2025-07-09 18:15:13Kai hadn’t slept.
Not after the shadow. Not after the voice.
He lay awake for hours, hand pressed to his chest where the mark still pulsed like a second heartbeat,steady, quiet, ominous. By the time the first rays of dawn kissed the eastern spires of Blacksteel, he was already out of bed, boots crunching against gravel as he stormed across the Academy grounds.
This time, he didn’t knock.
He shoved open the wooden doors of the sealed wing.
“Riven!” His voice echoed through the stone corridor like a crack of thunder. “You said the lock is cracking? Then tell me what’s inside it!”
The blind man didn’t flinch. He was already sitting cross-legged, as if he’d been waiting all night.
“It has begun,” Riven said calmly.
Kai’s hands curled into fists. “Don’t give me riddles. A shadow came into my room last night. It spoke. It knew my name. You said I’m a vessel,for what, exactly?!”
Riven turned his head slowly. Though his eyes were milk-white, they locked onto Kai like they could see straight through his soul.
“You felt it, didn’t you?” he asked softly. “The pressure in your blood. The way your body strained to contain it. The… hunger. Like something inside you wanted out.”
Kai’s breath caught. His jaw tightened.
“Answer Me.”
For the first time, Riven stood. His movements were slow but deliberate, as if time obeyed his rhythm, not the other way around.
“Very well,” the old man said. “But words alone will not be enough.”
He gestured toward a glowing circle etched into the stone floor. Runes danced faintly around it, flickering purple like dying stars.
“Step inside.”
Kai’s eyes narrowed. “What is this?”
“A vision seal,” Riven replied. “I can’t force the truth into you… but I can let you glimpse its edges.”
Kai hesitated. His heart thundered against his ribs. But he stepped forward.
The runes flared the moment his boots crossed the line.
Everything went black.
He floated in nothingness.
No ground. No sky. Just void.
A shape emerged from the dark. Not a man. Not a beast. Something vast. Chained. Bleeding radiant black light that pulsed like a star in agony.
Riven’s voice echoed inside the black:
“The Void is not evil. It is older. Older than mana, older than light. Before flame. Before breath. Before time… there was the… Nothing. And the Nothing knew your name.”
Kai fell backward out of the seal, landing hard on the cold floor.
He gasped, lungs straining. Sweat clung to his skin. His pulse roared in his ears.
“That energy…” he panted. “In the duel… when I moved. It felt just like that.”
Riven stood over him, nodding solemnly. “You didn’t summon it. It recognized you.”
Kai pushed himself up. “Recognized me?”
“That was Void Essence.”
Kai froze. “Void what?”
“Forbidden energy,” Riven said. “Not lost,erased. Locked away centuries ago. The Council purged every scroll, every rune, every practitioner.”
“But why?” Kai demanded. “If it’s not evil,why erase it?”
“Because they couldn’t control it,” Riven whispered. “Because it’s older than their laws. And they feared what they couldn’t bind.”
Kai’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Then how is it inside me?”
Riven didn’t answer immediately. When he finally spoke, his voice was low.
“Because someone put it there.”
The words hit like ice.
Kai’s blood went cold. “Who would do that?”
Riven’s expression was unreadable. “Someone who believed the world would one day need you… or feared what would happen if it didn’t.”
Beneath Blacksteel Tower, in a hidden archive sealed by bloodline glyphs, another answer stirred.
Jin Oroku stood alone, shadows pooling around him as he accessed the sealed console. Ancient runes glowed faintly across the surface. Most students didn’t even know the vault existed,let alone how to bypass the failsafes.
But Jin wasn’t most students.
He whispered a command phrase,his family’s crest embedded in the code,and the lock clicked open.
Subject File: VO-X173
Status: Erased from Public Record
Name: Talia Arclight
Designation: Voidbearer
Threat Level: Omega
Note: Terminated. Potential vessel born prior to extraction. Chain Status: Unstable.
Jin stared at the file, lips tightening.
“Arclight…”
He scrolled.
A photo appeared. Grainy. Burned at the corners.
A woman,mid-sprint,running through flames, clutching something tight in her hand.
His breath caught.
“That’s… him.”
He downloaded the file onto a glyph-crystal and slipped it into his coat.
Then he smiled.
Back above, Kai stood alone in one of the eastern training grounds.
He wasn’t supposed to be there,students weren’t allowed to use the arena without supervision, especially not after what happened during the duel.
But he had to know.
Was it real?
Sweat dripped from his brow as he exhaled, facing the reinforced dummies lined up like soldiers.
“Okay…” he whispered. “Once more.”
He closed his eyes.
Not like a mystic. Not toward mana. Not into the body.
Deeper.
Into the part of himself he never dared touch.
There it was.
Pressure.
Whispers.
Let me move. Just once more. I will protect you.
He clenched his fists. “I’m not scared of you.”
He let go.
The air screamed.
Black tendrils exploded from his back like wings made of void. They lashed across the arena like lightning. The ground cracked, groaned, and,
BOOM!
One of the reinforced dummies disintegrated into ash without so much as a touch.
Kai’s eyes widened. “That wasn’t,”
The energy surged again. Faster. Wilder.
“No,stop,!”
The walls cracked. Glyphs along the ceiling sparked and burned out.
The arena shook.
And then,
KRRAAACK,
The ground split.
The entire training chamber,a structure designed to withstand firestorms,collapsed inward as a wave of black energy rolled through it like a living storm.
Across the Academy, students screamed. Instructors ran toward the explosion.
Far, far away,beneath the capital,something ancient stirred.
A Sentinel.
Hidden for centuries beneath the sea. Sealed in stone and myth.
Its eyes lit up.
Runes across its chest flared.
Chains groaned.
For the first time in over two hundred years, it felt the Void awaken.
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010
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
009
Kai burst into Seria’s room, chest heaving, fingers curled tight around the warning note.Empty.No sign of a struggle. No blood. No overturned furniture.Just stillness.And a glowing glyph on the floor , soft, silver, pulsing like a held breath.“Seria?” he whispered.No answer.He crouched slowly, fingers hovering over the strange rune. It thrummed, a faint buzz rising into his bones. The second his skin touched it,FLASH.The room disappeared.He blinked.Now standing inside a circular chamber lit by floating candles, he spun around. Shelves lined with old books and glass vials stretched toward the domed ceiling. Shadows curled along the edges, curling like smoke.And then,Footsteps.She stepped out from behind a bookshelf.Seria.Alive.But her face was wrong. Pale. Ashen. Her lips trembled, and her eyes,red, wet, hollow.“Kai…” Her voice cracked. “You came.”His breath caught. “You’re safe…”Relief hit him,sharp, fast,but it didn’t last.She wasn’t looking at him.Not directly.
008
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
007
Another student was missing.Kai sat on the academy rooftop, legs dangling over the edge as dusk swallowed the horizon. His eyes weren’t on the sky though they were fixed on the darkened window of Dorm 5C. Malric’s window. The curtains hadn’t moved in two days.“Transferred,” the headmaster said this morning.Same word. Same lie.“Transferred to Obsidian Campus for advanced elemental studies,” they said with those fake smiles, like they’d rehearsed it. Like anyone ever came back from Obsidian.Kai chewed the inside of his cheek.That made four students now.Four gone without goodbyes, without luggage, without even a pulse in the rumor mill.And no one was talking about it.Except Seria.“Did you find anything?” she asked softly behind him. She was always soft-spoken, but lately, her voice sounded thinner stretched, like a thread pulled too tight.Kai shook his head. “No bags. No packed uniforms. Just a bloodstain near Malric’s sparring locker. It was half-scrubbed, like someone tried
006
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
005
Kai hadn’t slept.Not after the shadow. Not after the voice.He lay awake for hours, hand pressed to his chest where the mark still pulsed like a second heartbeat,steady, quiet, ominous. By the time the first rays of dawn kissed the eastern spires of Blacksteel, he was already out of bed, boots crunching against gravel as he stormed across the Academy grounds.This time, he didn’t knock.He shoved open the wooden doors of the sealed wing.“Riven!” His voice echoed through the stone corridor like a crack of thunder. “You said the lock is cracking? Then tell me what’s inside it!”The blind man didn’t flinch. He was already sitting cross-legged, as if he’d been waiting all night.“It has begun,” Riven said calmly.Kai’s hands curled into fists. “Don’t give me riddles. A shadow came into my room last night. It spoke. It knew my name. You said I’m a vessel,for what, exactly?!”Riven turned his head slowly. Though his eyes were milk-white, they locked onto Kai like they could see straight t
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