THE AETHERBORN

The doors creaked open just wide enough for a sliver of pale, alien light to spill across the floor.

Thorne slipped inside, silent as breath.

The chamber beyond was wrongly still. The air tasted faintly metallic, like lightning bottled just before a storm. The walls curved inward in perfect symmetry, polished smooth, etched with faint grooves that pulsed faintly with dormant aether.

And at the very center of it all…

The pyramid floated.

Small. Palm-sized. Its dull, shifting surface spun in slow, deliberate rotations atop a slender pedestal of blackened stone. From a mundane glance, it looked almost… harmless. An artifact lost to time.

But through his Aether Vision, the illusion shattered.

The room ignited into madness.

The pyramid wasn't just sitting there, it was wrapped. Layered. Cocooned in an intricate weave of spells that spiraled endlessly over one another. Wards of protection. Sigils of reversal. Traps woven with curses so complex they moved, shifting positions as if alive. Threads of glowing aether looped endlessly around it, tangling, splitting, rejoining.

Thorne's Veil Sense whispered danger in a hundred voices.

Each layer of the ward sang with a different kind of malice. He felt the quiet bite of spatial severance traps, the crushing weight of gravity implosions, the icy bite of soulbind hexes ready to rip apart anyone foolish enough to touch.

And then there were the sigils.

He couldn't recognize most of them.

They weren't simple. They weren't even in the textbooks he had leafed through or glimpsed in Aetherhold. These were ancient. Alien.

But a few he did know. Some from his textbooks and some... from his Veil Sense, that whispered to him what dangers he was facing.

Sigils for memory scramblers, designed to rip away coherent thought and leave intruders wandering in endless mental loops. For cognitive fog wards, which dulled perception until you couldn't tell up from down, left from right. And worse, recursive disorientation sigils, the kind that built on each other, bending time and space so that every step you took only led you back to where you started, deeper and deeper into the trap.

His jaw tightened.

No ordinary thief, or even a mage, would have made it two steps past this door. They would have walked straight into the chamber, set off the hidden chain triggers, and been erased from existence in a fraction of a heartbeat.

That's when the realization hit.

Hard.

Brennak hadn't sent him here to steal the pyramid.

Brennak had sent him here to die.

A clean, disposable pawn. Someone with just enough skill to get past the outer wards, trigger the true traps, and leave the artifact waiting for Brennak to stroll in afterward and claim it.

Thorne's teeth grit. His fingers curled slowly into fists.

So that was it.

Brennak knew he was special, he'd guessed at Thorne's unusual talents. But he didn't know how deep it went. He didn't know that Thorne's unique ability let him cut through spells and wards themselves, unraveling them like threads in his hand.

Bad luck for you, Brennak.

Or maybe bad luck for me, Thorne thought grimly. Because this wasn't a job anymore. This was an execution order.

And now?

Now he'd have to make Brennak the example.

A vicious smile crept across his face. Sharp. Predatory.

He stepped forward.

And immediately froze.

A sharp ping in his mind.

His Cunning Trapper skill flared to life, a silent alert blooming in his senses like a warning horn.

He cursed under his breath.

It wasn't just the pyramid.

The entire chamber was laced with traps.

He could feel them now, the faint, nearly imperceptible dips in the aether around the room. Hidden glyphs etched on the floor beneath the polished surface. Pressure wards. Motion runes. Even a phantom proximity field that would trigger if he displaced too much air.

He crouched, scanning the path between him and the pyramid.

What he saw made his stomach knot.

The room was a minefield.

Not just traps guarding the artifact. Traps protecting the traps. Layers upon layers. The pyramid was the spider at the center of the web, and the room itself was the web spun tight around it.

"Of course," he muttered softly.

He exhaled, slow, controlled, forcing his heartbeat into a steady rhythm. The room was quiet, too quiet, but the stillness buzzed with intent.

He stepped forward.

Immediately, his Cunning Trapper skill whispered its warning, a subtle tug at the edges of his awareness, like a spider feeling tremors in its web.

He froze mid-step.

There, just a fraction ahead, an almost invisible sigil etched into the floor. Its shape was wrong, asymmetrical in a way that would be imperceptible to the naked eye. Through Aether Vision, however, it shimmered faintly with distortion threads, coiled like a waiting snake. If he'd put weight on that tile, the glyph would have bloomed, spilling disorienting aether into the room and feeding directly into the other traps.

He eased his foot sideways, planting it in a narrow space where the aether lines didn't intersect.

Skill Level Up! Cunning Trapper: 16 → 17

"Good," Thorne whispered under his breath. "Keep talking to me."

He moved again.

Another whisper. This one different, a faint push against his senses, like invisible fingers brushing his temples. He crouched, scanning low. Nothing. Then he looked up.

Ah. Clever.

A ceiling rune, directly above him. One that created a cascading memory loop. If triggered, it would make the intruder forget they had even entered the room, forcing them to wander in circles until they tripped a physical ward.

Thorne tilted his head, shifted his body just enough to step outside its cone of effect, then slid into the next safe zone.

Skill Level Up! Cunning Trapper: 17 → 18

He kept going, one careful step at a time. The room was alive with traps, motion wards in the air, invisible pressure glyphs on the walls, phantom proximity fields just waiting for the faintest displacement of air.

Every time his skill flared, he adjusted.

Right. Stop. Left. Duck.

It was slow. Agonizingly slow. But he could feel the map of the chamber forming in his mind, a living blueprint of deadly threads woven through the air.

Another sigil: a cognitive fog trap, anchored to a thin strip of floor. He disarmed it with a soft whisper of aether through his dagger, just enough to dull its trigger without activating the chain.

Skill Level Up! Cunning Trapper: 18 → 19

Next, a phantom lure rune. That one was nastier, it projected a false path, a flicker of "safe" tiles to lead intruders straight into a cluster of overlapping traps. Thorne smirked faintly.

"Cute. But I've seen worse in Alvar."

He slid past it, slow as breath.

Skill Level Up! Cunning Trapper: 19 → 20

The room stretched on forever, each step a negotiation with unseen death. But finally, finally, he reached the center, the closest he could get without brushing the pyramid's personal ward cocoon.

Thorne crouched low, studying it.

The pyramid floated inches above the pedestal, spinning so slowly it almost seemed still. Around it, the aether layers were a kaleidoscope of shifting sigils, some looping inward, others twisting outward in impossible geometries.

His Veil Sense whispered softly: Danger. Precision. Old magic.

It would take time. A lot of time. And gods willing, the two mage guards would be thorough in their search, sweeping every other corner of the tower before returning here.

He flexed his fingers once, grounding himself.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Then he began.

The first ward was a simple surface trigger, a thin shell of magic that reacted to physical contact. It was the least dangerous, designed as a decoy. Thorne slid his dagger forward, feeding a trickle of intent: Unravel. The shell peeled away like soft cloth, dissolving harmlessly into the air.

Easy.

The second ward was deeper. A disorientation rune anchored in five rotating points. Through Aether Vision, he saw how the sigils orbited each other, changing positions every few seconds.

He waited. Watched. Counted their rhythm.

On the sixth rotation, there was a heartbeat-long gap.

He struck.

His dagger slid into the gap like a key into a lock, severing the anchor threads in perfect sequence.

The rune blinked out.

He exhaled.

The third ward was worse. Memory bleed.

It pulsed faintly, so subtle it would be easy to miss. But the moment it was disturbed, it would steal his short-term memory, leaving him confused, unable to even remember which wards he had disabled.

He didn't attack it directly.

Instead, he took a step back, traced the secondary anchor, a faint filament connecting the ward to the pedestal. He fed a single pulse of aether into it, redirecting the feedback loop. The ward thought it had already been triggered and quietly shut itself down.

The fourth ward was a recursive disorientation sigil, a trap that didn't simply confuse you. It folded the room around you, making every direction wrong. If he misstepped, he'd lose all spatial sense and stumble straight into the other wards.

He had to fight the instinct to move too quickly.

He waited. Listened. Let his Veil Sense whisper the trap's timing, every seven seconds, it blinked. Just for a fraction.

On the eighth cycle, he slid his dagger through the blinking sigil, cutting the spatial loop in half.

The air shifted back to normal.

Fifth, sixth, seventh. Each one nastier than the last.

A phase sigil that would displace half his body into another plane.

A cascade trigger meant to activate all previous wards in sequence if disturbed.

A soul tether curse, meant to bind an intruder's essence to the pedestal permanently, leaving them alive but hollow.

He dismantled them all.

Slowly. Painstakingly.

His Veil Sense guided him, his Aether Vision tracked the tiniest flickers of instability, and his dagger sliced through the magical knots one by one. Sweat beaded on his brow, but his hands never wavered.

Each successful deactivation made the room feel lighter.

Bit by bit, the cocoon around the pyramid thinned.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, only three wards remained.

These were different. These were the real danger.

Old. Deep. Alive.

They watched him.

One pulsed faintly with an alien rhythm, like the heartbeat of something that wasn't entirely dormant. The second shimmered in strange colors he couldn't name. The third… didn't move at all, but his Veil Sense whispered wrongness every time he looked at it.

These weren't just traps.

They were warnings.

He crouched lower, narrowing his eyes.

"This is where Brennak wanted me dead…" he muttered softly.

A slow, dangerous grin spread across his face. And he reached for the first of the final wards.

Even without knowing the exact spells, he could feel they were different. They weren't just traps; they were monsters lying in wait, each radiating its own quiet, terrible intent.

His Veil Sense didn't give him names, only impressions.

The first whispered cutting pain.
The second felt like confusion.
The third… didn't whisper anything. It just watched.

He forced himself to focus on the first.

The first ward coiled tight around the spinning pyramid like a serpent guarding its nest.

Through his Aether Vision, he saw its lines, not neat or clean, but endless, interwoven threads of pale blue light. The threads spiraled in overlapping loops, folding over themselves in ways that made his head hurt to track. He didn't know what the sigils meant, but the way the aether was layered told him one thing: if he touched this wrong, it wouldn't just trigger the ward, it would trigger everything.

His jaw tightened.

He raised his dagger, nearly depleted of aether. The Nullite blade drank in ambient aether eagerly, humming faintly in his grip. He bound his will into it, not his magic, not raw power, just intent. Break.

Then he waited.

The ward had a rhythm, almost like a breath. It would tighten for a moment, then loosen, threads pulling apart slightly before rejoining.

He crouched lower, eyes flicking over the patterns. Now? No. Too early. Wait.

The threads widened, just for a heartbeat.

He struck.

The dagger slid between two main strands like a needle sliding into silk. The bound aether pulsed, and the threads shivered. He turned his wrist, severing the core line with a single decisive twist.

The ward stuttered. Then… went still.

The first barrier was gone.

He exhaled slowly, but didn't relax.

The second ward sat deeper, closer to the pedestal. His Veil Sense whispered confusion and vertigo, something that would mess with his perception, twist his sense of space. He didn't dare study it too long. He just acted on instinct, knowing somehow, he had to act quickly, and he cut through the anchors one after the other, feeling the pop of energy each time.

And then there was the third.

It didn't move. Didn't hum. Didn't even feel like it was active. But every time he glanced at it, his Veil Sense whispered wrong. A hollow wrongness that made the hairs on his arms rise.

He stepped closer, slowly, carefully.

Even bound to the dagger, the ambient aether resisted his approach.

"Alright," he muttered under his breath, voice low. "Let's see what you really are."

He crouched, eyes flicking to the faint edges of the sigil barely visible through Aether Vision. He couldn't read it, couldn't even tell what it would do if it went off. The aspected aether was dark, heavier than any trap he'd seen yet.

He raised the dagger.

And pressed.

The ward fought back. Hard. A crushing pressure slammed into his chest, as if the room itself was rejecting him.

"Break," he hissed through gritted teeth, forcing his will deeper into the blade.

The sigil trembled.

Then fractured, just a hairline crack, but enough to send a wave rippling through the chamber.

For a heartbeat, the air bent. Shadows warped toward the pedestal, like gravity had shifted in every direction at once. His ears rang. His teeth ached. The entire room felt like it was tilting toward nothingness.

And then...

Snap.

The pressure vanished.

The sigil unraveled.

The third ward was gone.

Thorne fell back on one knee, breathing hard. His dagger was still intact, humming faintly, but his arms trembled from the strain.

But it was done.

Only the pyramid remained.

The last ward dissolved into silence.

Thorne didn't hesitate.

He lunged forward, grabbed the spinning pyramid off the pedestal, and stuffed it into his satchel in one smooth motion. The artifact was heavier than it looked, its surface unnervingly warm, but he didn't stop to examine it.

Time to go.

He spun on his heel, immediately activating Veil of Light and Shadow. The shadows clung to him like a second skin, blotting out his outline, softening his presence until he was barely a suggestion in the air. But this time, he pushed deeper, whispering to the ambient aether as he moved.

And it answered.

The motes around him shifted, swirling tight, hugging his body like a thin, living shell of silence. The tower's magic, ancient and restless, didn't reject him this time. It hid him.

He ran.

Not recklessly. Not loud. But with a predator's precision.

Every few meters he flared his Veil Sense, just enough to feel the room ahead of him, searching for the faint ripples of danger. Twice it saved him, once from stepping into an invisible lattice trap that would have snapped him into a recursive illusion, and once from a ceiling glyph designed to collapse the floor beneath him.

He skirted around both, barely slowing.

Skill Level Up: Veil of Light and Shadow 14 → 15

Thorne exhaled through his nose. Good. He needed every edge.

Ahead, the spiral stair loomed. His way out.

But movement flickered below.

Aether constructs.

Two of them, hulking, humanoid shapes of glass and aether, their cores burning faintly with restrained power. They were slow, their patrol patterns erratic, but their senses were sharp. If he got too close, they'd feel the displacement.

He crouched in the archway, studying their rhythm. Waited for the one moment when both turned their backs. Then he slipped past, each step a whisper, every motion wrapped in his doubled veil of shadow and ambient aether.

One wrong sound, and he'd have to fight.

But he made it.

The stairwell was clear, until halfway up, where voices drifted faintly from above.

Mages.

Not the two guards, thank the dead gods, but a pair of robed figures moving along the upper landing, their arms full of scrolls and glowing crystals. They were chatting idly in low tones, but their auras were sharp, disciplined. If he crossed their line of sight, even for a second, the wards would scream.

Thorne pressed flat against the wall, holding his breath.

Veil Sense flared, feel their path, feel their timing.

One step… another…

They turned down the opposite corridor, fading from view.

Thorne moved.

Quick. Silent.

The rest of the escape blurred into a series of split-second decisions.

A trap on the eastern hall, sidestepped just in time.

A hovering sigil-lamp ready to flare if it sensed motion, ducked beneath its radius.

Another construct lumbering near the entry chamber, avoided by hugging the wall and sliding through a hidden alcove.

Every moment felt like a knife's edge.

But somehow, miraculously, he didn't trip a single alarm.

The tower faded behind him, its oppressive silence giving way to the muffled hum of the outer gardens. He slipped past the last of the half-buried constructs, hugging the withered hedges until the shimmer of the tower's wards thinned into nothing.

Then he moved faster.

Through the mist-choked perimeter, past the cracked archways that ringed the tower like broken teeth. The ruined balcony where he had first observed the place came into view, a faintly familiar anchor in the shifting haze.

He vaulted up with practiced ease, boots gripping old stone as he climbed.

And then, at last, he was out.

He crouched on the same roof where he had waited hours before this madness began.

For a moment, Thorne just stayed there, breathing.

The cold night air hit his face, sharp and clean after the stifling, enchanted atmosphere of the tower. His chest rose and fell in slow, controlled breaths as the reality sank in.

He'd done it.

He'd robbed a Council Archmage's tower. Alone.

And walked out alive.

A low chuckle escaped him, quiet at first, then rolling into something almost giddy. It wasn't just relief. It was satisfaction.

His Veil of Light and Shadow had grown sharper. His Cunning Trapper skill had deepened in ways he hadn't felt in years. Every trap avoided, every ward dismantled had pushed him further.

For the first time in a long time, Thorne remembered what it felt like to advance.

That quiet, addictive thrill of feeling your edge sharpen. Of knowing you'd clawed your way forward, one cut at a time.

His smile lingered as he flexed his hands, still feeling the faint hum of energy through his fingers.

But then it faded.

His thoughts turned cold.

Brennak.

If he was right, and he was, then the dwarf was somewhere nearby. Close enough to watch the tower, waiting for chaos to erupt. Waiting for Thorne to trip the wards, die in the backlash, and leave the pyramid ripe for the taking.

Except chaos never came.

The bastard was probably still there, confused.

Thorne narrowed his eyes, his jaw tightening.

"Let's see…" he murmured.

He expanded his Veil Sense, letting it ripple outward in a wide, careful pulse. The ambient aether across the ruined district stirred faintly, brushing against cores, signatures, the faint flickers of life.

At first, nothing.

But then.........

A cluster.

Multiple cores huddled together in a building a short distance away, their faint rhythms too steady to be random. They weren't mages patrolling, they were waiting. Watching.

Exactly where he would have been if he were Brennak.

A slow, dangerous smile curved across Thorne's lips.

"Found you."

He rose smoothly to his feet, cloak falling silent around his frame.

Then he leapt.

From roof to roof, his steps soft as whispers, his Veil Sense flaring just enough to guide him. Each bound brought him closer, shadows sliding with him like loyal hunters.

Brennak had wanted a pawn.

Instead, he'd just made an enemy.