The world is Aetheria, a technologically advanced but fragile reality layered with the invisible dimension of crystallized memory and emotion, the Echo Labyrinth. Aura, the energy of life, flows through all things. For most, it's invisible. For Shadow (Kageyama Shiro), it's the only thing that's real.
The first thing Shadow ever truly saw was the color.
It wasn't a color of the spectrum, nor was it light. It was an absence, a perpetual sigh clinging to every object in Neo-Tokyo. It was the Aura of the world, and it was a sickly, muted gray.
Shadow, seventeen and intellectually bored, sat in the back row of a mandatory 'Aetherian History' class at the Odaiba Citadel Academy. His classmates were a riot of vivid, yet superficial hues. The girl next to him, Aiko, possessed a bubbling Viridian—an Aura of nervous vitality—that constantly flickered and popped like cheap neon. The teacher, a Mr. Tatsuya, had a dense, calming Cerulean Aura, radiating logic and order, but even his calm had a frayed edge today.
Shadow, however, had nothing. His own Aura was a patch of Void—a transparent, colorless field that simply swallowed light and energy. It made him feel like a perfect mirror in a crowded room; reflecting everything, but possessing nothing of his own.
He wasn't paying attention to the lecture on the Great Separation War. He was calculating. He was always calculating.
If Aiko's Viridian Aura, currently oscillating at 4.7 hertz, were to intersect with Mr. Tatsuya's Cerulean field at the vector of a 60-degree angle, the resulting output would be a minor, localized conceptual instability—likely a sudden, intense craving for sushi.
His mind worked in complex equations, a private universe of cause and effect. He saw the world not as solids and liquids, but as a fluid, mathematically solvable field of energy. This made the Spectres—the creatures of malicious, pure emotion that occasionally bled through from the Echo Labyrinth—particularly fascinating. They were walking paradoxes, equations that refused to balance.
The classroom door shuddered. Not from wind, but from a tremor in the fabric of the building's Aura.
Mr. Tatsuya's Cerulean Aura flared with alarm. "Is that a tremor? Everyone, please stay calm and follow protocol—"
The trembling intensified, and the gray, dull Aura of the steel-and-glass skyscraper suddenly split open like rotten fruit.
An aperture, a jagged, pulsing tear of pure shadow and corrupted color, ripped through the wall next to the whiteboard. It wasn't a hole; it was a Rift.
From it stepped an entity that made Shadow's blood run cold, not with fear, but with the shock of a corrupted theorem. It was a Spectre, a physical manifestation of crystallized paranoia. It was tall and skeletal, its body composed of swirling, chaotic Sepia (Fear/Anxiety) and Crimson (Rage/Force) Auras. It radiated a deafening mental scream.
Panic erupted. Students screamed. Aiko's Viridian Aura turned a sickly yellow, her vitality draining instantly. Mr. Tatsuya instinctively threw a Cerulean Weave—a rudimentary shield of crystallized logic—at the creature.
The Spectre sneered, and its mass of Crimson Aura shattered the shield effortlessly. It lunged for Aiko, whose Aura was now so weak she was already fainting.
Shadow did not move. He did not feel fear. He felt the pure, primal illogic of the Spectre's attack. Its equation was simple: Consume Fear.
As the Spectre's hand of raw Crimson/Sepia energy reached for Aiko, Shadow's brain snapped into overdrive. He didn't use a learned Weave. He used instinct.
His Void Aura, the colorless field of non-existence, suddenly pulsed outward. It wasn't an attack, but a counter-equation. It hit the Spectre's arm, and for a fleeting moment, the chaotic Crimson/Sepia energy was nullified. It didn't explode or deflect; it simply ceased to exist in that singular space.
The Spectre recoiled with a metallic shriek, its arm smoking with un-Aura. Its chaotic equation had met an impossible variable: Zero.
Shadow's mind burned with the effort, his nose beginning to bleed from the sheer processing load. He had just Woven at the most basic level—Aura Nullification.
He stared at the Spectre, and the Spectre, for the first time, stared back at him. It didn't see a boy; it saw the Color of Silence, and a chilling intelligence that promised destruction.
The Spectre let out a frustrated roar, retreated through the Rift, and the tear in reality sealed itself shut with a sound like grinding teeth, leaving behind nothing but scorched wall and the stunned silence of the classroom.
Shadow stood over the unconscious Aiko, his colorless Aura faintly humming. The danger was over, but the silence didn't last.
A harsh, authoritative voice cut through the stunned air from the doorway. Two figures in black, specialized combat gear, their Auras crackling with disciplined, high-level Aura Weaving, stood there. They were Wardens, the government's anti-Spectre force.
The leader, a woman with a sharp, Amber (Caution/Precision) Aura, looked at the damaged wall, then at the smoking Spectre remains, and finally, her eyes locked onto Shadow.
"Kageyama Shiro," she stated, her voice devoid of emotion. "You just saved seventeen lives, and in doing so, you exposed yourself. You're coming with us."
Shadow didn't argue. He knew the equation for his old life had just been solved, and the answer was zero. A new, complex, and dangerous calculation was beginning.
Stay Tuned For Next Chapter