Chapter One: The Husk
The world ran on Nox and Aether.[1]
Zack knew this as well as he knew the ache in his shoulders at day's end. The golden dust of Zoe's roads choked the air each summer. The Aether was the invisible river of magic that flowed through everything.
It was the reason for the Paths.
It was the wall between him and a future.
Dust is the element that path scholars have yet to fully comprehend; some say it is of no use to path walkers.
He watched his sister Mira work. Her hands kneaded dough in the heat of the stone oven, with power hard to believe can come from such a small physique.
That wasn't farm strength alone; she was a Body Path walker. The Aether she'd drawn into her body's core sat there dense and worm in her dantian,It amplified her muscles, her bones and her endurance. It was why she could carry two full water buckets without a tremble.
It was a humble, practical talent. Good for farm work. Not enough for the Academy in Greenfall, or for the glory of the arena. But atleast she has something.
With a plow that bit deeper into the ground than its weight should permit, their father worked the south field. Sitting by the door, their mother was sewing a shirt. Her fingers were remarkably accurate, and the thread never snagged or broke. They were subtle uses of the same talent.
All of them were Body Path walkers.
Zack glanced down at his own hands.
calloused. Empty and scarred.
He could feel the Aether around him, only around him. A low hum at the edge of his senses, like a song heard through a wall. It thickened near the old willow by the creek, pooling in its roots, misting faint green through its leaves. It shimmered over the river's surface. When Zack stepped closer, it did not change. It did not warm. It did not answer. It flowed through water, through soil, through life itself. but not through him.
Perennially thirsty, he stood on the bank, unsure why the water would not answer him.
He had come to an unsettling realization years ago. Others described sensations of varying levels based on their level and natural affinity, such as warmth, pressure, and resistance. Zack was completely unaffected, and he could not feel a single dime of it.
He observed it. Not precisely as light, but rather as motion and density, currents that silently and precisely fold through the world. He had once casually inquired as to whether anyone else had observed the way it thinned close to the stone or pooled in the roots. He had learned not to ask again from the looks he got. He has kept the information to himself ever since.
Tomorrow was the Aptitude Test. The Guildsman would arrive with his crystal focus. It would measure the density and affinity of the Aether in Zack's dantian. Every child of fourteen was tested. The result was your destiny.
Body. Soul. Hybrid.
The Body Path was vitality, strength forged to last. The Soul Path was escape, magic given shape as fired force, and thought. The Hybrid Path was a compromise, a careful craft of tools and in-between ways.
And there are some whose bodies won't allow them to be bearers of any path. Once in a hundred-tousled case.
Husk.
A dantian incapable of holding Aether. A soul that pushed it away. A living null. Husks were consigned to the Ash Corps, for the kingdom had no patience for those deemed useless. They were sent into Blight-lands where wild Aether warped flesh into Gloomspawn, or tasked with laying foundations in zones where magic had died. They vanished in quiet, uncelebrated years, their names erased after five seasons of service if they survived that long. In a world ruled by power, to be born a husk was not a misfortune. It was seen as a crime
Even though his family would not let that happen. The thought was a cold stone in Zack's gut.
"You're thinking too loud."
Mira's voice broke his reverie. She wiped flour on her apron. "It's just a test. You'll get Body Path, like the rest of us. Maybe a weak strain. So what? You can still hold a plow."
"I don't want to hold a plow."
"Nobody *wants* to," she snapped, her practicality fraying into frustration. "We do it because we have to. Because our Aether isn't strong enough for anything else. Welcome to the real world, Zack."
The real world. He looked past her to the village green. Two boys his age, Penn and Aron, were sparring. Their wooden swords clacked together. They were Body Path, their movements fueled by the faint, copper-colored glow of physical Aether, enhancing their swings. They were clumsy, but they had a future. Regional guard. Maybe caravan security. A life beyond mud and grain.
A louder laugh echoed from the green.
Joren, the miller's son. A year older, broad and mean. stood near the well. He'd tested for Body Path with enough strength for the guard, but not enough control for the Academies. The failure had curdled in him.
"Look," Joren's voice carried across the green.
"The maybe-man is contemplating his greatness. What'll it be, Zack? A mighty Soul Path prodigy? A Hybrid artisan? Your hands make dirt look clean."
His friends snickered. The laughter was a physical pressure.
Zack kept his face blank. His heartbeat sounded too loud in his ears.
Mira took a step toward the well, her eyes flashing. "Your wit is as thin as your mill's profit, Joren. Worry about your own grain."
Joren's smirk vanished. He shot her a dark look but turned away, muttering. Mira's tongue was a weapon her modest Body Path Aether sharpened.
Zack didn't thank her. Gratitude between them was an unspoken debt, a weakness. He just gave a slight nod and walked away, leaving the green behind.
He walked to his place, the old willow at the creek bend. Its roots cradled a hidden seat. Its leaves were thick with released Aether, a gentle, green mist that only those sensitive could see. It was the most magical place in Zoe, and it was useless to him. He couldn't absorb its bounty.
Here, he practiced.
He had no formal training. He stole fragments. A guard's stance from the yearly militia drill. A pivot he'd seen a traveling mercenary use. A blocking motion from a storybook illustration. He pieced them into a shaky, personal kata.
He began. Slow. Feeling the pull of muscle, the shift of weight on the loamy earth. Then faster. Strike, step, pivot, block. His breath hissed. His heart drummed. Sweat plastered his thin shirt to his skin.
The ritual made no sense. A rock trying to swim had better odds. But he did it anyway, a stubborn prayer hurled at a universe that had never once returned his calls. Let me be something. Let me touch the current just once.
Strike. Step. Pivot. Block.
His breath rasped. Sweat soaked his shirt. The earth shifted under his feet.
Please, he thought, not to the tree, not to the Aether, but to something nameless. Let me matter.
When he finally slumped against the trunk, his muscles trembling, the Aether mist curled lazily above him, untouched.
"What if the crystal stays dark?"
The thought landed cold.
Husk.
A boot scraped gravel.
Chief Burrel stood nearby, arms folded, his presence pressing the air flat. His Body Path strength had settled into a dense, immovable solidity. A pale scar cut across his temple, a relic of a war fought with Aether-fed steel.
Chief Zack said.
Burrel ignored the greeting. His gaze swept over Zack, a weight that measured bone and breath. A pale scar cut across his temple. "Stolen forms make a dangerous dance. You learn the step, not the music. When the rhythm changes, you fall."
"I have no music to learn."
"Everyone has a rhythm." Burrel's voice was low, stone grinding on stone. "The test finds your instrument. It doesn't teach you to play. Tomorrow."
"I know."
"You're afraid."
Zack said nothing. Denial died under that stare.
"Fear's a compass. It points to what you value. Walk toward it, not away."
Burrel looked toward the village green, where childrenslaughter still echoed. "People think Paths are about the Aether in your core. They're wrong. Paths are about the will in your heart. The crystal shows you a door. You choose to walk through it. Or break it down."
His dark eyes pinned Zack again. "A man with a lake of Aether who chooses nothing is stagnant water. A man with a hollow core who chooses his path is a hammer. Remember that. No matter what the crystal says."
Burrel gave a final, measuring look. He turned and walked into the trees. He made no sound.
Zack stood alone under the willow.
Choice
The word was a dry leaf in his mouth. What choice did a cup with a hole in the bottom have? He pressed his palm to the bark. Rough, cool, silent. The Aether mist curled above, indifferent. He pulled his hand back, empty.
well there is no point crying about it, it's not like it's the end of the world.
Supper choked the small kitchen.
His father chewed each bite with methodical care. His eyes studied the wood grain of the table. Dirt clung under his nails, dark and permanent. The Blight in the north fields was worsening. Everyone knew it.
Zack's mother sat with mending in her lap. The needle rested between her fingers. The thread lay slack. Her eyes were fixed on the cloth, but she did not see it.
Mira watched Zack. She looked away when he met her gaze, then looked back.
His father cleared his throat. "It's a formality. Every generation worries. You're our son. You'll have Body Path. A trickle is enough. We always make do."
Zack nodded. He did not trust his voice.
His mother's lips pressed into a thin line. She reached for her needle and fumbled it. The metal clicked against the floor.
Mira shoved a piece of potato across her plate. "He's stronger than he looks."
"Exactly." Relief flashed across her father's face. The meal ended soon after. No one stayed to chat.
In the loft, straw prickled through Zack's thin blanket. The beams creaked as the house settled. Mira climbed up and poked him between the shoulder blades.
"You're thinking loud enough to bring the roof down."
"Go to sleep."
She shifted closer, her knees drawn up. "You'll be fine. You know that, right?"
He stared at the dark ceiling.
"You're too stubborn to be empty." Her voice was a whisper in the dark.
"If that crystal has any sense, it'll glow just to spite us all."
A breath escaped him. It wasn't a laugh. It was an acknowledgment.
"Good." She rolled onto her side. "Don't get sentimental."
Her breathing slowed into sleep. Zack stayed awake.
The house hummed. He noticed it only in this quiet. Aether moved. He saw the currents. They slid through the walls like slow serpents. They pooled in the room's corners. They thinned near his pallet, bending around the space he occupied. They did not touch him. He closed his eyes. The silent hum continued.
Dawn came sharp and bright, a liar.
The village green felt foreign. A new wooden platform stood at its center. The planks were pale and raw. Elders sat in a stiff row behind it. Every soul in Zoe crowded close. Children clutched their legs. Murmurs rose and died like faulty breaths.
The Guildsman stood beside the platform. His green robes hung loose on a narrow frame. He yawned into his hand and tapped the lacquered box at his feet with a scuffed boot.
One by one, the children stepped forward.
Lydia went first. Her hand met the crystal. Blue light bloomed, deep and swirling like a midnight pond stirred by moonlight. Gasps cut the air. Her mother cried out.
"High to midium affinity Soul Path."
Cheers erupted. Someone lifted Lydia off her feet.
Kelan followed. The crystal pulsed a steady, earthy umber. He grinned and flexed. His shoulders squared under an unseen weight.
"medium to low affinity Body Path." This was the average level of children in this village.
More cheers. Less awe. Solid pride.
Each child stepped down with a road beneath their feet. A name. A future.
Zack waited. The sun climbed. Shadows shrank.
When his name came, the sound was distant, an echo from another valley.
He stepped forward. The crowd pressed in. Faces blurred into a wall of expectation. He caught Joren's grin, a slash of white. His mother's hands were fists in her shawl. His father stood rigid, jaw clenched. Chief Burrel watched from the edge, arms folded, a statue.
"Hand on the focus. Do not channel. Stand still."
The Guildsman did not look at him.
Zack placed his palm against the crystal. It was smooth. Cold. A perfect, dead thing.
He breathed in. He breathed out. He silenced the plea in his throat.
*Be anything.*
The crystal answered.
Grey spread beneath his hand. Flat. Ashen. The color of dead hearths and forgotten dust.
The light held for three heartbeats.
Then it died.
Silence fell. It was a physical force, pressing on ears, on skin.
The Guildsman leaned closer. He frowned with a confused look on his face. A stylus scratched on his slate, a dry, final sound.
"Null reading. No affinity. No dantian activity. Classification. Husk."
The word traveled on the quiet, infecting every ear.
His mother gasped. The sound was small, torn from her. His father's shoulders folded inward. Mira's face went blank, her mouth ajar as if a word had died there.
The crowd stirred. A wave of whispers rolled outward.
*A husk. Poor family. Thank the Paths ours are safe.*
Joren barked a laugh. "Hollow man."
Someone elbowed him. The laughter choked off, but the grin remained.
The Guildsman looked past Zack. "Next."
Zack stepped down. The platform seemed taller now.
He turned to face his path home.
The crowd had pulled back. They formed a perfect, open lane for him. It was not a path of honor. It was a quarantine.
He walked. The Aether in the air drifted, green and gold, ignoring him as always.
The people did not ignore him. They flinched. A mother's hand yanked a curious child behind her skirts. Old Man Harel took a full step back, his eyes wide with something close to superstition. Friends he had known since birth would not meet his gaze. Their faces were rigid masks of pity, of fear, of a profound, instinctive rejection.
He was a stone in a stream, and the water of his community parted around him without touching a single edge.
It was the silence that carved the feeling deep. No more whispers. Just the rustle of fabric as people shuffled aside, and the raw, hollow sound of his own footsteps on the hard-packed earth.
The Aether had never answered. He was born to that emptiness.
But this. This human silence. This contagious avoidance. It stung with a new, sharp clarity. It made the verdict real in a way the grey crystal never could.
He did not go home.
He walked past the willow. Its leaves whispered with green mist that meant nothing. He passed the last fence. He entered the thinning woods where the Aether grew wild and thick in the veins of roots. It glowed. It flowed. It parted around him like water around a stone.
He stopped only when his legs gave out. He sat on a rotting log. His breath came hard, but not from running.
*Husk.*
He was a Husk.
In a world where monsters rose from twisted magic and demons lurked beyond the edges, everyone had a role. Body Path walkers held the line with reinforced strength. Soul Path walkers struck from a distance with torrents of fire and force. Hybrids built the tools and wards that kept towns safe. Everyone fought. Everyone contributed.
A Husk contributed nothing.
A Husk could not hold the Aether needed to strengthen a blade, to fuel a wardstone, to heal a wound. A Husk was a dead weight in the endless, silent war for survival. They were a mouth to feed that could not lift a shield in return.
To be a Husk was more than a personal failure. It was a betrayal of the community's survival. It was a dangerous luxury.
The Ash Corps was the solution. It put the useless to final use. They would send him into the Blight-lands to dig foundations where the air itself could kill, or to draw the attention of horrors so real fighters could strike. His death would serve a purpose his life could not.
He looked at his hands. Good for a plow. Useless for a sword.
If he went with the Wardens, he would die as a tool. If he ran, he would die as prey.
Neither was a life. Both were just methods of dying.
He would not go. These hands are meant for glory in the arena.
The refusal was a cold, solid thing in his chest. He would not let them use him as bait or as a poisoned shovel. His death would not be their utility.
He stood up. He had no future as his people understood it. He had only a refusal and the wild, empty land ahead.
To survive there, even for a day, he would need to find a new kind of power. One that did not flow from the Aether, but from the sheer, desperate need to not be used up and erased.
He turned back.
The training yard lay empty under the bruised purple dusk. Packed dirt. Worn posts. Silence.
Zack stripped off his outer shirt. He began.
He ran laps until his lungs were raw fire. He dropped and pushed his body up from the dirt until his arms failed and his face met the ground. He stood and did it again. Pain was a measurement. He counted it.
A shadow stretched long across the dirt.
Chief Burrel stood at the edge. He held two wooden knives.
"Stop."
Zack stood, chest heaving.
One knife spun through the air. Zack caught it. The impact stung his palm.
"You chose the hard road." Burrel moved into the center. His stance was not a fighter's pose. It was the readiness of a cliff. "Now you pay the toll. There is no Aether here. No enhanced strength. Only weight. Angle. Mistake. And mistake is pain."
Burrel lowered his knife. "Come."
Zack lunged. Burrel was not there. A crack against Zack's ribs stole his wind. He stumbled.
"Again."
Zack attacked. He swung. He thrust. Each movement met empty air. Each opening earned a punishment. A sharp strike to the thigh. A jab to the kidney that brought him to his knees.
"You fight like you're shouting at the rain." Burrel stepped back, his face unreadable. "Stop wanting to hit me. See where I am. See where I will be."
Gasping, Zack forced his breath to slow. He watched. He saw the subtle shift of Burrel's weight to the front foot. The minute drop of the shoulder.
When Burrel next jabbed, Zack did not retreat. He slid inside the blow. He took the hit on his shoulder, a bright bloom of pain, and drove his own knife point toward Burrel's stomach.
Burrel's free hand snapped out. He caught Zack's wrist an inch from his tunic. He held it. His eyes were dark pools. A spark lived in them. It was not approval. It was recognition.
He released Zack's wrist. "Enough."
Zack straightened. His body trembled.
"You are not a fighter." Burrel's voice was flat. "You are prey that decided to bite. The difference is everything. Your road is short. It ends in a ditch, or at the edge of the world." He picked up the fallen knife from the dirt. "Tomorrow. Dawn. You are slow. You are weak. We will fix one of those."
Burrel left. The twilight swallowed him.
Zack stood alone in the dark yard. His anger had solidified into something cold and sharp. Sixty days remained. Then they come. The only thing in his corner was the stubborn will in his own chest.
He turned toward home, a place that may no longer be his.
Movement.
Not in the shadows. Above.
High in the oak at the yard's edge, a cluster of branches moved. They swayed against the wind's current. The leaves, heavy with drifting Aether, did not glow brighter. They did not bend aside. They rustled, pressed down by an invisible weight that left no imprint on the shimmering Aether, just like Zack.
From the deep gloom, two points of reflected twilight stared down. They held no glow. They were pools of cold, liquid darkness.
The feeling was not fear. It was a deep, icy understanding. This thing was not watching the village. not the Chief. It was watching him, as if it had been waiting for the hollow boy. For the Husk.
Zack held its gaze. His new will was a cold stone in his chest. He did not look away.
After a long moment, he turned. He walked toward the village, his back to the tree. Every sense screamed.
Behind him, the branches settled into perfect stillness.
The presence did not leave. It had found what it was looking for.
[1] They are invisible energy particles.