The alarm wasn't a sound; it was a vibration. A deep, sub-audible thrum that traveled up through the ferrocrete floor of the hab-unit, through the thin soles of Robert's standard issue shoes, and settled as a dull ache in his teeth. Wall Pulse. The automated systems testing the energy barrier that separated the Outer Ring of Nova-7 from the whispering, chittering nightmare of the Wilds beyond. It was the city's heartbeat, a constant reminder that survival was a paid subscription, and his family was barely making the monthly fee.
Robert Walton, seventeen, stood before the small, foggy mirror. The face that stared back was unremarkable. Black jet hair, cut in a low fade that was already growing out. Blue eyes that held a calm, tired intelligence, perpetually shadowed. An average look. But beneath the worn fabric of his gray civilian jumpsuit, a lean, muscular build spoke of hard, thankless labor in the recycling yards, not the flashy conditioning of the Awakened.
The walk to Apex Academy was a gauntlet measured in slights. Today's metric was a D-Tier Kinetic Pulse to the kidney, delivered by a bruiser named Troy.
"Oops. Clumsy Null."
Robert stumbled, his books actual, printed texts his family could barely afford spilling across the walkway. Calm. Enduring. He repeated the words like a mantra, his cunning mind already cataloguing Troy's unbalanced footing. Lead with the right leg. Lower back over-extended. Weak point.
"Hey, F-Tier! You gonna cry?" Kieran, a C-Tier with a minor Sonic Screech talent, sneered.
Robert said nothing. His silence was a wall. Words were ammunition he refused to give them. He saw his younger brother, Sammy, hovering nearby, frozen. Robert gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Don't get involved. This was the torment. Not just the violence, but the systematic erosion. He was the academy's stepping stone, the living proof against which others measured their own, meager power. An F-Tier. A Null.
Home was a different pressure. Their hab-unit in Sector 23 was clean but smelled faintly of the recycling plant and desperation.
His father, Marcus, a former Wall mechanic with a permanently damaged leg, looked up from a broken aura lamp. "Uncle Kael was here. Brought 'gifts.' Ration bars from the Inner Sector. Said Elena might need the extra nutrients." The unspoken words hung in the air: Because you can't provide them.
His mother, Elara, stirred a pot of synthetic nutrient stew, her voice tight. "He spent twenty minutes talking about the new resonant security gate on his E-Tier block. How it 'weeds out the undesirables.'"
Robert felt the raging anger then, a hot coil in his gut. He saw the weariness in his parents' eyes. They were ordinary people of profound strength, content with their love, yet the world insisted on measuring them in credits and Tiers. And he, their seventeen year old son, was powerless to lift that weight.
"He's a small man with a small power," Marcus said, his eyes holding a firm, unyielding pride. "He needs to shine his light on our shadow to feel it exists."
But that night, on the scrapped alloy balcony overlooking the waste processing chasm, Robert felt the calm fracture. The helplessness was a physical weight.
'Why? Why is my family's love not enough armor? Why is my mind worthless because my body registers as null on a scanner?'
He stared at the artificial starfield of the city dome. "Why can't I grasp the light?" he whispered.
Awakening Day at Apex Academy was a spectacle.
Robert was there only because of his sister Elena's provisional scholarship. He stood at the very back, a ghost.
The atmosphere crackled. A name was called that hushed the room.
"Anna Medic."
A path cleared. She glided forward, a vision of serene poise. seventeen years old, she moved with a grace that seemed to slow the air around her. Her waist-length white hair was a silent statement of legendary genetics. Her ruby red eyes took in the room with friendly, intelligent curiosity. The whispers were reverent.
She placed a hand on the crystalline Awakening Altar. It sang. Frost spiraled elegantly from its base, forming delicate, crystalline flowers that bloomed and shattered in a timeless loop.
"Talent: SSR. Primary Affinity: Cryokinesis. Secondary Affinity: Temporal Manipulation."
Thunderous applause. SSR! And not one, but two legendary affinities! Anna simply smiled, a gracious curve of her lips, gave a slight nod, and stepped back. Her display had been controlled, disciplined, and utterly breathtaking.
Later, another wave of excitement rippled through the atrium.
"Mo Ziyun."
This energy was different. Ziyun, also seventeen, all but bounced forward, her long black hair in a swinging ponytail, her jade green eyes alight with hearty, cheerful excitement. She waved at a friend in the crowd, her energy playful and infectious.
Her touch was less a placement and more a slap. The altar ROARED.
A column of violent, beautiful purple martial energy shot upward, solidifying for a moment into the phantom of a war god before dissipating. Then, from within the purple, crimson flames erupted, dancing in intricate, clever patterns that mirrored combat stances.
"Talent: SSS. Primary Affinity: Martial Soul. Secondary Affinity: Pyrokinesis."
The silence was absolute, then shattered by deafening noise. SSS! A prodigy among prodigies! Ziyun pumped her fist with earnest joy, beaming a smile so charming it disarmed the sheer terror of her power. "Woo! That's more like it!" she cheered.
Robert watched from the shadows, his heart a stone. Their light was so brilliant it made the world around them light and his world seem darker.
Then, the sneering voice cut through his thoughts. "Look who crawled in. The Null here to see how real people are born."
Troy and Kieran had spotted him. "Think you can borrow some talent by standing close enough, Walton?" Kieran snickered.
"Maybe we should ask for a special reading," Troy said, loud enough to draw glances. "A 'Why Are You Such a Waste' assessment. I bet the altar would just short-circuit."
The humiliation was public, razor sharp. Even here, on a day about potential, he was a punchline. He saw Sammy, across the crowd, shrink in on himself. Helpless. Weak. The words were brands on his soul.
He couldn't stay. He slipped out, the sounds of celebration and awed discussion of the new goddesses, Anna and Ziyun, chasing him into the sterile, empty halls.
Despair finally won. On the waste chute overlook, under the glittering fake stars, the tears he shed were of unyielding fury turned inward. The cool, false breeze, the orange glow of societal refuse burning below it was a perfect mirror of his life.
"WHY CAN'T I FIGHT BACK?" he screamed at the uncaring dome, his voice swallowed by the vast, artificial sky.
It was then, in the absolute nadir of his hope, that the universe answered.
Not with a whisper, but with a silent, screaming tear in reality itself.
A shard of perfect darkness a crystal that drank the light around it fell not from the sky, but through it, crashing into the scrap-metal mounds beside him with a world-hushing thud.
The curiosity that was his core, the clever mind that never stopped analyzing, overrode his fear. This was unknown. This was outside the system.
He approached. The crystal, about the length of his forearm, hummed with a deep, primordial frequency that made the ever-present Wall Pulse in the ground stutter and die for three full seconds.
He reached out.
The touch was not an awakening.
It was an annihilation and a genesis.
The scrapyard, the city dome, the orange glow all of it vanished. He was adrift in an infinite, starless void. And in the center of that void, two points of ancient, weary light ignited, focusing on him.
A voice, older than mountains, dry as forgotten tombs and yet carrying a bedrock of unyielding will, spoke directly into the core of his being.
"At last. A vessel of silence in a universe of noise. The canvas is blank. The laws are forgotten here. They play with faded copies."
The voice paused, the cosmic weight of its attention settling on Robert's spirit.
"I offer the original text. Will you read, child of nothing? Will you become everything?"
In the real world, Robert Walton, the seventeen year old F-Tier Null, stood rigid, his hand fused to the obsidian crystal. The raging anger found a direction. The helplessness met a primordial power that asked for neither Tier nor talent, but tenacity and will.
The path was not lit. He would have to seize the light himself, and from it, forge his own sun.
Back in the Grand Atrium, Anna Medic, accepting congratulations, felt a strange, fleeting temporal hiccup a sensation of a great, silent door swinging open somewhere very far away. She dismissed it as Awakening Day feedback.
Mo Ziyun, laughing with friends, suddenly shivered, her Pyrokinesis flickering for a microsecond as if chilled by a cold far deeper than ice. "Whoa," she muttered, rubbing her arms with a playful grin. "Got a ghost or something?"
The system had recorded two legends that day.
It had missed the third.
And the third would break all its rules.