"In Vandral, there are only two kinds of people:those who kill… and those who die."— Wall scrawl, South District
The sun was no more than a pale smudge behind the smog-draped skies of Vandral, capital of the Zorion Empire.
Steamships glided between monolithic towers of blackstone, leaving trails of ash that rained down on the slums like slow poison. Searchlights cut through clouds of synthetic dust, scanning alleys for movement. The city pulsed like a dying machine — hungry, vast, and blind.
Here, light was broken.
And Kael had learned early on: light was a lie.
He was seventeen.
A ghost of the South District. Pickpocket. Runner. Another orphan in a city built on forgetting.
He'd grown up in one of the many government orphanage blocks, indistinguishable from holding pens. But his was different. Watched. Not by imperial sensors — but by eyes that didn't officially exist.
The Silent Blade had been there.
A fragment of the old resistance, buried beneath decades of propaganda. They raised children like Kael to move like shadows, to become silence. Most of their agents were knives in the dark, saboteurs, informants.
But a few could channel Aith.
Aith was a force the Empire failed to erase — the soul's will made manifest. Dangerous. Subtle.
Tied to identity more than blood.
There were five Paths, as understood in modern theory:
Exsor - "Become one with your power."
Myra - "Shape that which lives within you."
Veyla - "Change what surrounds you."
Khaon - "Destroy the familiar."
Edras - "Lose yourself to gain."
Beyond those… whispered rumors spoke of a sixth state — a transcendent tier known only as Awakened Aith. Those who reached it could bend reality's logic itself. But such beings were myths. Or monsters. Or both.
Kael didn't know what he was.
Only that the doors in the orphanage sometimes unlocked themselves around him.Only that people forgot things when he got too close. Only that Merné, one of the last Aith-guides in the Blade, had feared what he might become.
And then she was gone.
The purge came without warning.
Imperial Blacklights. No alarms. No survivors.The orphanage burned without flame. Kael was taken.
Now
His wrists were bound with memory-silk. His body, stripped of anything reflective. No light.
No name. Just a room.
Black tile. One chair. A mirrored wall that wasn't glass — it watched.
A voice hummed from hidden speakers. Neither angry nor curious. Just… recording.
"Subject 017. Alias: Kael. Former occupant of the South Orphanage.Suspicion: Aith anomalies.Confirmed exposure to the Silent Blade."
Silence.
"You are not being tried. You are being measured."
Kael said nothing.He had stopped speaking days ago — maybe weeks.
The voice shifted.
"Your records were erased by Merné Vexel, Class-B rogue. Why would she do that?"
Kael's hands tightened around the cold metal of the chair. His eyes stayed on the wall — on his reflection, warped by the mirror's strange surface.
He didn't speak. But he thought: Merné didn't protect me because I was useful. She protected me because she was afraid of what they'd do if they found out what I am.
The voice paused. Then:
"You are not bound to any of the Five Paths. And yet… matter bends near you. Time stutters in your presence."
Kael felt the air press in — thick, expectant.
"You are not a subject. You are a potential rewrite."
A moment later, the room went black.A hiss. A drop in pressure.
No more sound.
Only the brief, electric hum of a gate opening where no door had been.
He never remembered leaving the room. Only the descent. The fall. And then—
Later
The Outer Ring
Dirt. Cold air. No sky — just endless grey.
He woke in the ruins of the old perimeter, where Vandral's maps ended and the Veil began.
No walls. No signals. No laws.
And in front of him — a door made of black stone and broken glass, pulsing with a light he had never seen before, yet somehow recognized.
He stepped through.
The empire had thrown him into the dark.
But it hadn't realized:
Something in the dark had been waiting for him.