The rain had stopped hours ago, but the sky stayed the same color as ash.
Jin Hyeon sat at the edge of the cliff, watching waves crash against the rocks below. The sea moved like a creature breathing, endless, restless and yet it gave him nothing. No peace. No sound.
He'd erased too much. Even the world seemed quieter now.
When he breathed, the air didn't ripple with mana. That invisible hum, the pulse of power that threaded through everything, was gone around him. The silence wasn't just absence it was hunger. The longer he sat, the more the world dimmed.
He clenched his fist.
"I didn't ask for this," he whispered.
His voice was the only thing that didn't fade.
The cliffside was still scorched with the echoes of his power, faint cracks webbing through the stone. He didn't remember what happened after the Bureau attack. Just flashes ,light breaking, runes screaming, and then… quiet. Always quiet.
He hadn't killed them. He didn't think so.
But maybe that was worse.
The void didn't leave bodies. It left nothing.
He stood slowly, his legs weak. He had to move, he could feel the Bureau's eyes searching. Even if he'd destroyed their first strike team, they would come again. They had to.
He looked down at his hands. The veins beneath his skin pulsed faintly, that same violet hue flickering in rhythm with his heartbeat. Every few seconds, the glow dimmed like it was syncing to something deeper, older.
A whisper brushed through his mind, faint as wind.
You are what remains when everything else is gone.
He froze.
"Who's there?"
No answer. Just the crash of waves below, muted as though underwater.
Far above, in the floating city of Aurea, the Bureau of Arcane Order gathered in a vast chamber lined with glowing glyphs. The central holographic map displayed the southern districts and a black hole where Sector 13 had once pulsed with mana.
"Everything?" the Director asked. His voice was calm, but the tremor in his hand betrayed the truth.
"Gone," replied a mage-technician. "Mana levels dropped to zero. Even the leyline has collapsed. The area is… dead."
Another officer leaned forward. "We've seen mana drain before. But this, this isn't drain. It's erasure."
The Director's gaze hardened. "And the source?"
"Subject name: Jin Hyeon. Former trainee at the Sejong Academy. Registered Nullborn."
The word hung in the air like a curse.
Nullborn, those born without mana. Most never survived childhood. Those who did were harmless. Powerless.
"Until now," the Director said.
He turned to the council of Archmages seated behind him. Their robes shimmered faintly, reality bending around them.
"This boy carries something we've never encountered, a phenomenon that defies the First Law. Magic cannot be undone. Yet he has."
A murmur rippled through the hall.
An elderly mage spoke, voice dry as parchment. "If Anti-Magic exists, it threatens the very weave of the world. He must be contained—before the leylines destabilize further."
"And if we can't contain him?" someone else asked.
The Director's gaze drifted toward the black void on the map. "Then we prepare for a new era. One without magic."
Jin made his way down the coastline, every step slower than the last. He needed food, shelter, answers.
He didn't dare approach any city. The Bureau's scanners would find him instantly. Even a mana detector could pick up the "hole" where his presence sat.
But the void within him was changing.
Sometimes, when he focused, he could feel threads in the air, thin, shimmering strands of mana stretching through the world. He couldn't use them, but he could touch them. Disrupt them.
He reached out now, concentrating on one of the threads glimmering faintly in front of him. It vibrated like a string under pressure. The moment his fingers brushed it, the strand dissolved into dust.
A pulse of cold traveled up his arm.
Then for an instant, he saw.
A flash of memory that wasn't his. A child, laughing, holding a crystal orb. A mother weaving light into fabric. A storm of colors. Then, gone.
He stumbled back, gasping. The images vanished as quickly as they appeared.
"What was that?"
He tried again, trembling. This time, he reached not to destroy but to listen. The void responded differently, not devouring, but vibrating with faint resonance.
The mana strand flickered and warped into a new shape, a ring of dark light that hovered above his palm. It wasn't fire, or ice, or lightning. It was emptiness given form.
A black flame.
The air around it warped, color draining away. But Jin felt something else inside it, fragments of what he'd seen before. Mana wasn't gone when he destroyed it; it was converted. Pulled into the void.
Rewritten.
He clenched his hand, snuffing the flame. His heart raced.
He wasn't just a void. He was a mirror. A counterforce.
Maybe… maybe he could control it.
In Aurea, panic spread quietly through the upper circles.
Rumors whispered of the Voidborn. People said he had no face, that he walked between spells, that even gods couldn't see him. The Bureau censored reports, but fear doesn't listen to silence.
Across the cities, magical systems began to flicker. Portals destabilized. Power conduits failed. Even simple spells misfired. The world's foundation, built entirely on mana, was beginning to forget itself.
And somewhere, deep beneath the Bureau's archives, a forbidden script was reactivated. The Abyssal Codex, a record of an ancient prophecy erased from history.
> "When the world is full, it will birth its own void."
"And from that void shall come the unmaker, neither curse nor salvation."
Jin found shelter in the ruins of an old temple overlooking the coast. The stone was cracked, moss climbing its walls, but its mana had long since faded , a perfect place to rest.
He sat by a fallen pillar, eyes half-closed. The world outside pulsed faintly with energy , flickers of power he could feel but not yet understand.
His thoughts drifted.
He remembered the night he awakened the fear, the rage, the despair. And beneath it all, a strange relief.
For the first time, he wasn't powerless.
The irony burned.
He'd become the thing that power feared.
"Maybe," he murmured, "that's why I exist."
The void inside him stirred, answering with a low hum. The black flame flickered to life again, small and steady. Its glow reflected in his eyes — two mirrors of violet light in the darkness.
He didn't know where this path would lead. But one thing was clear:
He couldn't go back.
And as the Bureau's fleets gathered in the skies far above, Jin Hyeon, the boy the world had forgotten, began to understand what he truly was.
Not a mistake.
Not a weapon.
But the balance.
The silence between every spell.