The abandoned wing of the Academy was a place of profound and unsettling stillness. It was not the peaceful silence of the Athenaeum, but a dead, oppressive quiet that seemed to leech the very sound from the air. The ornate marble walls were stained a dull, lifeless grey, and the air was cold and sterile, devoid of the familiar scent of dust and age. It was, as Lyra had described, an empty place—a conceptual vacuum.
Kyan moved through the derelict hallways, a ghost in a tomb. His woven echo of Unseen and Silence was his only shield. He could feel the passive effect of the Silent Heart around him, a constant, gentle pressure that sought to unravel his power. It was like wading through thick, invisible molasses that tugged at his soul. Maintaining his echoes here required ten times the normal effort.
He followed the feeling of "emptiness" to its source: a large, unadorned iron door at the end of the main corridor. There were no visible locks, no runic wards. There was no need. The door itself radiated such a powerful aura of negation that it repelled any sanctioned magic. No Imperial mage could have opened it.
But Kyan was not an Imperial mage.
He knew he couldn't force the door. Any aggressive echo would be instantly nullified. He had to use a key that the lock was not designed to recognize. He reached out with his mind, not his hand, and recalled the subtlest, most fundamental concept he could think of: the echo of Passage. It was not the concept of breaking or opening, but the simple, undeniable memory of one space transitioning into another.
He pressed his palm against the cold iron. He did not push. He simply willed himself to be on the other side. For a heart-stopping moment, there was a terrible resistance as the negation field tried to unmake his echo. His mind screamed in silent agony. It was a battle of concepts: the absolute law of Passage versus the absolute law of Negation.
And then, with the Silent Stone in his pocket acting as an anchor for his will, his concept won. He did not pass through the door; for an infinitesimal second, the space he occupied and the space on the other side of the door became the same. He found himself standing inside the sanctum, the iron door still sealed shut behind him. He had not opened it; he had simply ignored its existence.
The room was circular and surprisingly small. The walls were made of polished obsidian that seemed to drink the very light, making the chamber feel both claustrophobic and infinite. In the exact center of the floor, floating a foot above a complex, silver-inlaid diagram, was a perfect, black crystal sphere the size of a man's heart.
The Silent Heart.
It did not radiate darkness; it radiated absence. It was the source of the oppressive stillness, the anchor for Valerius's power. It was a conceptual engine, constantly consuming the ambient magical energy of the Academy, converting it into a field of pure negation.
Kyan could feel its power pulling at him, trying to separate him from his echoes, to render him a powerless, mundane boy. He had to act quickly.
Lyra had told him to disrupt it. His first instinct was to use the Void Edge, to unmake it. But he hesitated. The thought of unleashing the full power of Absence in a place that was already a monument to negation felt incredibly dangerous, like trying to put out a fire with a bomb. It could create a paradoxical reaction, a conceptual implosion that might wipe the entire Academy off the map.
He needed a different approach. Not destruction, but subversion. If the Heart was a consuming mouth, he would give it something it could not digest.
He walked to the edge of the silver diagram, the nullifying pressure growing with every step. He reached into his pocket and took out his half of the sympathetic stone, the simple piece of granite that was his link to Lyra.
He focused his will, not on a grand, powerful echo, but on the most fundamental one he had ever recalled, the very first concept that had truly awakened his power inside the Whispering Fog.
He recalled the echo of Sturdiness.
But he didn't channel it into himself. He poured it, with every ounce of his will, into the small piece of granite in his hand. He reinforced its conceptual reality, its memory of being solid, unyielding, and fundamentally present. He filled it with the absolute, unshakable truth of its own existence.
Then, with a simple flick of his wrist, he tossed the small, conceptually-charged stone into the field and onto the surface of the Silent Heart.
The effect was immediate and catastrophic.
The Silent Heart's function was to unmake, to negate, to turn things into nothing. But it had just been fed a piece of reality that screamed, on a conceptual level, "I AM." It was trying to consume an object whose very essence was now pure, weaponized stubbornness.
It was like a machine being fed an indigestible gear.
The Heart began to shudder violently. The smooth, silent hum of the chamber was replaced by a discordant, grinding shriek—not a physical sound, but a psychic one. The obsidian walls flickered as the negation field fluctuated wildly. The black crystal sphere began to glow with a faint, angry red light, like a dying coal being forced to burn too hot.
The machine was breaking.
Kyan felt the oppressive field around him shatter. It was like being released from a crushing weight, and the sudden influx of ambient energy made him feel light-headed. He had done it.
Now!
Lyra's mental voice, no longer a faint whisper but a clear, powerful command, surged into his mind.
A deep, grinding groan echoed from far below his feet. The prison was weakening.
But Kyan's victory was short-lived. A piercing, psychic shriek of pure, unadulterated fury ripped through the Academy, originating from the highest point in the city—the Spire of Divinity.
Valerius.
His ritual was interrupted. He had felt the violation of his sanctum, the breaking of his Heart. And he was coming back.
Kyan didn't need Lyra to tell him to run. He turned and threw himself at the door, using the same Passage echo to phase through it just as a wave of vengeful, focused Negation slammed into it from the outside. The backlash threw him across the derelict hallway.
He scrambled to his feet. He could feel Valerius approaching, not with the speed of a physical man, but with the terrifying speed of a conceptual jump. The Inquisitor wasn't running back; he was projecting his very presence through the Academy's network of shadows.
Kyan fled through the abandoned wing, his heart hammering in his chest. He could hear the Inquisitor's whispered voice behind him, no longer lipless but seeming to come from every shadow, every corner.
"Heretic... Weed... You have touched the sacred... you will be pruned down to your very soul..."
Kyan burst out of the abandoned wing and into the moonless grounds of the Academy. He didn't dare use Unseen; he knew Valerius would be looking for a conceptual signature. He relied on pure, physical stealth, darting between manicured hedges and ornamental statues.
He had to get back to his room, back to his illusion of mediocrity, before Valerius could pinpoint him.
He was halfway across the main courtyard when a shadow detached itself from the base of a large statue and solidified into the gaunt, crimson-robed form of the Inquisitor.
There was no escape.
Valerius's blindfolded face was turned towards him, and Kyan felt the full, focused weight of his Domain of Negation crash down upon him. It was a suffocating, soul-crushing force. The very air around Kyan seemed to grow heavy, his own will and power being actively suppressed.
"You have a powerful will, wildling," Valerius whispered, gliding closer. "But in my garden, I decide what is allowed to grow."
Kyan braced himself, his mind racing. He couldn't use Absence. He couldn't use any of his powerful woven echoes; the Domain of Negation was too strong here, too close to its source. A direct confrontation was suicide.
He had to do the one thing Valerius wouldn't expect. He had to use the very system he despised. He had to fight the master gardener with his own blunt, sanctioned tools.
As Valerius raised a hand, from which a terrifying arc of black, unmaking energy began to form, Kyan dropped into a textbook Academy stance. He quickly and deliberately traced the Imperial runes for Stone and Strength in the air.
A clunky, inefficient, but undeniably sanctioned wall of rock, reinforced with a sanctioned strength enchantment, erupted from the ground between them.
The Inquisitor's unmaking arc slammed into it. The sanctioned magic, an energy Valerius's power was designed to permit, fought against the raw negation. The wall exploded, but it had bought Kyan a precious second.
He didn't counterattack. He fell back, his face a mask of what he hoped looked like terror and desperation, and traced another rune—the first-year rune for Light. A pathetic, dazzling flash erupted, a simple spell designed to disorient an opponent for a moment.
To Valerius, a being who perceived the world on a purely conceptual level, the flash of light was meaningless. But Kyan hadn't been aiming at Valerius.
The brilliant flash illuminated the entire courtyard, acting as a perfect, undeniable signal. It was the magical equivalent of a screaming fire alarm.
From all corners of the Academy, lights began to flare. Shouts of alarm echoed from the dormitory windows. The golem sentries of the Athenaeum began to march into the square, their heavy footsteps shaking the ground. Patrols of Academy guards, roused by the disturbance, were converging on their position.
He had turned his personal duel into a public spectacle.
Valerius froze, his hand lowering. He could kill Kyan here and now, easily. But to do so in front of dozens of witnesses, to murder a Neophyte in the main courtyard—even an Inquisitor was bound by certain rules. His power was absolute, but only in the shadows.
His lipless whisper was a promise of future agony. "Clever weed. You hide behind the other flowers. But the Gardener is patient. I will find a time to pull you out."
With that, Valerius dissolved back into the shadows, vanishing as silently as he had appeared, just as the first of the Academy guards arrived.
Kyan collapsed to the ground, feigning exhaustion and fear, his mind and body screaming from the strain. He had survived. He had disrupted the Heart, freed Lyra (he hoped), and faced the Inquisitor, and he was still alive.
But he had also revealed his cleverness, and he knew, with a chilling certainty, that the Gardener would no longer be content to simply watch him. He would now be actively setting a trap. The gilded cage had just grown infinitely more dangerous.