The sky over Planet B 75 had too many depths.
Kaelen noticed it every morning on the walk to United Aegis Academy. Not the colors—those had become normal—but the layers. Blue bled into violet. Clouds overlapped where they shouldn't. Sometimes, if the light hit at the wrong angle, you could see structures floating far above the atmosphere, like reflections in broken glass.
Today, one of those reflections blinked.
Aether-Net City, Sector Twelve, recalibrated its gravitic anchors. The air hummed faintly, a vibration that crawled through bone.
Kaelen flinched.
Someone two streets away screamed.
Not because of the sound.
Because their spine had just been crushed by falling debris when an old Murim tower finally gave up on existing.
Kaelen felt it.
Every millimeter.
He staggered, gripping the railing beside the elevated road as pain tore through his back—not his, never his. His breath came out sharp and uneven. Sweat broke across his forehead even though the morning air was cold.
"Again?" someone muttered behind him.
Kaelen didn't turn around.
He didn't need to. He could feel their irritation like a bruise pressing into his ribs.
Empathy wasn't an emotion for him.
It was a full sensory feed.
The Great Mutation had happened a thousand years ago. That was what the textbooks said. Earth, overfed with dimensional energy, had rewritten itself into something unrecognizable. Continents twisted. Species changed. Physics loosened its grip.
Then came the Sky Fracture.
Reality tore open—not once, but everywhere. Other realms bled into the planet like spilled organs. Technology from hyper-advanced worlds drifted down into cities still learning to rebuild. Cultivation sects rose from places that had once been office parks.
Earth died.
Planet B 75 was born.
Kaelen had never seen the old world. No one alive had. But sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he could feel the echo of it—nostalgia that wasn't his, grief that didn't belong to him.
Empathy didn't care about ownership.
United Aegis Academy loomed ahead, its walls a patchwork of eras. Reinforced steel fused with spirit-etched stone. Defensive arrays hummed beneath the surface, calibrated to repel monsters, demons, and—on rare occasions—students.
It was neutral ground.
Neutral meant everyone was tolerated.
Neutral also meant no one was protected.
Kaelen passed through the outer gate, head lowered, shoulders tight. Around him walked children of every realm: cultivators with glowing meridians, augmented soldiers whose eyes flickered with data streams, bloodline heirs whose presence alone bent the air.
They walked like the world owed them space.
Kaelen moved like he expected to be hit.
And he was right.
A shoulder slammed into his side hard enough to knock the air out of him. Pain exploded in his ribs—his this time, sharp and personal—layered on top of someone else's broken knuckle nearby.
"Watch it," a voice said coldly.
Kaelen looked up.
Rovan.
Upper-tier student. Reinforced skeletal frame. Academy combat ranking: top ten percent. His uniform was pristine, his posture relaxed, as if violence were an inconvenience rather than a risk.
"You didn't dodge," Rovan continued. "Are you asleep?"
Kaelen swallowed. His throat burned.
"I'm sorry," he said.
The apology wasn't for Rovan.
It was for the girl behind him whose arm was fractured in a sparring ring. Kaelen felt the bone grinding every time she moved.
Rovan laughed. "Hear that? It talks."
A few others slowed to watch. No one intervened. This wasn't a crime. This was routine.
"You know," Rovan said, stepping closer, "I still don't understand why the Academy keeps you around."
Kaelen's vision blurred. Someone in the distance was dying—burn wounds, lungs failing. He couldn't tell where. He rarely could.
"I mean," Rovan went on, "no combat talent. No lineage. No system compatibility. All you do is feel what others feel."
He leaned in, voice dropping.
"Pain sponge."
The nickname spread through the small crowd like a spark.
Kaelen's hands clenched.
He didn't raise them.
He never did.
They called him The Empathic Trash.
Officially, his ability was listed as Passive Sensory Resonance. A rare mutation that allowed the user to experience the physical and emotional states of nearby entities.
Rare did not mean valuable.
It meant unusable.
Empathy didn't kill monsters. It didn't block blades. It didn't strengthen bones or accelerate healing. It just made Kaelen a living amplifier for suffering.
Instructors tried to train him once.
They stopped after he collapsed during a controlled exercise because a second-year student dislocated their shoulder three rooms away.
After that, Kaelen became a logistical asset. Field support. Medical early warning. Disposable scout.
Trash.
Combat class began at noon.
Kaelen sat at the edge of the arena, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around himself. The noise alone was enough to make his skull throb. Every strike, every fracture, every burned nerve registered in his body like static.
He learned quickly not to scream.
On the central platform, students dueled under instructor supervision. A cultivator clashed with a mech-enhanced brawler. Sparks flew. Spirit pressure rolled across the arena.
Cheers erupted.
Kaelen felt a tendon snap.
He gagged.
"Focus," an instructor snapped, glancing at him with open annoyance. "If you can't handle this, you shouldn't be here."
Kaelen nodded, forcing himself to breathe through someone else's agony.
He had tried to leave once.
The Academy denied his withdrawal.
Your ability is too rare to discard, they'd said.
They just never clarified who it was rare for.
The mission order arrived at the end of the day.
Red seal. Priority classification.
Kaelen stared at the tablet as the text resolved.
Restricted Grey Zone Deployment
Solo Scavenge
Survival Not Expected
No Retrieval Authorized
His heartbeat slowed.
Around him, other students received normal assignments—team raids, patrol rotations, fracture mapping.
Rovan glanced over, curiosity flickering. Then he smiled.
"Oh," he said softly. "You finally got one."
Kaelen didn't respond.
He felt something else instead.
Relief.
If the world wanted him gone…
At least it would stop hurting here.
He accepted the order.
The seal burned away.
And for the first time in his life, Kaelen walked away without looking back.