Two more months bled into one another, each day a mirror of the last. Ren's existence was a simple, brutal rhythm of failure and infinitesimal progress. Mornings were for the stone. After weeks of painstaking effort, the perfect circle was followed by a square, then a triangle, each shape demanding a new form of control, a new understanding of how to wield his will as a shaping tool. Afternoons were for the archives. He devoured texts on the Great Cataclysm, on the cyclical nature of the Grand Seal's weakening, and on the elemental properties of Aether itself. He found no other mentions of the Raijin, but he was building a picture of the world they had inhabited—a world on the brink of chaos, where any destabilizing force would have been seen as a disease to be purged.
He was a ghost in the academy, a rumor whispered in the halls. He didn't eat in the common refectory, his meals delivered by a silent academy servant. He didn't attend classes. His only human contact was the silent, observing presence of Elder Tian and the occasional, dismissive glance from the ancient archivist. This isolation didn't bother him; it focused him. The petty concerns of his peers seemed a universe away.
This quiet solitude was shattered by a formal, academy-wide summons delivered to his door. All first-year initiates were required to participate in the bi-annual Aetheric Sensitivity Trial. Attendance was mandatory, with no exceptions—not even for the reclusive ward of a GAMA Elder.
For the first time in months, Ren walked into a hall filled with his peers. The murmuring that followed him was different now. The initial scorn had been replaced by a confused, wary respect after his victory over Joric, which had then curdled into bafflement after the incident with the target. He was an equation that nobody could solve.
The Trial Hall was a vast, circular chamber, darker than the other halls, and dominated by a colossal, intricate device at its center. It was a shimmering construct of interwoven metallic rings and glowing crystals known as the Aetheric Loom, a masterpiece of Spirit Lumina Pagoda engineering.
An instructor stood before the Loom and explained the trial. "Aetheric sensitivity is the most fundamental of a Spirit Master's senses," she announced, her voice amplified by the hall's acoustics. "The Loom will project a non-corporeal maze of pure Aether into this chamber. Your task is to walk from this starting platform to the goal platform on the other side. You must use your Aetheric sense to perceive the invisible walls of the maze. Touch a wall, and you will receive a mild, corrective Aetheric shock. Three shocks, and you fail. This is a test of perception and control, not speed or power."
Lin Fei, standing near the front, shot a confident smirk in Ren's direction. A test of pure Aetheric sense. For a boy who was famously "Aether-deaf," this was a public humiliation waiting to happen. Anya Volkov, by contrast, looked at the Loom with a kind of professional hunger, her mind already dissecting its workings.
The trial began. One by one, students stepped onto the platform and began their slow, hesitant walks. Most stumbled blindly, yelping as they hit the invisible walls. A few managed to get partway through before failing. Lin Fei, to his credit, navigated a third of the maze with a look of intense concentration before making a mistake and wisely retreating.
Then came Anya. She moved with a preternatural grace, her eyes half-closed as if listening to a silent music. She flowed through the complex, invisible corridors without a single misstep, reaching the goal platform to a round of impressed applause. She was a natural, a true genius whose senses were as sharp as her mind.
"Ren," the instructor called out, her voice flat with low expectation. "Your turn."
Ren stepped onto the platform. The hall grew quiet, the air thick with anticipation. He closed his eyes. He could not use his Spirit Soul to 'sense' the maze as Anya had. His soul was a chained beast, and its senses were locked away with it. But his training had given him something else. He didn't need to see the walls. He could feel their presence.
He had spent months learning to maintain a skin-tight barrier of will around his body, a perfect, null-Aether shell. As he stood on the platform, he could feel the projected energy of the maze's invisible walls pressing against that shell. It was a faint, tactile sensation, like a steady, gentle wind blowing from a specific direction. He couldn't see the path, but he could feel the boundaries. He could trace the walls.
He took a hesitant step forward. Then another. He wasn't walking through the maze; he was walking alongside its walls, using them as a blind man uses a cane. His path seemed strange to the onlookers, slow and deliberate, with none of Anya's fluid grace. He would pause, turn at a sharp, unnatural angle, and then proceed. He was a weaver, threading a needle through a silent, invisible tapestry.
The silence in the hall deepened, turning from expectant mockery to dumbfounded confusion. He wasn't stumbling. He wasn't failing. He moved with an eerie, perfect confidence, flawlessly mirroring the complex twists of the labyrinth.
He reached the goal platform and stopped, opening his eyes. The journey had taken him twice as long as Anya, but he had not made a single error.
The two instructors monitoring the Aetheric Loom stared at their diagnostic crystals, their faces slack with disbelief. One of them looked up, his eyes wide.
"Impossible," he whispered to his colleague, just loud enough for the students nearby to hear. "His Aetheric output is a flat line. Zero. According to the Loom, he never even used his senses. It's as if he walked through it by sheer, impossible chance."