Not every story begins with glory. Not every legend is born in fire. Some begin quietly — too quietly for the world to notice.
In Cognara, where the skies shimmer with elemental light and the ground itself hums with the echoes of awakened power, strength is measured in resonance. Children are tested before they can walk. They are taught that their thoughts will someday shape fate — if their souls are strong enough to attract a Path.
Most children hear the call. Some as early as age six. A flicker of flame. A whisper in a dream. A glowing rune beneath their skin.
And those who do not?
They are forgotten.
This is the story of one such boy. A boy who was never meant to be remembered. Who lived in the cracks of the world's attention. Whose name was never etched into the great walls of the Academia Mutae. Whose silence was mistaken for absence.
But silence, as the world would come to learn, is not absence. It is preparation.
It is where this story begins...
The rain didn't bother him anymore.
Sorin sat alone behind the western wing of Academia Mutae, the famed floating citadel of learning, as drizzle laced the sky with quiet sorrow. To the other students, the western wing was an old ruin — a forgotten remnant of when the academy was carved from sky-stone. To Sorin, it was the only place no one followed. Where he could disappear without having to vanish.
The cold rain slid down his skin. He barely flinched. It was the only thing that touched him gently. of the Grand Academy of Cognara, where broken stone met weeping vines. His back rested against a cracked column as cold water slid down his cheeks — not that it mattered. The cold never spoke. The wind never shouted. And Sorin, like always, heard none of it.
Born deaf. Born mute. Born unseen.
He wasn't born to a family of name. No house crest marked his robes. No mentor's sigil lay stitched into his sleeve. No elder had whispered blessings over him.
He remembered her fingers — cracked and gentle — tracing circles into his back as she hummed in the dark. He had never heard the tune. But even now, in moments of pain, he felt it. A rhythm beneath the noise.
His mother had called him a quiet miracle. Her face, though tired, always softened when she looked at him. Until the day they came — cloaked men from the House of Flame and Iron, wielders of the Dominion Path, who accused her of harboring a child that defied the natural resonance.
He watched from under the floorboards as they burned her alive.
They called it purification. Justice. Balance.
To Sorin, it was the moment the world declared itself his enemy.
No one dared speak of it after. Only rumors — that she had fled the war camps and birthed a cursed child, one even the spirits wouldn't claim. There were rumors — wild ones — that she had fled the war camps and given birth to a cursed child, one whom even the spirits wouldn't claim.
In Academia Mutae, the legendary institution nestled atop the floating isle of Vael'nar, every child was taught to dream — not of love, or comfort, or even freedom — but of power. Power through awakening. Power through alignment with one of the Twelve Paths.
And yet, Sorin had no spark. No echo. No glow. Not even a flicker.
He sat through every lecture. Not because he heard them, but because he read lips, traced emotions, memorized the flow of movement in the instructors' hands. Every word became a shape. Every sentence a dance he had to interpret.
But nothing prepared him for the weight of being forgotten.
He was never addressed by name. He was never assigned a mentor. He was never invited into the meditation chambers, never called to the Awakening Circles. His meals were leftovers. His bed, the smallest, in the darkest corner. And yet, every morning, he rose before the sun and walked the eastern garden — not because he was ordered to, but because it was the only place that didn't stare back at him.
Toven, the son of a Faith-Warrior, made mocking him a ritual. Every dawn, he'd toss breadcrumbs into Sorin's bowl like feeding a pet. "There you go, beast. Maybe Silence likes crumbs."
Zira, the Dream-born daughter of a Seer, never missed a chance to draw sigils in the air and watch them vanish just before Sorin's eyes. "Look," she'd laugh, "another spell he'll never cast."
Others were worse. They didn't speak. They spat. They shoved. They carved insults into the walls beside his cot: Ghost. Curse. Hollow.
But Sorin never wept. Not where they could see.
At night, he'd press his hand against his chest and feel the beat — the one thing he could hear in his own way. It reminded him he was alive. It reminded him that he remembered everything. Every cruelty. Every shadow. Every laugh that carried pain like a dagger behind the teeth.
He didn't hate them. He didn't envy them. But he knew something they didn't.
He endured.
Others would burn out. They chased sparks like children chasing fireflies — beautiful but temporary. But Sorin, who had nothing, began to see things others missed.
He watched the way Toven's flames flickered when he lied. He noticed how Zira's eyes lost their glow each time she doubted herself. He saw cracks in smiles, tremors in fingers, silence in confidence.
And in his own silence, he began to find rhythm.
Not power. Not yet. But rhythm. A sequence. A language beneath language.
He'd scratch shapes into the soil behind the garden wall — spirals, lines, broken circles, mirrored arrows. Not copied from tomes. Not taught. Not even fully understood. But real.
Each night, he dreamed of different things. Of rooms with no windows but endless sky. Of statues whispering truths in vibrations. Of light that blinked like breathing.
He never told anyone. Who would listen?
So he carried it inside — the ache, the questions, the rhythm.
Some nights, the ache turned sharp. Loneliness morphed into something else. Not anger, but pressure — like something inside him was pressing against the skin of his soul, asking to be let out.
He would lie still on his cot, eyes wide open in the darkness, staring at the wooden beams above, imagining them cracking open, the sky tearing, and something ancient pouring in.
Once, during a meditation session he wasn't supposed to attend, he sat in the back corner, unnoticed. A group of senior initiates chanted to the Flame of Logic, invoking patterns of balance. As their voices echoed through the temple, Sorin saw something they didn't — the vibrations of their speech weren't symmetrical. He saw lines — invisible but perfect — splitting in fractals above their heads, like the speech itself was being judged by something unseen. He reached for it in his mind, and it vanished.
He left early, shaken but wordless.
Even pain became routine. Even isolation became a rhythm.
He knew how to hide his bruises. He knew which teachers would ignore the marks, which ones would pretend they didn't see. One instructor of the Archive Wing, Master Durel, once paused when Sorin limped into the archive room. But instead of speaking, he simply returned to cataloging scrolls. Sorin stood in silence for five minutes, waiting. Durel never looked up.
He began to wonder if he was becoming invisible — or if he had always been.
But in that deepening shadow, something stirred.
Sometimes he'd feel warmth when no one was near. Sometimes, in his most isolated hours, when the pain was so loud it pulsed through his skull, he'd see flickers of light — not flashes, but forms. Like someone watching from just behind the veil of sight.
He never chased it.
Because deep down, Sorin already suspected:
Silence was not empty. It was full. And it was listening.
But that was just a feeling — a passing ripple in the ocean of his thoughts. He couldn't name it, couldn't hold it, couldn't prove it. It lingered like a scent on a forgotten page, fading before he could trace its source.
Still, in moments when he sat beneath the old sycamore tree at the academy's edge — the one with roots like reaching fingers — he found himself pondering things no other boy his age would. Why was he born different? Why could he see emotions etched into the way people moved? Why did silence feel heavier on some days, and lighter on others?
He asked no one. He received no answers. But the questions grew.
He began keeping count — of how many people spoke out of fear instead of truth, how many moved by habit, not purpose, how often the world around him buzzed with noise but lacked substance. He couldn't explain why these thoughts came, or why they comforted him in the dark. He only knew they returned each night, just before sleep, and stayed with him even after he woke.
Perhaps, in another life, he might have spoken them aloud. But in this one, all he could do was think.
And so, he pondered. Not to awaken. Not to ascend. But because pondering was all he had.
**And still, he did not realize... something pondered back.
Unseen by all, across the vast tapestry of Cognara, a silence older than flame stirred in response. But Sorin heard nothing. Knew nothing. And still, he pondered.
It happened during the Fifth Moon of Trials.
That week, students were allowed to present early signs of Awakening — minor displays of elemental echo, dream recall, or symbolic patterns that hinted at potential Path alignment. Each student submitted their glyphwork or memory projection to the Selection Scribes. Even the weakest initiates were granted one parchment slip to declare their entry.
Sorin had none.
But he tried.
He spent hours scratching shapes behind the eastern garden, hoping that something he drew might resemble the glyphs the instructors taught. He memorized them with effort and recreated them on a simple slip of canvas.
The next morning, when the others were still in their chambers, Sorin walked silently to the Grand Marble box — where all declarations were dropped — and placed his canvas gently inside.
He didn't expect praise. He didn't expect notice.
But he expected fairness.
Two days later, the list was posted. Etched in floating runes above the library's mirrored wall. Every name shimmered. One by one.
Except his.
Sorin scanned the list thrice, then checked the scribe scrolls. Nothing. He stood quietly at the edge while students gathered and laughed.
Then Toven saw him.
"Still hoping to be named, ghost?" Toven sneered. "Your name's not on it because you never submitted. The scribes said it vanished."
Sorin's brow furrowed. He stepped forward and pointed to himself, then gestured a square — the canvas.
Zira approached, a smile already forming. "Didn't you hear?" she whispered sweetly, knowing full well he couldn't. "Your slip was burned. Torn up. Worthless."
She held something between her fingers — ash.
Sorin froze.
Behind her, Toven grinned wider. "No place for broken minds here. The Trials are for the living."
Sorin didn't move. He didn't run.
He simply bowed his head, the way monks do at a grave.
The instructors said nothing. Not Master Durel. Not Archseer Velar. They passed him in the hall like he didn't exist.
His right to submit had been quietly nullified.
And no one — not a single soul — stood in protest.
Later that night, in the eastern garden, Sorin sat beneath the sycamore and burned the last of his canvas slips.
If the world refused to see him, then perhaps he no longer needed to be seen.
He simply needed to endure.
But in the spaces between breath and thought — something ancient had already begun to listen.
And soon, the world would hear what silence had to say.