The laughter faded, leaving behind a silence so absolute it had weight. I sat on the edge of the stone bed, my hands hanging between my knees, and I looked at them. Pale in the opalescent glow. Strong from years of hidden labor. They had broken boards in secret, gripped swords in darkness, written coded letters that would start a war. And now they were just hands, holding nothing, in a room at the bottom of the world.
I breathed.
The sound was obscenely loud. An echoing rasp that bounced off the stone walls and came back to me, amplified by the sterile silence. I held my breath. The silence rushed in. Then I breathed again, and the sound was a thunderclap in the tiny space.
The sound of my heartbeat, breathing echoed through the room. It's making me go crazy.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. My own pulse, a prisoner's drum. Inhale. Exhale. The only proof I was still alive, and it was already a torment.
How am I gonna survive 3 years here?! The thought was a scream without sound. Three years of this. Three years of my own heartbeat as the only conversation. Three years of staring at stone, of eating edible plates, of feeling the seconds crawl like wounded insects across my skin.
Tch! Why does this hap—
I stopped myself.
There is no time to lament about it!. The lament was a trap. A spiral into nothing.
The voice in my head was harsh, commanding, a drill sergeant for my own sanity.
I have to survive. No matter what. I have yet to live my life. No one will stop me!... I guess…
The bravado faltered at the end. Who was I trying to convince? The empty room? The indifferent barrier? Myself?
Ah, what am I even saying?. What can I do in this situation?
I looked at the bed. It was simple, stone slab with a thin mattress, but it was horizontal. It was rest. And in the absence of any other option, rest was action. Since there is no way of telling what the time is… I decided to sleep.
I laid on the bed. At least it was comfortable. The mattress yielded slightly, a small mercy. My eyes closed as I dozed off to sleep. Sleep, the great eraser. The only escape from the echoing prison of my own body.
---
When I woke up… the food already came through a small hole through the wall. A square opening, barely large enough to pass a plate through, now sealed by a stone slider. On the floor sat a simple ceramic dish. I noticed and decided to check it out. I approached the wall, examining the mechanism. It was seamless, a complex interplay of stone and hidden counterweights that I couldn't figure out. Another dead end. I wasn't escaping through the food slot.
I looked at the plate. I decided to eat. Water, bread, some red things. Probably spice. The bread was dense, nourishing. The red things were tangy, unfamiliar. The act was mechanical, fueling a body that had no purpose but to continue. I finished and put the plate aside.
A small inscription on the rim caught my eye. On the side it was written that the plate was edible. Of course. No waste. No trash. Everything consumed, even the container. I ate the plate. It was bland, slightly chalky, but it filled the hollow.
The noise was gone. The sound of heartbeat and breathing echoed. The meal had been a distraction. Now, silence returned, more oppressive than before. Tch! I cannot live like this.
I decided to speak… the noise was gone. I talked to myself, narrating my thoughts aloud. The sound of my own voice was strange, rough from disuse, but it filled the space. It broke the tyranny of the heartbeat.
The main problem is… I don't know what to do. I had no training equipment, no puzzles. Just stone, barrier, and the slow drip of invisible time.
Oh, wait… I do know what to do.
The memory surfaced: a tiny infant in a crib, unable to move, and the decision to train anyway. To transform helplessness into progress. When I was in the crib, unable to do anything, practice helped my mind.
Let's practice. I moved against invisible shadow enemies, which earth calls shadow boxing. I found a clear space on the stone floor. I began with basic forms—kicks, punches, stances—moving through them with the precision of nine years of secret training. My body responded, muscle memory taking over. The movements created air currents, small sounds, a physical conversation with the void.
Minutes turned into hours, hours turned into da–
I stopped mid-punch, my heart lurching.
Wait!! Am I right??
It feels like time is accelerating or …. Not??
Without sun or moon, without any external marker, my perception of time was unmoored. Had I been shadow boxing for hours or days? The panic was immediate, disorienting.
This is confusing!
I needed a metric. Something to tether myself to reality. I looked at the plate I ate. Let's make that plate… 1 day. A crude system. Meal times as clock ticks. When the food arrives, a day has passed.
I would count them. Mark them somehow on the stone wall. It wasn't perfect, but it was structure.
I resumed my practice deliberately making sounds so that I don't go crazy. I grunted with each strike, counted repetitions aloud, sang fragments of songs from a life two worlds away. The noise was a lifeline.
Then, the accident.
Accidentally my fist hit the barrier. I had drifted too close, my shadow boxing carrying me to the edge of the cell. My knuckles connected with the opalescent surface.
And something happened.
The barrier had a very tiny hole then regenerated. A pinprick of darkness, there and gone in a flash, swallowed by the shimmering light as the barrier healed itself.
I froze, staring at my fist, then at the now-pristine barrier. Wait… my punch was not that strong. Or was it?
How did it make a hole… even a tiny one? My physical strength, while considerable, was not superhuman by this world's standards. An Aether-reinforced barrier should have absorbed my blow like a pillow.
I looked in my photographic memory about barriers. I closed my eyes, scrolling through the mental archive of the hidden library. Treatises on defensive magic, classifications of wards and shields. After what felt like an hour of mental searching, I found one similar to this barrier color and structure.
'These barriers are very strong, regenerative and exceptional. Even if you hit them, they will regenerate. Any Aether attacks will be absorbed making the barrier more powerful. Even strong punches will not cause even the tiniest hole.'
The text was clear. This was a state-of-the-art magical prison barrier, designed to contain Aether-users. It fed on magic. It grew stronger from magical assault. Physical force was supposed to be useless against it.
So how did mine do it?
A hypothesis formed, radical and electrifying. I decided to punch it again. I drew back my fist and drove it into the opalescent surface with all my strength.
BANG!
The sound was sharp, contained. And there it was again—a tiny pinprick of void, instantly healed. The barrier rippled like disturbed water, then smoothed.
Huh?... Is this because of my power….NO! Is this because I'm Aetherless!?
Yes that might be it…! Because opposite charges cause destruction. The barrier was woven from Aether, designed to interact with Aether, to absorb and neutralize it. But I was the one thing it wasn't designed for: an absolute void. A walking absence of the very energy it was built to contain. When I touched it, there was nothing to absorb, no magic to feed it.
It's just like that Aether paper!. The barrier's own structure, so dependent on Aetheric cohesion, encountered a null point. It didn't know how to process me. It destabilized, however briefly, creating a flaw. This means that if I keep punching, the barrier will grow weaker.
I decided to punch again… same thing happened…
A fierce, wild hope ignited in my chest, a fire in the absolute dark. I can… do this! I can escape from here!
The hope was immediately tempered by reality. But my punch is weak. And only a tiny hole. The holes were microscopic, healed in an instant. I couldn't slip through a pinprick. I couldn't even get a finger through before it sealed. I have to gradually increase my strength until I break this barrier…
But strength alone wasn't enough. Timing was everything. This actually might be doable. A year of training, two years, maybe the full three—pounding this barrier day after day, slowly widening the momentary flaw, conditioning my body to deliver ever more devastating blows. It was a mad plan. It was the only plan.
But early escape is meaningless. I couldn't just break out and run. Where would I go? The Abyssal AER jail was an underground labyrinth, guarded, warded, miles from the surface. If I escaped now, I'd be hunted, recaptured, or killed. I have to escape when House Theodore declares war/surprise attack on church and House Mareux.
My father's war. The chaos I had unwillingly helped create. When his armies marched, when the Church and Mareux scrambled to respond, when the surface world erupted in conflict—that was my moment. The jail's attention would be divided. Guards might be recalled. The magical infrastructure might be strained. In the chaos, a single Aetherless boy punching his way out of the deepest cell might go unnoticed until it was too late.
Everything will be in chaos… and I will escape the jail with the help of chaos.
I started punching the barrier.
Thump. A tiny hole. Healed.
Thump. Another.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Each impact was a small rebellion. A declaration that I was not done, not broken, not yet erased. This might take a long time … well 3 years it is.
Three years of punching a barrier. Three years of edible plates and echoing heartbeats. Three years of waiting for a war to give me cover.
I would count the meals on the wall. I would shadow box in the dark. I would sing songs from a dead world and whisper conversations with ghosts. And every day, I would punch the barrier a thousand times, slowly, incrementally, building the strength to crack my cage.
The Extreme Nightmare had given me nothing but obstacles. But it had also given me this: a body that refused to quit, a mind that refused to break, and now, a weapon it never anticipated—my own nothingness.
Let my father start his war. Let the dragon burn. Let my sisters decode their letters and the world tear itself apart.
Down here, in the dark, I would be making my own hole. And when the time came, I would crawl through it.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.