Pain.
It was the first coherent thought that pierced the void. Not the sharp, localized pain of a punch, but a total, all-encompassing agony. It felt as if every cell in Robert's body was being disassembled, its mundane structure scrubbed away by a torrent of silent, screaming nothingness. The primordial energy from the crystal wasn't filling him; it was unmaking him.
He couldn't scream. He had no mouth here, in this infinite dark. He was pure consciousness being dissolved in a sea of stars older than time.
"The vessel resists." The ancient voice was a neutral observation, like a physicist noting pressure in a chamber. "It is fragile. Brittle. Forged in a world of weak copies. Can it hold the original fire?"
The question wasn't rhetorical. It was a challenge. A test.
YES.
The thought wasn't words. It was the sum of Robert's seventeen years of silent humiliation, the protective fury for his family, the tenacious, clever will that had refused to break even when bending. It was a defiant, searing NO launched at fate itself.
The dissolving agony paused. The chaotic torrent… shifted.
"Good." A flicker of something that might have been satisfaction. "Anger is a catalyst. But control… control is the foundation. Observe."
Suddenly, Robert could see. Not with eyes, but with a newfound sense that pierced the dark. The chaotic energy wasn't random. It was a trillion threads of potential, each a different color, a different song. He saw a brilliant gold thread thrumming with rigid order. A deep blue one flowing with adaptive grace. A violent red one screaming with explosive power. They were all tangled, warring, tearing at the fabric of his being.
"They call these threads 'Affinities,'" the voice intoned. "They grasp one, or two, and call it talent. A child clutching a single note and calling it a symphony. You will conduct the orchestra. Begin by separating the notes. Find the silence between them."
The instruction was insane. How do you separate infinity? But the cunning, analytical part of Robert's mind, the part that reverse engineered bullies' weaknesses and machinery's faults, latched onto the problem. Find the silence.
He stopped trying to resist the threads. Instead, he focused on the spaces where they weren't. The gaps. The quiet moments in the cosmic noise. It was like listening for the pause between heartbeats in a hurricane.
There. A microscopic point of stillness where a silver thread of spatial potential veered away from a green thread of life force.
He pushed his will his calm, firm will into that silence.
The effect was instantaneous and violent. The two threads recoiled from the point of stillness, creating a tiny, stable void within the storm. It was a foothold.
"Adequate." The spirit's praise was as dry as dust. "Now expand. Build your fortress in the maelstrom. You are not a cup to be filled. You are a universe to be born."
Time lost meaning. It could have been seconds or centuries. Robert worked, his tenacious spirit refusing to yield. He found more silences, more gaps. He used the calm between the golden thread of order and the chaotic violet thread of entropy. He leveraged the quiet tension where the shimmering blue of water met the roaring orange of fire. Piece by agonizing piece, he carved out a stable, ever growing sphere of perfect stillness at his core.
It wasn't a Qi Core. It wasn't a Mana Heart. It was a Nexus. A blank, silent node of infinite potential.
"The First Foundation is laid," the voice declared. "The Primordial Nexus. It is nothing. Therefore, it can become anything. Now, draw your first breath. Take a single thread. Not to keep, but to understand. Then release it."
Robert's awareness hovered over the threads. His instinct was to grab the powerful, intimidating red thread of pure destruction. But his cleverness warned him. That was a beast he couldn't tame yet. His gaze fell on a gentler, silver-grey thread. It hummed with a frequency of endurance, of unyielding resilience. It reminded him of his father's hands, of his own silent endurance.
He reached out with the essence of his Nexus and brushed the thread.
Knowledge, raw and fundamental, flooded him. This was the Law of Density, the principle of matter holding firm against force. It was the mountain enduring the wind, the wall resisting the siege. He didn't learn a technique; he understood a truth.
For a single, glorious moment, he drew a wisp of that silver-grey energy into his Nexus. His phantom body in the void suddenly felt real, solid, anchored. Then, as instructed, he let it go. The thread slipped away, but the understanding remained etched into his soul.
"You have taken your first step on a path this world has forgotten," the spirit said. "You have not gained an affinity. You have comprehended a fragment of a Law. This is cultivation. Not accumulation. Not theft. It is the slow, painful, glorious act of becoming wise to the way things are."
WHOOSH.
The infinite void collapsed. Sensation rushed back the cold night air, the smell of rust and ozone, the distant hum of the city. Robert gasped, falling to his knees on the scrap metal, his hand wrenching away from the crystal. It was now dull, inert, just a piece of dark rock.
But inside him… inside him, the silent Nexus hummed. A tiny, perfect sphere of potential. And his body… he looked at his hands. They were the same. Yet, everything was different. He could feel the weight of the air on his skin, hear the scuttle of a Cutter-Sparrow three piles over, see the individual rust patterns on a girder fifty yards away in the dim glow. His senses were dialed to a preternatural sharpness.
He felt strong. Not SSR-tier, world-shaking strong. But a deep, foundational solidity, as if his bones had been replaced with forged steel. The lingering ache from Troy's kinetic punch was gone.
A laugh, brittle and amazed, escaped his lips. It echoed strangely in the silent junkyard.
Thump.
A weight landed softly on a crumpled hovercar shell beside him.
Robert's new senses flared, and he spun, heart pounding. Perched on the rusted metal was a beast. It was about the size of a large cat, but built like a compact tank. Its hide was a mosaic of dull metallic plates and coarse, gravel-like skin. A single, spiraling horn of dark iron protruded from its Forehead, and its eyes glowed with a soft, steady amber light. It regarded him with a gaze that held ancient patience, not animalistic hunger.
Stone-Tusk Lynx. Rank 1, Tier 4.
The classification popped into Robert's mind, not as a learned fact, but as an instinctual knowing emanating from his Nexus. It was an Earth-Attuned beast, young but stable, valuing solidity and territory.
It should have been terrified of him, or aggressive. Instead, it sniffed the air, its gaze fixed on his chest where the Nexus hummed.
"It senses the Law you touched," the ancient voice spoke, not in the void, but directly in Robert's mind now. A permanent connection. "The Law of Density resonates with its own nature. This is another truth they have forgotten: beast taming is not domination. It is resonance. It is offering a harmony their chaotic spirits crave."
The lynx took a slow step forward, then another. Robert held his breath, his calm holding firm against the thrill of fear. He didn't reach out. He simply… projected. He focused on the feeling of the silver-grey thread, the concept of enduring strength, of unshakable ground. He offered it not as a threat, but as a shared truth.
The lynx stopped. It let out a low, rumbling purr that sounded like grinding stones. Then, it did something extraordinary. It bowed its head, the iron horn dipping slightly, and then padded forward to rub its bulky head against Robert's leg. The contact sent a vibration of pure, stable earth-energy through him, a feeling of profound solidity.
A bond, delicate as a spider's silk but strong as adamant, snapped into place between his Nexus and the beast's core. No words, no commands. Just an understanding. A pact of mutual resonance.
"I'll call you Granite," Robert whispered, the name feeling right.
"Sentimentality. A distraction. But not without its uses," his master's voice grumbled internally. "The beast is a focus. Its core will stabilize your Nexus as you learn. Now, go. Your mortal shell needs rest. The true work begins at dawn. You will learn to cycle the ambient energy of this feeble world and refine it into something pure. And you will learn why this 'fortress' of yours is a tomb built on lies."
Robert stood, Granite falling into step beside him as if it had always been there. He looked back at the dull crystal. It was just a rock now. The key had turned. The door was open.
As he slipped back into the sleeping hab-unit, he saw his father, Marcus, still awake, staring at the perfectly humming aura-lamp he'd been fixing earlier.
"Dad?"
Marcus looked up, his eyes wide. "It's… it's not just working, son. It's emitting a cleaner light. Like the day it was forged." He looked from the lamp to Robert, a question in his eyes that he couldn't form.
Robert just nodded, a new, unyielding certainty in his blue eyes. "Things are going to change."
He went to his bunk. As he lay down, Granite curled into a heavy, warm lump at his feet. In his mind, his master's voice began a low, endless lecture on the twelve foundational cycles of primordial energy.
Outside, in the Central Sector scanning spire, the duty officer frowned at a secondary log. "Sector 23, Sub-level Waste Management: Faint, stable earth-energy signature detected. No beast tide pattern. Probable cause: Geological settling. Filed for morning review."
The report would be buried under a thousand others. The system churned on, blind to the universe being born in the cracks.