Lyra's tutelage was nothing like I had expected. There were no dusty tomes of dark rituals, no whispered incantations to the void. Instead, she began with the meticulous, boring fundamentals of alchemical theory.
"You cannot break a thing if you do not first understand how it is made," she said, tapping a complex diagram of a basic Earth-Ward. "All magic, all matter, is a structure. It has stress points, resonant frequencies, and elemental sympathy. Your… talent… allows you to introduce a profound stress—the stress of non-existence. But applying it like a hammer is wasteful and loud. You must apply it like a needle."
My first lessons were in observation. Using my Void Lens not to calm mana, but to analyze it. She had me sit for hours before a simple Light-Orb, a crystal charged with solar mana, and describe its internal structure. Not as a mage would feel its "glow," but as an engineer would map its load-bearing beams.
"The mana coils here, in a double-helix pattern. The binding agent is a trace of quartz resonance. A weakness exists at the third junction, where the helix overlaps—the pattern is strained."
"Good," Lyra would murmur, peering over my shoulder. "Now, if you were to introduce your 'Pin' at that junction, how much force would be required to sever the coil?"
It was a mathematics of annihilation. I learned to calculate the metaphysical "tensile strength" of a spell, to identify the point where a minimum application of void-force would yield maximum collapse. She called it The First Principle: Economy of Force.
My soul paid for every lesson. Each use of the Void Lens for delicate analysis was less draining than a deletion, but the constant expenditure deepened the hollow chill within me. Emotions became even more distant. The memory of Liam's life felt like a story about someone else. Prince Kieran's past was a faded parchment. I was a set of operating principles housed in flesh.
Lyra noticed. "Your essence fuels this. You are burning the fuel of your own selfhood. A dangerous economy." She began brewing tonics—thick, bitter draughts of concentrated moonlight and ghost-moss extract. "These will not replenish your soul," she warned, handing me the first vial. "But they will fortify the vessel that holds it. Slow the erosion."
The potions tasted of cold stone and distant stars. They did not warm me, but they solidified the edges of my being, like ice reinforcing a cracking dam.
The Second Principle: Catalytic Agents. This is where the Glimmerblight came in. The parasitic fungus didn't just eat magic; it excreted a residue that weakened magical bonds, making them brittle. Lyra taught me to distill this residue into a fine, silvery powder.
One night, she set a practice ward—a simple shield of force—between us. "Break it," she commanded.
I formed a Void Pin. It would take a significant portion of my will to punch through.
"Now, try with this." She tossed a pinch of the silvery powder at the ward. Where it touched, the shimmering energy of the shield dulled, its structure becoming visible as a fraying web.
I formed a new Pin, one-tenth the strength. I directed it to the largest frayed node.
The ward didn't shatter. It dissolved with a soft sigh, the energy dispersing harmlessly. The cost to me was minimal.
A cold, sharp thrill—the closest thing to pleasure I could still feel—shot through me. This was power, amplified. Efficiency.
The Third Principle: Sympathetic Resonance. Not all unmaking required direct contact. Lyra showed me how every magical structure has a frequency. By using the Void to create a counter-frequency—a "silence" that resonated against the "sound" of a spell—I could induce catastrophic interference from a distance. It was fiendishly complex, requiring perfect attunement. My first attempts failed. My tenth attempt made a Water-Orb three feet away violently implode, soaking us both in frigid water. Lyra cackled with delight.
Weeks bled together. By day, I was the Hollow Prince, occasionally glimpsed shuffling in a sunlit courtyard under Victus's tacit protection, a living ghost ignored by the court. By night, I was an apprentice of dissolution in a hidden temple.
I began to apply my lessons beyond Lyra's lab.
I found one of Valerius's Ignis Guard captains, a brutish man who enjoyed "accidentally" singeing servants with ember spells. Using Sympathetic Resonance, I identified the frequency of his personal fire-mana signature. One evening, as he warmed his hands by a brazier in the guardhouse, I stood in the shadows outside and pulsed a tiny, precise counter-frequency.
His hands didn't just go cold. The mana in his palms inverted. There was no flash, no scream. Just a sudden, sickening crackle as the heat within him was violently sucked out and nullified. Frostbite bloomed across his fingers in an instant. The healers called it a "manafeedback anomaly," a rare tragic accident. The captain's days of casual cruelty were over.
It was my first true, deliberate strike. Not for survival. For justice. The void in me approved.
The Fourth Principle: The Preservation of the Whole. Lyra was adamant about this. "True mastery is not in turning a man to dust. It is in removing the single rotten tooth from his jaw while he sleeps, leaving him whole but undone." She taught me to envision the system—a person, an organization, a spell—and to identify the single, key component whose absence would cause the entire system to fail towards my desired end.
My mind went to the 'V & Flame' patron. I didn't need to kill them. I needed to remove their ability to act against me. I began using my conduit-tapping to look for the source of the symbol, not in places, but in patterns of influence, flows of money and fear.
And then, Lyra introduced The Fifth Principle: Sacrificial Substrate.
She placed a live, healthy Moonfern on the table, its leaves glowing softly. "You pay with your selfhood. What if you could pay with something else?" She pointed to a lump of raw, dull iron. "All matter contains latent potential, a faint echo of creation's fire. Your void can consume that potential just as readily as it consumes poison or magic. It is… less nutritious for your power, but it will fuel minor workings without eroding you."
The implications were staggering. I could use raw materials as a battery for my power.
I tried. Focusing on the iron, I willed its latent potential to be converted into void-force. The iron didn't vanish. It simply became… more inert. Its colour dulled from grey to a flat, dead black. It became cold to the touch, and when I dropped it, it didn't clang—it thudded, like stone. All its vitality, its potential to be forged, to conduct, to be, was gone.
And I had a tiny, cold spark of void-energy to spend, without the accompanying soul-chill.
It was a revelation. I was no longer just a consumer. I was a converter.
One night, as I was leaving the temple, Lyra stopped me at the door. Her usual sharpness was softened by something resembling concern.
"You are learning faster than I anticipated," she said. "But remember The Sixth Principle: The Corollary of Corruption. Every use of this power, even fueled by external matter, changes you. You are defining yourself by absence, by negation. You must find something to build, Kieran. Not just something to unmake. Or one day, you will look in a mirror and see only the hole where a man used to be."
Her words hung in the cold air. I had no answer. What did I have to build? A claim to a throne I didn't want? Revenge for a mother I barely remembered?
I returned to my chambers, the weight of her warning heavier than any physical fatigue.
As I entered, I found a small, flat box on my bed, wrapped in plain cloth. No note.
Inside, on a bed of black velvet, was a signet ring. The seal was not the imperial crest. It was a single, stark symbol: a closed eye.
And beside it, etched into the inside of the band, was a tiny, precise 'V'.
It was not Victus's 'V'. The style was different.
It was an invitation. Or a declaration.
Someone else knew about the temple. About the door in the cellar.
And they were reminding me that in the game of eyes and voids, I was not the only player who could see in the dark.
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