The maintenance shaft smelled of wet earth and grease. Huge, bio-magical roots from the surface crops dangled through the ceiling like the limbs of dead giants, intertwined with buzzing mana-pipes.
Ren sat in the darkness, his back pressed against a vibrating turbine.
He popped his shoulder back into place with a wet crunch.
"Nngh."
He didn't scream. He just exhaled a shuddering breath, sweat beading on his forehead beneath the mask. The adrenaline from the freefall was fading, replaced by the deep, throbbing ache of torn ligaments. His Ring of Weight hummed, forcefully knitting the bone density back together, but soft tissue was slower to heal.
Ren looked at the metallic case resting on his knees. It was dented from the fall, but the seal held.
He popped the latches.
A hiss of pressurized air escaped. Inside, nestled in black velvet, were six jagged shards of crystal. They didn't reflect light; they drank it. Looking at them felt like staring into a deep well.
Refined Void Crystals.
"Valerius intended to use these to force a breakthrough to Tier 4," Ren whispered, his voice raspy. "He would have burned his circuits out. A fire mage trying to channel the Void? Idiot."
Ren picked up one of the crystals. It was freezing cold, burning his skin like dry ice.
For normal mages, this was poison. But for Elian Vane, whose Core was a shattered ruin leaking emptiness, this was filler.
"A broken cup can't hold water," Ren repeated his mantra. "But if you freeze the water... it stays."
He didn't meditate. He didn't draw a magic circle.
Ren unbuttoned his tunic, exposing the black veins—the Abyss Markings—that snaked across his chest and left arm.
He took the sharp point of the crystal and pressed it directly against the center of his chest, right over his heart where his Core used to be.
He pushed.
The crystal pierced the skin.
It didn't bleed red. It bled black mist.
"Open," Ren commanded his own body.
The Abyss Markings flared with a violent violet light. The vacuum inside him, the hunger that had been growing since the Shattered Peak, roared to life.
The crystal didn't just sit there; it dissolved. It turned into a viscous, tar-like energy that was sucked aggressively into Ren's chest.
Agony.
It felt like he was injecting liquid nitrogen into his bloodstream. The cold rushed through his veins, freezing his nerves, turning his blood into slush. His heart hammered against his ribs—thump-thump-thump—slowing down until there were seconds between beats.
Consume us...
The whisper came from the energy itself.
Let go. Be the hollow.
Ren gritted his teeth, his jaw muscles bulging. Frost began to form on his eyelashes. The metal floor beneath him cracked as his body involuntarily increased its density to fight the invasion.
"I am not... a vessel," Ren snarled, grabbing the second crystal. "I am... the cage."
He slammed the second crystal into his chest. Then the third.
He was force-feeding his soul.
Most mages spent years refining their mana capacity. Ren was doing the equivalent of bolting steel plates over a hole in a ship's hull. The Void energy filled the cracks in his broken Core, not healing it, but plugging it.
It gave him a reservoir. A finite, volatile tank of dark mana that he could use to fuel his physical arts without burning his own life force.
Ren convulsed, arching his back as the sixth crystal dissolved into him.
His eyes snapped open. They were entirely black for a moment, the sclera vanished, before fading back to white.
He exhaled. A puff of black smoke left his lips.
He looked at his hand. He clenched his fist.
He didn't use gravity this time. He just channeled the new energy.
A coating of black, static-like aura enveloped his fist. It wasn't elemental. It was Erasure.
He punched the steel casing of the turbine next to him.
There was no sound of impact. No dent.
The steel simply vanished where his knuckles touched it, turning into fine grey dust.
Void Strike.
"Nasty," Ren whispered, a cold smile touching his lips. "Valerius paid a fortune for this power. It's only polite that I use it to break him."
He stood up. The pain in his shoulder was gone, numbed by the cold energy coursing through him. He felt dangerous. He felt full.
He closed the empty case and tossed it into the spinning gears of the turbine, letting the machine chew up the evidence.
"Time to go back to class."
Meanwhile, in the Head of Security's Office.
Sir Alaric stood by the window, looking out at the dark expanse of the Academy grounds. His golden armor was polished to a mirror sheen, but his face was tired.
Sitting in the chair opposite him was Lord Valerius. The young noble looked ragged, his throat bruised in the shape of a handprint.
"Let me get this straight," Alaric said, not turning around. "You were at the Southern Gate at midnight—past curfew—inspecting a cargo shipment of 'family heirlooms' when a masked assailant attacked you, threw the heirlooms into the abyss, and escaped by detonating a bomb?"
"Yes!" Valerius lied, his voice hoarse. "He was a madman! He used some kind of artifact to negate my fire. He must be an assassin hired by a rival house!"
Alaric turned. His eyes were sharp, dissecting the lie.
"He negate your fire?" Alaric asked. "How? Did he use water? Ice?"
"No," Valerius hesitated. "He used a sword sheath. A black sheath. When my fire touched it, the spell just... died."
Alaric's expression tightened.
Anti-magic metal.
Star-Metal? Or something worse?
"And this assailant," Alaric stepped closer, looming over the student. "Did he have a magical signature?"
"I... I don't know," Valerius stammered. "He felt... heavy. Like standing next to a mountain. But my senses couldn't lock onto a Core."
Alaric's mind flashed back to the Shattered Peak. To the boy with the black eyes and the ringing bell. To the mountain that collapsed under the weight of a single hand.
Elian Vane.
But Elian Vane fell into the Abyss of Whispers. No one survived that.
"Sir Alaric," Valerius whined. "You have to find him! He stole—I mean, he destroyed property worth millions!"
"Quiet," Alaric snapped. The authority in his voice silenced the noble instantly.
Alaric walked to his desk and picked up a report.
"There was an incident at the Entrance Exam yesterday," Alaric murmured. "An F-Rank student destroyed the Bell of Giants with a single touch. No mana detected."
Valerius frowned. "The F-Rank? That peasant trash? Impossible. This attacker fought my butler, Sebastian, to a standstill. An F-Rank couldn't touch Sebastian."
"Unless the F-Rank isn't an F-Rank," Alaric said. He looked at the student file on his desk. A grainy image of a rugged-faced boy named Ren.
"Valerius, go back to your dorm. Do not speak of your 'heirlooms' to anyone. If I find out you were smuggling restricted goods, I will have you expelled before sunrise."
Valerius paled and scrambled out of the office.
Alaric sat down. He tapped his finger on the image of Ren.
The face was different. The height was different. But the description... Heavy.
"Sebastian couldn't catch him," Alaric mused. "That means he's fast, or smart. Or both."
He picked up a quill and wrote a new order.
Subject: Freshman Combat Assessment (The Hunt). Target of Interest: Student 'Ren' (Dorm 9). Instruction: Remove limiters on the testing golems. Push him until he breaks cover.
"If you are a ghost, Vane," Alaric whispered to the empty room, "I will be the exorcist."