The walk to the Village Square was exactly three hundred and sixty-five steps. Soren knew this because, for a boy whose lungs felt like they were filled with wet ash, every step was a calculated investment.
The moment he emerged from the shadow of his quarantine, the sunlight hit him like a K.O sucker punch.
'Suck me you over-dialed bulb, no one asked for so much Vitamin D; too healthy.' He lamented as he kept his head down, but his ears sharp.
This walk was a gauntlet of whispers, and he seemed intent on recording everything in his eidetic memory. Liora on the other hand, walked a respectful half-step behind him, her head bowed also.
He could feel her trembling—not from the cold, but from the sheer weight of the glares being leveled at them, even as the rustling of silks hinted at the nobles scuttling about to avoid their path.
He heard the sharp intake of breath as a commoner child pointed at him, only to have their hand slapped down by their fearful mother.
These sorts of reactions weren't new to both of them, but when one considered the fact that they both rarely walk around in the open at such hours, it would become evident as to why they haven't grown numb to it yet.
The village square was a bowl of white dust and jagged limestone. Hundreds had gathered, partitioned by rank. The inner-circle elites sat under silk canopies, fanning themselves against the heat, while the outer-ring commoners stood in the dirt.
As Soren passed, the crowd began to part like the zipper of a lascivious fornicator.
"Look at him," a woman hissed, pulling her toddler behind her skirts. "He looks like a walking corpse. He'll drain the luck right out of the soil if he stays much longer."
"The Shamans say the Truth-seeker Orb never lies," a man replied, his voice thick with a strange mixture of pity and revulsion. "By noon, he'll be a nameless ghost. The Chief won't let a blight sit on the heir-throne another day."
Hundreds of eyes were fixed on the homeless-looking duo, blessing their luck that the air was thick with the scent of expensive oils, otherwise, who knew how many would have flooded these sacred grounds with unsavory contents of their guts.
Soren however, kept his eyes fixed on the center of the square even as the low-frequency hum of a hundred minor cultivation bases vibrated in unison, making him feel small: not just seven-years-old small, but... insignificant.
There, sitting on a throne carved out of basalt, and donned with beast fur was his father—Chief Ignis. The man looked like a mountain sculpted into human form; his presence was so dense it seemed to warp the air around him, stifling the atmosphere somewhat.
Beside him sat the Tribe Matron, her face as sharp and unforgiving as an old hag whose husband just brought home a young maiden.
She was the benevolent benefactor who "gifted" Soren the Tranquil Poison, and even as Soren's eyes met hers, she didn't look away. She merely raised a jade cup in a silent, mocking toast to his continued, agonizing survival.
Looking back to Chief Ignis, Soren realized that his supposed father wasn't even paying him a dime of attention but rather began a deep in conversation with the Tribe Shaman instead of looking at his own flesh and blood, his face a mask of granite.
To Chief Ingris' right were Soren's other siblings; his brothers and sisters who had spent their lives thinking they are being groomed for divinity. They all sat in a shimmering row of blind arrogance; looking at him as one might look at a beggar that had interrupted a banquet.
"Soren of the House of Ignis," the Head Shaman roared.
Though he wasn't the only seven-year-old undergoing his Rite of Awakening, as the Heir to the Chieftain's Seat, he was destined to be the breaking news of the day.
"Step forward to the Truth-seeker Orb!"
Soren couldn't tell if it was the force backing the Head Shaman's voice or the implication of his statement, but his legs suddenly felt like lead.
The Tranquil Poison flared in his veins, a sudden spike of heat that made his vision swim, but He bit his tongue, allowing the iron taste of blood to help ground him.
One step. Two steps. He pushed on, until He reached the Shaman standing beside the Truth-seeker Orb; an eerily smooth, six-foot translucent relic that was older than their tribe, and looked like a frozen soap bubble.
To the tribe however, this orb was their social executioner; It didn't measure crime, muscle or wealth; it measured the resonance of the soul.
Soren's legs buckled as he reached the first step of the altar; a sudden spike Tranquil Poison had seared a part agonizingly close to his crown jewels, causing him to stumble where all men would have fallen.
Reacting as quick as he could, Soren caught himself, causing a wave of ignorant laughter to ripple through the square, a cruel, grating cacophony that hurt him more than the poison.
"Even the Altar rejects him!" someone shouted.
Soren however, ignored them. He dragged himself to the altar upon which the massive six-foot Orb hovered silently. From up close, it looked nothing special, just... hungry?
"Place your hand on the Orb, Heir, and let the truth be revealed" The Head Shaman commanded, his voice devoid of any iota of recognition whatsoever.
"Let the ancestors decide your worth." The Shaman beside Soren sneered derisively.
Soren looked at his hand; thin, trembling, and still stained with the blue ink of the scrolls he'd spent his nights secretly memorizing.
He knew what was supposed to happen. The stone would pulse with light—from White to Violet, weakest to strongest for a warrior, or, in his case, it would turn black, proving him a "Void Soul" with no significant fighting prowess.
Soren expected the familiar rejection. He expected the Stone to turn black, as He reached out. But the moment his palm touched the Orb; the cold of its feel didn't just meet his skin; it dived into his pores and wormed its way into his very marrows. But it wasn't the rejection he expected.
Inside Soren's chest, the Tranquil Poison and his stubborn will suddenly found a third party to the fight. A vacuum opened up. For a split second, the "glass-floor" vision returned, but a thousand times more intense.
He didn't just see the foundation of the yard; he saw the Orb itself, and through his fingertips, He didn't feel the so-called "Truth"; the supposed complex, beautiful lattice of energy recorded in the ancestral scrolls and tomes; instead, He felt its frantic, jagged vibration. Almost as if it was... terrified?
In the outside world however, things turned out to be even more terrifying; horrifying even, because the Truth-seeker Orb that had only hummed loudly at worst since it had been discovered, suddenly gave an ear-grating screech, and then;
CRACK.
The Stone didn't glow. It didn't turn white, violet or even black, instead, it was as if a thunderclap just resounded within in a closed room.
The entire square went pin-drop silent, aghastly watching as a hairline fracture slowly appeared and begin to snake its way from the center of the Orb, right where Soren's palm rested; spreading out in weblike zigzags that ran across the surface of the ancient relic.
The moment the fissure reconnected with its source, a wisp of gray, dead smoke suddenly hissed out of the crack, smelling of ozone and rotted silk.
It was as if someone had cut a thousand throats at once. Every laughter was stifled to death, even Chief Ingris had a major change of expression as he abruptly stood up at the expense of his basalt throne's groans.
"Nothing," The Shaman whispered, his face draining of all emotions and warmth.
"Nothing. Not even a spark of the lowliest cinder. A Void Soul. Worse... a Void that consumes the stone's own light." The Head Shaman blurted with blasphemous indignance. It was almost as if he had just seen Soren unload a hot shite on the ancestral altar.
"No light. No resonance. The boy is... he is a Void." The Matron's cup shattered in her hand. This wasn't the "formal failure" they had planned for. This was an omen of an impending collapse.
Soren pulled his hand and staggered a few steps back, his face a mask of horror. His skin burning hotter as if fueled by the vacuum silence in the plaza.
He looked up at his father, searching for a single spark of humanity, a flicker of 'I see you.'; but no, the Chief's eyes were two truth-seeker orbs frozen of all warmth, and devoid of any iota of recognition. There was no pity there. There was only a cold, clinical relief that the "mistake" was finally documented.
"Erase his name from the scrolls of the Ingris Bloodline" The order came faster than Soren could pull together his thoughts in order to register what hurt more; being ostracized, or the ever-increasing burns from the flaring poison.
To Soren, the words fell like lead weights, but to the hundreds of abhorring gazes in the square, they sounded like balloons of reservations finally lifting off their chests.
Their derisive laughter didn't start immediately. It began as a titter from the back, then swelled into a roar of mockery that pelted Soren like vengeful raindrops on a homeless beggar.
"He is no longer of my blood. He is merely a guest in this tribe—a guest who has overstayed his welcome. By sunset, he is to be cast into the Outer Wastes until the gods decide what to do with his waste of a life."
At first, another bout of silence swelled all across the square, but was then ruthlessly shattered by the voracious eruption of the crowd—not in laughter this time, but in a panicked, superstitious roar.
They wanted him gone. They wanted the "Blightbearer" purged before the broken Orb brought the sky down on their heads.
Soren stood alone by the smoking Orb, his heart beating with a rhythm that matched that of the overcharged crowd.
The "guest" comment was the cruelest part; in a social stratum such as theirs, a guest without a name was a target without a shield; an open invitation for anyone with a grudge to settle it without consequence.
Liora tried to push through the guards to reach Soren, but there was little to what strength her uncultivated frail frame could muster against the crowd of hyperactive bulls on emotional overdrive. She was simply shoved back into the dirt like stale bread into the trash.
Soren looked up, only to see Chief Ingris stood and walked away, followed by the shimmering train of his newly updated family line.
The sun was at its zenith, but the light felt wrong. It was no longer too healthy; it seemed to be exacting vengeance for Soren's mockery a while ago.
Soren looked up. A single, tiny tear tracked through the soot on his cheek and was blown away, along with the final modicum of safety he once had.