Tears of overwhelming relief spilled down her dirty cheeks.

"F-Finally..." she sobbed into the quiet night. "That death curse... it’s gone."

Three days had passed that night.

The heavy velvet curtains of the master bedroom blocked out the morning sun. Young Lucian slowly opened his eyes. His body felt impossibly heavy, like lead weights had been tied to his bones.

He turned his head groggily expecting to hear Lydia’s annoying, overly enthusiastic morning greeting. Instead, sitting on the edge of his bed, looking pale and completely exhausted, was Aria.

Lydia was nowhere to be seen.

Seeing his eyes open, Aria choked on a sob. She immediately fell to her knees beside the bed and threw her arms around him, burying her face into his blankets as her shoulders shook violently.

"Y-Young Master... I am so sorry... I am so, so sorry!" she wept as her voice fractured with immense guilt.

"I—I didn’t want to! I swear, I didn’t!" Aria choked out, her fingers digging so hard into the bedsheets that her knuckles turned white.

"She... she put a death curse on me! She said if I did not wipe your memories, it would crush my heart! She only sent me here for that... she chose me because of my telepathy! I-I was just doing what she told me! Please... please understand! I just didn’t want to die! I had no choice!"

Lucian couldn’t speak. His mind was sluggish, slowly piecing together the fragmented memories of that night.

"Lydia..." he managed to croak out from his dry throat. "Where is Lydia?"

Aria released him from the hug and looked up at him, her emerald eyes red and swollen. "She’s gone. She disappeared that same morning. No one knows where she went... but, my Lord, that is not the worst of it."

She opened her mouth to say more, but hesitated slightly.

"You’ve been in a coma for three days. The Duke brought in the highest Royal Physicians to examine you."

Lucian felt a sudden, sickening drop in his stomach.

"The Duke, your stepmother, your stepbrother, and both your stepsisters... they were all here in this room when the physicians shared the outcome," Aria’s voice trembled when she broke the news.

"The doctors told them your mana circuits are completely destroyed. They said it’s permanent depletion. They said..." She swallowed hard. "...they said you are a cripple."

The words didn’t just bring shock; they brought an avalanche of crushing dread. The sheer weight of everything happening at once — the betrayal, his only loyal maid missing, his entire family discovering his downfall — was too much for him to process.

What rubbish. It is a mistake, his mind rationalized. I just need to circulate my core.

Lucian closed his eyes and instinctively reached inward, trying to summon the deep blue mana that had always answered his call like a second heartbeat.

Nothing.

Instead of the familiar, roaring warmth of his magic, a hollow, freezing numbness spread through his chest. It was a dead void.

His breath hitched. As the realization hit.

Days turned into weeks, and weeks bled into months.

Aria never left Lucian’s side. She became his shadow, dedicating her every waking moment to serving him, desperate to wash away the heavy sin she carried.

To her surprise, Lucian didn’t lash out, nor did he banish her. Instead, choosing to focus entirely on survival, he silently forgave her. Meanwhile, he also refused to accept his fate as a cripple. Every single day, he locked himself in the library, burying his face in ancient tomes, and exhausted his physical body in the courtyard, searching for a way to shatter the seal on his core.

But No matter what ancient technique or physical torture he put himself through, the result was always the same: a freezing, dead void in his chest. Nothing worked.

As a few more months passed, the atmosphere within the Valemont estate drastically shifted.

The respectful bows and fearful glances of the servants vanished. The title of the "Once-in-a-Century Prodigy" was quickly replaced by malicious whispers of the "Crippled Bastard Son." Those who used to admire his presence now looked down on him with thinly veiled disgust and mockery.

Lucian cared little for the insults; his mind was fixed solely on the grueling task of rebuilding himself. Aria, however, would not tolerate their mockery. Any servant or guard caught whispering behind Lucian’s back would suddenly collapse in the hallways, clutching their heads in pure agony. Using her telepathy, Aria secretly force-fed their minds horrifying doses of pure dread and traumatic memories.

Several servants were left as hollow shells, staring blankly at walls, haunted by the nightmares she had scorched into their psyches. Yet, even Aria’s ruthless protection couldn’t shield Lucian from the rot of his own thoughts.

The crushing pressure of his failure, the suffocating pity of the estate, and the sheer hopelessness of his destroyed core finally took their toll. The boy who had tried so hard to fight back simply... broke.

He stopped going to the library. He stopped training. He locked the heavy oak doors to his bedroom and refused to come out. The brilliant young master became a complete shut-in, rotting away in the dark for months.

Aria could only stand outside his door, listening to the hollow silence within. Watching the boy she had ruined slowly wither away tore at her sanity. She realized, with bitter despair, that she couldn’t save him alone.

Out of pure desperation, she sought out the only people in the estate who might still hold some influence over him.

His step-sisters: Cassia and Lysandra.

Aria dropped to her knees the moment she entered the sunroom, pressing her forehead flat against the cold marble floor.

"Please... Lady Cassia, Lady Lysandra. I beg of you. I cannot bear to see Master Lucian like this anymore. I will do whatever you ask. Anything. Just help him."

Lysandra looked down at the girl, her expression one of bored pity as she adjusted her sleeve, barely glancing at the poor maid.