CHAPTER 39: THE TYRANT’S PRICE

The sun had begun its descent behind the jagged cliffs of the Eastern Wastes, casting the sky in hues of crimson and ash. Thalen stood alone on a broken ridge, the remnants of the training field behind him now scorched and torn. His breathing was heavy, shallow. His clothes were drenched in sweat, and the once-pristine blade he wielded trembled in his grasp.

"Again," came the voice.

A cold gust of wind blew down the cliffside, carrying with it the gravelly command of Seraine, one of the nine SSS Heroes. Cloaked in a storm-grey mantle, she approached with the deliberate calm of a veteran. Her eyes were pools of still water reflecting everything, revealing nothing.

"You haven’t yet bled enough for it," she said, drawing a sharp arc through the air with her own blade, a Legendary-class weapon known as Whisperveil. It shimmered faintly with the Tyrant’s Spirit, hungry.

Thalen nodded, jaw clenched. This was his fourth day of direct training under Seraine, and already he understood why none had survived this regimen in the last decade.

He had passed the exam. He had earned the Tyrant Spirit. But now came the price.

He crouched, digging the heel of his foot into the dust for balance. Blade Aura surged along the edge of his sword, a silver-blue sheen wrapping around it like living flame. He felt the Tyrant Spirit pulse just beneath his ribcage, locked and coiled, waiting.

He struck.

In a blur, he launched forward, blade cutting a fierce arc through the air. The Blade Aura screamed with velocity, splitting a pillar of stone in half as he vaulted towards Seraine.

But she was gone.

Thalen twisted mid-strike too late. Her boot slammed into his back, launching him forward and sending him crashing into a jagged wall of granite. Dust plumed. His blade skittered from his hand.

"You swing with desperation," Seraine said coolly. "Not purpose."

Thalen groaned, rolling onto his side. He spat blood. He hated how right she was.

He pushed to his knees and whispered, "Again."

Seraine didn’t move, merely nodded. "Good. Once more."

Night fell. Campfires dotted the edge of the valley below, flickering like distant stars. Thalen sat alone by a dying ember, wrapped in silence and sweat. His blade rested across his lap, the edge chipped and dulled.

He stared at his trembling hand.

The Tyrant Spirit refused to awaken fully. He could feel its power lingering inside him like a storm trapped beneath his skin unshaped, untamed. Every attempt to merge it with his Blade Aura had ended in failure or near-collapse.

"You’re hesitating," came a new voice.

Thalen turned to see an old man sitting beside his fire, hunched and draped in ragged black. The man had not been there a moment ago. His aura pulsed like gravity, dense and suffocating.

"Who are you?" Thalen asked, hand moving to his blade.

The old man laughed softly. "I was like you once. Young. Proud. With a fire too big for my chest. But the Tyrant Spirit... it doesn’t bow to fire. It consumes it."

Thalen narrowed his eyes. The man wasn’t a mirage. Nor was he part of the SSS.

"You bear its mark," the man said, gesturing at the faint glow beneath Thalen’s collarbone, where the Tyrant Spirit sigil had been seared into his flesh after the exam. "You passed the trial. So did I."

Thalen froze. "You’re a Tyrant Spirit wielder?"

The man’s gaze turned toward the fire. "Was."

That single word echoed.

"You lost it?"

"No," the man said. "I gave it back. I refused the price."

Thalen felt his heartbeat quicken. "What is the price?"

The old man looked at him now, and for the first time, Thalen saw his eyes one blind, the other burning faintly with Tyrant light.

"Control. Pride. Sometimes your name. Other times your soul. The Tyrant Spirit isn’t a gift. It’s a pact."

"So you’re here to scare me off?" Thalen asked.

"No," said the man, slowly standing. "I’m here to see if you’re worth surviving it."

And then he was gone.

Thalen sat frozen for long moments. The fire flickered once more. The wind whispered his name.

The next day, Seraine summoned Thalen to the Trial Basin a hollowed valley of scorched earth and dead trees, the site where she had first awakened her Tyrant Spirit decades ago.

"This will be your reckoning," she told him, tossing a vial of black ash at his feet. "The Remnant Root."

Thalen looked down at the substance. It shimmered faintly, pulsing with a rhythm that mirrored his heartbeat.

"What does it do?"

"You swallow it. Then you endure. If the Tyrant within you is worthy, it will rise to meet the chaos. If not, it will break you."

She turned and walked away. "You have until nightfall."

Thalen stared at the vial. His thoughts spiraled. All the years of being second-best. The nights of quiet shame. The endless training. The words of the old man. The pressure of Seraine’s glare.

He popped the vial open. Swallowed.

And the world shattered.

Pain.

Every nerve in his body lit up like wildfire. His bones felt like they were being cracked open and reassembled in random sequence. His aura flared out of control, Blade Aura spinning into a frenzy while the Tyrant Spirit exploded inside him.

He collapsed to the ground, screaming. His vision turned red. Then black. Then red again. The sigil on his chest seared hotter than the sun.

He saw memories that were not his.

A child standing atop a mountain of corpses. A tyrant kneeling before a flaming throne. A sword, bathed in crimson light, splitting the sky.

His Blade Aura lashed outward, slicing open the ground.

The Tyrant Spirit surged.

Then came stillness.

When he awoke, it was dawn. The basin was gone flattened, carved into a perfect ring of glass and ash. Trees had been uprooted. Rocks vaporized.

Thalen stood in the center, unharmed. His sword floated inches above his hand, encased in light.

He reached for it. The blade pulsed.

Blade Aura and Tyrant Spirit fused for a heartbeat.

A flash of light.

He collapsed.

From afar, Seraine watched, lips twitching into the hint of a smile.

"He might just live through this."

That night, Thalen dreamed again. But this time, the storm within him was silent.

The Tyrant had begun to listen