THE THRONE THAT HEAVEN FEARED

CHAPTER 3: ZERO PULSE PRODIGY

Move it, trash! You heard the Inspector!"

Rafe’s hand shoved my shoulder, but I didn't stumble. I felt like a lead weight anchored to the earth. The lightning I’d swallowed was no longer screaming; it was purring, a low-frequency vibration that made the very air around me feel heavy.

"I can walk on my own, Rafe," I said, my voice unnervingly steady.

"You’ll walk where we tell you!" Rafe barked, though I noticed he kept his distance. He didn’t try to slap me again. The memory of my grip on his wrist was still fresh in his eyes.

The courtyard was a sea of whispers as they marched me toward the center of the Academy—the Plaza of Truth. In the middle stood the Pulse Pillar, a twenty-foot obsidian monolith etched with glowing white circuitry. It was the ultimate arbiter. It didn’t just measure power; it peeled back the soul.

"Inspector Vane," Elena called out, running to keep up with our pace. "This is unnecessary! He’s a janitor. If he had power, the gate sensors would have flagged him years ago!"

"The gate sensors detect flow, Elena," Vane said, his eyes never leaving the back of my head. "What I smelled in the courtyard wasn't flow. It was a storm held in a bottle. If Cassian is hiding a core, he’s a spy. If he’s a Thorne survivor, he’s a dead man. The Pillar will settle it."

"Place your hands on the base, Cassian," Vane commanded as we reached the obsidian monolith.

I looked at the black stone. The circuitry hummed with a predatory hunger. "And if I refuse?"

"Then the turrets execute you for non-compliance," Rafe sneered, crossing his arms. "Go on, 'Lord' Cassian. Show us your empty soul. Or show us the lie you’ve been living."

I stepped forward. The crowd gathered in a tight circle, hundreds of eyes boring into my back.

Internal Voice: [WARNING: EXTERNAL SCANNER DETECTED. PROBABILITY OF EXPOSURE: 100%.]

Can I hide it? I thought frantically.

[NEGATIVE. THE PILLAR USES DISPLACEMENT MAPPING. IT WILL FIND THE LIGHTNING.]

Then what do I do?

[CONSUME. DO NOT HIDE THE VOID. EXPAND IT.]

I reached out. My palms touched the cold obsidian.

"Commencing scan!" Vane shouted.

The Pillar groaned. White light began to crawl from the base, snaking up the circuitry toward the top. Usually, for a student, the light would turn green, blue, or gold depending on their rank. For a janitor, it shouldn't even flicker.

"Look," a student whispered. "It’s... it’s not turning green."

The light wasn't rising. It was being sucked into my palms.

"What is he doing?" Rafe demanded, stepping forward. "Inspector, the Pillar is glitching!"

"Stay back!" Vane yelled, his silver staff vibrating violently. "Cassian, let go!"

"I can't!" I roared.

It was true. My hands were fused to the stone. The Void-Devouring Seal wasn't just sitting there anymore; it had turned my body into a gravitational singularity. The Pillar wasn't testing me; it was feeding me.

"His pulse!" Vane looked at his handheld monitor. "It’s still zero! How can the Pillar be drawing this much power into a zero-pulse body?"

"He’s breaking it!" Elena screamed.

The obsidian began to glow a violent, angry purple. The white lines of the circuitry turned black—darker than the stone itself. A low-pitched hum started to shake the windows of the surrounding classrooms.

"Give it back, you freak!" Rafe lunged at me, his hand crackling with a desperate spark of lightning. "You’re stealing the Academy’s energy!"

"Rafe, don't!" Vane warned.

Rafe ignored him, slamming his fist into my side. The moment he made contact, he didn't feel ribs. He felt a vacuum. His eyes went wide as the sparks on his fist were instantly inhaled into my skin. He was thrown back ten feet, hitting the pavement with a sickening thud.

"Get away from me!" I yelled, but the Pillar was now screaming.

The crystals at the top of the monolith began to spiderweb. Tiny shards of pressurized glass started to ping off the surface like shrapnel.

"The pressure!" Vane shouted, shielding his face with his robes. "The internal vacuum is too high! He’s not a cultivator—he’s a black hole!"

"Cassian, stop it! You'll blow the whole plaza!" Elena cried out.

I couldn't stop. The mechanical voice was a deafening roar in my mind now.

[CALIBRATING MEASUREMENT... ERROR.] [SOURCE DETECTED: ACADEMY POWER CORE.] [WANT. MORE. WANT.]

"The readout!" a student pointed at the floating holographic screen above the Pillar.

The numbers were spinning so fast they were a blur. 1,000... 5,000... 10,000...

"He's a Tier 5?" someone gasped.

"No, look!"

The numbers hit 99,999 and then suddenly flipped. A negative sign appeared.

-1,000. -50,000. -900,000.

"Negative values?" Vane’s voice trembled. "That’s impossible. You can't have negative energy. It’s a death-loop!"

The Pillar began to glow with a light so intense it blinded everyone in the plaza. The obsidian was no longer black; it was a translucent, vibrating mass of pure, trapped force.

"Cassian, let go or you'll die!" Vane screamed, reaching for his emergency shut-off remote.

"I told you," I gritted out through clenched teeth, the black veins now reaching all the way to my eyes. "I'm just a janitor."

CRACK.

A sound like a mountain splitting open echoed through the Academy.

The Pulse Pillar shattered.

It didn't just break; it detonated. Thousands of shards of obsidian and crystal exploded outward. The shockwave leveled the nearest statues and sent the students flying back like ragdolls.

Dust choked the air. Silence followed, heavy and suffocating.

As the haze began to settle, I remained standing in the center of the crater. My clothes were shredded, but my skin was unmarked. The base of the Pillar was nothing but a jagged stump of smoking rock.

Vane crawled to his feet, his robes torn, his face covered in gray dust. He looked at the holographic display that was still flickering in the air, projected by a broken remnant of the machine.

The screen didn't show a rank. It didn't show a number.

It was stuck in a flashing red loop.

[ERROR: DEBT DETECTED.] [VALUE: -∞] [SYSTEM FATAL ERROR: THE VOID IS HUNGRY.]

Vane looked from the screen to me, his face pale with a terror I had never seen in a high-ranking official. He looked at the way the light seemed to bend around my body, as if I were eating the very sunbeams.

"What... what are you?" Vane whispered, his staff clicking as it fell from his nerveless fingers.

I didn't answer. I couldn't. Because in the distance, the Academy’s main sirens began to wail—the sound reserved only for a Grade-S containment breach.