At twenty-two, Aurelion Caelum stood alone beneath the vaulted obsidian dome of the ancestral Caelum shrine—the sacred place where generations of his bloodline had once communed with the celestial powers that shaped their destiny.
But no voices whispered from beyond now. No ancient wisdom echoed through the crystalline walls. No spectral guidance offered itself from the stars.
Only silence remained, thick and suffocating, broken only by the slow, rhythmic hum of destiny unspooling its final thread.
His breathing was controlled, deliberate, eyes closed in meditation as power built within him like a storm gathering on distant horizons. 2 years had passed since his last awakening, but his body remembered the pattern—every few years without fail, a tempest would churn inside him and leave him fundamentally altered. It wasn't like normal nobles who awakened once at seven and spent decades honing their gift. His evolution was sequenced, programmed by forces beyond mortal understanding, as if nature itself had crafted a design meant only for him.
The progression was branded into his very soul:
Age 10 – Concealment
Age 12 – Sensory Echo
Age 14 – Kinetic Pulse
Age 16 – Astral Sight
Age 18 – Spatial Fold
Age 20 – Temporal Mark
Age 22 – Now...
The shrine trembled around him, ancient stones resonating with frequencies older than kingdoms. A golden rune blazed to life beneath his feet, its edges bleeding silver light as mystical circuits carved themselves into the air around him. The final gate was opening.
Seventh Ability: Mirror Clone.
This wasn't the parlor trick illusions used in noble sparring matches or the ephemeral projections taught in academy courses. This was something far more profound—a complete replication of his essence, a fully sentient being made from living magic. The clone wouldn't just look like him; it would be him, capable of independent thought, genuine emotion, even bleeding real blood if wounded.
It was his key to freedom.
As the celestial light faded and the runes settled into dormancy, Aurelion opened his eyes to a world that suddenly felt different—heavier with possibility, pregnant with change.
He found Verda in the estate's twilight garden, tending to night-blooming jasmine with hands that had grown more frail than he'd allowed himself to notice. Her once-dark hair had turned silver-white, and when she looked at him approaching through the moonlit paths, her expression held not awe or fear, but a bittersweet ache that spoke of long-dreaded inevitability.
"I suppose... you'll be leaving us now?" she asked, her voice carrying the weight of a question she'd been preparing for years.
He gave the slightest nod, unable to soften the truth with false comfort.
"I cannot build my life on foundations of lies," he said simply.
She clutched her gardening shawl tighter, knuckles white against the faded fabric. "You sound so much like your mother when you speak that way. The same quiet fury, the same unwillingness to accept what others call wisdom."
He stopped walking, something electric running through him at the unexpected revelation. "You knew her?"
Tears gathered in verda's weathered eyes. "I never met her personally,but she was really famous around the court-".Verda suddenly stopped as if something had prevented her lips from moving.
Aurelion understood that somethings weren't meant to be said.
Aurelion had decided.
He would remain behind, attending court functions and noble gatherings, playing the role of the dutiful heir with perfect precision. But his clone would vanish into a world where power flowed through different channels entirely.
He materialized in the shadow of towering glass and steel, in a dense port city called New Vesperia that existed far beyond Regnum Island's sphere of influence. Here, the air was thick with neon lights instead of crystalline magic, and the streets pulsed with an energy that had nothing to do with bloodlines or ancient gifts.
Neon advertisements painted the night in electric colors, their messages promising everything from fast food to faster lives. Cars moved in rivers of light through concrete canyons while people—thousands upon thousands of them—brushed past each other without the careful choreography of noble society.
It was chaos. It was magnificent. It was freedom.
And within days, Aurelion understood the fundamental truth that governed this world: power wasn't inherited from star-touched ancestors or awakened through mystical ceremonies.
Power was purchased.
Everything had a price—respect, influence, even truth itself could be bought and sold like any other commodity.
Without proper identification or a single coin to his name, he spent his first week as humanity's forgotten—sleeping in doorways, feeding on discarded scraps, invisible among the city's countless desperate. But he watched everything, absorbed every lesson the streets offered about the mechanics of mortal ambition.
His ethereal beauty attracted the wrong kind of attention: predatory offers whispered in alleyways, dangerous invitations wrapped in false kindness, calculating eyes that mistook his youth and apparent vulnerability for exploitable weakness.
They couldn't see the glacier-cold intelligence beneath his perfect features, or the power that he kept leashed with iron will.
Three months later.
Aurelion sat in an executive conference room thirty floors above New Vesperia's business district, his appearance transformed by a tailored black suit that could have paid most people's rent for a year. Across from him, the board of directors of Meridian Dynamics—one of the continent's largest tech conglomerates—reviewed the presentation he'd just delivered with expressions ranging from stunned amazement to barely concealed greed.
The quantum energy blueprints he'd shown them represented a technological leap that would revolutionize power generation for the next century. The neural interface protocols could reshape human-computer interaction forever. The gravitational manipulation theories would make interstellar travel economically viable within a decade.
None of them asked where a twenty-two-year-old with no formal education history had acquired knowledge that surpassed their best research teams. They were too busy calculating profit margins.
"Mr. Vale," the silver-haired chairman said carefully, "these innovations could be worth... well, more than most small countries' entire GDP."
"I'm aware," Aurelion replied with glacial calm. "The question is whether you're prepared to act on that knowledge, or if I should take my proposals to your competitors."
The room fell silent except for the soft hum of air conditioning and the distant sound of traffic far below.
"What exactly are you proposing?" the CEO asked.
"Partnership," Aurelion said simply. "I provide the innovations. You provide the infrastructure to implement them. We reshape the global economy together."
"And your... compensation?"
"Controlling interest. I want to be more than a consultant—I want to be the one making decisions."
Some of the board members shifted uncomfortably, but the numbers were too compelling to ignore. Within a week, the contracts were signed. Within a month, Lucien Vale was the youngest CEO in corporate history.
The business journals called it the deal of the century. Industry analysts spent months trying to understand how someone with no apparent background had not only revolutionized multiple fields of technology but had managed to orchestrate a corporate takeover with surgical precision.
Some whispered about industrial espionage, others about family connections hidden from public view. The more romantically inclined suggested he'd seduced his way to the top, while conspiracy theorists spun elaborate tales about government black projects and alien technology.
None of them guessed the truth: that his success was orchestrated by his clone, who had seamlessly integrated into Regnum Island's highest social circles, gathering intelligence and steering investments through a network of unwitting noble allies.
Power in the mortal world required a different kind of mask than the ones worn at court. Where nobles hid behind elaborate courtesy and ritual politeness, corporate leaders projected authority through controlled aggression and calculated indifference.
Aurelion adapted with unsettling ease.
He never smiled—not the practiced expressions of diplomatic necessity, not even the brief flashes of genuine warmth that had occasionally surfaced during his sheltered youth. His face became a perfect mask of professional neutrality, beautiful but untouchable as carved marble.
He arrived at every meeting precisely on time, never early enough to suggest eagerness, never late enough to imply disrespect. He spoke with surgical precision, each word chosen for maximum impact and minimum vulnerability. Questions were answered with exactly the information required and nothing more.
But for all his cold efficiency, he was scrupulously fair. Employee benefits under his leadership became industry-leading. Research budgets expanded exponentially. Innovation was rewarded regardless of the innovator's background or connections.
When rival CEOs complained about his unconventional methods or questioned his meteoric rise, his response never varied:
"I accomplished what you couldn't. I earned what you inherited."
Yet beneath the corporate success and financial empire he was building, Aurelion's true purpose remained unchanged. Every decision, every acquisition, every strategic alliance served a larger goal that no mortal mind could fully comprehend.
He was hunting for answers about the massacre he couldn't remember, about parents who existed only as shadows in his dreams, about the forces that had orchestrated his exile and shaped his extraordinary existence.
The resources of Meridian Dynamics became his weapon—satellite networks that could peer into the most remote corners of the world, quantum computers capable of processing information patterns that would reveal hidden connections, financial instruments that could trace the flow of power through channels both legitimate and shadowed.
Somewhere in the vast complexity of the mortal world, the threads of his past were waiting to be found. And when he finally grasped them, kingdoms both magical and mundane would learn what happened when someone tried to cage a force of nature.
The crownless king had found his throne.
Now he would use it to reclaim everything that had been stolen from him.
And perhaps, in the process, he would discover that some prizes were worth more than revenge—though that revelation lay hidden in a future where coffee-stained resumes and chance encounters would reshape the very meaning of power itself.