Power shifted and warped everything around it, space, silence, and expectation. I felt this warping, not from my ornate carriage or the imperial crest, but from the unspoken question in my summons. Why me? That question pulsed beneath the wheels, stares, and silence. But no one dared ask it aloud. No one in the capital ever wanted to admit ignorance.
The capital rose like a storm-carved monument, towers glistening with mana-infused glass, bridges arcing between floating courtyards, and the Sanctum of Orenhal, the oldest and highest authority untouched by empire politics, anchored to the imperial continent like a sword half-buried in flesh. It wasn't a palace but a vault, a place history had forgotten before rewriting it. Somewhere beneath its silence lay the Null Gate, the site of the trial, where they sent people the world couldn't categorize, like me.
I stepped alone from the carriage, no fanfare or escort. A masked archivist in indigo robes waited beside a black stone pillar that shimmered when I came near. He didn't introduce himself, bow, or gesture. He only gestured once, down, toward the path beneath the Sanctum. I nodded and followed.
They call it the Null Trial, but that's a misdirection. It's not a test of might, mana, or star alignment. It's quieter, darker, and more invasive. It's about disturbance. In the past two months, I did something the world noticed, even if no one else could name it. I disturbed the Veil, the world's will. It isn't conscious like a mind, but aware, reacting only to anomalies, things outside of order. When I awakened the Origin, that's what happened.
When I let the silence breathe and synchronized with something beyond elemental resonance, the Veil stirred and demanded to know why.
The stairwell spiraled deeper, its walls carved from memory ore that absorbed sound, making my thoughts feel smaller. I liked it.
At the bottom stood a sealed, silent chamber with three figures waiting. Candidates? Victims? Not like me.
One wore a brittle, sharp-edged sigil from the Empire of Kaedros, a cultivator who burned too fast and knew it. The second looked like he didn't belong, younger, pale, and unwoken, staring at the floor like it had betrayed him. The third was veiled in white silk, features hidden, but posture sharp, too still to be harmless.
None acknowledged me, which was good. I wasn't here to compete; I was here to observe.
The Gatekeeper's voice echoed, low and without direction, "Null candidates. You stand before the gate not to prove power, but to confirm disturbance."
"One stirred the Veil. The others are bait."
The boy flinched. Kaedros stepped forward, "I've done nothing to—"
"Exactly. And yet you're here. That is the question."
"You'll enter alone, remember nothing, and won't die. But you may come out changed."
I didn't flinch. This was expected. A trial designed not to judge our actions, but our nature. I stepped forward, not too fast, not too late. The gate shimmered open, black as the underside of existence, and I walked through it.
Inside the Null Gate, there was no air, no sound, no shape, only pressure like the world's thoughts pressing down, waiting to be reflected.
Who are you?
I didn't speak, didn't answer. But I thought of my first breath under the Origin & the silence, the understanding, the refusal to be explained.
The Veil pulsed around me, not in pain, but in recognition.
I saw refractions flashes of lives I hadn't lived, possibilities that weren't. My shattered hand regrew from stardust, my voice chanting laws in a bent tongue, and my body floated alone in a sky devoid of stars.
In every vision, the same silence, gravity, and center.
Then it was over. I stood in the gate chamber, it felt like thousands of years have passed in the gate but outside only minutes passed. The others waited, but the archivist watched me now my posture, breath, or presence. For the first time, he looked away in confirmation.