The next day dawned on a body that felt like shattered glass held together by fraying string. The void-pattern I'd archived wasn't a skill; it was a spiritual concussion. Colors were too sharp, sounds too loud, the gentle flow of the academy's ambient mana an abrasive torrent against my senses. My own meager core felt thin, brittle, as if the echo of that perfect nullity had starved it.
I moved through my classes like a ghost, my responses monosyllabic, my hands trembling slightly. The wary curiosity of my peers edged towards renewed dismissal. The odd Blank had relapsed into simple infirmity.
Machina was relentless. [THE NULL-RESIDUE IS INTEGRATING WITH YOUR NEURAL PATHWAYS. THIS IS A FORM OF TOXIC ASSIMILATION. IT MUST BE COUNTERACTED BY A SURGE OF PURE, ORDERED MANA TO RE-ESTABLISH EQUILIBRIUM. THE CONDENSATION CHAMBER IS NOW A MEDICAL NECESSITY, NOT A LUXURY. YOU REQUIRE FOUR ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTION POINTS.]
Four points. A chasm. The bulletin offered nothing quick or safe. But necessity is the mother of terrible invention.
There was one task. Listed under "Special Requests – Faculty." It had been there for weeks, ignored.
*"Seeking discreet assistance with retrieval of a personal article from the restricted section of the Grand Library's East Wing. Article is non-hazardous, sentimental value only. Must be comfortable with minor bureaucratic circumvention. Reward: 5 Contribution Points. Inquire at Archive Annex, Ask for 'Silas.'"*
Five points. It would solve the problem and leave one point over. "Discreet assistance" and "bureaucratic circumvention" were euphemisms for breaking rules. It was a risk. But my body was singing a silent, unraveling song from the void, and risk had a new, desperate calculus.
The Archive Annex was a dusty, cluttered satellite of the main library, staffed by a single, ancient-looking human man who seemed more parchment than person. He peered at me over half-moon spectacles. "Yes?"
"I'm here about Silas's request," I said, my voice hoarse.
His eyes sharpened. He looked me up and down, taking in my pallor, my frayed academy tunic. "You're the one with the twitch. The… unorthodox one."
"I can be discreet."
He sighed, a sound like dry leaves. "Sentimental. A researcher's folly. He left a monograph draft in a study carrel in the East Wing, Section Delta. The wing has been sealed for pest eradication glyphs for a fortnight. He's leaving on sabbatical tomorrow. The official requisition to retrieve it would take a week." He slid a small, bone-white key across the desk. "Master key for the study carrels. The main door to Delta is warded, but the environmental seal has a maintenance gap in the northwest corner, near the air-duct. Small person could squeeze through. You'll need to be in and out before the dawn patrol. The points will be transferred upon verified retrieval. The item is a blue leather folio. Do not open it."
It was a simple fetch quest. The kind of petty rule-breaking students had probably done for centuries. But for me, in my current state, every step felt like a mountain.
The East Wing after dark was a cathedral of shadows and silence. The "maintenance gap" was exactly where Silas had said—a warped section of the magically-treated wood paneling near a large air duct, where the pest-repelling glyphs didn't quite overlap. It was a tight squeeze, even for my thin frame. I had to exhale fully and use [Flicker Step] for the last, impossible few inches, reappearing inside the darkened wing with a stomach-churning lurch that sent fresh pain spiking through my skull.
The air was still and cold, smelling of old paper and the faint, bitter ozone of active, dormant glyphs. My [Mana-Sense], still hypersensitive from the void-exposure, painted the space in alarming detail. The pest-glyphs on the walls were shimmering nets of minor offensive magic. The silence was absolute, a heavy blanket.
Section Delta was a maze of towering, freestanding bookshelves. I moved like a phantom, my senses stretched taut, following the carrel numbers. I found it: Carrel 47. The bone key turned with a soft click.
The blue leather folio was there, exactly as described. It was thick, worn at the edges. I felt a powerful, irrational urge to open it, to see what was so important it was worth five points and this clandestine mission. But "do not open it" had been the only real instruction. I tucked it under my arm.
As I turned to leave, my [Mana-Sense] brushed against something else in the carrel. Not the folio. Something tucked behind a loose panel at the back of the desk. A residual signature, faint but… familiar. A cold, structured emptiness that was a pale, distant cousin to the void-fragment in the cavern. A related nothingness.
My curiosity was a sickness. Against all better judgment, I pried the panel loose with trembling fingers.
Behind it was a small, flat disc of a material like tarnished silver. It was inert, but the pattern… the pattern of its latent energy was a simpler, cruder version of the God-Touched fragment's null-geometry. A practice piece. A shard of a shard. Left behind, forgotten.
Without thinking, driven by the compulsive hunger of my archive function and the void-datum screaming in my soul for context, I reached for it.
The moment my fingers closed around the cold metal, the world exploded.
Not in sound or light, but in silence. A pulse of absolute negation erupted from the disc, a localized, dying gasp of void-energy. It wasn't an attack. It was a release. The disc crumbled to inert dust in my hand.
But the pulse hit me point-blank.
My [Kinetic Dispersal] trait flared, trying to dissipate energy that wasn't kinetic. It failed. The null-pulse passed through my body like an X-ray of annihilation. My [Mana-Sense] went blindingly white, then black. My own fragile core stuttered. For one horrific second, I felt my heartbeat pause, my neurons fire into nothingness.
I collapsed against the carrel, gasping, my vision filled with static. A sharp, crystalline crack echoed not in the room, but deep inside me, in the place where my will and my magic met.
[WARNING! CORE INTEGRITY BREACH!]
[THE NULL-RESIDUE HAS CATALYZED WITH EXTERNAL STIMULUS!]
[MANA CIRCULATION COMPROMISED!]
I clawed my way back to consciousness, the blue folio clutched to my chest like a talisman. The world was wrong. My connection to mana, always tenuous, now felt like trying to drink water through a shattered cup. I was leaking. Not like Corin's dramatic fracture, but a fine, constant seepage. The void-pattern in my mind now had a physical mirror: a hairline crack in the very foundation of my power.
But I was alive. And I had the folio.
The journey back was a nightmare of disorientation and pain. I used [Flicker Step] once more to get back through the gap, the effort sending jagged bolts of agony through my core. I returned the key to the ancient archivist. He took the folio, examined it briefly, and with a nod, made an entry in his ledger. My Student Ledger, tucked in my pocket, grew warm for a second—five points transferred.
I now had eleven. Enough for the chamber.
I didn't go to the barracks. I went straight to the Reliquary, a small, temple-like building near the Spring. The attendant, a sleepy-eyed upper-year student, barely glanced at my ledger. "Condensation Chamber? One hour. You know the drill: it's intense. Don't puke in the basin. Room three."
Room three was a spherical chamber of seamless white stone, bare except for a central meditation dais and a shallow crystal basin set into the floor. The door hissed shut, sealing me in absolute silence. Then, the room began to hum. The air thickened, grew heavy with raw, unaspected mana. It was like being submerged in warm honey, pressure building on my skin, in my lungs.
For a normal student, this was a boost, forcing their core to expand and process more energy. For me, with my cracked vessel, it was torture. The pressurized mana didn't flow into me; it tried to force its way through the new, hairline fracture, widening it. I screamed, the sound swallowed by the dense energy.
**[DO NOT RESIST THE FLOW!] **Machina's command was a lance of clarity in the pain. [THE CRACK IS A WEAKNESS, BUT ALSO A NEW INTERFACE. YOU CANNOT HOLD MORE MANA. SO REFINE WHAT LEAKS THROUGH! USE THE PRINCIPLE OF THE NULL-DATUM!]
The principle of the null-datum? To annihilate?
No. To define by contrast. To understand purity by knowing its absolute opposite.
I stopped trying to hold the mana in. I let it flow into the crack, a torrent of undifferentiated power. And as it passed that terrible, void-touched flaw in my spirit, I did not try to compress it. I compared it. I held the screaming, perfect silence of the void-pattern in my mind and set the rushing mana against it.
The mana, by contrast, was chaos. It was noise. It was life and power and messy, glorious existence. Against the template of absolute nothing, every ripple, every color, every potential within the mana became visible to me in a way it never had been before.
I began, not to compress, but to sculpt. Using the void as my chisel, I carved away the impurities, the chaotic resonances, the waste energy. I didn't make the mana denser. I made it sharper. I made it true.
The pain didn't cease, but it changed. From the agony of being torn apart to the fierce, burning strain of creation. The mana that leaked out of me through the crack was no longer a loss; it was dross, the shavings from my work. The mana that remained within the tiny, intact portion of my core… it glittered. It was a needle of flawless intent.
The hour ended. The humming ceased, the pressure vanished. I slumped forward onto the cold stone dais, drenched in sweat and trembling. I was exhausted to my marrow. My core still felt small, pathetic, cracked.
But when I reached for that sliver of refined mana, it responded with a speed and clarity that was utterly new. It was less like pulling water from a well, and more like flexing a perfectly honed blade.
I stood up on shaky legs. My ledger now showed one remaining point. I had paid for the chamber with pain and a permanent wound. But I had gained something.
Outside, in the cool evening air, the world felt different. My hypersensitive senses had calmed. The void-residue was still there, a cold scar, but it was integrated now, a tool rather than a toxin. And my mana, though minute, was now a precision instrument.
The path had cracked me. But in the crack, light—a terrible, refined light—now shone through. The thief had not just stolen knowledge of the void; he had used it to sharpen his only tool to a razor's edge. The cost had been a piece of his soul's integrity. The gain was a fraction of a god's discernment. The exchange, as always, was brutal. But the balance sheet, for now, was in the black.