The training hall was a hollow shell of obsidian and silent machinery. I stood in the center of the vast, circular floor, the air smelling of ozone and the expensive floor-wax used only in the Ducal wings.
I walked toward the perimeter, my reflection trailing me in the polished walls. I stopped, tilting my head.
"It's a tragedy, really," I murmured, tracing the sharp line of my jaw with a thumb. "If a war broke out today, I could likely end it just by standing on the frontlines. The enemy commanders would realize what a waste it would be to mar a face that belongs in a museum, not a battlefield. I'm essentially a walking national treasure."
Lyra Nox stood by the control console, her fingers poised over the holographic interface. Her violet eyes didn't move from the data-streams. "The medical droids noted that cranial trauma can lead to localized delusions, Master Vesperian. It seems your sense of self-importance has survived the impact even if your mana-circuits haven't."
"Self-importance? No, Lyra. It's a public service to keep this face intact." I turned away from my reflection, my playful tone sharpening into something brittle. "Now, show me what this 'treasure' is actually worth. Activate the droids. Grade-B."
Lyra's hand hesitated. "The scholarship student—Arthurian—struck you with a resonance that should have shattered your core. Testing Grade-B units while your energy is still fluctuating is..."
"Is exactly what I asked for." I stepped into the sparring circle, my black-and-silver silk tunic rustling. "Unless, of course, you'd prefer to tell the Duke I've spent my afternoon hiding in my room because a commoner gave me a headache?"
She bowed her head, her face a mask of cold professionalism. "Maximum aggression. Commencing."
Four obsidian-plated droids rose from the floor. Their sensors flickered to a hostile, pulsating crimson. They didn't offer a salute. One lunged instantly, its forearm shifting into a vibro-blade that hummed with a frequency meant to grind through titanium.
My body moved before my brain could protest. The "Vesperian" I had become had years of elite training etched into his muscles, but the "me" inside was screaming. The blade was a blur of silver.
The script says I fall here, a voice whispered in the back of my mind—a memory of a story I hadn't finished reading. The villain loses. The hero wins.
A cold, jagged spark of irritation flared in my gut.
I reached out. I didn't try to gather the Malakor lightning. I didn't reach for the elements. I reached for the hollow, freezing sensation that had been gnawing at my chest since I woke up.
"Not today," I breathed.
I didn't strike. I simply opened my palm toward the incoming droid. A wisp of grey, light-eating smoke spiraled from my skin.
There was no sound of a clash. No sparks flew. When the vibro-blade entered the grey mist, it didn't break—it simply ceased. The metal vanished. Then the droid's arm followed, then its torso, as if an invisible mouth had taken a bite out of reality itself.
The silence that followed the droid's collapse was not a normal silence. It was heavy, as if the room itself was holding its breath, waiting for the laws of physics to reassert themselves.
Lyra didn't move. Her fingers remained frozen over the holographic console, the blue light reflecting in eyes that had gone wide and glassily vacant. I watched her—really watched her. The way the muscle in her jaw jumped. The way her breath hitched in a shallow, jagged rhythm.
She wasn't just confused. She was stupefied.
"Master..." she began, her voice cracking. She looked from the half-deleted machine to my hand, and then back again. "There was no mana displacement. No heat. No kinetic force. It just... it's gone."
I looked at my palm. The skin was pale, unmarked, and cooling rapidly. Inside, however, my chest felt like it had been hollowed out with a rusted spoon. A cold, numbing sensation was crawling up my spine, a visceral rejection that made my stomach churn.
I wanted to vomit. I wanted to scream that this wasn't mine.
Shock. It wasn't a sudden jolt; it was a slow, drowning sensation. My mind kept trying to find a logical anchor—a spell name, a rank, a category—but there was nothing. Just a terrifying, silent 'zero.'
"A malfunction," I said, my voice sounding like it was coming from the bottom of a well. "The droid was clearly defective. The Malakor family shouldn't be buying such cheap scrap."
"Defective?" Lyra finally stepped forward, her boots clicking sharply on the obsidian. She knelt by the remains, her hand trembling as she reached out to touch the edge of the wound. "Vesperian, the cut is molecularly perfect. It didn't break. It was removed from the world. This is... this shouldn't be possible for a human."
"Everything is possible if you're talented enough, Lyra," I replied, though the arrogance felt like a thin mask over a face that was likely turning grey.
I turned away from her, my legs feeling like they were made of water. Every step was a battle. I could feel her gaze burning into the back of my neck—a mixture of dawning horror and a strange, new kind of wariness. She didn't see the 'Young Master' anymore. She saw a variable she couldn't calculate.
I spent the next three hours in my private study, the door locked, the lights dimmed to a low, amber hue.
The room was filled with the smell of old paper and digital ozone. I sat behind a desk carved from a single piece of gravity-stone, staring at a blank holographic display.
I was waiting for the 'me' to return. The 'me' that lived in a world where things made sense.
But as I sat there, the details of the 'Script' kept flickering in my mind. A golden boy. A high school hallway. A crushing defeat. It was like trying to remember a movie I had watched while half-asleep—vague, but certain.
"Arthurian," I whispered.
The name felt like a jagged piece of glass in my throat. I didn't know why he mattered, only that his existence was a threat to mine. The 'Sun' that Lyra mentioned... it felt like a beacon, drawing the world's attention away from the shadows. Away from me.
Knock. Knock..
I flinched, my hand flying to the desk. "I said I wasn't to be disturbed."
"The Duke has sent his personal physician, Master," Lyra's voice came through the door, muffled but persistent. "He heard about the... incident in the training hall."
A surge of genuine, cold fear spiked in my gut. My father. A man who looked at his children as nothing more than biological data-points. If he saw this 'Void,' he wouldn't be proud. He would be curious. And in the Malakor house, curiosity usually involved a scalpel.
"Tell him I'm sleeping," I barked, my voice cracking with a sudden, sharp desperation. "Tell him the 'defective' droids gave me a headache. I'll see the physician in the morning."
Silence. I could almost feel Lyra standing on the other side of the wood, her mind whirring, trying to piece together the shattered puzzle of the boy she thought she knew.
"Very well," she said finally. "But the transport for the Academy leaves at 07:00. Your final year begins tomorrow, Vesperian. The world will be watching."
"Let them watch," I muttered to the empty room.
I stood up and walked to the window. Below, the city of Neo-Aetheria was a sea of neon and shadows. I looked at the reflection of my face—the beautiful, cruel, narcissistic mask I was now forced to wear.
I touched the glass. It was cold.
I am a Malakor, I told myself, the words feeling like a lie. I am the best. I am unrivaled. My face alone is a declaration of war.
I tried to smile, to find that effortless arrogance that should have been my birthright. But as I looked in the glass, all I saw was a man standing on the edge of a cliff, clutching an eraser and praying that the ground wouldn't be the next thing to disappear.
The shock hadn't left me. It had just settled into my marrow.
"One year," I whispered, my breath fogging the glass. "I have one year to find out why the sun is so bright, and why I'm the only one who can see the dark."