Kai woke up cold and damp.He wasn’t in his bed. Hell, he wasn’t even in a room.Instead, he was lying on the edge of the slum ruins, half-buried beneath someone’s broken fish crate, the smell of brine and rotting scales clinging to his clothes. That’s because he’s roof collapsed in the middle of the night and he had to leave in the middle of the night. A torn tarp fluttered over him like a cheap burial shroud. When he sat up, his back screamed and his ribs pulsed like bruised drums.The sunrise hadn’t fully broken yet. Only slivers of orange kissed the rusted rooftops and cracked mud paths of Ironvale’s outer ring. Sleepy merchants dragged their carts past him, paying him no attention. Children fought over a rotten apple a few feet away. It was the same as yesterday. The same as every day.Except it wasn’t.Kai’s hand drifted to his chest. His fingers touched raw skin,just below the collarbone. There, where the dream had burned him, something still throbbed.A mark.Faint. Webbed li

The rumor spread before sunrise.By the time the first bell rang at Blacksteel Academy, everyone had heard it:The Null boy shattered a ranked student’s weapon. Without touching it.“Used a spirit coin, I swear. One of those cursed relics,” someone said near the mess hall.“Bullshit. I heard he channeled a void wraith. Saw it with my own eyes,” a boy whispered too loudly near the eastern dorm.“Didn’t lift a finger,” another chimed in. “Just stared,and boom.”No one knew the truth.Not even Kai.He sat at the edge of his bunk, hunched over, staring at his right hand like it was foreign.“What did I do…” he muttered, flexing his fingers. “What even was that?”The mark on his chest hadn’t pulsed since the fight, but it was still there,like an eye carved into his skin, waiting.Still.Watching.Waiting.“The Void stirs…”The voice. That same impossible whisper that came with the coin. It echoed in the back of his mind like a curse that wouldn’t leave.Kai clenched his fist. His fingers s

The silence in the Council chamber was so sharp it could’ve carved through bone.Kai stood at the center of the obsidian circle, the weight of every stare pinning him down like iron chains. Twelve crimson-robed mystics loomed above him, each seated on thrones sculpted from jagged black stone. Some wore literal masks,iron, bone, glass. Others wore expressions far worse.No warmth.No welcome.Just scrutiny.The air felt thin. Too thin. His lungs fought for breath.“Explain,” Councilor Dareth growled. His voice scraped like gravel in a blade sharpener. “You shattered a Class-Five training chamber. No enchantments. No runes. No focus seals. What, precisely, did you invoke?”Kai’s throat worked, but the words tangled.“I didn’t…” he started, then stopped.What was the point of lying?He forced himself to meet their eyes. “I don’t know.”Councilor Mireya leaned forward, emerald irises glowing like cold flame. “You don’t know? Are we to believe you stumbled into a destabilization wave capab

The tunnel collapsed behind them in a roar of stone and fire.Kai and Seria were flung into the forest clearing, landing hard as a shockwave rippled through the trees. Leaves scattered into the air like birds taking flight, and dirt rained from the sky.Kai choked, coughing violently as the air turned to ash in his lungs. “Seria… you okay?”Seria nodded, shaky and pale. “That… that wasn’t just magic. That thing… it wore your face, Kai.”He didn’t answer.His eyes stayed fixed on his trembling hands,fingers curled, knuckles white, veins faintly pulsing.Not from fear.From something deeper. Rage. Shame. Power.He’d felt the pull again. Deep in the ruins,when the shadow whispered, when the air turned black. It had called to him. Tempted him.And he’d run.Just like his mother had all those years ago.“I could’ve stopped it,” he muttered.“No,” Seria said gently. “You chose not to lose yourself.”He turned away.But the worst part wasn’t the shadow.It was what it meant: Jin knew. Faen k

Kai opened his eyes to darkness.Not the kind that came with night or shadows. This was weight. This was a silence that pressed against the skull, dense, suffocating. The kind of dark that breathed.He sat up slowly, his muscles aching. His mouth tasted like ash and metal. No sign of the candlelit chamber. No sign of Seria. Just cold stone beneath him and a strange pulse in the air, steady like a heartbeat.He wasn’t alone.“Kai,” came the voice. Smooth. Too smooth. Familiar. Wrong.He stood. “Who’s there?”A faint light glowed behind him. He turned and the voice was suddenly behind him again.“You saved her. Now who will save you?”He lunged toward the sound but a hand shot out of the black and grabbed his wrist. It wasn’t solid. It felt like fog and ice and bone all at once.Then “Enough,” barked a voice. Rough. Grounded. Real.The darkness peeled away like smoke blown from a flame. Kai blinked as shapes formed. Bookshelves. Braziers. Carved runes.Riven.The old man stood before h