A month passed in the Thorne mansion, and time, usually a frantic, commodity within the walls of the noble estate, slowed to an absolute crawl in the west wing.
The Marquis's order had been absolute: [Leave him be.] In a household built on strict hierarchy and rigid obedience, the command was executed with surgical precision.
The daily medical check-ins ceased. The hovering servants were reassigned to other wings. The heavy, gold-trimmed doors of Lucian's room were bypassed by the cleaning staff unless explicitly summoned, which they never were.
Lucian had successfully become a ghost in his own life.
He developed a routine, though calling it a routine implied a level of active participation that he simply didn't possess. It was more of an existence cycle.
He woke up when his body could no longer sustain sleep, which was usually in the late afternoon. He would eat whatever cold, simple provisions Hans had left on a small table outside his door, the butler still refused to let him starve entirely, though he no longer knocked or lectured.
Once awake, Lucian would wander. He didn't walk the grand halls or the illuminated galleries. He moved through the mansion's secondary corridors, the dimly lit servant pathways, and the abandoned storage annexes.
He moved with the total, eerie silence of a shadow, his heavy, matte-black headphones securely clamped over his ears, drowning out the persistent hum of the estate's mana-grid.
If he encountered a maid or a night-guard during these aimless walks, the reaction was always the same. They would freeze, press their backs flat against the wall, and lower their eyes.
They didn't do it out of the terrified respect they used to hold for the "Trash" of the family. They did it because standing near him felt like standing too close felt like... He wasn't human.
He never looked at them. He never acknowledged their bows. He simply drifted past them, a hollow vessel navigating a world he had long since mentally vacated.
Silas and Michael had adapted to his ghostly presence by aggressively ignoring him. If Lucian happened to drift through the training room while Michael was polishing his gear, Michael would pack up his things and leave without a word.
If Silas saw Lucian sitting in the dusty corner of the secondary library, the new heir would simply turn on his heel and walk the other way.
They had convinced themselves that this was a psychological game they were winning by not playing. Lucian didn't care what they thought, he was just grateful for the way they don't talk to him.
There was only one exception to the absolute quarantine of the west wing.
Lily.
About two weeks into the "Ghost Routine," the youngest Thorne had realized a fundamental truth about her brother's newly acquired apathy, his room was the only place in the entire estate where no one expected anything from her.
The rest of the mansion was a pressure cooker. Her tutors demanded perfection in mana-theory. Her father demanded flawless etiquette. Her brothers expected her to revere their hunting achievements.
Lucian expected absolutely nothing.
She started slipping into his room after her evening classes.
She wouldn't knock, she would just key the door open, walk in, and drop her heavy Backpack on the floor. Lucian would usually be lying on the bed or sitting in the armchair by the window. He wouldn't greet her. She wouldn't ask how he was.
She would just spread her textbooks out on the thick rug, uncap her pen, and start doing her homework.
Sometimes, she would sit there for three hours, the only sound in the room the soft, scratchy friction of her pen against the paper.
Lucian would watch the clouds, or nap, or idly trace the grain of the obsidian nightstand with his finger. They existed in a quiet, mutual sanctuary.
To Lily, the silent, emotionally dead man was a perfectly safe harbor from the storm of her family's ambitions.
"The tutors say the First Gate opened because of a localized spatial tear," Lily said one evening, not looking up from a complex geometric diagram.
Lucian, lying flat on his back staring at the ceiling, didn't move. He knew in his past transmigrations the First Gate in another world had opened because a celestial dragon had sneezed during a dimensional transit in his fourth life, but explaining that required entirely too many words.
"... I see" Lucian said.
"It's going to be on the test tomorrow," she murmured, flipping a page.
"Okay."
That was the extent of their conversations. It was perfectly balanced. She provided a mild, non-threatening anchor to reality, and he provided an atmosphere devoid of judgment.
By the end of the month, Lucian's physical body had mostly recovered from the drone impact. The deep lacerations had scarred over, leaving jagged, pale lines across his shoulder, and the lingering lethargy of his injured muscles had faded. He had somehow can now control this body a bit, but this body of his is still too weak for him to use but he's fine with it.
But his mental state remained a vast, stagnant lake.
Sitting on the edge of his bed one night, long after Lily had packed up her books and gone to sleep, Lucian finally picked up the encrypted data-slate Hans had left weeks ago.
He tapped the screen. The device woke up, casting a cold, blue light across his pale face. It's been a long time since he had used a phone mostly he never uses it too much.
The numbers on the screen were staggering. The liquidation of his former life's petty obsessions, the rare jewelry, the vanity artifacts, the imported silks had yielded a fortune. The "Freedom Fund" sitting in the untraceable proxy accounts was enough to buy a small island in the southern archipelagos.
He stared at the zeroes, his expression completely blank.
In his mind, he mapped out the necessary steps to utilize the funds for a traditional escape. He would need to negotiate with real estate brokers in the neutral zones. He would need to organize supply drops, establish a localized warding grid, and forge a new identification registry with the Hunter Association to avoid border patrols.
He let out a long, slow exhale, the very thought of the logistics making his bones feel heavy. It was a mountain of administrative work. It required talking to people, making decisions, and actively participating in the friction of society.
He didn't want a private island. A private island meant maintaining a private island.
He swiped across the screen, pulling up the public registry of the capital's real estate market. He bypassed the glittering high-rises, the luxurious neutral-zone villas, and the fortified hunter estates.
He scrolled all the way to the bottom, to the red-lined sectors on the extreme outskirts of the city.
Sector 4, an abandoned city.
It was a massive grid of abandoned houses and apartments that had been shut down decades ago, it has been abandoned because of the portal that ransacked the place in the past. Nobody lived there because of how high the mana content, having normal citizen passed out sick.
The air there was thick with old smog, the buildings were hollow, rusted concrete shells, and the crime rate was just high enough to keep the city patrols away, but too low to attract the Hunter Association. It was a dead zone. Nobody wanted it. Nobody went there.
It was perfect.
Using the encrypted proxy protocols Hans had set up, Lucian initiated a transfer. He didn't buy a single apartment, he doesn't need one of those, he bought a normal sized house. Just a normal building that has an extra soace outside, ot looked rundown since it was abandoned but he's ok with that. He called the one who was in charge of selling that and paid in full. He was actually surprised that someone still trying to sell this place, but he didn't really seem to care that much, as long as he got himself a place to have when his father might exile or kick him out of the house someday.
It was a backup plan. If the Thorne mansion ever became too loud, he now had a very large, very quiet house waiting for him.
The slate pinged with a soft notification.
*Ping!
[Transaction pending. Physical biometric signature required for untraceable deed transfer. Please visit Courier Station 9, Lower Sector.]
Lucian stared at the notification. The proxy broker had done everything possible digitally, but city law required a physical thumbprint to finalize the transfer of that much land without triggering the Marquis's automated financial alarms.
It meant he had to leave the house.
He tossed the slate onto the bed and stood up. He walked over to the massive, ornate wardrobe that held the remnants of his old life.
He pushed past the racks of gold-threaded coats, the silk tunics, and the enchanted hunting leathers. In the very back, he found what he was looking for, a plain, unadorned black jacket made of durable synthetic weave, and a pair of simple black trousers. No family crests. Just dark, functional fabric.
He stripped off his sleeping clothes and dressed. The dark clothes fit loosely over his gaunt frame, making his pale skin and silver-white hair stand out in stark, ghostly contrast.
He slipped his boots on, grabbed the data-slate, and finally, picked up the matte-black headphones from the nightstand.
He placed them over his ears. The world instantly muted.
Lucian walked out of his room. The mansion was quiet in the early hours of the morning, the artificial lighting dimmed to a soft, ambient glow.
He walked down the grand staircase, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of the black jacket. He didn't try to sneak. He didn't stick to the shadows.
He simply walked with the slow, deliberate pace of a man who had absolutely nowhere to be, but was going there anyway.
As he approached the grand foyer, the two heavily armed guards with a suit and a sunglasses stationed at the interior gates stiffened.
They had not seen the eldest Young Master outside of the west wing in a month. They were used to the Marquis, who demanded crisp salutes, and also Michael and Silas, who radiated an intense, competitive mana.
The figure walking toward them looked like none of those things. Dressed in basic black, a pair of chunky headphones swallowing his ears, Lucian looked like a bored, lost civilian who had wandered into a military installation.
His golden eyes swept over them, registering their presence as one might register a pair of potted plants, before looking straight ahead at the doors.
The guards exchanged a frantic, panicked look. Their orders were explicitly clear
'Leave him be. Do not engage. Do not provoke.'
They had no protocol for what to do if the "mentally unstable" heir decided to casually stroll out the front door at dawn.
Lucian reached the heavy glass doors. He didn't ask them to open it. He just stopped, staring blankly through the reinforced pane at the courtyard beyond, waiting.
One of the guards, swallowing hard, reached out and pressed the release panel. The doors hissed open, letting in a draft of the cool, morning city air.
Lucian didn't nod. He didn't say thank you. He just stepped through the opening and began the long walk down the driveway toward the main estate gates.
The guards watched him go, their hands resting uneasily on their pockets. They watched the eldest son of the Thorne family, a man who possessed millions of credits and the bloodline of a high-rank hunter, walking away looking like a phantom that couldn't be bothered to haunt his own house.
Lucian walked past the outer gates and stepped onto the public sidewalk of the upper tier. The morning commuter traffic of cars was just beginning to hum in the road. He couldn't hear them through the headphones.
He kept his hands in his pockets, his face an impassive mask of supreme, untouchable boredom, and began the long, quiet walk toward the lower city.