Marcis was sobbing and blubbering while hugging Lucien, his tears soaking into the boy’s fresh bandages. "Oh, Lu, my special little angel! You tried getting that flower for your mother... you’re such a special little boy!"

  Lucien couldn't help but sigh, his small body feeling crushed under his father’s emotional weight. The situation only worsened when Adeline arrived with the soup. Seeing her husband in tears set her off again, and she joined in the bawling. They both clung to Lucien, praising him for his bravery and adventurous spirit in one breath, and then harshly chastising him for doing something as reckless as climbing a cliff in the next.

  What a drag, Lucien thought, staring blankly at the wall. It didn't help that Sebas was standing in the corner, dabbing his own eyes at the "touching" family scene. The butler’s performance was perfect—or perhaps he was actually crying for the innocence they were both pretending still existed.

  Once the crying session finally tapered off, Lucien firmly told them to stop. He insisted he was okay, and the room settled into a quieter, though still stifling, rhythm. Adeline sat on the edge of the bed and began to blow on a spoonful of onion soup, carefully feeding him.

  Marcis pulled himself together, wiping his face with a silk handkerchief. He looked over at Sebas, his expression turning uncharacteristically somber. "You know, Sebas... this accident, it must be a blessing in disguise. A sign."

  Sebas straightened up, his eyes darting to the Baron. "Sir?"

  "I’ve had a bad feeling about this deal you were setting up," Marcis admitted, his instincts flickering to life. "The more I thought about it, the more I felt we should pull back. I still think you should not go through with it."

  Sebas’s face went weary, a mask of deep, gnawing guilt. Marcis, though often distracted by his own comforts, was no fool—he noticed the change immediately.

  "What’s wrong, Sebas?" he asked, his voice laced with concern.

  Sebas rubbed the back of his neck, his gaze dropping to the floor. "You’re right, sir. Perhaps... perhaps I was too excited. My judgment was clouded by the potential gain. There will always be other opportunities."

  He snuck a quick, furtive look at Lucien. The boy was currently being "love-bombed" by Adeline, who was cooing over him as she wiped a drop of soup from his chin. Lucien caught Sebas’s eye over the rim of the spoon, his expression unreadable.

  Marcis lightened up instantly, his anxiety vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. "Exactly! Of course there is always another opportunity. No mine is worth more than our safety."

  Lucien swallowed a spoonful of the savory soup. My father might be a leecher, he mused, but his instincts are surprisingly sharp. He realized then that Marcis’s intuition might be the very reason the man had managed to survive as long as he did in the original timeline—right up until the end of the world.

  Lucien began a subtle, one-man performance, letting his eyelids flutter and his head tilt with practiced exhaustion. He gave a tiny, lingering yawn, looking up at his parents with a vulnerability that was entirely manufactured.

  "Mama... Papa... I'm so sleepy," he murmured, his voice soft and high-pitched. "Can Sebas stay and read me a bedtime story? He’s seen so much of the outside... he must have so many adventures to tell."

  Both Adeline and Marcis practically melted into puddles of affection. They cooed over him, tucking the blankets tighter around his small frame.

  "Oh, of course, my treasure," Marcis said, looking over his shoulder at the butler. "Sebas, stay with the boy. Give him a grand tale of the world. It’s the least you can do after such a frightening day."

  "I would be honored, sir," Sebas replied. He forced his lips into a strained, jagged smile that didn't reach his eyes.

  Because Adeline and Marcis were facing away, busy fussing over the pillows and smoothing the sheets, they were completely oblivious to the change in the room. They didn't see the mask of innocence slip from Lucien's face.

  The parents stood up, blew kisses toward the bed, and quietly exited the room, closing the door with a gentle click.

  The moment their backs were turned, Lucien’s eyes snapped toward Sebas. The "sleepy angel" was gone, replaced by a cold, deadly gaze that pinned the butler to the spot like a butterfly under glass. It was a silent command: Sit down. We have business.

  The silence that followed was heavy and immediate. Sebas didn't reach for a storybook. He pulled a chair closer to the bed and sat down, his hands resting on his knees, waiting for the "child" to speak.

  "Sebas," Lucien whispered, his voice a cold draft in the quiet room. "Come closer."

  He needed to map the boundaries of this new power. He needed to know if it was just a physical fluke or something that could bend the laws of magic itself. "Give me your hand."

  Sebas complied, stretching out a palm that was still calloused from the night’s work. Lucien grabbed it, wrapping his small, bandaged fingers around the butler's wrist. He squeezed with every ounce of his natural eleven-year-old strength, his face reddening with the effort.

  Sebas tilted his head, looking down at the small hand with genuine confusion. "What are you doing, Young Master?"

  "Does it hurt?" Lucien strained.

  "Does what hurt?" Sebas asked gently, his voice full of the pity that Lucien hated.

  So, naturally, I am nothing, Lucien thought. He closed his eyes and summoned the sensation of the internal scales.

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  The world began to tilt. The balance of his very existence skewed, shifting the weight of his soul away from his senses and funneling it into a single point: his grip. As his vision blurred and the ambient sounds of the manor dulled into a muffled hum, a terrifying, unnatural strength surged through his small frame.

  "Ow! Oww!" Sebas suddenly yelped, his eyes bulging. "Young Master! Why? Please—you're hurting my hand!"

  Lucien didn't let go. He poured everything into the squeeze, attempting to crush the bones. He couldn't quite manage it—the physical limitations of his young skeleton acted as a ceiling—but the fact that he could even make a trained adult warrior cry out in pain was a massive boon.

  He let go abruptly. As he did, the world righted itself, the tilt vanishing like a receding tide.

  "Why?" Sebas gasped, massaging his bruised wrist, his face a mask of bewilderment.

  "Testing my strength," Lucien said simply, his voice flat. "Now, do me another favor. Activate your sigil."

  Sebas didn't question the strange request; he was already too deep in Lucien's web to refuse. He took a breath, and the air in the room grew heavy and humid. Faint blue markings began to glow softly on his skin, and coils of liquid light—Water energy—began to spin slowly around his arms, dancing like ribbons in a current.

  Lucien beckoned the tilt again, but this time he didn't aim for strength or sight. He aimed for the essence.

  The physical reality of his room dissolved. The wood of the walls, the fabric of the bed—they weren't objects anymore; they were vibrating signatures of energy. He lost the senses of a man and gained the senses of an apex element.

  To his heightened perception, Sebas's energy wasn't just "water." It was a flowing, torrential river of life, churning with the rhythm of the butler’s heart. He could see the molecular tension of the droplets, the way the energy pulsed through Sebas’s Veins like a pressurized hydraulic system.

  Then, Lucien saw it—a tiny, microscopic leak in the flow. A point where the energy didn't circulate properly, a flaw in Sebas’s technique or perhaps a result of his Second Vein limitations. Lucien reached out with his mind, imagining himself "tilting" his very existence into that gap, plugging it with his sheer will.

  Sebas suddenly stood up in a panic, his eyes wide with shock. The glowing ribbons of water flickered and died. The hum of power in the air vanished instantly.

  "Young Master! What are you doing?" Sebas cried, his voice trembling. "My sigil... it’s failing me! I can't feel my energy!"

  Lucien let the tilt slide back to zero. He leaned back against the pillows, a cold, triumphant smile spreading across his face.

  "Just testing something," he responded.

  He had realized a terrifying truth: he couldn't just enhance himself. He could interfere with the world around him. He could silence the energy of others.

  Lucien leaned back, his mind racing. He had summarized the ability into a single, fundamental concept: Balance. He was a living set of scales. He could tilt the internal weight of his existence to his advantage, and it was becoming clear that this wasn't limited to his own muscles or senses. He could reach out and manipulate the scales of the world around him.

  He decided on one final experiment before the night was through. Instead of suppressing Sebas’s sigil, he would try the opposite. He reached out with his mind, finding that same "leak" in the flow of water mana. But this time, instead of plugging it, he pulled. He threw the weight of his focus into the gap, yanking the valve wide open.

  The effect was instantaneous and violent.

  Water came roaring out of Sebas with the force of a burst dam. Unprepared for the sudden surge, the butler couldn't contain the pressure. A massive geyser of energy-infused water erupted from his palms, slamming into the bedroom door with a thunderous CRACK and blasting it off its hinges. The flood rushed out into the hallway and surged down the stairs, soaking the carpets and walls in a drowning wave.

  Sebas stood frozen, flabbergasted, his wet hair plastered to his forehead. Lucien was equally stunned; his mind was already cataloging a hundred lethal uses for this newfound amplification.

  Then, the heavy thud of footsteps raced up the stairs. Marcis and Adeline appeared in the doorway, breathless and wide-eyed. They looked at the shattered door, the soaking hallway, and then at Sebas, whose markings were still glowing with the fading hum of his sigil.

  Marcis stared at his butler, his face blank with sheer confusion. "Sebas... what on earth are you doing?"

  Sebas opened his mouth, but no sound came out. The situation was too absurd, too impossible to explain.

  It was then that Lucien launched into another performance. "Sebas was telling me a story!" he chirped, his voice high and excited. "He was showing me how he beat those scary bandits when he traveled to the big city! Whoosh! Boom! Bang!"

  Marcis blinked, looking at his son’s animated face and then back to the dripping butler. A slow smile spread across the Baron's face as he let out a lighthearted laugh, the tension in the room evaporating.

  "Sebas, you old storyteller, you!" Marcis chuckled, shaking his head. "Look at the mess you’ve made. Honestly, getting so carried away by your own tales?"

  "You're going to have to clean all of this up, you know," Adeline added, though she was smiling too, relieved that the "explosion" was just a bit of overzealous magic.

  Sebas turned a deep, brilliant shade of red, a mix of genuine embarrassment and the lingering shock of the power surge. "I... I am deeply sorry, sir. I simply got so excited I lost myself in the moment. I will clean it up immediately!"

  He rushed out of the room to fetch cleaning supplies, his boots squelching with every step. Marcis and Adeline blew kisses to Lucien, telling him to get his rest now that the "excitement" was over, and quietly closed the broken door as best they could.

  Lucien lay in the dark, the smirk returning to his face. He had a mine, he had a servant, and he had a power that could rewrite the laws of combat. The pieces were finally on the board.

  Lucien lay in the darkness of his room, the only sound the distant, rhythmic schlop-schlop of Sebas mopping the hallway. His mind, however, was far from the quiet of the manor. He was dissecting the fundamental nature of the force he had just wielded.

  It was exactly as he suspected. He wasn't just "stronger" or "faster." He was tilting a cosmic balance. To gain that unimaginable power, he had to drain the weight from other parts of his existence. It was a zero-sum game of survival.

  He stared at his hands in the moonlight. Was this power a side effect of his soul being ripped through time and stuffed back into a younger vessel? Was it a gift—or perhaps a curse—bestowed by a force that watched from the shadows of the void? He didn't have the answers yet, and perhaps he never would.

  But a power this absolute needed a name.

  In his previous life, he had watched as an unstoppable force arrived to strip the world of its stability, plunging everything into a chaotic, one-sided slaughter. If the world was destined to lose its balance, he would be the one to even the odds. He would stand against the coming darkness by tilting the scales of reality until they bent to his will.

  "Equilibrium," he whispered to the empty room.

  The name felt right. It was a paradox—the power to create balance by being the most unbalanced force in existence. He would use it to stabilize the future he had lost, even if it meant destroying the present he currently lived in.

  He closed his eyes, the word echoing in his mind like a vow. He was no longer just a regressor; he was the anchor. He was the tilt. He was Equilibrium.