Ascension Of the Divine Sovereign

CHAPTER FOUR: DIVINE APTITUDE: ZERO

Two years passed in a blur and it was time for him to have his awakening, just like the others, he went for the aptitude test. The machine beeped once.

Then silence.

The examiner, a thin man with wire-rimmed glasses and a slender pointy nose, stared at the reader. Then at Chase. Then at the reader again, as though the sequence might produce a different result.

It didn't. He called his colleague over without a word, simply turning the screen. The colleague, Jared Helsinki, blonde, pale-skinned leaned in, adjusted his glasses, and went very still.

"Run it again," Helsinki said quietly.

They ran it again.

The hall had been loud ten minutes ago, all fourteen-year-olds comparing scores. Some had barely passed with fifteen aptitudes. Two kids at the back, all from power houses just like the Baltimore had a divinity level of twenty, and now it was Chase, they all knew he was from the Baltimore, even if he was from a low blood, they had expected an even greater score.

"You have zero divinity, kid."

Chase heard the words clearly. He understood each one individually. They simply refused to assemble into meaning in any order he could accept.

"Zero," he repeated.

"There must be a fault in the equipment," Helsinki muttered, already moving toward the secondary reader mounted on the far wall, the backup, reserved for disputed results. He pressed Chase's forearm against it himself, held it there, watched the screen.

The number that appeared was the same.

“It’s still zero!!” they all turn to Chase.

The room had gone completely silent. Ten was the lowest recorded value an even ten could be assigned in desk duties, back up plan and even in the healing department. Zero was a record never seen or recorded. Especially to a member from one of the founding Houses. Zero had no precedent.

"There has never been —" Helsinki started.

"I know," the examiner said.

Chase pulled his sleeve down.

He didn't remember the journey back to the mansion.

He remembered fragments, he remembered that the driver didn't speak, which meant the driver already knew, which meant everyone already knew. In the Galactic Throne, aptitude scores were institutional record.

The mansion gates opened without him pressing anything. The staff at the entrance stepped aside without greeting him. That was the first sign.

The second was the corridor.

He had walked the east corridor of the Royal Mansion his entire life. He was brought home at five years old, the bastard son of the second lord of house Baltimore. Yeah, that was how Chase Baltimore was. He remembered the first week, standing at the top of the main staircase, watching the household staff below as they went about their morning routines.

One of the senior maids had looked up, seen him, and simply looked away again. Not with hostility but with the specific indifference reserved for unworthy existence.

That had been the shape of his existence here, not cruelty exactly, but a consistent, practised invisibility. The other staff spoke around him. Meals appeared outside his door rather than at the family table for the first year. His half siblings, did hate him during his first years but after a heartful warning from the patriarch, they just let him exist but spat whenever they saw him. Noelle had been the single exception, she had simply treated him like a person, which in that household had felt radical.

He had adapted, learned to move quietly learned to ask for nothing. Learned to be unremarkable enough that the invisibility felt like peace rather than rejection.

That was finished now.

He heard it before he turned the corner, the particular hush of a conversation suspended at the sound of approaching footsteps. Two housemaids near the linen cupboard, who looked at him as he passed with expressions they didn't bother arranging into neutrality.

"Zero," one of them murmured, not quietly enough, as he passed.

"Didn't expect anything else, did you," the other replied.

In the kitchen corridor a footman turned away with a short, private laugh. On the staircase a groundskeeper descending simply stopped, let Chase pass, and watched him go with something that wasn't quite contempt and wasn't quite pity more of disgust.

As if they finally didn’t need to hold back.

Lord Augustine Baltimore's study occupied the entire north corner of the third floor. Chase knocked once and entered at the sound of the chair.

His uncle, technically his father's elder brother, Lord of Baltimore House sat behind a desk submerged in application letters, military correspondence, and the administrative weight of a noble house managing itself through a period of sustained crisis.

 Since the Second Wave, monster incursions had become quarterly events. His father, Lord Edric Baltimore, had been deployed to the front battlegrounds eighteen months ago.

He didn't look up immediately.

Chase stood in front of the desk and waited.

Augustine read to the end of whatever he was holding, set it down, and studied Chase his expression said it all. To be honest, the only reason he allowed Chase into the house hold was because he inherited the Baltimore features, white hair, silver eyes, he was a perfect copy of his father unlike the other siblings, and so he had hoped he would turn out to be just as strong as his father.

He couldn’t hide the disappointment at such a project. That was what Chase was to him. Augustine rose from his chair, clasped his hands behind his back, and walked to the window.

"The Baltimore name," his uncle muttered calmly, "has stood for six generations in this Throne, we rival the three powerful houses even when we lack Saints amongst us but we have more High knights to cover it." He paused. "We do not carry dead weight. We cannot accept such scorn amongst us."

Chase said nothing.

Augustine turned from the window. His face was void of any expression.

"During the night I have arranged a car that will take you out." His voice was the same tone he used for household logistics. "Drop the Baltimore name and leave. From now on, you and this house have nothing to do with each other."