The "Salty Keg" was no longer a tavern; it was a shooting gallery, and Tristan was the only target.
Finnegan's rage had transcended common sense.
Each bolt of white-hot light that erupted from his focus-staff was a jagged, screaming arc of 4th Circle destruction.
One blast pulverized the heavy oak bar, sending a cloud of tooth-shattering splinters through the air.
Another vaporized a rack of iron-bound ale casks, filling the room with the hissing roar of steam and the cloying, fermented scent of boiling beer.
Tristan moved.
His IQ of 100 was the only thing keeping his 1st Circle body from being charred to a cinder.
To the terrified patrons huddling under tables, it looked like Tristan was moving with the erratic luck of a frantic rabbit.
But in Tristan's mind, the world had become a grid of vectors and probability.
He saw the way Finnegan's shoulder dipped before a strike; he calculated the millisecond of delay in the focus-staff's recharge.
He didn't just run; he slid between the gaps in the carnage, his silver eyes tracking the ionization of the air.
Two meters to the left.
Duck behind the stone hearth.
Wait for the discharge.
"Hold still, you coward!" Finnegan screamed.
The elf's face was a mask of sweat and manic fury. "Stop running and die like a man of your blood!"
Tristan lunged behind a thick masonry pillar just as another beam of light melted the stones where his head had been a second before.
He was panting, his lungs burning from the acrid smoke. He looked at his hands. They were shaking.
I can't keep this up, he thought.
My Durability is only 10.
One stray spark, one lucky splash of kinetic energy, and I'm a smear on the floor.
He needed a weapon.
[ WARNING: ESCHATON LEVEL 25 DETECTED ]
Tristan didn't think twice.
"System! Summon Eschaton!"
A sound like a glass bell shattering echoed through the tavern, cutting through the roar of the fire.
The light didn't just appear in Tristan's hand; it seemed to pull itself out of the air.
This wasn't the pathetic, flickering shard he had summoned before.
The Level 25 Eschaton was a jagged, elegant blade of pure, translucent white energy, roughly the length of a gladius. It hummed with a deep, subsonic vibration that made Tristan's teeth ache.
Finnegan laughed, a shrill, hysterical sound. "Do you think more glow will save you?"
The elf leveled his staff, gathering every ounce of his mana into a singular, blinding sphere of destruction.
This was a 4th Circle "Solar Lance," a spell designed to punch through castle gates. He fired.
The beam of light was so bright it turned the tavern into a world of pure white. It moved faster than Tristan could dodge.
Instead of running, Tristan raised the Eschaton.
The moment the 4th Circle spell touched the blade of light, something impossible happened.
The Solar Lance didn't explode. It didn't deflect. It unraveled.
The white energy of Finnegan's spell hit the edge of the Eschaton and was shredded into harmless, fading sparks.
It was as if Tristan's blade wasn't made of light, but was a hole in reality that swallowed magic whole.
Finnegan's laughter died in his throat. "What... what did you do?"
Tristan didn't answer.
He felt a sudden, cold surge of predatory instinct.
He stepped out from behind the pillar, the white blade casting long, sharp shadows across his face.
For the first time, he wasn't looking for an exit. He was looking at his target.
He lunged.
With 10 Strength, he wasn't a powerhouse, but he was fast, and the Eschaton felt weightless.
He closed the distance in three long strides.
Finnegan tried to raise his kinetic shield, but Tristan's blade passed through the magical barrier as if it weren't there.
Tristan swung in a wide, horizontal arc.
Squelch.
The light of the Eschaton bit deep into Finnegan's flesh.
The elf let out a guttural, wet scream as the blade sliced through his left forearm, shearing through bone and sinew with the ease of a hot wire through wax.
Blood—bright, elven red—sprayed across Tristan's face.
Tristan didn't stop.
He raised the blade for a finishing blow, his heart hammering with a terrifying, dark adrenaline. This was it. This was the power of a Silverbrook.
CRACK.
The sound was sickeningly familiar.
The Eschaton, unable to handle the feedback of its own "Conceptual Interference," exploded into a thousand shards of fading light.
The backlash sent Tristan reeling backward, his hand scorched and empty.
Finnegan collapsed to his knees, clutching the stump of his left arm.
He stared at his hand—or where his hand used to be—lying on the floor amidst the splinters.
The shock seemed to burn away his drunkenness, replacing it with a cold, hollow vacuum of agony.
"You..." Finnegan wheezed, his voice trembling. "You mangy... gutter rat..."
He looked up at Tristan, and his eyes weren't just angry anymore.
They were void of anything but the desire for total annihilation.
He didn't need a staff.
He began to draw mana directly from the air, his remaining hand glowing with a sickly, pulsating gold light.
The tavern began to tremble.
The floorboards groaned, and the remaining glass in the windows shattered outward.
This wasn't a Solar Lance.
This was a "Mana Overload"—a suicidal release of energy that would level the building and everyone in it.
"I'll see you in hell, Silverbrook!" Finnegan roared.
"Finnegan, you idiot! Stop!"
The voice came from the ruined doorway.
A flash of emerald light streaked through the smoke.
It hit Finnegan in the back of the neck with the precision of a surgeon's needle.
The golden light in the elf's hand vanished instantly, extinguished like a candle in a gale.
Finnegan's eyes rolled back in his head, and he slumped forward into the debris, unconscious before he hit the ground.
Tristan leaned against a wall, sliding down until he hit the floor. He was shaking, his vision swimming.
Selene Brightwood stepped over the threshold, her green robes billowing around her.
She looked at the destruction—the fire, the unconscious Garrick, the ruined tavern—and then her eyes landed on Tristan.
"Well," she said, her voice uncharacteristically grim. "You certainly have a way of making an entrance, Tristan."
She walked over to the unconscious Finnegan, her gaze dropping to the floor.
She saw the severed hand. Without a word, she knelt down, picking up the limb with a practiced, clinical detachment.
She pressed it against the stump of Finnegan's arm, her hands beginning to glow with a soft, pulsing green light.
Tristan watched in a daze as the flesh began to knit.
It was a mature, direct process—the skin crawling back together, the bone fusing with an audible click, the veins reconnecting like living wires.
"I can reattach it," Selene murmured, not looking up.
"But the nerves won't be right for weeks. And when he wakes up... Tristan, he's going to be really mad. Finnegan doesn't handle losing well. Especially not to someone he considers 'trash.'"
She finished the healing, leaning back with a sigh. She looked at Tristan, and a small, tired smile touched her lips.
"I told you that you were a Silverbrook. I just didn't think you'd start proving it by dismembering our best mages."
"He tried to kill me," Tristan managed to say, his voice cracking.
"I know," Selene said, standing up.
"And trust me, the Guild will deal with him. But for now... let's get you and Garrick out of here before the Royal Guard arrives. They don't tend to ask questions before they start throwing people in the stocks."
The Moonveil Guild – Vice Captain's Office
The atmosphere in Sylvara's office was cold enough to frost the windows.
Finnegan Dewlight stood in front of her desk, his head bowed, his left arm wrapped in heavy white bandages.
He looked smaller, the arrogance drained out of him, replaced by a sullen, simmering resentment.
Sylvara Starbloom was not shouting. Her voice was a low, glacial silk that was far more terrifying.
"Fourteen casualties in the 'Salty Keg,' Finnegan," she said, her amber eyes fixed on a report.
"Three buildings damaged by the mana-shock. A permanent ban from the harbor district for all Moonveil members. And the Royal Guard is currently demanding your head on a platter for 'inciting a riot' in a time of border instability."
"He's a fake, Sylvara," Finnegan muttered, his voice thick with spite.
"He is a guest of this guild!" Sylvara snapped, her hand slamming onto the mahogany desk.
"And he is currently the only reason the King hasn't revoked our charter! Your rewards for the next six months are forfeit. You will be relegated to archive duty and manual labor in the alchemy labs. If you so much as look at Tristan Silverbrook again, I will personally strip you of your Circle and cast you out."
Finnegan's jaw tightened.
He looked up, his eyes flashing with a desperate, petty need to strike back.
"You're protecting him because you're soft," Finnegan hissed.
"Because Selene told me what happened. She told me all about his 'stamina.' About his... 'big tool.' You're all just enamored by what's between his legs instead of what's in his head."
The silence that followed was absolute.
Sylvara's expression didn't change, but a faint, unmistakable flush of pink crept up her pale elven ears.
She stared at Finnegan, her amber eyes widening for a fraction of a second in pure, unadulterated shock.
"She... she said what?" Sylvara whispered, her voice barely audible.
"Oh, don't play the saint," Finnegan sneered, emboldened by her reaction.
"Selene was bragging about it at the 'Lantern.' Said he was a masterpiece of anatomy. Said he exceeded all her 'expectations.' You're all just waiting for your turn with the legendary Silverbrook, aren't you?"
Sylvara's hand trembled slightly as she reached for her tea, but she stopped herself.
She cleared her throat, her face returning to its glacial mask, though the flush on her ears remained.
"Get out, Finnegan," she said, her voice shaking with a mix of fury and profound embarrassment.
"Get out before I decide that manual labor is too good for you."
Finnegan turned and stormed out, the door slamming behind him.
Sylvara sat in the silence, her mind reeling.
She thought of Tristan—the quiet, silver-haired boy with the panicked eyes and the abysmal mana.
She thought of the way he had looked at her in the infirmary.
A masterpiece of anatomy?
She closed her eyes, a sudden, vivid image of Tristan's muscular frame flashing through her mind.
She shook her head, trying to banish the thought, but it lingered, a strange, warm weight in the pit of her stomach.
"Selene," Sylvara whispered to the empty room, her face heating up again. "What on earth have you been doing?"