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# **THE BLANK-ESSENCE CHRONICLES**
### **Chapter 1 — The Void Between Worlds**
There was no sky.
No ground.
No body.
Only **color**—endless, shifting, swirling like a living kaleidoscope. A place too bright to be real and too silent to be alive.
"I… died?"
My voice wasn't a voice at all. It came from a small sphere of white light—**me**—floating in the impossible currents of the void.
I tried to remember anything. My name. My life. My face.
Nothing came.
Nothing except fragments:
*Education. Books. Languages. Games. School. Skyrim. Magic.*
But not who I *was*.
"I died," I repeated, more certain this time.
A pressure rippled through the space around me, bending the colors into spirals. A presence approached—vast, ancient, and impossibly bright. A sphere of pure white, the size of a moon, floated toward me with the weight of a deity.
"Hello, young one," it said—not with speech, but vibration. "You drift within the void between multiverses. A place no mortal soul should linger."
I would've blinked if I had eyes.
"What happened to my body? How am I… just a soul?"
The massive sphere hummed, thoughtful.
"You are an anomaly. You arrived stripped of flesh, yet whole in spirit. Curious. Unexpected. Entertaining."
*Entertaining?*
That word sent a ripple of unease through my soul.
The white giant pulsed.
"I will make you an offer, little anomaly. For my amusement, I shall grant you **three wishes**—but with limits. Only potential. Never finished power."
My thoughts went white with shock.
Three wishes.
Infinite possibilities.
The danger of choosing wrong.
But the being waited patiently.
"I'll take the deal," I said, my light trembling. "Sir."
A ripple of amusement washed over me.
"Then speak your first wish."
"I want to merge with Hadrian Adams—my Skyrim character. His skills, belongings, land… everything he has. But any artifacts must be purified of influence or will."
"That is possible," the being said without hesitation. "Your next?"
I thought carefully.
"My second wish is an Inner World—undetectable, growable, able to absorb anything to expand."
The void hummed, long and low.
"Acceptable. It shall begin as a seed."
"And my last wish… the Essence of Blank. Is that possible?"
A pause. A stillness.
Then:
"It is."
Before I could react, the giant sphere flared—blinding, overwhelming—
"Go now, young one. Make your story worth watching."
And then the void shattered.
I was pulled through a collapsing tunnel of darkness—
spinning, falling, dissolving—
until **I woke up.**
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### **Awakening to a New Life**
I jolted upright in a bed, gasping.
Wooden walls.
Blue-and-black patterned wallpaper.
The scent of pine and smoke.
"Where… am I?"
Memories—foreign memories—slammed into me.
Hadrian Adams.
Dragonborn.
Skills. Armory. Lands.
And a child's life that wasn't mine.
I climbed out of bed and approached the rough wall-mirror.
A boy stared back.
Eleven years old.
Silver hair.
Emerald-green eyes.
Tall for his age—five foot three.
A child-version of my Skyrim character.
Not me.
But also… me.
I should've panicked.
I didn't.
Instead I whispered, "Let's take stock."
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### **Mental Checklist**
1. **Gather information about this world.**
2. **Find out if the supernatural exists.**
3. **Live the way I choose.**
The boy's memories settled into place.
He had Viking parents.
They were dead—killed in a Saxon raid.
He was taken in by an uncle.
A single tear rolled down my face before I could stop it.
"New world," I murmured at the window, watching the morning sun stretch across fields and wooden homes. "New life."
My stomach growled.
Of course.
---
### **Morning in the Village**
Downstairs, my uncle Erik stood over a hearth, flipping meat in a pan.
"You're finally awake, Hadrian," he said with a rough laugh. "Thought I'd have to drag you out of bed again."
"No, Uncle. I'm up. I'm hungry."
"You need more meat on your bones," he grunted. "You're skinny."
I ate quickly. Too quickly.
My mind drifted to the three gifts:
**Dragonborn Magicka. Inner World. Blank Essence.**
Training would be the safest path.
"Hadrian," Erik said suddenly, face serious. "The Coming-of-Age ceremony is in two weeks. You *will* attend."
A spark of dread flickered through me.
Two weeks to avoid dying.
Fantastic.
"Yes, Uncle."
I stood.
"I'm going to the forest."
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### **The First Meditation**
The village air was crisp and clean as I ran through the morning light toward the tree line. Grass brushed my legs. Birds chirped overhead.
In a clearing, I sat.
Breathed.
Focused.
I found it: two orbs inside me.
One was my **Inner World**—a hundred cubic meters of bare soil and wind, with all my Skyrim gear floating at the center.
The other was my **Magicka Core**—dense, pure power from my Dragonborn soul.
I touched it.
The detonation of energy tore through my nerves—
burning, reshaping, rebuilding—
creating a second nervous system woven from Magicka.
The pain was unbearable. Endless.
I held on.
For a while.
Then everything went black.
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### **The Old Man in the Grey Room**
I woke on a straw bed inside a grey-stoned hut.
"Ah. Awake at last."
An old man hunched near the fire, white beard braided, eyes sharp as a hawk's.
"Who are you?" I croaked.
"Bjorn," he said. "The village Seer. Some call me Shaman. Others call me mad."
He leaned closer.
"And who are you, child?"
"Hadrian…"
I hesitated.
"Are you… a mage?"
Bjorn laughed.
"Mages? That is what the Saxons call their spell-men. We Nords have *Seers* and *Vitki*."
He tapped my chest.
"And you, boy, are a Vitki. A rare one."
A shiver ran down my spine.
"Magic is in the air around you. Thick. Hungry."
Bjorn grinned.
"I will teach you what I know—magic, runes, and how not to die with all that power leaking out of you."
My heart thudded.
"I'll be your apprentice, Master Bjorn."
The old man nodded once.
"Then we begin with runes."
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# **END OF CHAPTER 1**