The Aurel Dormitory Suite was a sanctuary of faded grandeur, a place where the shadows of the past still whispered in the silver-threaded tapestries and the scent of Elara's lavender sachets fought the encroaching cold. For Alaric, it was more than a room; it was the one place in the Imperial Academy where he could allow the mask of the "Dread Son" to slip, if only by a fraction.
He sat cross-legged on the floor of his inner chamber, his eyes closed as he navigated the intricate, violet-hued nebula of his Mortal Step 9 foundation. He was tracing the "Star-Path" logic Lyra had shared, trying to find the conceptual "pivot" that would allow him to transition from the Mortal to the Awakened Path.
The air in the room was still, the only sound the rhythmic, distant pulse of the Academy's heart.
Then, the silence didn't just break. It was torn apart.
It began as a sudden, agonizing "pull" on his mana-well. It wasn't the natural draw of his Authority; it was an external, jagged force that felt like a hooked wire being dragged through his veins. The silver-inked protective runes etched into the walls flared with a desperate, dying light, then shattered into a thousand useless fragments.
The mana-lamps in the suite flickered and died, plunging the room into a thick, artificial darkness.
"What..." Alaric gasped, his breath hitching as he felt his refined Step 9 energy being siphoned out of his core. It wasn't a slow drain; it was a violent, indiscriminate theft.
He scrambled to his feet, his senses screaming a warning that was echoed by a muffled, wet thud from the adjacent room.
"Elara?"
He lunged through the doorway, his silver eyes drinking in the dim, chaotic scene.
Elara was on the floor, her body curled in a tight, shivering knot. Her skin, usually warm and vibrant, was the color of old ash, and her breath was coming in shallow, frantic gasps. Above her, a "Mana-Siphon" array—a forbidden, parasitic set of runes—was glowing with a sickly, crimson light.
The array wasn't just taking her mana; she had none to give. It was dragging the very life-force from her cells, her "mortal" energy being converted into a raw, crude fuel that was being funneled toward a large "Mana-Gem" pulsing at the center of the room.
The gem was a "Crimson Core"—the signature tool of the Crimson Society, a group of mid-tier nobles who served as the unofficial muscle for Prince Malakor's faction. They were using the Aurel suite as a "battery," indiscriminately draining the life and energy of its occupants to fuel their own cultivation.
"Elara!" Alaric dropped to his knees beside her, his hand flying to her throat. Her pulse was thready, a faint, flickering thing that seemed to be fading with every pulse of the crimson array.
The void within him, which had been a disciplined, quiet hunger for weeks, suddenly gave a roar that wasn't just a demand for power. It was a scream of protective, visceral fury.
His 21st-century mind—the man who had lived a life of quiet mediocrity and avoided conflict at all costs—was momentarily paralyzed by the sheer, casual cruelty of it. *They're killing her for a mana-gem. They're erasing a person for a fraction of a percent of cultivation.*
But the Alaric who had died and been reborn as the Hunger of House Aurel didn't hesitate.
He felt his noble pride, the ancient, blood-stained history of the Aurel lineage, surge within him. How dare they? How dare these shallow, mid-tier vultures touch what was *his*? How dare they turn his sanctuary into a slaughterhouse?
"Stay with me, Little Star," he whispered, his voice a low, vibrating growl that seemed to rattle the very floorboards.
He reached out and picked up Elara's limp hand. Her fingers were freezing, the warmth already being stolen by the siphon. As he touched her, he felt the crimson array try to latch onto him, to drag his Step 9 foundation into its insatiable maw.
The Supreme Devouring Authority didn't resist.
It didn't need to.
*Feed.*
Alaric didn't just stop the siphon; he reversed the flow. He lowered every internal barrier he had spent weeks building, letting the "Hunger" out of its cage with a single, murderous command.
The crimson array didn't just flicker; it screamed. The sickly red light was instantly overwhelmed by a flood of abyssal violet energy. The mana-gem at the center of the room, which had been pulsing with stolen life, suddenly began to crack, its contents being inhaled by the "nothingness" that was Alaric Aurel.
But Alaric didn't stop at the gem. He tracked the connection, the invisible "umbilical cord" of mana that led through the walls and into the corridor outside.
He saw them through the stone—three students from the Crimson Society, led by a boy named Valen, a sycophant of the Malakor family who was currently laughing as he watched the mana-gem fill.
"This is going to be a record-breaking harvest," Valen was saying, his hands glowing with the resonance of the array. "The Aurel trash was actually useful for something..."
His laughter died in his throat.
The crimson light in his hands didn't just fade; it turned black. The "pull" he had been managing suddenly became a "push"—a violent, overwhelming surge of "nothingness" that traveled back up the connection and slammed into his own core.
Valen let out a strangled cry, his eyes rolling back in his head as his own mana, his own life-force, and the very foundation of his cultivation were torn from his body. It wasn't a drain; it was an erasure.
His two companions fared no better. The "bite" of the siphon had become the "bite" of the void, and within seconds, the three nobles were slumped against the corridor wall, their skin grey and their eyes vacant—their "Awakened" foundations already being digested by the boy they had tried to use as a battery.
Inside the suite, the crimson array shattered into dust.
Alaric exhaled, the stolen energy of three mid-tier nobles and a high-grade mana-gem rushing into his core. It was a massive, unfiltered influx of power, a "digestion" limit that would have crippled a normal mage. But the Authority crushed it all with a single, rhythmic pulse, refining the stolen life into a pure, cold stability.
He didn't care about the breakthrough. He didn't care about the fact that he was now standing at the very precipice of the "Awakened" realm.
He only cared about the girl in his arms.
He reached out with a sliver of the refined, pure energy—not the devouring void, but the "Solar-Aurel" mana he had cultivated—and fed it back into Elara's system.
He watched as the color slowly returned to her cheeks, as her breathing stabilized and her pulse regained its steady, lavender-scented rhythm. She stirred, her amber eyes fluttering open, and when she saw Alaric's silver ones, she didn't look afraid. She just looked... tired.
"Alaric?" she whispered, her voice a ghost of itself. "Did... did the lights go out?"
"The lights are back, Little Star," Alaric replied, his voice soft but carrying a resonance that would have terrified anyone else. "Rest now. You're safe."
He laid her back on the floor, his eyes shifting to the wall where Valen and his sycophants were currently rotting in their own grey skins.
He realized then that his "quiet life" at the Academy was an illusion. He had tried to be the "hidden genius," the "disciplined second son" who grew in the dark. But the Empire didn't want him to grow. It wanted him to be a resource, a battery, or a corpse.
The choice had been made for him.
He stood up, his silver hair falling across eyes that were no longer human. He didn't just feel like a transmigrator anymore. He was the Hunger of House Aurel, and the "Siphon's Bite" had taught him one final, irrevocable lesson.
Defending wasn't enough.
In a world of predators, the only way to protect what was his was to ensure that there was nothing else left to eat.
He walked toward the door, his shadow stretching and pulling at the edges of the room. The Festival of the Solar Bloom was days away, and Alaric Aurel was done with the harvest.
He was going to be the plague.