The Anomaly's Path

AN:

Hey everyone, Quick note about the Chapter title. I realized the original title didn’t quite fit the tone and content of this Chapter, so I’ve changed it.

_

The doors of the lecture hall swung shut with a quiet thud, cutting off the last sounds of the students leaving. Inside, the huge room went completely silent. Sunlight came through the tall arched windows, lighting up dust floating in the air.

Roan stayed standing near his desk in the upper row, his hands shoved deep into his trouser pockets. The lazy smirk he usually wore had faded into a blank, unreadable mask. Down at the front of the hall, Professor Lorien quietly gathered her lecture notes, stacking them neatly without looking up.

”You can drop the tragic act, Roan...” Lorien said softly, her cold, melodic voice carrying easily across the empty room. ”The others are already halfway down the hall.”

Roan let out a short, quiet breath through his nose and ran a hand through his hair as he slowly walked down the steps. ”...I wasn’t acting though. You know how much I hate sitting through hours just for studies, Aunt Lorien. I feel sleepy whenever I try to study.”

”It is Professor Lorien while we are on academy grounds,” she corrected smoothly, finally turning her sharp eyes toward him. She leaned back against her desk and crossed her arms over her chest. ”And about being sleepy? That’s exactly what you did. You spent the entire second half of the lecture leaning back in your chair with your eyes closed.”

”Was I? Come on, can’t you spare your nephew? It’s not like this theory will help me much anyway,” Roan offered with a faint twitch of his lips.

”...”

Lorien didn’t laugh.

She watched her nephew with a calm gaze that stripped away his casual act piece by piece. As an elder of the Elven Court and a strategist, she knew the boy better than almost anyone in the academy.

She knew the terrifying size of his raw talent... and she knew the stubborn, silent wall he had built around himself.

”Your mother sent a letter yesterday,” Lorien said, her tone shifting into something heavier. ”The High Council is restless. The Gate activity along the southern border is getting worse, and the King remains secluded within the core of the World Tree.”

At the mention of his father, Roan’s eyes flickered. A quick chill passed over them before he looked away.

”The elders are asking questions again,” Lorien continued quietly, breaking his silence.

”They wonder why the Crown Prince of the Sol-Valis bloodline relies only on human spear arts and physical training. They wonder why you refuse to use your affinity. Some of them think you are afraid. You already know how much stronger you would become if you actually used it.”

A quiet, dry laugh escaped Roan’s throat. ”Hah. Let the old leeches wonder. If those bastards at the Council really want to inspect my training, they can come down here themselves and take a spear up their asses. I’m sure that’ll clear their heads.”

”Roan.” Lorien’s voice grew stern, a sharp edge entering her words.

”This isn’t a joke. You are a Master-Mid ranker, yes. Your spear speed is unmatched among your peers, and your combat instincts are sharp. But when you face a stronger opponent. like a Grandmaster or a Transcendent, when you stand inside an opponent’s Arcane Realm or a Soul Dominion, your physical strength alone will not save you.”

She stepped forward, her eyes locking onto his.

”Sure, you can use raw Will to resist a domain’s pressure for a little while. You can force your way through an enemy’s intent for a few short moments on pure grit. But it is temporary. A bandage on an open wound. Without a domain of your own, you will eventually be crushed under the weight of their law. The world is breaking, Roan. The demons, the cults, the anomalies... when a real threat comes for you, they will not spare you just because you don’t have a Soul Dominion.”

”I know how Soul Dominions work. I can’t resist them for long with just my will, Professor,” Roan said, his voice dropping lower, losing its playful warmth.

”Then why?” Lorien pressed, taking a slow step toward him. ”Why do you keep fighting with one hand tied behind your back? Is it pride? Do you really believe you can bypass the laws of power just because you refuse to accept them? Or are you trying to prove that you don’t need an affinity just because your father didn’t need a domain? Roan, you don’t have to be like your fath—”

”I am not trying to be my father.” Roan cut her off, his voice flat.

The air in the room instantly grew heavy. A sharp, crushing pressure flared from Roan’s body, not mana, but suffocating intent. The temperature in the room seemed to drop in an instant as his eyes flashed with cold rage.

”Do not bring my father into this,” Roan said quietly, every word deliberate and sharp.

In the Elf Domain, King Thandril Sol-Valis was not just a ruler.

He was a living force of nature, a Sovereign who had reached the absolute top of the world without ever showing a Soul Dominion. He didn’t need one. His connection to the World Tree was so strong that the whole kingdom worked as his domain

. Every root, every leaf, every breath of wind inside his borders answered to his command. Inside his borders, he was basically a god.

Roan knew the court whispered about it all the time.

They looked at the King, a strong, unyielding pillar connected to the earth, and then they looked at his son. A Crown Prince born with an SSS-rank core, an Origin-rank path, and an affinity that had not appeared in the royal bloodline for thousands of years.

Time.

While his twin sister, Lyssaria, had inherited their father’s World Tree affinity, the gentle, life-giving power of growth and healing, Roan had been born with something completely alien. He was the odd one in the royal family.

A warrior born with the most broken power in existence, living in the shadow of a father who ruled an entire domain through raw, unchanging presence.

”I know what I am,” Roan continued, his voice dangerously low. ”I know I will never be Thandril Sol-Valis. That man doesn’t need a domain because he became the land itself. I’m not living in his shadow, and I’m certainly not trying to prove a point to a bunch of old elders who seem to forget their place.”

Lorien didn’t flinch under his pressure. She just stood her ground, watching him with calm, steady eyes. ”Then give me an answer that makes sense, Roan. Because from where I stand, you are wasting a gift that the entire world would go to war to possess.”

Roan held her gaze for a long, suffocating moment before the sharp pressure around him dissipated. He closed his eyes, letting out a heavy, tired sigh, and rubbed the back of his neck.

A gift? he thought bitterly to himself. If only they knew.

They thought it was just a simple, broken power. They thought time manipulation was like throwing a fireball or summoning a lightning bolt, a tap you turned on, a wave of power you let loose to dominate a battlefield.

They didn’t understand the price. They didn’t know what happened to his mind every time he touched that thread. Power never came free in this world, and the Time affinity demanded a toll that bordered on psychological torture.

It wasn’t a physical curse or a flaw in his core. It was simpler and far more terrifying than that.

The elders and his aunt thought he had never even tried to master his affinity, but that wasn’t true at all. As a kid, driven by curiosity and his own monstrous potential, he had experimented with it in secret dozens of times.

...And the memory of that terrible recoil was something he still remembered clearly — a scar burned into his very soul.

His mind, like any living mind, human or elven, was built to process reality in a straight, steady stream. Second by second. Moment by moment. But the moment Roan touched his Time affinity, that straight line shattered.

The main side effect was that his senses and his mind fell out of sync.

When he used it in combat to dodge a blade or land a strike, the world around him froze into dead stillness. To anyone watching, Roan moved with godlike, blinding speed, a blur that appeared behind his opponent in a fraction of a millisecond.

But the mental recoil on his brain was horrific. That fraction of a millisecond in the real world stretched into days inside his head.

Weeks of suffocating, agonizing silence...

He was forced to live inside the cold, frozen prison of his own mind, trapped in a motionless void where no sound existed, where no air moved, where he was completely alone with his thoughts for what felt like forever, just to deliver a single strike.

Every time he overused it, he came out of the fight mentally broken, feeling detached from reality. Less like a living, breathing person and more like a ghost floating outside of time itself. And then there was the memory clutter, the leftover mess from messing with time.

Whenever he slowed or rewound moments to test outcomes or predict where things would go, his brain was forced to store multiple versions of events that reality had thrown away.

Ghost timelines. False memories. Even as a child, he would wake up the morning after practicing, unable to tell whether he had actually shared a meal with Lyssaria or if it was just a timeline he had erased during training.

That was the true side effect of overusing his affinity: slow, permanent damage to his mind.

He was terrified that if he relied on it the way the elders wanted him to, he would eventually lose his mind completely. He would drown in a sea of fake memories and endless stillness until he forgot who he truly was.

He didn’t refuse to use it out of laziness or arrogance. He picked up the spear because steel was real. Blood was real. The sweat, the pain, the physical exhaustion of a fight kept him anchored in the present. It reminded him that he was alive.

Others might call him a foolish, arrogant prince who was wasting his divine talent. They could call him a coward or a slacker. He didn’t care. Being called a lazy prodigy was infinitely better than losing his mind to a broken power.

He would use it if the worst happened, if Lyssaria’s life was on the line, if his friends were about to die, if there was no other choice left in the universe. But until that day came, he would rely on his own muscle, his own spear, and his own blood.

”...There are things about this power you don’t understand, Professor,” Roan said softly, his voice remarkably calm now. ”Power always comes with a price. And some prices are too steep to pay unless the world is ending.”

Lorien observed him silently. The anger in his eyes had faded, replaced by a deep, quiet exhaustion.

I pushed too far, she thought quietly to herself.

It was easy to look at his monstrous potential and forget the child who had once practiced until his palms bled. She was his aunt, not just an instructor, not just a court elder. She had no right to decide his fate or force him onto a path that would break his mind. That choice belonged to him.

She let out a small, quiet sigh, the tension in her shoulders relaxing slightly.

”...We will talk some other time,” Lorien said, her tone softening, carrying a rare, real warmth. ”Go on. Get out of here before I find another excuse to keep you.”

A faint, familiar smirk slowly pulled at the corner of Roan’s lips. He didn’t say another word. He just gave her a short, respectful nod before turning on his heel.

Lorien watched the doors swing shut behind him. The hall returned to its quiet, cold stillness. She stood alone at the front of the room for a long moment, staring at the empty doorway where her nephew had just stood.

”He’s a stubborn boy,” she murmured under her breath. A faint, almost invisible smile touched her lips before her expression hardened back into her usual noble calm. ”...Just like his mother.”