The bell tolled, its sound a deep, gut-rumbling summons that promised no comfort.
It was half-past four in the morning. Darkness still clung to the narrow windows of the hall, but the children were already stirring.
Chén Yè sat up on his bed. He wasn't excited, but a cold, pragmatic curiosity gnawed at him. He wanted to know what kind of concept was supposedly "cursed" within him. He wanted to know the name of the power that had upended his life.
Leaving his small room, he entered the crowded hallway.
The first thing he heard was a thick, earnest voice speaking with practiced deference.
"Young master, I hope you had a good rest?"
The tone was thick with deference—the kind that had been beaten into bone and blood over years of service. Chen Yè's gaze drifted toward the source.
A bulky boy stood with his head slightly bowed, his fist cupped in the formal gesture of respect. Scars and half-healed cuts marked his skin, evidence of a life spent doing hard labor. He looked unkempt, rough—the kind of person who would vanish into any crowd of commoners.
But he wasn't addressing a commoner.
The boy before him was his opposite in every way. Smooth skin. Long golden-brown hair that fell in perfect waves. A posture that radiated grace and breeding. He stood like someone who had never doubted his place in the world.
"I am sure you will awaken a strong concept," the bulky boy continued, "and in turn increase the fame and fortune of the family name."
The young master smiled—warm, gentle, perfectly practiced.
"You do not need to bow," he said. "We are equals now."
He reached down, attempting to lift the bulky boy from his subservient posture. The effort was futile—the servant outweighed him considerably—but the gesture itself drew attention.
Chen Yè watched the faces around them. Commoners looked on with something like hope. *A noble, treating a servant as an equal?* Their expressions softened. Their shoulders relaxed.
*Fools*, Chen Yè thought.
Having a concept didn't break the leash. The bulky boy had spent his entire life learning one thing: how to serve. That knowledge didn't vanish just because divine power now flickered in his soul. He would follow his young master because following was all he knew.
And the young master? He would keep the leash because keeping it benefited him. A loyal follower at this stage was rare. Valuable. Worth a few pretty words and empty gestures.
Chen Yè looked away.
He had no prayers for the bulky boy. The gods, if they existed, didn't answer street orphans.
He saw the other nobles watching the exchange with undisguised envy. A loyal divine existence, already conditioned to serve? That was a rare and valuable asset.
It was a testament to the fact that power wasn't just about concepts; it was about control.
Reaching the main hall, Chén Yè scanned the crowd.
He saw the other children, their faces a mixture of terror and forced excitement.
But there was no sign of the Baron's daughter, Xīng Hé.
Soon, an officer entered. The instructions were brief and impersonal. They were to exit the hall, proceed to the next floor, and wait outside a designated room until their name was called.
Hours passed.
The children were called one by one—names announced by an official near the platform, each summoned child directed through a door that led to the awakening chambers. They vanished inside. Minutes later, they returned through a different door, their faces carrying expressions that ranged from elation to confusion to barely-concealed terror.
Chen Yè watched them all.
He watched a noble girl return with trembling hands and tear-streaked cheeks, refusing to speak to anyone. He watched a commoner boy emerge grinning, practically bouncing on his heels, whispering excitedly to anyone who would listen. He watched a pair of siblings called in sequence—the first returned pale and shaken, the second never returned at all.
No one explained where the missing ones went.
He watched the clusters of children gradually thin. Watched the officials move with mechanical efficiency, their faces betraying nothing. Watched the guards stationed at every exit, their presence a constant reminder that this was not a choice.
Five hours crawled by. Then finally, Chén Yè's name was called.
---
He stood, his movements economical, and walked towards the door. He knocked once.
A disembodied voice simply said, "Enter."
He pushed the door open and stepped inside.
And into nothing.
The room was obscenely dark, a profound and absolute blackness that seemed to swallow the light from the hallway as the door clicked shut behind him.
But the darkness was not empty.
It was alive.
Millions of tiny, flickering lights danced in the void, like a swarm of fireflies made of starlight. They moved with impossible speed, darting and weaving through the black. He had to strain his eyes just to catch a glimpse of a single one—a tiny, impossibly fast wing of light that would flicker for a nanosecond before vanishing completely.
They weren't fairies—too strange, too *other*. They weren't sparks—too purposeful, too alive. They were something else entirely. Winged motes of luminescence that pulsed with inner radiance, trailing streamers of light as they moved.
What struck him most was millions of light-winged things filled the darkness, yet the darkness remained absolute. They moved through it without touching it. Existed within it without changing it. As if the darkness was something *more* than mere absence of light—something that light could not conquer.
Chen Yè reached out.
His hand passed through empty air. The lights danced around his fingers but never touched them. He lunged, grabbed, swiped—nothing. They evaded him without seeming to notice he existed.
Frustration bubbled up in his chest.
"What are you?" he demanded.
Silence answered. The lights continued their dance, indifferent to his presence.
He tried again. And again. And again.
Eventually, exhausted by futility, he sat down in the darkness —or at least assumed the position of sitting, since he couldn't feel any surface beneath him—and simply watched.
The lights moved in patterns he couldn't decipher. Sometimes they clustered together, forming shapes that almost looked like something before dissolving back into chaos. Sometimes they scattered, spreading across the infinite dark like stars fleeing some cosmic catastrophe. Sometimes they simply... hovered. Waiting. Watching.
*Watching me?*
He didn't know. Couldn't tell. The frustration had faded into something like awe—and beneath that, a confusion so deep it felt like drowning.
*What is this?
Curiosity overriding caution, he "played" for a few minutes—reaching out, trying to touch one of the lights—but his hands met only empty air. They were always just beyond his grasp.
He waited, wondering if one would come to him.
Nothing.
After ten minutes of sitting in the silent, swirling darkness, the world twisted.
The feeling was not unpleasant, like stepping through a cool curtain of water. The next thing he knew, he was back in the waiting hall, standing among a group of other children who had already finished.
The air was buzzing with their confused whispers.
"...a desert made of glass," a girl was saying, her voice trembling. "And the sun was a screaming mouth."
"The gravity in my room was so heavy, I thought my bones would crack," a boy added, rubbing his shoulders. "I couldn't even stand."
Chén Yè listened, a cold realization dawning on him.
Every experience was different.
Every room was a world unto itself.
This was not a test.
It was a divination.
End of Chapter 4