Chapter One: The Husk
The world ran on Nox and Aether.
Zack knew this the same way he knew his shoulders would ache by sundown. The Aether was the invisible river of energy flowing through everything. Every rock, every root, every living creature that had the good fortune of not being him.
Nox was the other half. The element scholars argued about in towers he would never see. Some called it useless to Path walkers. Others called it misunderstood. Zack called it irrelevant because neither element answered when he knocked.
He sat on the porch step and watched his sister work.
Mira's hands drove into the dough with force that didn't match her frame. Thirteen years old, built narrow, and strong enough to carry two full water buckets up the hill without shaking. That wasn't stubbornness. That was the Aether coiled dense in her dantian, feeding her muscles, thickening her bones. Body Path. Weak strain, but real.
Must be nice.
Their father worked the south field. His plow bit deeper than its weight should allow, but even Body Path strength couldn't fix what was happening to the soil. Three rows near the fence had gone grey this season. Crops stunted and brittle. Blight. Nobody said the word at dinner, but everybody chewed a little harder when the portions got smaller.
Their mother sat by the door, stitching a shirt with fingers that never snagged the thread. Subtle uses of the same talent. The whole family ran on a low, steady current of physical Aether.
The whole family minus one.
Zack looked at his hands. Calloused. Scarred from farm work and poor judgment. Empty.
The strange thing was, he could see the Aether. Not feel it. See it. Fine particles with weight and motion, folding through the air in precise currents. They thickened near the old willow by the creek, pooling green in its roots, misting through its leaves. They thinned around bare stone. They gathered where life grew dense and scattered where the soil went dead. When Zack stepped into the current, nothing changed. It didn't warm. Didn't respond. Flowed right past him and kept going.
I can see the entire feast laid out on the table. Can't take a single bite.
He'd figured this out years ago. Others described sensations when they perceived Aether. Warmth. Pressure. Resistance. Levels of feeling that deepened with talent. Zack felt zero. But he could see the particles themselves, their density, their speed, the way they eddied behind a walking man and pooled in the joints of old trees. He'd mentioned it once, casually, to Mira. The look on her face taught him to never mention it again.
Tomorrow was the Aptitude Test.
A Guildsman would arrive with his crystal focus and measure every fourteen-year-old in Zoe. The crystal read the density and affinity of Aether in the dantian. The result was your destiny.
Body Path. Strength forged into flesh. Soldiers and laborers. The ones who held the line.
Soul Path. Energy given shape. Fire, force, distance.
Hybrid Path. The careful middle road. Tools, wards, and in-between crafts.
And the fourth result. The one nobody said above a whisper.
Husk.
A dantian that couldn't hold Aether. A constitution that pushed it away. One in a hundred thousand. In a world where monsters crawled out of corrupted magic and demons pressed at every border, a Husk contributed nothing. A mouth that couldn't lift a shield in return. The kingdom's answer was the Ash Corps. They shipped you to the Blight-lands to dig foundations where the air itself could kill, or posted you as bait so real fighters could strike. Your name got erased after five seasons of service. If you lasted that long.
Outstanding career opportunity. Great benefits. I hear the retirement plan is a shallow hole and a pat on the back. Posthumous, of course.
"You're thinking too loud."
Mira wiped flour on her apron and squinted at him from the kitchen doorway.
"It's a test. You'll get Body Path like the rest of us. Maybe a weak strain. So what? You can still hold a plow."
"I don't want to hold a plow."
"Nobody wants to." Her voice went tight. "We do it because we have to. Because our Aether isn't strong enough for anything else. Welcome to the real world, Zack."
The real world. He glanced past her to the village green. Two boys his age, Penn and Aron, were sparring with wooden swords. Their movements carried the faint copper glow of physical Aether. Sloppy strikes, genuine power. They had futures. Regional guard. Caravan security. A life that didn't end in a ditch.
A voice cut across the green. Louder than it needed to be.
Joren. The miller's son. A year older, wide across the shoulders, and mean in the particular way of boys whose best moment had already passed. He'd tested Body Path the prior year. Enough strength for the local guard. Not enough control for the Academies. That rejection had gone rotten inside him, and he'd been spreading the smell ever since.
"Look at that. The maybe-man, contemplating his greatness."
Joren leaned against the well, arms folded, performing for his small crowd.
"What'll it be tomorrow, Zack? Mighty Soul Path prodigy? Hybrid artisan?" He cupped his hands around his mouth. "Your hands make dirt look clean."
Snickering rippled through the group. The sound pressed into Zack's chest.
He rehearsed that all morning. You can tell because it almost made grammatical sense.
Zack kept his face blank. His pulse hammered behind his ears, but nothing showed.
Mira moved before he could stop her. Three fast steps toward the well. Eyes hard.
"Your wit is as thin as your mill's profit, Joren. Worry about your own grain."
The grin dropped off Joren's face. He shot her a look that stored something ugly for later, then turned away muttering. Mira's tongue was the most dangerous weapon in Zoe, and even Joren had enough sense not to come back for seconds.
Zack didn't thank her. Gratitude between them was an unspoken debt, and debts were weight. He gave a small nod and walked off the green.
The willow waited at the creek bend. Its roots cradled a hidden seat. Its leaves breathed green Aether mist into the air. The densest concentration in all of Zoe. The most magical spot for miles.
Completely useless to him.
He practiced here anyway. No formal training. Stolen fragments. A guard's stance from the yearly militia drill. A pivot he'd watched a traveling mercenary perform. A blocking motion copied from a storybook illustration. Pieces forced into a rough, private kata that belonged to no school and followed no doctrine.
A rock trying to learn to swim. But this rock is very, very stubborn.
He began. Slow. Weight shifting on the loamy earth. Then faster. Strike, step, pivot, block. Breath hissing between his teeth. Sweat pasting his thin shirt to his ribs. He threw his body into the sequence again and again, a prayer aimed at nothing and nobody.
Let me be something. Let me touch the current. Once.
Strike. Step. Pivot. Block.
His muscles gave out. He slumped against the trunk, chest heaving, arms dead. Above him, the Aether mist curled in slow, lazy spirals. Green and gold. Silent. Indifferent.
Please. Let me matter.
Nothing answered.
He sat there while the light turned amber and the shadows grew long. The willow exhaled its energy into the open sky, and Zack breathed plain air, and between those two facts sat the widest gap in his world.
Tomorrow, the crystal would measure him. It would find the density of Aether in his dantian. It would name his Path. It would hand him a life or bury him.
What if the crystal stays dark?
The thought dropped cold into his gut and stayed there, heavy and still.
Husk.