Two weeks passed in a gray blur. Elara was sent to stay with their aunt in the sun-drenched coastal provinces, a place with no memories in the walls. Arlan refused to go. The house was a tomb, but it was their tomb. Leaving felt like a second abandonment.
He wandered the empty halls, the silence a physical presence. He tried to replicate the spatial flicker from that night, but it was like trying to catch smoke. The vast power within him remained locked, a vault with no key. His status window, called with a thought, was a monument to his failure.
```
**Universal System - Status**
Name: Arlan Thorne
Race: Human
Age: 16
Affinity: Space (Dormant)
Cultivation: 1st Order, Rank 1 (Baseline)
Mana Pool: 12/100
Class: [Unassigned - Locked until 4th Order]
Skills: None
Titles: Son of Valor (Inactive)
```
Dormant. The word was a brand. He was less than an Awakened. He was a placeholder.
The world moved on. Notifications flickered at the edge of his vision—public system alerts about D-Rift incursions in the northern badlands, academy enrollment deadlines for the prestigious Celestial Ascent Academy, ads for mana-enhancement tonics. The machinery of a society built on power kept turning, indifferent to his personal void.
On the fifteenth day, a formal letter arrived. It bore the seal of the Valor Guard's Widows & Orphans Fund and the Thorne family solicitor. It was time to discuss the estate, the "substantial pension." His uncle Kaelen would be there.
The meeting was in a sleek downtown tower, all glass and polished steel, a world away from the rain-slicked cemetery. As Arlan walked through the cavernous, echoing lobby, he felt a prickle on the back of his neck. Not the usual sidelong glances of recognition and pity. This was different. A sense of being… assessed.
He glanced around. Businessmen with subtle aura signatures of enhanced strength (2nd Order Adepts, probably). A woman with eyes that glinted with telltale emerald—a low-level wood affinity. Normal for the city center.
Then he saw the man by the synth-bamboo planter. He was unremarkable: mid-thirties, neat haircut, a grey business suit. But he was watching Arlan with the calm, detached focus of a botanist examining a rare specimen. His suit was a shade too perfect, his posture too still. And the aura around him… it wasn't an aura at all. It was an absence. A place where the ambient light and sound seemed to die.
Their eyes met for a fraction of a second. The man offered a small, benign smile that didn't reach his cold, flat eyes. Then he turned and melted into a crowd of exiting executives.
A chill, deeper than grief, slithered down Arlan's spine. Paranoia, he told himself. Grief playing tricks.
The meeting with the solicitor and his uncle was a dry, legalistic affair. Numbers scrolled on a screen. Trusts were established. Arlan would have access to a monthly stipend more than enough for ten lifetimes. The house was his in perpetuity.
"There is, of course, the matter of your education and… development," the solicitor said delicately. "The Celestial Ascent Academy's final entrance trials are in three months. Given your family's legacy and your own… potential… a special preparatory course could be arranged. A final attempt to… catalyze your Awakening."
It was charity. Glorious, humiliating charity. Kaelen looked at him, a silent plea in his eyes. Take the lifeline.
Arlan's pride, the last crumbling wall around the void inside him, screamed to refuse. But another part, the part that had felt that flicker of spatial power, whispered. Power. To never feel this helpless again. To find out what really happened in that Rift. The official report felt sterile, incomplete.
"I'll do it," he heard himself say, his voice flat.
That night, back in the silent house, the chill from the lobby wouldn't leave him. He searched the public system net for any group that matched the feeling of that man—the perfect suit, the null-field aura. He found nothing but conspiracy forums ranting about government cover-ups.
Exhausted, he retreated to his room. The moon was full, casting sharp, black shadows across the floor. He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, the solicitor's words, the cold man's smile, the image of the closed caskets swirling in a maelstrom in his mind.
Sleep. You need to sleep.
The thought wasn't his own.
Arlan bolted upright, heart hammering. The room was still. Moonlight pooled on the floor.
Then, the shadow in the far corner, the one cast by his father's old armoire, detached itself from the wall.
It didn't move like a living thing. It unfolded. It stretched, rising into a slender, man-shaped silhouette made of perfect, light-eating blackness. No features, no details, just a humanoid cutout of void.
Terror, pure and primal, locked Arlan's lungs. He tried to scream, to call mana he couldn't access. Nothing emerged.
The shadow-being tilted its head. A voice spoke, not in the room, but directly into the core of his mind. It was the sound of stillness at the heart of a collapsed star, of the silence between thoughts, ancient, patient, and immeasurably cold.
"Arlan Thorne. Child of Void and Tragedy. We have been watching. Your grief is a key. Your rage is a catalyst. The path laid before you by the light is a cage. Your true affinity is not one they can measure."
"W-what are you?" Arlan finally choked out, scrambling back against the headboard.
"A remnant. A keeper of forgotten truths. The one they call the God of Darkness and Shadows is... a patron. He sees potential in the hollow places. In the spaces between." The entity gestured, a fluid motion, and the shadows in the room deepened, swirling gently. "The system that governs this world is universal, but it is not impartial. It has blind spots. And enemies."
"Enemies? Who was that man today?"
"The Silent Accord. They serve a different master. They seek to control the narrative of power, to prune anomalies. You are an anomaly, Arlan. A spatial affinity they cannot control, born to heroes they could not corrupt. Your parents' end was... convenient for them."
Ice flooded Arlan's veins. "What are you saying?"
"I am saying their sacrifice may have been more than a random rift. I am offering you the means to uncover the truth. To forge a power they cannot anticipate. To turn your emptiness into a weapon."
The entity extended a hand of solid shadow. "A contract. Not of bondage, but of mutual interest. I will be your... personal system. A guide in the blind spots. I will grant you access to the Darkness, not as a primary affinity, but as a shroud, a tool, a second layer of reality. Your space affinity will remain, dormant until you are strong enough to wake it without breaking. But with my aid, you will cultivate both. You will walk the path of the Umbral Void."
The offer was madness. A deal with a shadow that spoke of gods and conspiracies. Yet, it resonated in the hollow places within him. It spoke of answers. It offered not pity, but a weapon. It acknowledged his rage and grief as currency, not weakness.
"What's the cost?"
"Your allegiance to the path. Your willingness to embrace the necessary shadows. To become a reaper in the dark for those who thrive in false light. And, one day, to fulfill a favor for my patron."
The entity paused, its form shimmering. "The Universal System will give you generic quests upon reaching 4th Order. I will give you yours now. Your first: Survive the Celestial Ascent Academy entrance trials. Succeed not with the light, but from the dark. Let no one know what you are becoming."
A new screen, sleek, obsidian-black, and utterly silent to his senses, superimposed itself over his Universal Status. The text was etched in silver-grey light.
```
**[Personal System - Shadow Protocol - Activated]**
Contractor: Arlan Thorne
Patron: The Unseen God
Primary Objective: Ascend. Uncover. Avenge.
**Current Quest: The Veiled Ascent**
- Infiltrate and pass the Celestial Ascent Academy Trials.
- Do not reveal your contractual affinity.
- Attain a ranking within the top 10%.
Reward: Unlock Shadow Affinity Skill Tree.
Failure: Severance from the Contract. Return to dormancy.
```
The void inside Arlan didn't feel empty anymore. It felt like a coiled spring. It felt like potential. It felt, for the first time since the rain, like a direction.
He looked from the eldritch, black system screen to the shadowy entity, a fragment of a dark god's will. It was madness. It was probably damnation.
But it was a choice. And after having everything taken from him, the power to choose was everything.
He met the featureless gaze of the shadow. The terror was still there, but beneath it, fueled by grief and a burning new suspicion about his parents' death, was a steely resolve.
"Tell me what to do."
The shadow-being's form seemed to smile, a crescent of deeper darkness. "First," it whispered into his soul, "we learn to see in the dark."
The entity flowed back into the corner shadow, leaving Arlan alone in his moonlit room. But he wasn't alone. The obsidian system screen glowed softly in his mind's eye. The silence was no longer empty; it was filled with a silent, waiting promise.
The prodigy was dead. The puzzle remained. But now, in the shadows, a weapon was being forged.
---