Riven drifted in a sea of silence.
No breath. No sound. No light.
No self.
Just the echo of a voice that wasn't his.
> "Erase, and become."
Then, something shifted.
A pinprick of pressure pressed against his chest, as if the universe had remembered him. A heartbeat. Dull. Then another. The sound grew louder, and louder, until it pulsed like a war drum against an infinite canvas of black.
He opened his eyes.
---
He was no longer in the Awakening Hall.
Instead, he stood in a white void, utterly empty except for a floating obsidian mirror a few meters ahead. The mirror rippled like liquid glass, reflecting nothing—not even him.
He stepped forward.
There was no floor beneath him, no wind on his skin, and yet he moved.
The moment he looked into the mirror, words formed across its surface:
> Status: Bound to [Nothingness]
System: Rewritten
Concept-Class: VOIDWALKER
Passive Ability Unlocked: [Erasure]
Hidden Trait: Vessel of Erasure
"You are not chosen. You are the absence of choice. You are not born. You are the gap between what is and what could never be."
> Your presence is a threat to structure.
> WARNING: The world rejects you.
> WARNING: The gods deny you.
> WARNING: The system cannot contain you.
---
> "You were not meant to exist. Therefore, you are free."
The voice again.
It felt closer now. Familiar. Like it had always been there—just waiting.
> "Who are you?" Riven whispered.
There was no answer.
Only a ripple in the mirror.
Then pain.
---
His chest burned. As if something inside him was tearing apart—not violently, but with precision. Like threads being separated from a tapestry. A feeling of being unmade and rewoven.
A screen flashed behind his eyes again.
> Void Core Stabilizing…
First Skill Unlocked: [Erase I] – Touch-based deletion of non-living matter.
Cooldown: 12 hours.
Effect: Absolute negation. No residue. No energy. No trace.
System Reminder: You are not alive in the way others are. Your body is a structure borrowed from reality. Use with caution.
Riven gasped.
The void cracked.
And light swallowed everything.
---
✦
He awoke to chaos.
Dozens of magical circles glowed above him, forming a protective dome. He lay inside a sealed chamber, surrounded by half a dozen instructors and three white-robed spellcasters from the capital.
The air shimmered with tension.
The moment his eyes opened, defensive spells were aimed at him.
"Don't move!" shouted one of the robed men. "You're under containment!"
Riven didn't flinch.
He sat up slowly, his body cold but weightless—like he was wearing skin that didn't belong to him. He glanced around, noticing the web of glyphs beneath him: runes of suppression, spirit lockdowns, even spatial seals.
They didn't hurt. But they should have.
"I'm… alive?" he said quietly.
"No. Not technically," a voice said.
Riven turned.
The man who stepped forward was clearly not part of the academy. Tall, with a hawkish nose, eyes like polished obsidian, and robes bearing the seal of the Obsidian Tower, the oldest magical authority in the continent.
"You are… contained," the man said.
"I didn't do anything," Riven replied. "The crystal—"
"Was obliterated," the man snapped. "Without energy release. Without elemental residue. Not even time-based anomalies. It just… ceased. That's not magic. That's conceptual damage."
The words barely made sense to Riven, but the fear in the man's voice was unmistakable.
"You should not be possible," he said. "No one awakens a non-Class. The system has safeguards. You either awaken to something… or you awaken to nothing. You've done both."
"I didn't choose this."
"No," the man murmured. "That's what makes it worse."
---
They brought him food. No metal utensils—just wood and cloth. He wasn't allowed to touch any enchanted items.
"Just in case you erase them," muttered a guard.
No one told him what was going to happen next.
He overheard instructors whispering behind magical barriers.
> "He's a threat to system integrity…"
> "...no precedent…"
> "...the gods won't like this…"
> "He could be a walking reset button."
Riven sat quietly.
Staring at the black wall.
His thoughts were calm, but somewhere deep inside—something had awakened. Not a hunger. Not power-lust. But a gnawing emptiness that felt… natural.
Like he'd finally come home to himself.
---
That night, the headmaster came.
An old man with gold-rimmed eyes and the smell of frost magic clinging to his robes.
"You destroyed one of the Class Crystals," he said without preamble.
"I didn't mean to."
"I believe you."
Riven blinked. "You do?"
"You were always unremarkable, Riven. Quiet. Not malicious. Not ambitious. I monitored you for three years. You blended in perfectly. But then, that's what nothing does."
A long silence.
The headmaster sighed.
"I should report this to the capital. Have you sent for dissection or worse. But I won't."
"Why?"
"Because for the first time in decades, something truly new has entered this stale world."
He turned to leave.
"One warning: do not touch another person while using your ability. If even a pebble vanishes from the world without trace… what do you think happens to a soul?"
---
The next morning, the Obsidian Tower took him away.
Not to prison.
To a containment temple on the outskirts of Eldreach—the capital of the continent.
They called it The Silent Bastion.
There, Riven was to be observed. Measured. Studied.
There were no other students.
No laughter.
No classes.
Just him.
And the void inside.
---
On his third day there, they gave him a block of enchanted steel.
"Use your skill," said a mage behind a triple-layered barrier.
Riven frowned.
"I don't know how to activate it."
"Focus," the mage said. "Picture the steel no longer existing."
So he did.
He reached out.
Touched it.
And willed it to not be.
There was no flash.
No sound.
No smoke.
The block simply… disappeared.
Even the table underneath it had a small hole.
The mage staggered back.
"This is… this is absolute nullification…"
Another wrote furiously.
"A class that affects conceptual presence? He rewrites structure. This is more than Void—it's Erasure."
One of them muttered, "We're not studying a boy. We're studying the end of magic."
---
That night, alone in his cold room, Riven stared at his hand.
He clenched it.
And for the first time in his life, he whispered:
> "They're afraid of me."
> "Good."
Because in this world built on hierarchies, gods, and rules…
He had become the exception.
The anomaly.
The thing that should not be.