Lazarus might offer him something more.

A better method. A more refined one. One tailored for him. And once you started a meditation method, switching to a new one became difficult, sometimes impossible without damaging your foundation.

So until he knew, with certainty, that Lazarus wouldn't give him something better, Jacob held back. He turned the pages, studied the diagrams, absorbed the theory. But he didn't act. Not yet.

After several hours spent reading in near-total silence, Jacob finally closed the book and let his thoughts settle.

Arthur hadn't returned, and Belemir, as usual, remained in his shadow, silent, still, content to observe.

The stillness in the room felt heavy, almost sacred in a way, and Jacob decided it was as good a moment as any to try something he hadn't done since the banquet. He would call upon his one rune, the only one he had managed to form.

A faint smile crept across his face, a quiet flicker of satisfaction, as he raised his hand and summoned his mana. It was sluggish, as it always was, not rebellious exactly, but stubborn in a way that made it feel half-asleep, like it needed convincing to move at all.

But despite its resistance, mana was still his to command, and soon he felt it pool in his palm. With practiced precision, he guided it into the familiar structure, and there, hovering gently above his skin, appeared the shape of the true rune of fire.

Even without being activated, the rune exuded something powerful, something subtle but undeniable, a kind of pressure that didn't announce itself with sound or light, but with silence, the kind of silence that caused the world to fall quiet, as if it too were holding its breath in recognition.

But beyond that presence, Jacob noticed something else, something technical and strange that hadn't occurred to him before.

"It's only a rank ten rune," he muttered to himself, brows furrowing slightly.

Yes, it had presence, it radiated potential, but unmistakably, it carried the weight and force of a rank ten rune.

That meant true runes were not some separate category altogether, they still operated within the system of ranks. The idea unsettled him at first, but then it ignited a small burst of curiosity.

What would a rank nine true rune of fire look like? What kind of shape would a rank zero version take, and what kind of force would it unleash? The questions came one after another, and with them a quiet excitement began to stir in his chest.

But for now, those questions were far away.

He focused his intent and pushed it into the rune, willing it to activate. He expected to feel heat gather in his hand, for flames to flicker into life. Instead, nothing happened.

The rune floated there, unchanged. He tried again, this time narrowing his thoughts, sharpening his will again, nothing. Not even a flicker of reaction. It wasn't that the rune failed, it was more like it had… refused.

Jacob blinked, his expression tightening. That wasn't possible.

Runes weren't conscious, not in the way people were. They didn't think, didn't make decisions. They were constructs, tools meant to carry out functions when supplied with mana and intent. And yet, the more he tried, the more certain he became: the rune wasn't inert, it was denying him. Denying his command.

His hand fell slowly to his side as he stared at the hovering symbol, now pulsing faintly with that same silent pressure. "No," he whispered under his breath, almost to himself. "That's not how this works."

But nothing changed. The rune remained as it was, calm, unmoved, indifferent.

He gritted his teeth and forced his mana into it once more, a little harsher this time, almost like a challenge. Still, the rune refused to respond. It simply remained there, utterly unaffected by his effort.

And then, for just the briefest instant, Jacob felt a strange sensation, something that made the hairs on his arms stand up. He could've sworn the rune was laughing at him. Not in sound, not even in emotion, but in sensation, like an unspoken mockery passed directly into his mind.

"Fuck," he said aloud, voice low and bitter.

The frustration wasn't just because he'd failed to activate it. It was because he'd once succeeded. He had felt its power, had seen what it could do. It had answered him once. And now? Now it denied him as though he were a stranger to it, as though something about him had changed, or perhaps, as though the rune itself had changed.

He stared at it in silence, the flicker of flame-shaped mana still glowing softly in the air above his palm, no longer beautiful, no longer thrilling, just cold, mocking, and incomprehensible.

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