The village slept in silence.
Beyond the crooked timbers of my home, I could hear the faint rhythm of wind scraping across the rooftops, the occasional bark of a dog, and the rustle of branches bending beneath the night air. Inside, the house groaned with its own noises—my so-called father's deep, rasping snores, the shifting creak of wooden beams, the faint crackle of embers dying in the hearth.
It was in these hours, when the world's noise thinned, that I began my experiments.
By day I was nothing—just a Hollow boy, burdened with chores, ignored or scorned by those who believed fate had sealed my worth. But by night, I became something else. A seeker. An observer. A questioner.
If the Weavers and Bearers had their natural channels, then perhaps mine were closed only because no one had ever tried to open them. And if no one would teach me, then I would teach myself.
I began with the simplest method I knew: breath.
I had seen the Bearers train, their lungs rising and falling in deliberate cycles. They inhaled through the nose, drawing their chests tall, then released in sharp bursts with every strike, every push, every movement. It was not mere oxygen they were seeking, I realized, but resonance—breath as rhythm, rhythm as energy.
So I copied them.
Night after night, I sat cross-legged on the dirt floor, eyes closed, spine straight, hands resting on my knees. Inhale. Exhale. Slow. Measured. Controlled.
I waited for something—warmth, pressure, a spark.
Nothing came.
Frustrated, I added focus. I drew my attention to the beat of my heart, counting each thud like a drum. My breaths aligned with it, creating an internal symphony of rhythm. Surely, I thought, this would stir something.
But again—silence. My body remained dull, my veins empty of the glow I saw in others.
Perhaps posture mattered. The Bearers' stances were not random. So I adjusted my body into the shapes I had memorized: arms extended, one leg forward, chest tilted just so. Sometimes I squatted low, sometimes I arched backward, holding positions until my muscles screamed.
Still, nothing.
The hours slipped by. My body trembled with effort, my chest ached, but not once did I feel the spark of Aetherka.
I should have given up. Most Hollows never tried at all. But stubbornness was carved into my bones, honed sharper by the memory of my first life. I had not been born to accept the boundaries others gave me. I was a man reborn, not a child of this village, and I would not die a shadow.
So I turned to another path.
Meditation.
I remembered the old yogic practices of my past life, the whispered instructions of gurus, the slow alignment of breath and thought. Those techniques had been used to calm the mind, to expand awareness, to reach inward toward truths hidden beneath the noise of daily life.
So I practiced them.
I closed my eyes. I slowed my thoughts. I shut out the distractions of body and world. I envisioned light flowing through me, veins of fire tracing across my skin. I imagined doors within my chest, waiting to be opened, and keys made of breath and patience.
But still… nothing.
No warmth. No pulse. No current waiting to be claimed.
Days blurred into weeks. Weeks into months. Each attempt ended the same: silence. A child's body exhausted from trying to command forces that did not answer. And with each failure, the voices of the village crept into my mind:
Hollow. Empty. Useless.
One night, lying flat on the hard earth, I nearly surrendered.
The stars above glittered faintly through the cracks of the roof, distant and indifferent. My body ached from hours of failed postures. My lungs felt raw from forced breaths. My mind churned with questions, but all of them fell back into the same pit of despair.
Maybe they were right. Maybe I was Hollow. Maybe all my knowledge from another life, all my stubborn refusal to accept fate, meant nothing in a world whose rules I could not bend.
But as the despair pressed close, I noticed something.
It wasn't in me. It was around me.
The soft touch of the earth beneath my palms. The faint whisper of wind pressing against the walls. The creak of branches moving together, like wood sighing. The buzz of insects in the grass outside.
It was all rhythm.
Not chaos, but pattern. Not silence, but hum.
And suddenly I realized my error.
I had been trying to command Aetherka. To seize it. To bend it. To demand that it flow where I willed. But perhaps it was not a servant to be ordered. Perhaps it was a song. And songs were not controlled—they were heard, echoed, joined.
That night, for the first time, I did not try to command.
I listened.
I lay flat on the cold earth, hands splayed on the dirt, and let my body soften. My breath fell into the rhythm of the night itself—slow, swaying with the breeze. My heartbeat matched the distant chirping of crickets. My mind stilled until the noise of thought faded into the background.
And then—
I felt it.
A hum.
Subtle, ancient, vast.
It wasn't sound exactly, nor sensation, but something deeper. A pulse beneath reality itself, as if the world exhaled in slow harmony. It was in the soil beneath me, in the air brushing across my skin, in the tiny flicker of life within every crawling insect.
Not a force to command. Not a tool to wield. But a pattern.
My breath slowed. I matched it. My chest rose when the wind rose. My heart fell into step with the chorus around me. I let it wash through me, not as power, but as song.
And then—
A flicker.
Like a spark in dry grass. So small, so faint, I might have missed it if I hadn't been listening so carefully.
It vanished as quickly as it came. But it was there.
Real.
My eyes snapped open. My body trembled, not from exhaustion, but from exhilaration. For the first time since my birth into this world, I had touched it.
Not as a Weaver. Not as a Bearer.
But as something new.
I lay back, chest heaving, a smile ghosting across my lips despite the cold.
This was only the beginning.
I could learn this.