The wind moved through the ruins like a memory that refused to fade.
Jin Hyeon sat in the shadow of the broken temple, staring at the black flame hovering just above his palm. It swayed gently, bending the air around it, warping light like heat without warmth.
He had grown used to its voice.
Not words, not truly, just a low hum in the back of his mind, like a heart that didn't belong to him. Every pulse matched his breath, every flicker felt like it remembered something he didn't.
When he closed his hand, the world seemed to exhale.
The flame vanished. Silence returned.
Jin leaned against the stone wall, his body trembling from exhaustion. Sleep had become dangerous. The dreams weren't his anymore. They whispered in languages that didn't exist, showing places that couldn't be real, cities made of glass, oceans of light, towers that floated without mana.
And always, at the end of every dream, a voice:
"You are the echo of what was forgotten."
He didn't know what it meant. He wasn't sure he wanted to.
Far above the coast, the skies were no longer blue. A faint ripple spread across the upper atmosphere, visible only to those who could see mana. It shimmered like a wound, small, but spreading.
In the floating city of Aurea, panic wore the face of order. The Bureau called it "containment," but the truth was simpler. They were afraid.
Inside the Director's chamber, the air was heavy with restrained mana. Crystals pulsed along the ceiling, feeding light into a single projection: the coast, dark and lifeless.
"Sector Nine's leyline has begun to decay," said an officer, her voice tight. "Mana disruption spreading along the faultline. If it continues"
"It won't," the Director interrupted. His hands clasped behind his back. "The boy is heading north. We've deployed interceptors."
"And if he does what he did to Sector Thirteen?"
The room fell silent.
The Director turned, his face half-shadowed by the projection's dim light. "Then pray he doesn't."
---
Jin woke to the sound of thunder that wasn't thunder.
He opened his eyes to see streaks of light tearing through the sky — Bureau drones, scanning patterns that glowed like falling stars. Their hum carried the faint vibration of mana.
He felt it before he saw it.
The world recoiled around him, the threads of power bending, screaming, collapsing inward.
"They found me."
He moved fast, grabbing his satchel and slipping into the trees. The forest beyond the temple was dense, but not enough to hide his presence. The void followed him like a shadow, consuming his footprints, erasing his path.
A drone passed overhead, its mana-beam sweeping the ground. When the light brushed against him, it flickered, once, twice, then died completely. The machine fell from the sky, silent, like a bird forgetting how to fly.
Jin stared at it, stunned.
He hadn't even meant to do that.
The void responded on instinct now. It wasn't destruction, it was correction. The world sought balance, and around him, imbalance meant death.
He ran until the forest ended at a ravine. A broken bridge hung between cliffs, half-collapsed from time. Across it, faint lights flickered, a small settlement, distant, but alive.
He hadn't seen living mana-lights in days.
For a long moment, he hesitated. The last time he'd gone near people, the ground itself had screamed. But hunger gnawed at him, and exhaustion pressed down like a weight.
He took one step forward. Then another.
---
The bridge groaned under his weight, wood splintering, wind howling between the gaps. Halfway across, he felt it again, that faint vibration beneath reality, the tremor that came before the void stirred.
Someone was using magic nearby.
He froze. The mana current was faint, flickering like a candle healing magic, weak but deliberate. Someone was injured.
He followed it.
On the far side of the bridge, a young woman knelt beside a wounded soldier. Her robes were Bureau standard, though tattered and burned. She pressed glowing hands to his chest, trying to mend a wound that refused to close.
"Stay with me," she whispered. "Please"
The light flickered once, then died. Her breath caught. She looked up , and saw him.
For a moment, neither moved.
Then her eyes widened. "You…"
Jin raised a hand instinctively. "Don't."
But it was too late. She reached for a spell, panic overriding thought. Circles of light flared around her hands , only to crumble into dust. The magic dissolved the instant it touched the air around him.
She gasped, staring at the fading glyphs. "It's true…"
He didn't speak.
"You're the one from the reports," she said, her voice trembling. "The Null. The one who"
"Don't call me that."
Her expression shifted , not fear, but recognition. "Then what are you?"
Jin looked past her, to the dying soldier. The man's eyes were glassy, breath shallow. Mana leaked from him like steam, fading into the cold. Without thinking, Jin knelt beside him.
The healer tried to pull him back. "No, you'll kill him!"
But Jin didn't touch the man. He simply reached toward the wound, and the black flame stirred again, soft, silent.
The leaking mana stopped. The body went still, not from death, but peace. The wound sealed without light, without sound. When Jin pulled his hand away, the man's chest rose in a slow, steady breath.
The healer's eyes widened. "You… healed him?"
Jin shook his head. "No. I took away what was killing him."
The void hummed faintly inside him, cold and steady.
It hadn't devoured this time. It had… balanced.
The healer whispered, "You shouldn't exist."
"Maybe not." Jin stood, his eyes distant. "But neither should this world, not like this."
She looked at him, uncertain whether to run or bow. "What are you going to do?"
He didn't answer. His gaze drifted toward the horizon, where the floating city of Aurea hung like a second moon, faint, golden, and watching.
"I think it's time they learned what silence really sounds like."
---
That night, as storms gathered across the sky, the Bureau's instruments began to fail.
Not because of attack, but because the world itself had stopped listening.
Mana currents twisted, reversed, and vanished. Spell matrices unraveled midair. And in the quiet that followed, the first echoes of something ancient stirred beneath the earth, an answering hum to the void above.
The Abyssal Codex flickered open on its own, its pages shifting as if breathing.
> "The unmaker walks, but not to destroy.
To remember what the world chose to forget."
And in the ruins by the coast, where sea met sky, Jin Hyeon walked
into the darkness — not as prey, not as hunter, but as the balance itself.
The silence between every spell.
The memory that would not fade.