The Dominion of Vaen, Year 302 After Resonance
> "When the heavens forget their own creation, even the smallest spark can ignite rebellion."
— Dominion Precept, Year 302 After Resonance
—
The city of Dalen, outer ring of Lohvar — the tenth and dying province of the Dominion of Vaen — never truly slept. Pipes hissed beneath the cobblestones, their joints leaking ribbons of pale Qi mist that drifted through the alleys like tired ghosts. Beyond the industrial haze, the grand spires of Vaen's inner provinces shimmered faintly in the distance — untouchable, radiant, and cruel.
The Dominion's power came from Qi, the current of life itself. Every lamp, tram, and tower ran on it. Qi-cores pulled ambient energy from the air, condensing it to light the streets or drive machines. It was the lifeblood of civilization — but for one, it refused to flow.
The ceiling of the shack sagged under years of condensation, the walls swollen and warped from time's indifference. Inside, Xang Xi stirred awake. He listened to the soft dripping above him, the rhythmic tick of a leaking pipe somewhere in the dark — the shack's pulse. The air reeked faintly of rust and damp earth.
As he sat up, his gaze wandered from the warped ceiling to Ling's bed, resting in the corner. The blanket still lay folded neatly on its edge, untouched for months.
She wasn't there — hadn't been for a long time. Ling had fallen ill when her Qi awakened too early. The physicians called it Celestial Resonance Collapse — a sickness so rare and always fatal that even the Dominion's scholars whispered of it like a curse.
He rose slowly, chest tight and legs trembling. Every motion cost him breath. His body had always been frail — a consequence, they said, of being born without Qi at all. The world called him Nullborn — the only known human to exist without even a spark of resonance. He'd learned to live as an observer, watching the current of life pass him by as though he stood behind a window he could never open.
Near the door rested a folded cloak and a weathered envelope, its wax seal cracked and dulled with age — stamped with a sigil. He slipped it into his cloak. Even after two years, the reminder that compassion hadn't yet vanished from the Dominion brought him a soft, almost grateful smile.
Outside, rain whispered against the shack's tin roof, steady and cold. Xang pulled the hood over his head, took one last look at Ling's empty bed, and stepped into the storm.
—
The rain deepened — a ceaseless gray veil that swallowed sound and shape alike. Dalen's streets were a maze of cracked stone and corroded pipes that exhaled pale mist from their seams — the dying breath of Qi engines that had long since forgotten rest.
Xang couldn't see their faint glow, only hear the uneven hum beneath the rain — sounds he'd learned to recognize in place of the light he would never perceive.
He passed a vagrant slumped against a wall, her skin ashen, her breath shallow. The blackened veins across her forearms marked her as Qi-locked — a living warning of what happened when resonance turned stagnant — the inevitable decay that follows a failed ascension, when the soul reaches upward for power the body cannot sustain, leaving its Qi to rot inside its veins.
Without hesitation, Xang bent to help her.
"Careful," someone muttered from across the street. "Unless you want to end up Qi-locked yourself."
Another voice followed, mocking. "Can't end up Qi-locked if you're already Nullborn."
The woman froze. Her eyes widened as she realized who had touched her. She jerked her hand away, scrubbing the spot against her sleeve as if to erase him from her skin.
Xang simply smiled — soft, forgiving, the kind of smile that belonged to someone who understood that even the oppressed had learned to hate weakness. He steadied her until she could stand on her own, then stepped back.
"Be careful," he said softly, with a polite smile.
She didn't answer — only scowled, lips curling with quiet disgust.
The rain fell harder, hissing against the stone as he continued toward the tram station — another silent figure swallowed by Dalen's endless gray.
—
From the wall of rain ahead came a low hum — first a tremor beneath his feet, then a resonance that set the puddles trembling. The tram burst through the gray like a brass leviathan, its frame veined with runes that pulsed faint Qi light. Vents along its flanks exhaled ribbons of pale blue, each breath glowing before fading to ash. The storm bent aside as it passed, torn open by its own momentum. When the tram screeched to a halt, the brilliance collapsed back into the downpour — swallowed once more by Dalen's endless gray.
Xang stood before the open carriage, droplets rolling from his cloak, eyes tracing the ghost-blue light that rippled across the tram's hull. He couldn't see the resonance itself — the shifting threads of Qi that painted the world in color for others — only the motion of machinery, the play of shadow and reflection on wet metal.
To him, the Dominion's splendor was sound and pressure, the rhythm of pistons and the hiss of vents. Yet somehow, knowing he would never see its light made him treasure the fragments he could still feel: the warmth of a vent's breath, the steady pulse beneath his boots, the faint echo of life in a world built on energy he could never touch.
He stepped aboard. Inside, the air hummed softly with the current of Qi that powered the tram's motion. Passengers stood near the donation node — a polished pillar engraved with Dominion runes, its surface alive with faint light. Each traveler pressed their palm to it in turn, offering a fragment of their Qi in payment.
When it was Xang's turn, the conductor frowned.
"Don't tell me you're not giving?"
"I can't," Xang said quietly. "I'm Nullborn."
The man blinked, disbelief hardening into scorn. "Didn't think that was possible." He held out a hand instead. "Then at least pay in coin. If you can't contribute to the flow, you can help mine."
Xang reached into his pocket, withdrawing several worn silvers and placing them gently in the man's palm. Behind him, a mother tugged her child close, whispering sharply. "Stay away from him — you'll become Nullborn too."
The words cut through the quiet, their weight sinking deeper than the rain outside. Xang only offered a soft, apologetic smile, lowering his gaze as if he were the one who had done wrong. He moved to an empty seat, folding his cloak across his lap.
Around him, passengers whispered in muted awe as the tram's interior shimmered with a soft luminescence drawn from the same Qi that carried it through the rain.
To them, it was beauty — proof of the Dominion's divinity.
To Xang, it was something else entirely: beauty bound in chains, a marvel born of the same current that divided worth from worthlessness, faith from function.
They saw a temple of light; he saw only the weary strain of engines beneath it — the measured breath of pistons, the sigh of vents that wept pale mist into the air. That was the only radiance he knew. He could not see the glow that stirred their wonder, only the trembling of metal shaped by it. Yet somehow, the weight of that unseen brilliance pressed heavier on him than on any of them.
What they called divine, he understood as sorrow — beauty bound to power, its radiance stolen from all it left in shadow.
The tram glided to its final stop with a shriek of pressure vents, blue fire curling from its exhaust like ribbons of silk. Beyond the shimmering rails, the station itself lay in ruin — cracked pillars, corroded signage, puddles that reflected more rust than light. Once, it might have been a beacon for the sick and weary; now it was nothing more than a tomb that pretended to serve the living. The Dominion poured its brilliance into spires that reached the clouds, yet left its healers' gate to rot where the forgotten came to die. As the tram's glow faded, the imbalance was laid bare: progress on one side of the tracks, despair on the other.
The doors hissed open, releasing a wash of cold Qi into the rain. Above the exit, a flickering halosign pulsed through the haze — DALEN — SECTOR 3 : STATION TERMINUS. Its light bled across the puddles, painting rust in false gold before dimming again. Another boundary, another sector built to separate value from burden. Xang stepped down onto the cracked platform, his silhouette folding back into the Dominion's endless gray.
—
The rain had thinned to a cold drizzle by the time Xang reached the Dalen Provincial Hospital. Its rust-streaked fence sagged beneath years of rain, iron gates half-sunk in puddles that reflected a ceiling of gray. Once, its façade might have carried the Dominion's pride; now its Qi-lamps sputtered weakly, their light choked by years of neglect.
Dr. C stood beneath the overhang at the entrance, a cigarette balanced unlit between his fingers. He was tall but gaunt, skin drawn pale against the collar of his coat, dark hair tied back in a loose knot. The blue-gray lenses of his spectacles hid eyes that hadn't known sleep in days. The faint scent of burnt metal clung to him — the ghost of too many Qi-circuits sparked and rewired by exhausted hands.
When he saw Xang, he smirked faintly. "You're early. Didn't expect the tram to still run in this weather."
"Figured the Dominion wouldn't let the sick rest even if the heavens did," Xang said, his voice soft beneath the drizzle.
Dr. C laughed once — a dry, tired sound. "Fair." He flicked open his lighter, thumb brushing the etched lid. The flame flared a cold blue, painting the rain in trembling light. Across its surface, Xang caught the mark engraved into the metal — a serpent devouring its own tail, inked deep with the Dominion's insignia.
Xang hesitated. "I've always wondered what that meant."
Dr. C's gaze followed his. "The Praxis Sigil. Every licensed physician designs their own when they're accepted by the Board of Resonance Physicians. The color, the form — all unique. It's both license and oath. Once sealed in wax, it proves you've sworn to mend life, not take it."
"The serpent?"
"An old symbol. The Dominion interprets it as eternity through refinement — but mine…"
He pocketed the lighter, eyes flicking away. "Mine's a reminder that knowledge devours its wielder just as easily."
Rumor said he'd bargained with a Celestial once, traded years of his life for forbidden understanding. That his real name — Cerce — had been struck from every record by his own hand because he believed it to be a curse upon his patients. He'd erased it to protect them, convinced that the sound of it alone doomed those he treated. No one ever asked if the stories were true.
"You look like hell," Dr. C said finally. "You eating properly?"
"Define properly."
"Anything that isn't rainwater or guilt will do."
He motioned toward the door. "Come on, she's sta — "
The shriek of resonance sirens cut him off.
A burst of white-blue light tore through the rain as a Dominion ambulance skidded to a halt at the gate. Vaporized water exploded outward in a halo of steam, runes along the vehicle's hull flaring bright enough to turn night into midday.
To Xang, it was noise and pressure — the scream of engines, the hiss of vents, the hammering rhythm of boots in water.
To everyone else, it was light — blinding, pure, merciless.
"Level 3 Ascension Failure!" one of the medics shouted over the storm.
"Qi-lock confirmed, heading toward complete psyche collapse!"
Dr. C was already moving, coat whipping behind him as he reached the nearest stretcher. Inside the containment field, a man thrashed, veins glowing like cracked glass. The air around him pulsed — each surge bending the rain outward in concentric rings.
"Talismans!" Dr. C barked. "Now!"
The medics slapped three sedation talismans across the patient's chest and throat — thin slips of runed fabric that seared gold before dissolving into ash. The backlash rippled outward, and the storm itself seemed to hold its breath. For a heartbeat, the patient's convulsions stilled. The glow dimmed.
"Resonance stabilized," one medic gasped. "Cycle holding — we can make containment!"
"Go," Dr. C said. His voice was steady, but his hands trembled. The ambulance doors sealed, pylons flashing green as the vehicle surged back into the haze. Its fading siren left a hollow quiet in its wake — a silence that somehow felt heavier than the noise.
Xang blinked against the afterimage he couldn't see. To him, the world was unchanged — gray, soaked, indifferent. Yet he could feel the air's weight shift, the pressure settling as if the Dominion itself exhaled.
Dr. C turned back, rain streaming down his face.
"Come on," he said again, softer this time. "She's stable today."
—
Ascension Failure, Qi-Lock, Hollowization, Celestial Resonance Collapse — the Dominion cataloged them clinically, as though names could contain the suffering. Each marked a stage in the slow betrayal of body by its own Qi.
Ascension Failure came first: a soul reaching higher than its vessel could endure, leaving the meridians burned and trembling. When the channels seized from the strain, Qi stagnated — a paralysis the physicians called Qi-Lock, its victims left to wither, half-alive. If the rot continued, the energy turned inward, feeding on the mind until the self unraveled, leaving only instinct behind — Hollowization.
But CRC was another kind of cruelty entirely. When Qi awakened too young — before fourteen — it tore its host apart from within. Some burst, their blood turned to light; others mutated, their strength multiplying as reason slipped away, until the inevitable detonation consumed them and everything nearby. Those rare few who lingered past that point became the Fallen — monuments to what mercy could no longer reach.
Dr. C had been the first to delay that spiral. At twenty, barely three years after earning his Praxis Sigil — the youngest physician ever accepted by the Board of Resonance Physicians at seventeen — he devised a suppression therapy capable of postponing CRC's progression. It didn't cure. It bought time. As long as the suppression held, they slept; lift it, and the spiral resumed. The breakthrough made the Board consider him a prodigy — but the work aged him beyond his years. He was thirty now, yet the mirror told another story: skin pallid, eyes ringed dark as smoke, hair shot through with gray. He called himself a failure who hadn't stopped the dying — only taught them how to linger.
The corridor opened into a ward lined with containment cradles, each haloed by sigils of suppression and faint blue light. Xang followed Dr. C past rows of silent forms until they reached the last chamber. Inside floated a young girl — Ling — her body weightless within a suspension field of soft luminescence. Tubes of woven Qi-glass traced from the seals at her wrists and neck into the humming array beneath the cradle. Her chest rose slowly, rhythm measured by the stabilizer's pulse.
Xang placed a hand on the glass. The field trembled faintly beneath his touch.
"Hey, Ling," he whispered. "Still dreaming?"
Her face was peaceful, but her eyes never moved.
"You'd probably tell me I look tired," he murmured, smiling faintly. "You'd be right."
Dr. C stood a few steps behind, his expression unreadable.
"She hears more than she shows. The stabilization field's holding — her Qi remains dormant, no further fracturing in the resonance pattern." He adjusted a dial on the panel. "The treatment protocol's still experimental, but it works. For a time."
Xang turned to him. "You made this?"
—
Dr. C nodded once. "Years ago. When CRC first appeared in the outer provinces, the Dominion wrote them off as lost causes. So I built a method to delay collapse — a resonance-inversion cycle. It postpones the progression, nothing more. If we lift it, CRC continues from where it left off."
Xang's gaze drifted back to Ling. "It's enough."
Dr. C studied him for a long moment. "You say that like someone who's never wished for more."
Xang's lips curved in that quiet, saint-like way. "I'd rather her breathe in stillness than vanish in light."
The physician didn't answer. He only exhaled, pulling the cigarette from his coat pocket but never lighting it. "You really are a strange one, Xang Xi."
—
The hum of the containment field faded behind him as Xang stepped out into the ward's corridor. The air was thick with disinfectant and fatigue — a scent that clung to everything within these walls. Monitors whispered in uneven rhythm, and through the glass partitions he saw the soft silhouettes of patients suspended in their cradles, half-lit by flickering sigils.
He paused to glance back once more toward Ling's chamber before turning toward the exit. A nurse passing with a clipboard slowed as she noticed him. Her expression tightened.
"You shouldn't waste your breath talking to her," she said flatly. "She's going to die anyway."
Another nurse, younger, leaned against the doorway beside her. "Honestly," she added, "if I had to choose, I'd rather be in her position than mine. At least CRC's merciful — wouldn't have to live with the shame."
Xang met their eyes with the same calm he always carried, unflinching beneath their scorn. He bowed his head slightly. "Thank you," he said softly, voice even, almost gentle. "For watching over her."
The elder nurse's lip curled. "Thanks from a Nullborn are worth about as much as he is."
Their laughter echoed faintly down the hall. Xang didn't answer. He only smiled — faint, unshaken — and continued toward the door, the soles of his boots whispering against the tile.
He felt no anger for them. Their cruelty wasn't their own — it was the Dominion's voice speaking through frightened mouths. In a world where strength was worshiped and mercy branded sin, even those sworn to heal were taught to fear the weak. He pitied them not for their hatred but for their blindness — a blindness taught, not born. They basked in the Dominion's light and cursed it for what it refused to show them. He understood; even mercy has its shadows.
"Enough," came a voice like cold iron.
Dr. C stood at the junction, arms crossed, eyes sharp behind the blue-gray lenses. The two nurses stiffened as his gaze fell on them.
"You think words like that make you righteous?" His tone was calm, but each word landed with surgical precision. "You work in a place meant to preserve life — not to weigh its value. If disdain is all you have to offer, get out of my ward before you poison the air with it."
Neither nurse spoke. They bowed their heads and hurried off, their footsteps fading quickly.
Dr. C watched them go, exhaling a quiet breath through his nose. "People like that," he muttered, half to himself, "I'll never understand. They worship the Dominion's doctrine of power and still come begging to tend the powerless. Hypocrisy dressed as virtue."
He turned to Xang, the edge in his voice softening. "Come on. Let's get you out of here before their stupidity spreads."
They walked together down the corridor, their steps echoing through the hollow hall. The faint glow of the suppression sigils followed them like dying stars.
"I apologize for their ignorance," Dr. C said quietly.
Xang shook his head. "You've done enough. I should be thanking you."
"You can start by not starving," the doctor said dryly, though his voice carried warmth beneath the sarcasm.
At the doorway, Xang adjusted his cloak. "I'm heading to the Collectors' Den after this — see if there's work. Should I tell Ren anything for you?"
Dr. C huffed. "Tell him to stop smoking during calibrations and maybe he'll live long enough to see me retire."
A faint smile ghosted across Xang's lips. "I'll deliver it word for word."
Dr. C nodded once, pushing the door release. The rain beyond was steady now, silver threads crossing the threshold.
"You're welcome here anytime, Xang. Don't let them convince you otherwise."
"I know."
Xang stepped through, his figure fading into the drizzle, cloak merging with the gray.
For a long moment, Dr. C stood watching the door as it sealed shut, the echo of his footsteps already lost to the storm.
He couldn't fathom it — how, in a world so radiant with Qi-light and color, the brightest thing he'd ever seen was someone who lived in darkness.
Maybe that was what made Xang dangerous to the Dominion.
Or maybe it was what made him human.