For the next three days, Lucian Thorne experienced the closest thing to Nirvana a mortal body could achieve.
The heavy, matte-black headphones Lily had given him never left his ears. They were a marvel of magical engineering, designed to block out noise, which meant they were perfectly suited for silencing the relentless, vibrating hum and whispers of the mansion.
Ever since he woke up from this world, his ears kept hearing something that nobody really heard much.
The world was reduced to a muted, underwater quiet. When the wind howled outside the reinforced glass, he saw the trees bend, but he didn't have to hear the rattling of the panes. When the servants walked past his locked door, he didn't have to process the frantic, heavy thud of their boots.
He was medically confined, socially exiled, and entirely left alone. It was absolute bliss.
His routine was the epitome of stagnation.
He slept for twelve, sometimes fourteen hours at a time, his exhausted soul pulling the fragile human body into deep, restorative voids. When he was awake, he sat on the edge of the mattress, his back resting against the headboard, and watched the gray, artificial sky of the city shift and change.
Hans came in three times a day. The butler would enter with a tray of nutrient-dense food, his face a mask of profound, lingering concern.
Lucian would not remove his headphones. He would simply look at Hans, give a slow, flat nod of acknowledgment, and take precisely three bites of whatever was on the plate, just enough to keep his body from going into starvation shock he never really felt hungry or anything, this was just enough to satisfy the butler's basic reporting duties so that he won't bother him. Then, he would push the tray away and turn his head back to the window.
The servants, trading whispers in the lower kitchens, were entirely convinced that the eldest Young Master had gone completely, irreparably insane. They thought his mind had fractured under the weight of his near-death experience, leaving behind a drooling, catatonic shell.
Lucian, on the other hand, thought it was the best vacation he had taken in hundreds of years.
He didn't have to manage an army. He didn't have to study ancient spell-tomes to prevent an apocalypse. He didn't have to pretend to care about the socio-political hierarchy of the Thorne family. He was a certified, heavily guarded vegetable, and the lack of responsibility tasted sweeter than any fine wine.
But the Marquis, a man who viewed every problem as a nail that simply required a more expensive hammer, was not a man who accepted stagnation. If physical doctors and Association inspectors could not figure out what was wrong with his son, he would escalate the matter.
***
On the afternoon of the fourth day, the electronic locks on Lucian's door disengaged with a series of heavy clicks.
Lucian didn't turn his head. Through the thick padding of his headphones, the sound was barely a muffled *thump*. He kept his eyes fixed on a distant, floating transport ship outside the window.
Three figures entered the room. The Marquis led the way, his expression carved from stone, radiating a heavy, oppressive aura of forced authority. Silas trailed behind him, looking deeply uncomfortable, his eyes darting to the bloodstains still visible on the edge of Lucian's discarded coat in the corner of the room.
The third figure was a stranger. She was an older woman dressed in flowing, pale-violet robes that were heavily embroidered with silver runes of the mind.
She carried a polished crystal orb suspended on a silver chain around her neck. She was Madam Emilia, one of the most prestigious, prohibitively expensive Mind-Mages in the capital.
Her specialty was diving into the fractured psyches of high-rank hunters who had suffered "psychological trauma" in the dungeons, untangling their traumas, and stitching their sanity back together.
The Marquis had paid a small fortune to bring her here. He was absolutely certain that beneath Lucian's silent, dead-eyed exterior was a labyrinth of repressed agony and trauma just waiting to be cured.
Madam Emilia stepped forward, her eyes soft with a highly practiced, professional empathy. She looked at the young man on the bed, the pale skin, the dull golden eyes, the heavy headphones clamped over his ears.
She raised a hand, her fingers glowing with a soft, lilac-colored mana. It was a soothing, invasive spell designed to seep into the patient's mind, lower their defensive barriers, and draw out their most painful emotions so they could be addressed.
Lucian saw the purple light reflecting in the windowpane. He turned his head slowly, looking at the woman with the glowing hand.
Emilia gently pushed her mana forward.
It flowed across the room like a visible wave of mist, washing over the bed and sinking directly into Lucian's chest and forehead.
Silas tensed, expecting his brother to thrash, or cry out, or suddenly break down into violent sobs as the trauma was forcibly pulled to the surface.
The Marquis crossed his arms, waiting for the breakthrough.
The purple mist sank into Lucian.
And then, absolutely nothing happened.
In the realm of the mind, Emilia's spell was designed to be a warm, comforting light entering a dark, scary cave.
But when her magic touched Lucian's consciousness, it didn't find a fractured, scared boy hiding in the dark. It hit a wall. It was an abyssal, bottomless ocean of ninety-nine lifetimes. It was a mental fortress forged in the fires of apocalyptic wars, refined by centuries of meditation, and hardened by countless deaths.
Her soothing, emotional-probing magic hit that ancient, monolithic presence and simply dissolved. It was like trying to dye the ocean with a single drop of ink. There was no trauma for her to grip, because the man sitting on the bed currently felt zero emotional pain.
He wasn't suppressing his grief... he just didn't have any.
The purple glow faded from Emilia's fingers. She blinked, her professional smile faltering. She looked at her hand, then back at Lucian, clearly confused.
Lucian looked at her. He didn't take off the headphones. He just waited for her to do whatever it was she was trying to do so she would leave.
"Mr. Thorne," Emilia said, her voice projecting clearly, though to Lucian it sounded like a faint hum from another room. "Can you hear me?"
Lucian read her lips. He gave a slow, minimal nod.
"I am here to help you," she continued, stepping closer to the bed, her brow furrowing as she tried to gauge his aura.
"Your father tells me you experienced a severe shock. You stood in the path of a lethal machine. You have stopped speaking. You have withdrawn from the world. We need to talk about the pain you are holding inside."
Lucian stared at her moving lips.
"No," Lucian said. His voice was a flat, gravelly rasp that hadn't been used in days.
Emilia offered a patronizing, gentle smile. "It is normal to want to build walls, Lucian. But ignoring the trauma will only make the soul-shock fester. Let me in. Tell me about the anger you feel toward your family. Tell me about the heartbreak of your annulment."
Lucian looked from the Mage to the Marquis, who was watching with hawk-like intensity, and then back to the Mage.
"No," Lucian repeated.
"Are you afraid?" Emilia asked, leaning in, trying to force eye contact. "Does the memory of the drone terrify you?"
"No."
"Are you trying to punish your father by starving yourself?"
"No."
"Then what are you feeling right now, Lucian?" she asked, her frustration beginning to leak through her carefully cultivated tone.
She had never encountered a mind so completely unresponsive. "What is going through your head at this exact moment?"
Lucian looked at her. He blinked once. "I want to sleep."
Emilia stared at him. She reached deep into her core and sent a sharp, concentrated pulse of diagnostic mana straight into his eyes, looking for the telltale signs of a broken mind, the jagged edges of a shattered ego, the chaotic swirl of repressed panic.
She searched. She probed. She dug as deep as she safely could.
And she found a void. It wasn't a void created by illness or damage. It was the perfect, smooth, undisturbed surface of a man who simply did not care.
Slowly, Emilia lowered her hand. The remaining purple mana fizzled out in the air. She took a step back, her posture losing its professional confidence, replaced by a deep, unsettling bewilderment. She turned to the Marquis.
"My Lord," Emilia said, her voice tight. "I... I cannot treat him."
The Marquis stepped forward, his jaw clenched. "What do you mean you cannot treat him? You are the highest-rated mind-healer in the sector. Break down his walls. Fix his mind."
"He doesn't have any response of psychological issues, Marquis," Emilia said, looking back at the boy on the bed. Lucian had already lost interest in the conversation and was looking back out the window. "A mind-healer cures the wounds of the psyche. We soothe pain. We untangle fear. But to cure someone, there must be suffering."
"Look at him!" the Marquis snapped, gesturing angrily at Lucian's gaunt, unmoving frame.
"He sits in the dark all day! He doesn't speak! He doesn't eat! Are you telling me that is the behavior of a healthy man?"
"No, it is not healthy," Elara agreed quietly.
"But it is not an injury, either. His mind is not fractured, my Lord. It is not bleeding. It is simply... empty."
Silas frowned. "Empty? Like a spell wiped his memories?"
"No. He is fully aware of who he is and where he is," the Mage explained, packing her crystal orb away with slightly trembling hands.
"But he is suffering from a condition beyond my magic. Profound, absolute apathy. He is not suppressing his emotions. He has discarded them. You cannot cure a man who isn't hurting. You cannot fix a man who does not want to participate in his own existence."
The Marquis stared at the Mage, the words hitting him like physical blows. "Are you telling me this is permanent? That my eldest son is just... gone?"
"I am telling you that there is no magical or medical intervention that can force a man to care about a life he has completely rejected,"
Emilia said, bowing her head. "I am sorry, Marquis. But he is functionally incurable."
She walked past the Marquis and Silas, eager to leave the heavy, deadening atmosphere of the room.
The Marquis stood in the doorway. He looked at Lucian. He remembered the boy who used to scream until his throat bled just for a scrap of validation. He remembered the heir who used to throw lavish, obnoxious parties to prove his worth.
He looked at the man on the bed now. Lucian was wearing a pair of industrial noise-canceling headphones, staring at a gray cloud, completely indifferent to the fact that he had just been pronounced a lost cause by the finest healer in the city.
The Marquis felt a sudden, crushing weight settle in his chest. It was the weight of total, unavoidable defeat.
For Nineteen years, he had tried to mold Lucian. He had used money, discipline, anger, and finally, neglect, all to shape him into a proper tool for the Thorne family.
But as he looked at the silent, unmoving figure, the Marquis realized the truth. The tool wasn't broken. It had simply ceased to be a tool. It was a stone. And no matter how hard you strike a stone, it will never bleed, and it will never bend.
"Father?" Silas whispered, entirely unnerved by the heavy silence in the room.
The Marquis closed his eyes. The fight went out of him all at once. The rigid, authoritative posture of the High-Rank Hunter sagged. He looked suddenly much older.
"Pull the guards from the hallway," the Marquis said, his voice quiet, stripped of its usual thunder.
"Sir?"
"You heard me, Silas. Pull the guards. Cancel the daily medical reports. Stop sending the healers."
The Marquis looked at Lucian one last time, a look of profound, bitter resignation.
"Leave him be. If he wants to rot in a dark, let him rot."
The Marquis turned and walked out of the room. Silas hesitated for a fraction of a second, glancing at his brother's motionless back, before following his father into the hall.
The heavy door slid shut. The electronic locks engaged for the final time, sealing the room.
On the bed, Lucian watched the reflection in the glass. He saw the door close. He felt the subtle shift in the ambient mana of the mansion as the guards were dismissed from their posts outside his wing.
He didn't smile. He didn't celebrate. He just let out a long, slow breath that fogged the glass for a brief second.
They had given up. There were no more expectations, no more tests, no more doctors, and no more screaming. He had finally reached the absolute bottom of their regard, and he found it to be the most comfortable place in the world.
Adjusting the headphones to make sure they were perfectly snug, Lucian Thorne closed his eyes and went back to sleep.