The room around him was still blurred. At the corners of his eyes, he felt dampness — the kind that shouldn't have followed him out of a dream, and yet had.
The first sensation that confirmed he had truly returned was pain.
Every muscle ached down to the bone, his head throbbed with each heartbeat, and each breath carried a deep, dragging weight — as if a stone had been laid across his ribs and forgotten there.
He looked upward at the familiar stone ceiling.
Threads of green mana woven into Inscribed Healing Magic glowed faintly above him, humming in a steady rhythm. It was the same sound he had heard when he first crossed into this world.
The world of Arath.
This body.
Rein slowly lifted his trembling hands and studied them, opening and closing his fingers with great effort. The memories from the snow-covered hut remained vivid, as though they had happened only moments ago.
At least this time… I didn't forget your story, Rein.
He blinked to clear his vision before slowly turning his head to survey the room. The patient chamber inside the Vault remained quiet and empty, its stillness broken only by the distant mechanical murmurs of arcane machinery.
He noticed he was wearing a clean white patient's gown — something that now felt disturbingly like his personal uniform.
It seemed he had officially become a regular patient of the Department of Healing's Inpatient Ward.
"Damn it… my health insurance premium is definitely going to skyrocket this year."
His voice came out hoarse and dry as crumpled paper. A sudden wave of thirst hit his throat. He began searching for a glass of water that ought to be somewhere nearby, yet even moving his arm a few inches proved far more exhausting than it should have been.
The faint creak of a metal door broke the silence.
Rein shifted his blurred gaze toward the sound.
Ingrid entered in a hurry, carefully balancing a tray with a kettle and a ceramic cup. Walking just behind her was the tall figure of Master Rachel, the elven instructor whose fiery red hair glowed like embers beneath the lamplight.
"He's awake!"
Ingrid's voice burst out before she could stop it. She hurried to the bedside, set the tray down, and immediately began casting a diagnostic spell over him. Pale green light flickered from her fingertips, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
"That night I really thought you weren't going to make it…" she continued rapidly, her tone shifting from relief into the stern cadence of a head nurse scolding an unruly patient.
"It's lucky Master Rachel arrived in time and managed to suppress that curse temporarily. Next time you're absolutely forbidden from doing something that reckless again, understand? Do you know how much trouble everyone had to go through because of you?"
The corners of her eyes were red.
"First… could I have a glass of water?" Rein asked.
Ingrid paused, then quickly poured water into the cup and helped support his still-shaking back so he could drink.
Meanwhile, Master Rachel stepped closer to the bed and folded her arms, her sharp elven gaze studying him as though she could see straight through to his Core Mana Circles.
"You were already infiltrated by a curse of that level, yet you still managed to conceal it," she said calmly. "You do realize that once a Dragon's Speech curse begins synchronizing with a mage's mana circuits, every form of healing magic becomes useless."
Ingrid adjusted the pillow behind him while Rachel delivered the question that mattered most.
"Rein… why did you hide the existence of this curse?"
Rein drank slowly, letting the water soak through his parched throat until half the glass was gone. He then held the cup loosely in his lap, sitting half-upright against the headboard as strength gradually returned to his hands.
"I only knew it was the work of a Warlock," he said at last. "At the time, I didn't have enough information to understand how to break it."
He paused, lifting his gaze to meet both Ingrid and Rachel directly.
"The reason I couldn't tell anyone… is because I don't know how deeply Arcadia has already been infiltrated. If I publicly announced that I was under a curse that weakened me, I'd only make myself an easier target."
Master Rachel nodded slowly, emerald eyes reflecting understanding.
"I see. In a war of espionage, distrust can be the strongest armor. You feared that even among instructors or medical staff, there might be spies hiding in plain sight."
Rein did not answer.
Instead, he lowered his gaze toward the trembling reflection of his pale face in the water still swirling inside the cup.
"But I'm not some shapeshifter!" Ingrid protested quietly.
"I'm sorry, Ingrid…" Rein said softly, still staring at the reflection. "I just… didn't want you to share the risk."
Silence settled over the room.
Only the faint humming of the healing inscription on the ceiling filled the gap between their heavy words.
"How long was I unconscious… and what happened afterward?" Rein asked, breaking the stillness. His voice remained hoarse, but carried more weight now.
Ingrid sighed and shook her head.
"Three full days, Rein. You slept like the dead while the rest of us were losing our minds. If Master Rachel hadn't arrived in time, we would've been completely helpless. No one in the Healing Department knew how to deal with the ancient curse you were hit with. Luckily Master Rachel recognized it and figured out how to keep you alive."
Rein turned toward the red-haired elven instructor. His eyes narrowed slightly — not suspicion exactly, more the reflex of someone who needed to understand the mechanism before he could accept the result.
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"Master… how did you stop the curse?"
Master Rachel remained standing with her arms crossed, the wall lamps reflecting softly in her flame-colored hair. She studied the student who had just returned from the edge of death before letting out a quiet sigh.
"For several hundred years, I haven't been wandering across the continent of Etheria merely to admire the scenery," she replied evenly, though a trace of something that wasn't quite pride lingered in her voice. "I keep records of forbidden curses in the Elven Index, though until now that information had rarely drawn much attention."
Ah… right.
Rein recalled the murder case in the library.
Back then, the "elf auntie" had mentioned she wasn't particularly skilled in curse-breaking magic — largely because elves possessed naturally strong resistance to curses.
It was like being fully vaccinated against measles. With perfect immunity, you'd have little reason to study treatments for the disease.
"But Dragon's Speech is different," Rachel continued, her tone turning serious. "It's a high-level curse born from the will of dragonkind itself. Its effects are so severe that even a high elf like me cannot resist it directly. That is precisely why I chose to study it — out of caution."
She stepped closer to the bed.
"That night, I didn't remove the curse. That was beyond the limits of ordinary mana. Instead, I used Elven Blessing to temporarily suppress its cycle."
"Elven Blessing?" Ingrid repeated, frowning slightly. She had seen the term mentioned in historical texts but never imagined witnessing it used in a hospital ward.
"Yes. Ingrid, Elven Blessing isn't merely a spell. It's the act of sharing a portion of my life force and mana directly with Rein. By doing so, I interfered with the magical circuits in his body and altered them temporarily, allowing them to imitate the curse-resistant properties of the elven race."
Rein said nothing for a moment.
He had spent most of his life — both lives — treating gratitude as a variable to be acknowledged and filed away. But Rachel was several hundred years old. She was not obligated to share anything with a first-year student she had known for less than a semester.
He filed that away too. Carefully.
"But Elven Blessing is not a permanent solution," Rachel continued. "It only buys us time. We must find a way to remove the curse entirely before my blessing is consumed by the dragon's darkness."
The room went quiet.
Rein felt it like a shift in pressure — the kind that preceded a structure giving way.
"Then… how do we actually remove the curse, Master?" Ingrid asked.
Master Rachel drew her brows together, the ruby sheen of her eyes carrying a tension Rein had not seen on her before.
"The first condition," she said slowly, "is that we must determine what type of dragon originally gave rise to the curse. Rein… in the moment I used Elven Blessing to interfere with your mana circuits, I felt an aura far darker and more powerful than any ordinary dragon. The presence carried the unmistakable scent of a Black Dragon."
"A Black Dragon… is that so?" Rein murmured.
At once, his thoughts drifted toward the enormous black gate standing silently within his Mana Realm — that structure he still had no framework to explain. Somewhere in the back of his mind, something shifted, like a variable slotting into an equation that wasn't ready for it yet.
"Does that mean we have to find a Black Dragon?" Ingrid pressed her lips together tightly, already running through the logic — specialized curses often required reagents from the origin itself.
"That would be nearly impossible, Ingrid," Rachel replied. "Black Dragons are primordial beings that vanished from recorded history thousands of years ago. Every record we possess states that they went extinct along with the ancient era itself."
She paused briefly.
"So you may as well forget about solutions like reversing the mana flow or brewing counteragents according to Arcadia's standard methods. Those approaches simply will not work in this case."
"Then what are we supposed to do?" Ingrid asked. "Should we ask Master Chloe for help? If it's Master Chloe casting a supreme curse-breaking spell, then maybe—"
Rachel shook her head slowly.
"Ingrid, listen carefully. This is not an ordinary curse born from dark mana, nor is it a toxin from a magical beast that can be purified with the holy light of the goddess Luminara. This is an Ancestral Anathema — a spoken malediction belonging to a race that stands at the very apex of the mana hierarchy."
The elven instructor leaned forward slightly, her gaze locking directly onto Rein's eyes.
"The only way to erase such a curse is for a being greater than the origin of the curse — or one who holds absolute authority over it — to personally revoke it. A word must be undone by a word of greater power. That is the immutable law governing the authority of dragons."
…
…
When the metal door finally closed behind Rachel and Ingrid, silence reclaimed the patient chamber.
Only the faint humming of the healing inscription on the ceiling remained, along with the lingering scent of elven herbs drifting quietly through the air.
Rein leaned back against the headboard and began running the numbers.
The shapeshifter incident had cracked Arcadia deeper than he'd estimated. The Five Disciples were still outside, hunting infiltrators across the royal palace and the noble houses — which meant the Academy was running on instructors and students organizing their own defensive rotations.
He'd asked Ingrid to pass one piece of intelligence to the FMD: mass-produced shapeshifters had a lifespan under two weeks. That alone should let the investigators tighten the net without wasting resources.
The first-generation prototypes were a different problem. He believed most of them were already dead.
Believed. Not confirmed.
He noted the gap and left it open.
Alexander was in a sealed magic cell. Sophia and Isabella had been called in for interrogation — which, given what they'd witnessed, was going to be a long conversation for everyone involved.
Rein found himself hoping, with unusual sincerity, for exactly one thing:
Let those damned nobles forget the name "Rein Rhys" entirely.
Then, at the edge of his vision, a pale blue interface flickered into existence.
[LIZ: You look absolutely terrible right now, Rein.]
Rein offered a dry smile to the empty air.
"Yeah… honestly, I'd rather sleep for another week than wake up to deal with all this," he muttered, lifting the glass of water Ingrid had left behind and taking another slow sip. The coolness helped soothe some of the lingering heat burning faintly in his chest.
[LIZ: While you were on your little 'vacation,' that black gate of yours was causing quite a disturbance. Even with the laboratory sealed, it kept trembling nonstop until it started getting on my nerves.]
"Sorry about that. What about the Elven Blessing?" Rein asked.
[LIZ: Without that elf's life force and mana modifying your body's curse-resistance system, you probably wouldn't have survived. Next time, don't do something that reckless again.]
Rein was quiet for a moment.
A voice surfaced in the silence — not his own.
"It isn't about wanting or not wanting. It's about doing… or not doing."
He tapped his index finger lightly against his knee.
"Can you simulate the structure of the blessing?"
[LIZ: If it's just the anti-curse mana circuit, I can probably tune it to approximate the original. But you need to understand the rules of biological mass — your body is human, not elven. Your compatibility with that magical structure can't exceed 49 percent. The only reason you survived this time is because Master Rachel also shared part of her Life Force with you, which pushed the stability up to 78.5 percent.]
"So what's the real problem?"
[LIZ: The problem is that while I can replicate the mana structure, I cannot replicate life force. That means even if I perfectly imitate the Elven Blessing, your curse resistance will only be half that of a true elf — and it will gradually decline over time.]
"Half is still better than zero." Rein took another long drink.
[LIZ: True… but you're forgetting one critical variable. My modified version of the blessing still requires a Stratosphere-tier healer to cast it, and most importantly — you cannot cast it yourself. The curse limits your mana tier to Troposphere, remember?]
Rein pressed his lips into a thin line.
"Wonderful… another dead end," he murmured. "So my next mission is to find a high-tier healer willing to sacrifice mana repeatedly just to keep me alive until we discover a permanent cure. What a nuisance."
He rested his head against the pillow and stared up at the ceiling.
The healing inscription hummed on, steady and indifferent, measuring out time in intervals that didn't care whose they were.
These entries expand the lore and mechanics introduced in this chapter.
Completely optional—read only if you enjoy diving deeper into the system.
Curse
Dragon's Speech Curse (Update)
An extremely rare and ancient curse originating from dragonkind. Once the curse synchronizes with a mage’s mana circuits, it renders conventional healing magic ineffective. The curse gradually integrates itself into the victim’s magical structure rather than acting as an external toxin.
Curse Synchronization
The process by which a curse merges with a mage’s internal mana circuits. Once synchronization reaches a critical stage, the curse becomes part of the victim’s magical system, making removal nearly impossible through standard purification or dispelling methods.
Magic and Spell Techniques
Elven Blessing
A rare ritual performed by high elves in which they share a portion of their life force and mana with another being. The blessing temporarily alters the recipient’s mana circuits to mimic the natural curse resistance of the elven race.
Life Force Transfer
The essential component of Elven Blessing. Unlike ordinary spellcasting, the caster transfers part of their own vitality to stabilize the recipient’s body. This significantly increases survival chances but places a burden on the elf performing the ritual.
Items and Artifacts
Elven Index (Update)
A personal archive maintained by Master Rachel containing records of ancient curses, forbidden magic, and historical magical phenomena. Because elves possess natural resistance to curses, such records are usually studied only out of caution rather than necessity.
Concepts
Ancestral Anathema
A class of curses originating from the primordial authority of ancient races. These curses are not merely magical effects but manifestations of the will and authority of the race that created them. Dragon's Speech belongs to this category.
Authority of Dragons
A metaphysical rule governing dragon-origin curses:
A curse spoken by a dragon can only be undone by a being possessing greater authority than the dragon itself or by the same level of dragon authority revoking it. This principle reflects the hierarchical nature of magical authority among ancient races. ‘
Creatures
Black Dragon
A legendary and extremely powerful dragon species believed to have gone extinct thousands of years ago. Master Rachel senses the aura of a Black Dragon behind Rein’s curse, indicating that the curse’s origin lies far beyond ordinary draconic magic.
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Re:Naissance