The city of Vanguard-Prime was a masterpiece of architectural arrogance. Built upon the highest plateau of The Eternal Bastion: Aethelgard Zero, its obsidian towers pierced the violet clouds like the teeth of a starving god. Below the city, the "Mana-Sea" churned—a roiling ocean of Primordial Ether so dense that it behaved like molten glass. In this world, weight was the only truth. If you could not carry the pressure of the Ether, you were crushed by it.
Aetherion Vane was a man who had spent eighteen years being crushed.
He sat at the very back of the Luminous Zenith Academy's main lecture hall, a space designed to accommodate three thousand scions of the Bastion's most powerful clans. The walls were lined with Resonance Crystals that hummed in a low, constant frequency, vibrating the very marrow of those within. For the elite, this hum was a massage for the soul, a constant trickle of power. For Aetherion, it was a migraine that never ended.
He kept his head down, his face obscured by a curtain of unkempt, matted black hair. His clothes were the drab gray of the "Caste-less," a sharp contrast to the shimmering silks of the students around him. To the world, Aetherion was a "Mute"—not because he could not speak, but because his soul was silent. In a world where every infant's first cry triggered a surge of Etheric resonance, Aetherion's birth had been as silent as a vacuum.
"The second law of Etheric Displacement," the instructor, a man with skin like polished bronze, droned from the front of the hall. "Is that the soul-core must act as a furnace. If the furnace is cold, the pressure of Aethelgard Zero will snuff out the life within."
Aetherion coughed, a wet, rattling sound that drew several sneers from the rows in front of him. He clutched his chest, feeling the familiar, hollow ache. His doctor—a man who had long ago stopped charging the Vane family out of pity—called it Etheric Atrophy. He told Aetherion that his body was like a sieve; no matter how much mana he breathed in, it simply vanished into a void within him.
He was half-right. It was a void. But it wasn't a sieve.
Deep within Aetherion's cellular structure, something was waiting. His Genesis Null-Body was a biological engine of such staggering complexity that the "Primordial Ether" of this world was like crude oil being fed into a fusion reactor. His cells didn't just reject the energy; they annihilated it in disgust, searching for a fuel source that hadn't existed since the birth of the very first Omniverse.
"Hey, Gutter-Trash," a voice hissed.
Aetherion didn't need to look up to know who it was. Kael of the Solar-Flare Clan. Kael was the epitome of what the Bastion valued: loud, bright, and heavy. His skin radiated a constant, low-level orange glow, and his presence felt like a physical weight pressing down on Aetherion's shoulders.
"The instructor is asking for a demonstration of 'Internal Ignition'," Kael sneered, leaning over the obsidian desk. "Why don't you show everyone how a 'Vane' does it? Or did your father sell your soul-core along with the family's honor?"
The surrounding students snickered. The Vane Clan had once been the "Wardens of the Core," the strongest lineage in the Bastion. But centuries of "weak" heirs—culminating in Aetherion's father, who had lost their ancestral lands in a desperate gamble to cure his son—had turned the name into a joke.
Aetherion didn't respond. He couldn't. His focus was entirely on the corner of his vision. There, a translucent, flickering timer was ticking down.
[00:04:32...]
He had seen this timer since the day he was born. At first, it had been a blur, a strange hallucination that the doctors dismissed as a symptom of his failing heart. But as he grew older, the numbers became sharper, more real than the world around him.
"Ignore me, will you?" Kael's hand shot out, his fingers glowing with a searing heat. He grabbed Aetherion by the shoulder.
Aetherion gasped, the heat of Kael's 5th-Stage Spirit Awakening searing through his thin tunic. It felt like a branding iron. But more than the pain, he felt the Ether. Kael's energy was trying to force its way into Aetherion's body, to "ignite" his stagnant veins as a cruel joke.
Inside Aetherion's body, the Null-Physique reacted. It didn't just block Kael's fire; it swallowed it. The heat vanished into his skin as if it had never been there.
Kael's eyes widened. "What... what did you do?"
"I didn't do anything, Kael," Aetherion whispered, his voice raspy from disuse. "Your fire is just... cold."
Kael's face contorted with rage. He raised his hand, gathering a ball of condensed solar Ether. "Cold? I'll show you cold when I burn the marrow from your—"
"Kael! Sit down!" the instructor roared. "We do not incinerate the 'lesser' students until the final exams."
Kael slumped back into his seat, but he leaned close to Aetherion's ear. "Tonight, Vane. In the Training Pits. If you don't show up, I'll go to your sister's dormitory and see if she has more 'fire' in her than you do."
Aetherion's hands clenched into fists, his knuckles turning white. His sister, Liora, was the only reason he was still alive. She worked three jobs in the lower districts just to pay for the "Void-Stablizing" pills he needed to breathe.
[00:01:15...]
The rest of the lecture passed in a blur of pain and anticipation. Aetherion felt a strange pressure building behind his eyes. It wasn't the usual ache; it was a rhythmic pulsing, as if a second heart were beating in the center of his brain.
As the bell chimed, signifying the end of the session, the three thousand students rose as one, a sea of glowing, vibrating souls. Aetherion stayed in his seat, his head between his knees, gasping for air. The air in the Bastion was heavy, saturated with Ether that his body continued to fight with every breath.
[00:00:10...]
[00:00:09...]
He stood up, his legs shaking. He needed to get to the lower districts. He needed to find Liora. He needed to tell her... what? That he was dying? That he had finally reached the end of the clock?
He stepped out onto the balcony of the Academy. From here, he could see the entire expanse of Aethelgard Zero. The Bastion was a flat, continental shard, hundreds of thousands of miles wide, floating in a violet abyss. At the center of the shard was the Great Spire, a needle of light that drew energy from the stars themselves.
[00:00:03...]
[00:00:02...]
[00:00:01...]
Aetherion stopped. He closed his eyes.
[00:00:00]
[DING!]
The sound wasn't a sound. It was a conceptual rupture. It felt as if someone had taken the universe and snapped it like a dry twig.
[The Akashic Prime System has completed its 18-year synchronization.]
[Calculating host potential... Error.]
[Physique detected: Genesis Null-Body... Error. Potential exceeds local data limits.]
[Identity Confirmed: The Origin Sovereign.]
Aetherion fell to his knees, but he didn't feel the hard obsidian floor. He felt as if he were falling into a sun.
[Status: The Null-Point has Awakened.]
[Bypassing Aethelgard Zero Reality-Locks...]
[Unsealing System Function 1: Daily Sign-In.]
[Unsealing System Function 2: Fate-Missions.]
[Unsealing System Function 3: Infinite Lottery.]
"What... what is this?" Aetherion gasped.
Suddenly, the "weight" of the Bastion changed. For eighteen years, the gravity of Aethelgard Zero had been a predator, trying to crush him. Now, it felt like a whisper. The air—the "stale" Ether he had spent his life rejecting—began to swirl around him in a violent vortex.
[First Check-In Location Detected: The Luminous Zenith Academy.]
[This is a 'Prime-Tier' Node. Would you like to Check-In?]
"Check... in," Aetherion thought, his soul screaming the words.
[DING! Check-In Successful!]
[Reward: Initial Unsealing of [The Infinite Genesis Null-Body].]
[Reward: Cultivation Technique - [The Eternal Void-Origin Script].]
[Reward: Skill - [Eyes of the Akashic Judge].]
A heat more intense than a supernova surged through Aetherion's veins. His DNA, the fragile biological blueprint of a human, was being systematically deleted. In its place, the System was weaving a strand of "Original Logic."
His pale, sickly skin began to slough off in flakes of gray ash, revealing a new surface that glowed with a faint, pearlescent radiance. His messy black hair grew, cascading down his back in a shimmering wave of liquid obsidian. His bones clicked and snapped, lengthening his frame, widening his shoulders.
But it was his face that underwent the most terrifying change. The sunken cheeks filled out; the dull, tired eyes sharpened into twin galaxies of rotating golden rings. Every flaw, every scar from eighteen years of "atrophy," was erased, replaced by a divine symmetry that defied mortal biology.
[Level Up: 1... 5... 10... 15!]
[Current Rank: Peak of Spirit Awakening.]
Aetherion stood up. He didn't just feel stronger; he felt as if the world were made of glass, and he was the only thing made of stone.
He looked at his hands. They were beautiful—slender, powerful, and radiating a faint, dark-matter mist. He looked at his reflection in the crystalline window of the balcony.
The "Ghost of the Vane Clan" was gone. In his place stood a man whose face was a weapon—a Transcendent Celestial Visage that seemed to draw all the light in the vicinity toward him.
"Aetherion?"
He turned. A group of students was standing at the doorway of the balcony, including Kael. They had come to follow him, to continue their "sport."
But when they saw him, they stopped. Kael's jaw dropped, his solar-fire flickering and dying out in an instant. The female students in the group gasped, some of them clutching their chests, their souls physically reacting to the perfection of Aetherion's new form.
"Kael," Aetherion said. His voice was no longer a raspy whisper. It was a layered, melodic baritone that vibrated the very air, causing the students' heart-cores to hum in involuntary submission. "You said something about a demonstrated demonstration?"
Kael took a step back, his face pale. "Who... who are you? What did you do to Vane?"
Aetherion smiled, and the golden rings in his eyes began to spin.
"I didn't do anything, Kael," Aetherion said, walking toward him with the grace of a stalking predator. "I just stopped being polite to a world that was too small for me."
[Mission: The First Humiliation.]
[Objective: Force the 'Star' student to kneel using only your gaze.]
[Reward: 10,000 Origin Points & SSS-Rank Lottery Ticket.]
Aetherion didn't move a muscle. He simply looked at Kael. Using his newly awakened All-Affinity Physique, he commanded the gravity-data of the floor beneath Kael to intensify by ten thousand percent.
CRACK.
The obsidian floor groaned as Kael was slammed face-first into the deck. He didn't just fall; he was pinned, his glowing skin turning gray as the "Sovereign Aura" radiating from Aetherion devoured his puny solar Ether.
[Mission Complete! Reward Issued.]
Aetherion walked past the kneeling boy, his long obsidian hair drifting in a wind that only he could feel. He looked toward the horizon, where the Bastion met the Infinite Void.
"The clock has reached zero," Aetherion whispered. "And I think it's time I rewrite the Script."