The howling mountain wind made the ancient tree branches rustle restlessly behind him, practically pleading for the young boy's attention. Morca, however, heard nothing. His gaze was tightly glued to the hovering black screen. His outstretched right hand moved in a daze, attempting to grasp the illusory interface, while half of his foot already hung precariously off the sheer drop of the cliffside.
In a deep, hypnotic trance, he kept leaning further toward the glowing black text. In that terrifying instant, the entire world around Morca seemed to freeze, as if time itself had ceased to flow....
Meanwhile, hidden among the tangled tree branches directly behind him, a pair of cold, dark blue eyes pierced through the shifting shadows of the leaves. It looked as though the captive sky itself was being held hostage within those icy orbs, silently analysing every subtle movement the boy made.
The source of that predatory gaze was undeniably human—a patient hunter waiting for the perfect window to execute his target.
Though the figure was flawlessly concealed by the heavy midnight shade, a single glance was enough to confirm that those blue eyes did not belong to a hidden guardian or a secret protector. This was a spy. A calculating, cold-blooded killer.
From the gaps in the foliage, a firm, black-gloved hand wrapped tightly around the hilt of a half-unsheathed silver metal blade, its polished steel catching the dim reflection of the hued moon above.
Yet, despite having countless opportunities over the past year to end Morca's life, the spy still held back his strike. He was afraid of something. Or perhaps, he simply knew he wasn't the only apex predator scouting the boy in this isolated valley.
What the hell is wrong with this kid today? the spy mused, his brow furrowing beneath his hood. First, he lies frozen on the grass for almost two hours without twitching. I almost thought he'd finally kicked the bucket. Then he suddenly sits up, clutching his head in absolute agony... and now he's walking straight off a cliff in a daze? Is he trying to commit suicide?
The spy squinted, testing Morca's bizarre actions in his mind like a blade held to the light. But no matter how he analyzed the situation, nothing about the boy made logical sense.
I wonder if 'she' will slide out of the woods to save him this time.
Those cold blue eyes darted sideways briefly before locking back onto Morca. Though, honestly, I'd prefer it if she didn't show up. A broken waste like him shouldn't have been allowed to live this long within the lineage anyway....
***
In another sector of the dark forest line, a small, dead plant with distorted, brownish leaves grew stubbornly near a pile of jagged rocks. Crawling along its withered branch was a black pyrophorus beetle that blended perfectly into the dark texture of the stem.
The most notable thing about this specific insect was its entirely artificial, bio-mechanical body and the two glowing, blood-red luminescent spots cutting through the posterior corners of its pronotum.
The precise, rhythmic way it manipulated its artificial antennae and legs made it obvious that this was a highly advanced, programmed monitor invention—especially when those two glowing red sensors locked directly onto Morca's coordinates....
***
"Ugh, what an absolute pain in the ass it is to watch this kid's pathetic, boring life. A single minute of negligence, and the higher-ups will have my head. I wonder when this wretched assignment will finally end."
The lazy, deeply frustrated voice belonged to a man seated in front of a massive array of surveillance monitor screens inside a dim, windowless room. His legs were crossed comfortably on top of the messy desk, his bored gaze fixed entirely on the live feed of Morca displayed across the central monitor.
He had been strictly ordered to log every single subtle detail of this boy's life for nearly a year now, all thanks to the bio-monitor bug transmitting data from the other side of the valley.
Except for a few highly confidential documents he had managed to gather over the months, most of this failed Sherman scion's life was nothing short of pitiful and monotonous. But the operator knew far better than to waste any genuine sympathy on the boy—whose mere existence was rumored to be an anomaly capable of endangering the entire Evoslon system.
"...Well, judging by his physical decay, the brat doesn't seem to have much of a lifespan remaining anyway. I might as well treat this job like watching the final credits of a long, boring movie," the man mused, lazily squinting at the screen.
Suddenly, his eyes went wide.
"Huh?"
The operator slammed his feet off the table, sitting bolt upright as he glued his face to the screen.
"Is he actually trying to commit suicide?" He pressed both hands flat against the desk in front of him, his breath catching in anticipation of what would come next. "So this is the grand finale I've been waiting for? Yes... fall. Fall, you broken brat. End it all. You've suffered enough anyway."
The man leaned in eagerly, waiting for the body to plummet. To his profound disappointment, a completely uncalculated variable unfolded across the screen....
"Huh?"
***
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Much to the hidden spy's frustration, the distinct, uneven sound of uncalculated footsteps suddenly echoed through the clearing, violently shattering the stillness of the mountain peak.
Gaining a sudden, violent flash of self-awareness, Morca staggered backward in a frantic hurry, desperately forcing distance between his boots and the edge of the cliff—and more importantly, away from the hovering black screen.
Cold sweat instantly dampened his forehead. Drawing in shallow, ragged breaths through furrowed brows, Morca cursed under his breath. "That was... damned close. I almost killed myself."
My heart... it's racing too fast.
His breathing was completely disoriented. He slammed his right hand hard against his chest, feeling the terrifying pace at which his heart was hammering against his ribs. It felt like a wild animal trying to burst out of its cage.
Something is officially going wrong with my body.
His mental guard rose to the absolute fullest extent his fragile frame could muster. This sudden surge of adrenaline wasn't just standard fear from nearly falling off a mountain. No, the true source of his terror was the inexplicable urge that had driven him to jump in the first place:
The glowing black screen—the one that had snapped into existence out of thin air.
Granted, Morca had grown deeply tired of reacting to every subtle display of the extraordinary over the past year... but this was entirely different. This went far beyond the standard rules of cultivation or pathways.
It was true that Evoslon was technically a highly advanced world beneath its mundane surface. Though hidden from the public eye, the elite factions possessed technologies and mystical systems capable of rivaling any modern civilization—perhaps even surpassing standard human comprehension. But how much of that hidden world did a broken mortal like Morca truly understand?
Even with his recent encounters with extraordinaries, he knew that a phenomenon like this had never been documented. Perhaps not even once in the entire recorded history of Evoslon.
A pitch-black screen manifesting from the void without wires, electricity, or an internal core was too absurd to be believed. Yet here it was, perfectly blending magic and technology right in front of his face. And worse, it had nearly hypnotized him into a lethal fall just by looking at it.
"How ironic," Morca muttered, letting out a sharp, self-deprecating breath. "I was just thinking about what the word Nihility truly meant, and a literal taboo screen appears out of thin air."
Shaking himself out of his stupor, he shifted his gaze to verify he was at a safe distance from the edge. Sure enough, he was a few yards away from the precipice.
Phew.
He let out a massive lungful of air, walking another three meters inland before halting. Once he felt safe, he noticed something even more unsettling: the black screen was moving with him, maintaining a perfect, fixed distance from his face.
Adopting a classic detective's pose—one hand propping up his chin, his lone crimson eye turning as sharp as a razor blade—Morca began to slowly circle the floating anomaly.
It looks exactly like a broken television screen... or rather, those bizarre interfaces that only exist in web novels from Astro. What the hell did those authors call them again?
He racked his brain, digging deep into his old bookworm's memories.
A System? Yes, that's the word. Except this one is literally woven into the void itself, and it looks impossibly, expensively magical. Televisions and displays on the Astro Continent are powered by standard electricity, while here in the Salvic Union of the Mystrasia Continent, they rely on encoded energy cores. But this thing...
Curiosity getting the better of him, Morca slowly reached out his peeling right hand toward the black, glowing interface once more. This time, his fingers passed clean through the static edges, meeting no resistance. It was a perfect illusion.
Sure enough, it's completely intangible. I wonder if anyone else can see this monstrosity, or if I've finally lost my mind. He tore his gaze away from the panel, scanning the dark perimeter of the forest line for any signs of movement.
To his profound relief, the woods appeared entirely empty.
Good... at least I'm alone out here, he thought, letting out a comforted sigh.
Unknown to him, lurking deep within the shrouded forest behind his back, those same watchful, dark blue eyes narrowed in absolute, profound confusion. The spy couldn't see the screen—he only saw Morca circling empty air, staring intently at nothingness.
Simultaneously, inside the foliage, the artificial red glow of the pyrophorus bug crawling on the dark stem flared noticebly brighter, transmitting the anomalous neural data back to the surveillance room.
Morca, entirely oblivious to the eyes tracking his move, returned his focus to the static-draped interface. He stopped speaking aloud, a deep, calculated frown carving itself into his brow. The bizarre characters pulsing across the screen did not belong to any modern alphabet. Instead, they were ancient, majestic glyphs woven by fate itself.
It was the Ancient Galatux Ascent—the forbidden language of the ancient.
His lone, razor-sharp crimson gaze remained fixed on the silvery-bold ancient glyphs pulsing across the interface. Strangely, something deep within his mind surged—an ancient, echoing vibration from a past he could not remember. Whether it was a hidden quirk in his bloodline or a dormant will he didn't know existed, the fog in his mind cleared. Pixel by pixel, glyph by glyph, he found himself reading their forbidden meaning, translating the ancient text with minimal difficulty:
[INFINITY NIHILITY… INITIATED]
[DESCENDANT IDENTITY VERIFIED… AWAITING SYNCHRONIZATION]
[REGISTERING DESCENDANT: MORCA SHERMAN NIHILITY][NIHILITY DESCENDANT… SYNCHRONIZATION PAUSED]
[PRIOR PREREQUISITES UNMET: ?? / ??]
"Infinity Nihility...?" Morca whispered.Uttering the words aloud felt strange, sounding like an abandoned child trying to call out his father's true name for the very first time.
As he stared, the mechanical translation of the silver glyphs rapidly formed inside his mind. It looks grand, almost like a supreme title. But that word... Nihility... cannot be ignored. The characters are displayed in ancient, rigid glyphs. If translated directly into the formal Decanis tongue, it would mean Boundless Emptiness. If pushed further into our common Gremacan, it translates to Limitless or Endless Nothingness.
At that moment, his bookworm memory sparked, recalling the extensive linguistic classes taught by his teachers back in high school.
Gremacan was the universal spoken tongue of Evoslon's citizens. It was simple, highly efficient for daily communication, and engineered perfectly for solving complex mathematical equations. Everyone—from the poorest street urchin to the wealthiest merchant lord—spoke it, though every distinct tribe possessed its own unique ethnic variation. For instance, the elite Mount Shem province natively spoke the Shilican dialect.
As for Decanis, the language was strictly labeled a Classic. Only the wealthy, high-class families, a select few affluent middle-class households, and heirs who successfully graduated from prestigious universities could speak Decanis fluently.
It was the absolute language of international businessmen, high-ranking politicians, and formal alliances. For those reasons, it was universally recognised and respected as the Formal Tongue.
True to its reputation, Morca had encountered only a rare handful of individuals across Evoslon who could actually communicate using Decanis. Among the common populace, virtually no one understood its syntax. Those rare commoners who did speak it either held massive corporate positions—achievable only after earning the highest academic honors—or served as direct, high-value assets under the wealthy lineages.
Because of this rigid social gatekeeping, common parents across both in the Astro and the Mystrasia would willingly spend their very last dime to send an intellectually gifted child to a university. Some families went as far as selling irreplaceable generational heirlooms just to cover the extortionate tuition, desperately praying that the formal tongue would elevate their entire family's social status.
And lastly, there was the Ancient Galatux Ascent.
This language was an absolute taboo, completely erased from public knowledge. The vast majority of citizens didn't even know it existed. In fact, even among the high-class lineage houses, most lords couldn't comprehend a single line of its script. Only the truly ancient, aristocratic houses whose heritages had successfully survived the bloody transition from the eighth to the tenth epochs of the Great Medieval Era possessed the secret lexicons required to barely decipher its characters.
The Ascent did not utilize standard alphabets. It manifested as rigid, heavy glyphs that hummed with a haunting, ethereal tone. Some forbidden records even claimed the language was directly tied to the mysterious First Epoch.
Morca could vividly recall his mother, Allina, softly warning him about it during their isolation over the past year:
"The Galatux Ascent does not merely describe reality, Morca—it actively weaves fate. The tongues of the ancient Gods never sleep. A single script written in the Ascent holds a monumental record of past eras. If a fragment of it should ever appear in the waking world, the aristocratic houses, the major megacorporations, and the religious churches will slaughter millions to possess it... because its contents document the lost Age of the Godly Days."
Yet, there was a secret even the elite didn't know: the Galatux Ascent was the literal language that had recorded the universe's very first utterance.
The fact that Morca could instinctively read and translate the black screen's glyphs into fluent Decanis—despite never attending a high-tier university—was a profound mystery. He could only attribute it to his mother's rigorous, secretive teachings over the past year.
Furthermore... the strangest part is that this black screen seemed to trigger the exact fraction of a second I subconsciously added 'Nihility' to my name, realization drowned on Morca, his expression darkening into a grim, calculated line as a cold chill washed over him. Was that truly just a coincidence?
The deeper his analytical mind dug into the equation, the more sinister the reality became.
Then there's the Descendant Identity Verification. Am I really that structurally worthless to the universe that I've been granted an identity of absolute nothingness? No... wait...
Suddenly, a detail that had completely slipped past his notice violently dragged his attention back to the screen.
"Nihility Descendant?" Morca muttered, his eyes widening. "How is that possible? I am of the Sherman bloodline... precisely the direct son of Claudius Sherman, the former lineage head!"
This time, the sheer panic of the thought caused him to speak aloud. The words echoed sharply into the quiet clearing before he could catch himself.
Damn it! I said that out loud. If anyone is lurking in these woods, that single sentence will ruin me.
He cursed himself inwardly, his lone crimson eye snapping open as he scanned the dark perimeter, verifying his isolation.
Thankfully, the clearing appeared entirely vacant. Only absolute silence and midnight darkness stretched through the ancient forest behind him, save for the rustling leaves, the clapping tree branches, and the eight spectral hues of the hued moon illuminating the grass. Yet, despite the apparent safety, something deep within his primitive instincts whispered a terrifying warning. He felt a phantom gaze pressing against his skin, telling him he was being watched.
Then, just as quickly as the sensation had arrived, it vanished.
If the world officially classifies me as the Descendant of Nothingness... Morca thought, his breath turning ragged, ...then whose blood is actually running through my veins? Am I even a Sherman?
Instinctively, his hand dropped from his chin. Trapped in a sudden, violent surge of existential dread, his fingers clamped onto the collar of his plain brown shirt, ruthlessly ripping the fabric down the center. His calculated, defensive detective pose crumbled into ash in a single second.
Staring down at his exposed flesh, his heart stopped.
Three deep, vivid crimson claw marks were violently scratched across his left chest, intersecting at sharp, jagged angles. Dark, sluggish blood welled up from the wounds, slowly tracing the path of a sudden, burning pain.
For the very first time in his sixteen years of existence, Morca fundamentally questioned his own identity.
It's that horrific feeling again...
The burning sensation in his chest rapidly began to metastasize, spreading outwards through his torso. His spine ran ice-cold with sudden sweat, yet his internal organs burned hotter than an open furnace.
Was this sensation pure, unadulterated fear?
Or was it something far more dangerous... an insatiable hunger to tear down the veil and know the absolute truth?