Chapter Three: Grey
Grey spread beneath his palm. Flat. Ashen. The color of dead hearths and cold dust.
The light held for three heartbeats.
Then it died.
Silence hit the green like a physical weight. It pressed on ears, on skin, on the space between people where words should have been. The Guildsman leaned closer. His brow creased. A stylus scratched against his slate, a dry, final sound that carried further than any shout.
"Null reading. No affinity. No dantian activity." He didn't look at Zack. "Classification. Husk."
The word traveled on the quiet and infected every ear in Zoe.
His mother gasped. Small. Torn from somewhere deep. His father's shoulders folded inward, collapsing around a center that had just gone hollow. Mira's face went blank, her mouth ajar, a word dead on her tongue before it could form.
So. That's that.
The crowd stirred. Whispers rolled outward in a wave.
A husk. Poor family. Thank the Paths, ours are safe.
Joren's laugh cracked the air. "Hollow man."
Someone elbowed him. The laughter choked off. The grin stayed.
The Guildsman looked past Zack's shoulder. "Next."
Next. He said 'next.' I'm standing right here and I've already been subtracted from the count. That's efficient. I'll give him that.
Zack stepped down from the platform. It felt taller than when he'd climbed up. The wood creaked under his boots, and every head in the crowd tracked the sound.
He turned toward the path home.
The crowd had pulled back. They formed a perfect, open lane for him. Nobody planned it. Nobody decided. They just moved, the way water moves around something it doesn't want to touch. It was not a path of honor.
He walked.
The Aether in the air drifted green and gold around him, ignoring him the way it always had. But the people did not ignore him. They flinched. A mother yanked her child behind her skirts, fingers white on the fabric. Old Man Harel took a full step back, his eyes wide with something older than pity. Friends he'd known since birth couldn't meet his gaze. Their faces locked into rigid masks. Fear. Relief. A profound, instinctive rejection that lived somewhere below thought.
I'm the same person I was two minutes ago. Same hands. Same face. Same bad haircut. But two minutes ago I was a question. Now I'm an answer nobody wants.
The silence carved the feeling deep. No more whispers. Just the rustle of fabric as people shuffled aside, and the raw, hollow sound of his own footsteps on hard-packed earth.
The Aether had never answered. He was born to that emptiness.
But this. This human silence. This contagious flinch. It stung with a sharpness the grey crystal couldn't match.
He did not go home.
He walked past the willow. Its leaves whispered green mist that meant nothing to him and never would. He passed the last fence. He entered the thinning woods where wild Aether pulsed thick through root and soil, glowing and flowing and parting around him without contact.
His legs quit a quarter mile in. He dropped onto a rotting log and sat there, breathing hard, staring at his hands.
Husk.
The word settled into the space behind his ribs and made itself comfortable.
So here's the situation. In a world where monsters grow out of corrupted magic and demons press at every border, everyone has a job. Body Path holds the line. Soul Path strikes from distance. Hybrids build the tools. Everyone fights. Everyone contributes. And me? I'm the one item on the menu that doesn't come with a fork.
He turned his palms over. Good for gripping a plow handle. Good for hauling water. Useless for holding Aether, channeling force, reinforcing a blade, fueling a wardstone, healing a wound.
The Ash Corps is the kingdom's answer. Ship the empty ones to the Blight-lands. Put them to work in zones where the air rots flesh. Use them to draw the attention of horrors so the real fighters can flank. My death would serve a purpose my life cannot.
He stared at the canopy. Green light filtered through leaves fat with Aether. Beautiful. Useless.
I could go with them. Dig ditches in poison soil. Draw monsters for soldiers who won't learn my name. Die in a year, maybe two if I'm stubborn about it. They'd erase my name after five seasons anyway. Standard policy.
He pictured it. Grey uniforms. Grey food. Grey faces of other Husks who'd stopped caring. A slow grinding erasure that would leave nothing behind, not even a decent story.
Or I could run. Make it three days into the wilds before something with too many teeth and not enough manners finds me. Die faster, but at least on my own terms. Romantic. Stupid, but romantic.
A bird sang overhead. Some animal rustled through the underbrush. The world continued without his participation.
Neither is a life. Both are just methods of dying.
He looked at his hands one more time.
These hands are meant for glory in the arena.
The thought landed with the weight of absolute certainty. It didn't come from logic. It didn't come from the Aether or the crystal or the crowd. It came from the same place that made him practice his stolen kata every evening under the willow. The same place that kept him swinging when his muscles screamed. A deep, stubborn center that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the simple refusal to be erased.
I will not go.
The refusal was cold. Solid. It sat in his chest and hardened.
I will not let them use me as bait or a poisoned shovel. My death will not be their utility. If the world says I'm nothing, then the world is wrong, and I will make it apologize. With interest.
He stood up. His legs ached. His eyes burned from something he refused to name. But his spine was straight and his jaw was set.
Sixty days until they come. Sixty days to become something they can't throw away. Step one: stop sitting on rotten logs feeling sorry for myself. Step two: figure out what a man with zero magical talent can actually do in a world that runs on magic. Step three: do it so well they choke on the word 'Husk.'
Simple plan. Clean. Absolutely no idea how to execute it. But the plan exists, and that's more than I had five minutes ago.
He turned back toward the village.
The training yard lay empty under bruised purple sky. Packed dirt. Worn posts. Silence. The last light of day bled across the ground in long red streaks.
Zack stripped off his outer shirt. He began.
He ran laps until his lungs were raw fire. Dropped and pushed his body up from the dirt until his arms failed and his face hit the ground. Stood and did it again. The pain was a measurement. He counted it. Each pushup was a number. Each lap was a fact. Facts didn't care about Aether or crystals or the opinions of crowds.
Forty-seven. Forty-eight. My arms are filing a formal complaint. Noted and denied. Forty-nine.
His muscles quit on fifty-three. He lay face down in the dirt, tasting dust and iron, chest heaving.
A shadow stretched long across the yard.
He lifted his head.
Chief Burrel stood at the edge of the training ground. The last red light caught the scar on his temple. His face held no expression at all, which for Burrel meant he was paying very close attention.
He held two wooden knives.
"Stop."
One knife spun through the air toward Zack's chest.