Dawn came to Thares in shades of gray.
Kael walked across the rusted plains toward the southern valley, each step echoing against corroded metal. He hadn't slept. Every time he closed his eyes, his spatial perception intensified, revealing impossible geometries, distances twisting in his mind like unsolved equations.
The southern valley was a graveyard of industrial machinery. Collapsed drilling towers. Cargo containers crushed by decades of neglect. And at its center, a natural depression where the ground had sunk, forming an accidental amphitheater.
Perfect—no one would see them there.
Kael descended the uneven edge. His boots slipped on loose gravel. The air smelled of rust and the faint ozone of a recent storm. Silence hung heavy, broken only by the crunch of his footsteps.
Then he saw him.
Darling stood at the center of the valley, staring toward the gray horizon. The cigarette between his lips released smoke that curved into impossible patterns. His coat rippled though there was no wind. And beneath his feet, where the light of dawn should have cast a long shadow—
Nothing. Only bare earth.
"Punctual," Darling said without turning. "Good. Punctuality suggests discipline. And discipline is the only thing that will keep you alive for the next few hours."
Kael stopped ten meters away. Something in the space between them felt… dense. As if Darling subtly distorted the local geometry just by existing.
"The next few hours?" Kael asked, trying to keep his voice steady. "That's all it will take?"
Darling finally turned. His gray eyes examined him with an intensity that seemed to measure every atom.
"The Awakening can take a second or several days. Depends on how long your mind resists understanding." He took a drag from the cigarette. "But with spatial signs as strong as yours, I'd bet on hours. Three, maybe four."
"And what do I do in that time?"
"Survive."
The word fell like a slab of iron. Darling walked toward him with measured steps. Again Kael noticed that strange phenomenon—the distance between them didn't change naturally. It was as if Darling adjusted the space with each movement to maintain an exact separation.
"Tell me something, Kael Thorne." He stopped, allowing the distance to close to just three meters. "Why do you want to Awaken?"
The question caught him off guard. "Why? I… to survive. To not just be another civilian watching transmissions."
"Honest, but shallow." Smoke curled around Darling's head like a spectral crown. "Try again. Why really?"
Kael clenched his fists. The words escaped before he could filter them.
"Because all my life I've wanted to understand. The laws that govern the universe. Why things are the way they are. My parents died in a critical zone without knowing what killed them. I don't want to die without understanding."
Something shifted in Darling's expression—a subtle raise of his eyebrow.
"Better. Much better." He turned halfway and began to walk away. "The Spatial Field doesn't respond to ambition or fear. It responds to curiosity—to the need to comprehend the fundamental structure of distance, time, and the geometry of the universe itself."
He stopped at the center of the valley, where the depression was deepest.
"If your motivation were power or revenge, I'd tell you to choose another Field. But comprehension…" A faint smile curved his lips. "That's the only right motivation for a Spatial."
He extended both hands. The air between his fingers began to flicker—as if space itself was vibrating.
"Watch."
And the valley changed.
Not dramatically—no explosion, no flash of light. Simply… distances stopped making sense. Kael could see Darling clearly, but his mind insisted the hunter was a hundred meters away. And at the same time, a single meter. Both were true.
He staggered, dizzy.
"What… what is this?"
"Basic spatial distortion." Darling's voice came clear despite the impossible distance. "Level 5, Law Engineer. I can rewrite spatial relationships in a limited area. For you, newly Awakened to spatial perception, it must be… overwhelming."
Overwhelming was an understatement. Kael fell to his knees, pressing his hands to the ground. But even the ground felt wrong—simultaneously meters away and glued to his palms.
"Breathe," Darling ordered. "Don't fight the perception. Accept it. Your mind is trying to grasp something that contradicts everything you thought you knew about space. Let it."
Kael tried. He closed his eyes, focusing on his breathing. In. Out. In. Out.
Slowly—very slowly—the perception began to stabilize. It didn't make logical sense, but his mind started to accept that distances could be relative, that space wasn't the fixed canvas he'd always assumed.
It was malleable.
"Good," said Darling, and the distortion faded like smoke. "You've just taken the first step—acceptance that space is conceptual, not absolute."
Kael opened his eyes, panting. The valley looked normal again. Darling stood exactly where he should, about twenty meters away.
"That was…" He couldn't find the words.
"A fraction of what you'll experience during Awakening." Darling approached, allowing distance to change naturally this time. "When your body finally syncs with your spatial perception, the entire universe will feel like that—for a moment. Your mind will have to rebuild its understanding of reality from scratch."
He extended a hand. Kael took it, letting him help him stand.
"Ninety percent of spatial latents collapse mentally at that point. Their minds can't reconcile the contradiction. They lose sanity—or worse, they physically fragment, trying to manipulate space they don't yet understand."
"How do I avoid that?"
"By not avoiding it." Darling released his hand. "By embracing it. The Spatial Field requires surrendering certainties. There is no absolute up or down. No defined near or far. Only relative comprehension of variable geometries."
He took another drag, the smoke curling in complex spirals.
"To survive, you need an anchor—something that keeps you tied to your identity while space tries to convince you you're just another set of coordinates in the universe."
"An anchor? Like what?"
Darling met his gaze. "That's for you to decide. Some use memories. Others, goals. I…" He paused, as if considering how much to reveal. "I use the feeling of the cigarette between my fingers. It's concrete. Physical. It reminds me I exist in a specific point, even when my perception tells me I exist in all points simultaneously."
He pulled a small coin from his pocket and tossed it to Kael. The boy caught it instinctively.
"Keep it. When the Awakening begins, focus on the weight of that coin in your hand. It's your anchor. Your reminder that you're you—not just an abstract observer of space."
Kael closed his fist around the coin. It was heavy, edges irregular. Real.
"Now sit," Darling said, pointing to the center of the valley. "Somewhere comfortable. You'll be there for a while."
Kael obeyed, crossing his legs on the cold ground. The coin remained clenched in his fist.
Darling stood several meters away, watching him with that characteristic intensity.
"Close your eyes. Find that spatial perception you've been feeling. Don't reject it—invite it. Expand it."
Kael closed his eyes. The perception was there, constant. The hotel room the previous night had been overwhelming, but here, in the open valley, it felt… different. Clearer. More real.
He could sense every stone, every piece of metal, every irregularity in the terrain. Not visually, but as pure knowledge of geometry and distance.
"Good," Darling's voice sounded distant now, though Kael knew he hadn't moved. "Now expand it further. Don't resist. Let your perception grow."
Kael obeyed. The perception expanded. Ten meters. Twenty. Fifty. A hundred.
And then something inside him… broke.
It wasn't painful. It was like a mental dam collapsing. The perception burst outward like an invisible shockwave.
Suddenly, he could feel everything.
The entire valley. The collapsed towers kilometers away. The buildings of Thares on the horizon. The buried pipelines underground. The space between every atom of air.
It was too much. Overwhelming. It was—
Beautiful.
For the first time in his life, Kael understood space. Not as a passive canvas where things existed, but as a dynamic, living structure. Every distance was a relationship. Every position, relative. The universe itself was geometry in constant motion.
And he could feel it.
"There it is," Darling's voice came from both near and far at once. "The Awakening. Welcome to the Spatial Field, Kael Thorne."
But comprehension brought chaos.
The perception was too vast. His mind tried to process infinite distances simultaneously. He felt his body here—and there—and there—splintering through impossible coordinates.
The coin.
Darling's voice cut through the chaos like an anchor of sound.
"The coin, Kael! Focus on its weight!"
Kael clenched his fist. The metal pressed against his palm. Cold. Solid. Real.
I'm here. In this point. In this coordinate. I am me. I am Kael.
The fragmentation stopped. The perception remained immense, but now it had a center—a reference point. His body. His identity.
He inhaled deeply, air filling lungs that confirmed his physical existence.
"Good," said Darling. "Now comes the hard part. Open your eyes."
Kael obeyed.
And the world had changed.
Not visually. Everything looked the same. But now he knew things he hadn't before. He saw distances between objects as invisible lines of pure information. He understood the geometry of space as if it were a language he'd always known but never read.
And more importantly—he could feel possibilities. As if space itself whispered options. This object could be here. Or there. Or nowhere. Everything is relative. Everything is malleable.
Darling stood before him, but Kael now saw what he had only intuited. The space around the hunter was… different. Permanently bent. As if Darling existed a millimeter out of phase with normal reality.
"You see me differently now?" Darling asked with a faint smile.
"You're… displaced." Kael's words came with certainty. "You exist slightly outside conventional space. That's why you cast no shadow."
"Correct." Darling took another drag. "That's Level 1 understanding—Pre-Pillar. Thought equals action. I no longer need to try to displace myself from normal space. I simply do. My very existence is displaced because my comprehension makes it inevitable."
He circled Kael, yet the distance between them remained constant despite the movement.
"You're at…" He paused, assessing him. "Level 8. Minor Theorist. You grasp the fundamental principles of space. You can manipulate simple variables. But you still think in Euclidean terms. That will change."
A holographic screen materialized between them—not from Kael's terminal, but forming directly from the air itself.
The presence returned. That infinite weight watching.
RESONANT AWAKENING COMPLETEUser: KAEL THORNEField: SPATIALClassification: MINOR THEORIST (Level 8)Mental stability: 72% – Within acceptable parametersDominant trait: Scientific curiosity – StableFragmentation risk: Reduced to 8% with established anchorAutomatic registration completeRecommended academy: NOVA ASTRA
And the voice spoke directly into his mind:
"You have crossed the threshold. Space recognizes you as one of its students. Learn well, Kael Thorne—because every answer you find will show you how little you truly understand."
The presence vanished. The screen dissolved.
Darling exhaled smoke slowly. "The Universal Consciousness. It speaks to Spatial Resonants more often than any other Field. Some say it's because space is its natural domain. Others say it's because we're the ones who get closest to understanding its true nature."
"What do you think?"
"I think it asks more questions than it gives answers." Darling dropped the cigarette and crushed it underfoot. "And that's fitting for a Field built on paradoxes."
He looked toward the horizon, where the gray sun began to rise over rusted towers.
"Level 8 on your first Awakening. Ninety-ninth percentile. Extraordinary, even by Spatial standards." He turned back to Kael. "Nova Astra will take you without an entrance exam. But that doesn't mean you'll survive the training."
"Why not?"
"Because the Spatial Field changes you." His tone darkened. "With each level, you'll lose a part of yourself. First comes arrogance—you'll think you understand more than you do. Then emotional detachment—you'll start seeing people as coordinates, not individuals. And eventually…"
He looked down at his own hands.
"Eventually you'll lose the boundary between where you end and where space begins. That's the curse of Level 1. And beyond that—the Pillar…" He shook his head. "Void isn't human anymore. He's a spacetime paradox keeping human shape out of courtesy."
Kael felt a chill—but also determination.
"I understand the risk. But I still want to understand."
Darling studied him for a long moment, then nodded.
"Then I'll teach you the fundamentals before you go to Nova Astra. You've got sixty-eight hours before the entrance evaluation. We'll use every second."
He extended his hand. This time, when Kael took it, he felt something different. The handshake was solid, real—but he could sense the space compressed between their palms, Darling shortening the distance to make contact possible.
"Lesson one," Darling said. "Space isn't emptiness. It's pure information waiting to be interpreted. Your job is to learn to read that information—and eventually, to rewrite it."
He walked toward the valley's edge, and this time Kael could see how he did it. Each step was a macro-adjustment of space. Darling didn't walk through distance—he reduced it, making the destination come to him instead of the other way around.
"Follow me. And don't worry if you can't replicate what I do. You're Level 8. I'm Level 1. There's an abyss of understanding between us."
Kael followed, feeling for the first time the full weight of what it meant to be a Spatial Resonant.
The rarest Field.The hardest to master.The one that might eventually cost him his humanity.
But as he walked behind the Shadowless Swordsman, the coin still clenched in his fist—his anchor to identity—Kael felt something stronger than fear.
He felt purpose.
And the understanding, for the first time in his life, that the universe was far more malleable than anyone dared to imagine.