The golden doors of the Bourbon Grand Ballroom were twenty feet high. They were carved from white oak and inlaid with real silver that shimmered under the floating magical lights. For most students at the Academy, these doors represented their future—a world of power, high-society parties, and the ruling of nations. For Adam Cook, these doors felt like the entrance to a cage.Adam stood at the edge of the room. He felt out of place, and he knew he looked out of place. His suit was a dark navy blue, but it was three years old. The sleeves were a bit too short, showing his bony wrists, and the fabric was thick and cheap compared to the silk and velvet worn by everyone else.His hands were hidden in his pockets. They were rough hands. They were the hands of a boy who spent his mornings hauling heavy crates at the docks and his nights scrubbing floors in the Academy’s alchemy labs. He did all of this for one reason.His eyes searched the crowded room, darting past sons of dukes and daug

The rain did not stop, but for Adam Cook, the sound of the water hitting the pavement suddenly faded into a hum. The cold mud against his cheek vanished. The smell of the dirty alleyway was gone.One moment, he was lying in the dirt, a broken boy with a wine-stained suit. Next, he was floating.He was in a place that didn't have a floor or a ceiling. It was an endless, black space. But it wasn't empty. Thousands of tiny, violet lines of light moved through the dark like a giant spiderweb. They pulsed. They looked like the veins of a god."Am I dead?" Adam whispered. His voice didn't echo. It just sat in the air.[Negative. Integration in progress]The voice came from inside his bones. It wasn't a sound he heard with his ears. It was a vibration that started in his teeth and moved down to his toes. It was a woman’s voice—cold, beautiful, and as sharp as a jagged piece of ice."Who are you?" Adam asked, looking around the darkness. "Where are you?"[I am the Eternal Sovereign System]

The sun rose over Bourbon Academy, but the light did not feel warm to Adam Cook. He woke up on the thin, straw mattress in his tiny servant’s room. The room was barely a closet, tucked away in the basement of the boys' dormitory. It smelled of damp stone and old dust.Usually, Adam woke up with a heavy heart, thinking about the chores he had to do. But today was different.When he opened his eyes, the world was not just gray and brown. Floating in front of his face was a glowing purple screen.[Time Remaining: 68 Hours, 12 Minutes.][Health: 45/100 (Recovering)][Status: Void Vessel Initialized.]Adam sat up. He looked at his hands. They weren't shaking anymore. Last night, he had been a broken boy in a dark alley. Now, he felt like he was plugged into a lightning bolt.He looked at the wooden door of his room. To his normal eyes, it was just old wood. But as he focused, a layer of shimmering light appeared over his vision. He saw thin, glowing blue lines running through the door.[O

One moment, Adam was standing in the Great Library, surrounded by the smell of old paper and the gasps of shocked students. The next, his stomach felt like it was being twisted into a knot. His vision blurred into a swirl of white and deep indigo. The sound of the library, the whispers, the shuffling feet, was replaced by a roar of wind so loud it hurt his ears.THUMP.Adam hit a hard, cold floor. He fell onto his hands and knees. The air here was thin. It was so cold that every breath he took felt like he was swallowing needles.He looked up, gasping. He wasn't in the library anymore. He was in a circular room at the very top of a tower. There were no walls made of stone here; instead, the walls were made of thick, translucent ice. Through the ice, he could see the gray clouds of the storm outside. The room was filled with floating crystals that hummed with a low, blue light. In the center of the room was a large desk covered in scrolls, and behind it stood Catherine Cook.She di

The heat from High Inquisitor Malphas’s hand felt like a branding iron against Adam’s skin. The golden light coming from the Inquisitor’s shield was so bright that even with his eyes closed, Adam saw nothing but a searing, painful red.Inside his body, a war was raging. The black smoke he had sucked out of Catherine’s chest was not sitting still. It felt like a thousand angry wasps were trapped in his stomach, trying to sting their way out. His veins felt like they were filled with crushed ice and battery acid. Every second he kept his eyes closed was a second he spent fighting the urge to scream."I will not ask you again, boy," Malphas growled. His voice was deep and heavy, like the sound of large stones being ground together. "Open your eyes. If your soul is pure, the light of the Sun will not harm you. If you are hiding the rot of the Void, you will be blinded. It is a simple choice."[Warning! Warning!][Void Capacity: 99.9%][Internal Pressure: Critical.][System Note: You can