The Anthology

Raphas burst into the street with a bag of mangoes slung under one arm, running so hard his toes barely skimmed the cobblestones. He stumbled—almost kissing stone—but flung his palms down, shoved, and let the momentum roll him back upright in one fluid, reckless motion.

Behind him:

“Thief! Thief!”

The vendor’s howl cracked through the market air. Another shout followed. Then another. Yes. They were all chasing him. Again.

Raphas grinned through the stitch in his ribs. This was the most interesting thing he’d done all week. Saints, what he would give to live like this every day.

But the alley ahead narrowed into a dead end.

Well. Almost a dead end.

He turned sharply. At the mouth of the street, more voices converged—people he’d stolen from in quick succession, each realizing too late they’d all been played by one scrawny boy with quick fingers and quicker feet.

Raphas laughed under his breath.

Then spoke softly to the empty air beside him:

“Take my hand.”

Something stirred.

Not wind. Not shadow.

Smoke—black as scorched ink—spiraled around his right arm. The world dimmed. A sigil flickered across Raphas’s eyes, turning his gaze molten gold for a heartbeat.

A philosopher’s rune. An isolation. A bargain.

Then the smoke tightened—hungry, decisive—and his entire hand vanished.

Skin first. Then flesh. Then bone.

Blood sprayed the wall in a fine arc.

Raphas hissed at the pain, teeth clenched. Nothing ever prepared him for that part.

“It’ll do,” he muttered, breath shaking.

He slapped the bleeding stump against the stone wall and whispered:

“Explode.”

The rune flared. His whole arm vibrated with the price he’d paid.

The wall detonated—stone shattering outward in a burst of molten air and dust.

He sprinted through the rubble, boots skidding on broken stone.

“There he is!”

A dagger whistled toward his neck from somewhere above.

Raphas didn’t even look.

“Take my left eye.”

The second rune ignited. His vision flared white.

Then his left eye burned out of existence, leaving nothing but hot tears and a hollow ache where sight had once lived.

He raised his remaining hand and swept it sideways.

A wall of ice erupted from the ground—clean, cold, and impossibly dense. The dagger slammed into it and froze in place.

Raphas laughed again, high on adrenaline and agony.

The stump of his missing hand was already knitting itself together—slowly, painfully—muscle squirming like worms beneath skin. He was getting better at balancing the “cost.” Or so he told himself.

But then—

The world slowed. Not the familiar drag of an Isolation. Something else—thicker, heavier—like time itself had been packed with wet sand.

Raphas tried to force his legs forward. They didn’t listen.

Out of the shimmering veil ahead, a man stepped through as if parting a curtain. A long shawl concealed most of his face, but his smile was visible—thin and amused.

“So you’re the thief everyone’s chasing.” His eyes flicked over Raphas, lingering on his bloodied stump and ruined eye. “…You’re a child.”

He clicked his tongue softly.

“Such mana. Such a peculiar sage path.” He lifted one finger. “Hold still.”

Raphas’s stomach turned violently. Then again. The street tilted sideways, the horizon lurching like a boat caught in a storm.

He dropped to his knees and vomited blood.

The man watched with clinical curiosity.

“Fascinating,” he murmured. “Your resistance is unusually high.”

Raphas clawed at the cobblestones, vision splitting into three.

The stranger crouched, shawl shifting just enough to reveal sharp, bright eyes.

“Before awakening,” he said, “I was a scientist. Not one of those trauma-born savants this generation churns out. No. My awakening came from bliss.” He tapped the side of Raphas’s head lightly with one gloved knuckle. “My sage path is Arcane. My branch lets me… edit biological constants.” His smile widened. “I only nudged your vestibular system. Twisted the inner ear. A tiny adjustment.”

He leaned closer, voice dropping to a whisper.

“Humans are such negotiable machines.”

Raphas’s arms buckled. His head swam. The street pulsed like a living thing.

“You’re hallucinating already, I assume,” the man said warmly. “Good. That means you’ll sell well.”

His hand reached toward Raphas’s hair—

slash.

His hand hit the ground before he realized it had been cut.

And Raphas was gone.

Up on the rooftop

The world snapped back around him.

Raphas sagged against the arms of a tall figure cloaked in gray.

Bayblon.

“Master Raphas,” the man said, voice tight with barely contained anger, “what are you doing?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He ran.

And with each step, space folded around them. Streets vanished. Air stretched and snapped. In the blink of an eye, Bayblon crossed half the district, not stopping until they were far—far—from the incident.

He dropped the boy on a quiet rooftop.

Raphas rolled over with a groan, clutching his ear. His eye socket throbbed. His missing hand was still halfway through knitting itself back.

Bayblon stared down at him in disbelief.

“You don’t even understand how dangerous your power is,” he said quietly. “Your isolations—your… thing—doesn’t let anyone heal you. I can’t mend you. No potion can. You have to wait for your own regeneration.”

Raphas spat blood onto the tiles. “So? I’m fine.”

Bayblon’s jaw clenched.

“There are were only three according to the books in the whole empire that could fully control their Entities—spirit, soul, and body. In Raphas his father had killed communties to have another son come from his bowels. Maybe the thought Aureilla having the other and them escapign left a sour taste in the Lords mouth. In Raphas case that Entity control gave him healing levels that were unpresednted and mix that other side he could quickly create Class-Nine isolations with that thing.” He stepped closer.

“You are reckless. Reckless enough to die.”

Raphas looked down at his half-regenerated arm, trembling with pain.

Bayblon crouched.

And for the first time since he entered Imperial service, he raised his hand—

—and slapped the boy across the face.

The sound cracked through the air.

“You,” Bayblon said, voice shaking with fury, “are the Emperor’s first son.”

Raphas froze.

“I am strong,” Bayblon went on, “but not stronger than the Imperial Heroes. And they live here in Avod—more than anywhere else in the empire.”

He pointed at the boy’s mangled arm.

“You are strong. But not strong in the grand scale. Not yet.”

Raphas swallowed hard. The pain burned. His body struggled to repair itself.

Raphas sagged against the wall, breath hitching in shallow bursts. His arm was half-mended, skin trembling over exposed sinew. Blood dripped in slow, heavy drops.

Bayblon knelt beside him, jaw tight with anger.

“Raphas,” he said, “your body can’t take more of this. We have to wait for regeneration—”

Raphas closed his eyes.

Then whispered, not to Bayblon, but to the thing coiled inside him:

“Take the blood vessels in my leg. Use them. Heal the rest faster.”

The world went still.

A pulse answered him—a whisper behind his ear, too close to be sound and too cold to be human.

Agreed, it hissed—like a smile pressed against the back of his skull.

Raphas’s entire body arched.

Pain detonated through him—raw, electric, invasive. His leg seized violently as the veins inside it writhed, tightening and collapsing, rerouting their vitality into his chest, into his arm, into the rest of him.

He bit down on his own lip so hard he tasted iron. A scream clawed up his throat.

He swallowed it.

His eyes snapped open—wild, twitching, fiercely defiant—as he forced himself to look directly at Bayblon.

Blue light raced under his skin. His leg darkened, color draining to a dead, icy hue. His fingers spasmed uncontrollably.

Between violent shudders, he managed to speak:

“I would rather die… than go back to that castle.”

Bayblon froze.

Raphas gasped again, biting down another scream as the Entity continued its consumption.

“Any of my siblings,” he choked, “would kill me for a throne I care nothing about.”

His arm stitched together faster now—muscle stringing itself whole, bone re-aligning with sickening pops.

“That place…” He trembled, jaw quivering. “That place is a prison. This—” Another convulsion tore through him. “—this is training.”

Bayblon stared at him, horror and reluctant admiration battling in his eyes.

Raphas dragged in a shaky breath.

“I will become the strongest Imperial Hero to ever live,” he whispered hoarsely. “Even stronger than Author.”

Silence hung between them—cold, heavy, dangerous.

Bayblon rose.

He broke the spatial bubble with a flick of his fingers. Reality shivered, the air rippling around them like water disturbed by a stone.

“I’m going back,” he said quietly, voice low and edged with something Raphas had never heard from him before. “To put that man to sleep. He somehow managed to track us.”

Raphas blinked up at him, vision still trembling at the edges.

For a heartbeat, Bayblon simply stood there. Silent. Still.

A pause— barely a breath, barely long enough to notice— but weighted in a way that should have meant something.

Raphas didn’t catch it.

And then Bayblon blurred once and vanished into the night.

That was the last moment Raphas would ever see him alive.

A wind swept across the rooftop, colder than before. Raphas shivered, though his regenerating body should not have felt cold at all. He didn’t know why the tiles suddenly seemed emptier, or why a hollow ache pressed against his ribs as if something final had just been taken from the world.

But he knew— without knowing how— that nothing about tonight would ever fade quietly.