The hall was cold. Geummo knelt on the floor, his hands tied behind his back. He didn't look up. He kept his face blank, the way he'd trained his whole life. The way he had to, because feeling too much could literally break him from the inside.
Elder Hwang Myung, his own uncle, spoke from the high seat. His voice was tired. "The evidence is clear. You betrayed the Union, Geummo."
On a table lay a dark stone tablet, covered in ugly, crawling black marks. A relic from the old war, now corrupted. Glowing on its surface was a smear of golden light—his own energy signature. His fingerprint on a crime.
He'd never seen it before.
"My granddaughter found it in your quarters," said the Baek elder, a man with fire tattoos snaking up his neck. He sounded bored.
Geummo's fiancée, Baek Sooyoung, stepped forward. She was beautiful, dressed in red. She looked sad. Perfectly, beautifully sad.
"I didn't want to believe it," she said, her voice trembling just right. "I heard him talking… to something in the dark. He said the Union was weak. He said we deserved to be cleansed." A single tear fell. It traced a clean line down her cheek.
It was all lies. Every word. Geummo looked at her and felt nothing. The Sealed Heart Meridian inside his chest did its job, locking the storm away. He just felt cold.
His friend, Seo Jinho, spoke next. Handsome, smooth. "I saw it too. I tried to reason with him. He was… calm. Certain. It was the most frightening thing I've ever seen."
Geummo understood then. This wasn't a trial. It was a cleanup. He was the stain they were wiping away. He was the mediocre disciple, the emotionless statue, the easy piece to sacrifice to keep the powerful families happy. Sooyoung wanted to be rid of him. Jinho wanted her. The elders wanted peace.
His uncle finally looked at him. "Do you have anything to say?"
Geummo made his voice flat. Empty. "I didn't do it."
A ripple of disgust went through the room. *Even now, no passion*, their faces said. *He really is a hollow thing.*
Sooyoung let out a soft sob, putting a hand over her heart. "He lies so easily."
Elder Myung closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them, it was over. "The truth is clear. For the safety of the Union, Hwang Geummo is cast out. His name is erased. His power is forfeit."
Four men in grey robes and silver masks came forward. Executioners. They held long, sharp needles that glowed with a sickly light.
One stepped toward Geummo. The needle aimed for his gut, for the core where his power lived.
His body reacted on instinct. A transparent bubble—his Equilazer Domain—flickered to life around him. It was his only technique. It didn't attack. It just tried to balance whatever came in, to neutralize it.
The needle slowed, pushing against the balance.
Then the other three Executioners moved. They didn't stab Geummo. They stabbed his domain.
The bubble shattered with a sound like cracking ice.
The pain was immediate and wrong. It wasn't like being cut. It was like being *unmade*. The first needle slid into his core. He felt his energy—the steady, quiet strength he'd spent his life building—being pulled apart and drained away. It felt like dying from the inside out.
The other needles found the major pathways in his arms and legs. They sewed them shut with threads of burning silver light. Each stitch was a bolt of numbness, leaving a hollow, aching void behind.
He didn't scream. He couldn't. His face stayed blank, even as his world went dark and silent inside.
As they worked, he felt a cold spot over his heart. The old birthmark, the one that looked like a smudge of shadow, twitched. For a second, where a needle passed close to it, the silver light dimmed, like something was sucking at it. The Executioner paused, confused, then finished his work.
When they pulled the needles out, Geummo was empty. He was a dry well. He couldn't feel a flicker of energy. The world seemed dull and far away.
They ripped his disciple robes off, leaving him in a thin, rough prisoner's shirt and pants. The air was cold on his skin.
Elder Myung walked down and stood in front of him. He smelled like dust and old wood. "You are nothing now," he said quietly, so only Geummo could hear. "The wilderness will finish what we started."
He nodded to the Executioners.
They dragged Geummo out of the hall. His bare feet scraped on the stone. As the doors closed, he looked back. Sooyoung was watching him. All the sad tears were gone. Her face was clean and sharp and ambitious. Her lips moved.
*"Firewood,"* she mouthed.
Then the door shut, and the light was gone.
## **PART TWO**
They marched him through the heart of Golden Peak. Past the training grounds, the gardens, the libraries. Disciples stopped to watch. No one threw anything. No one yelled. They just stared. Some looked away, ashamed. Most just watched, curious. Their eyes felt like bugs on his skin.
He saw his friend, Jin Taeho, in the crowd. Taeho's face was white with fury. Two Jin elders were holding him back, their hands digging into his arms. Taeho fought, his healing tattoos glowing green. He stared at Geummo, his eyes screaming.
*I'm sorry.*
Geummo looked away. He couldn't give anything back. His face was a stone. Looking at Taeho's pain just made the hollowness worse.
They walked to the edge of the mountain, to a cliff that overlooked a place called the Cursed Ink Valleys. The air here was thin and bitter. Below, through dirty grey mist, Geummo could see a jumble of black rocks and oily rivers. It smelled bad—like rotten eggs and old blood.
One Executioner stepped forward with a small bowl of red paste. Oathbreaker's Ink. He smeared it on Geummo's forehead. It burned, sinking into his skin, leaving a permanent, upside-down mark. The brand of a traitor.
Elder Myung stood behind him. "The fall is your mercy."
The Executioner put a hand on Geummo's chest and shoved.
Geummo fell.
The wind ripped at him. Then he hit the mist. It was wet and cold and it whispered. He saw flashes in the grey—people screaming, monsters of ink, old deaths replaying. The binding spells on his core flared, keeping him painfully awake.
He hit a rock. His arm broke with a dry *snap*. Pain, sharp and simple. He bounced and slid down a slope of sharp black gravel. It cut through his clothes, through his skin. It was like being sanded down to bone.
He splashed into a stream. The liquid wasn't water. It was thin, black, and it burned. It burned his cuts, his mouth, his eyes. He swallowed some by accident. It tasted like hate. He choked, vomiting black sludge.
Somehow, he crawled out. He lay on a bank made of bones. White bones, stained black. He couldn't move. Everything hurt. His broken arm. His shredded skin. The hollow, aching voids where his power used to be. The brand on his head pulsed.
He was starving.
Next to him, growing from a cracked skull, was a mushroom. It was purple and shiny. It smelled sweet. His body moved before he could think. He grabbed it and ate it.
It was sweet for one breath.
Then his stomach exploded. Pain. Real pain. He curled up, vomiting more black fluid. His muscles locked. He couldn't breathe. He was dying. His heart beat wrong. His vision went dark.
*This is it*, he thought. *This is how it ends.*
But deep in his chest, the dam that held back all his feelings—the Sealed Heart Meridian—cracked. It had been damaged by the needles. Under this new, total pain, it broke.
The frozen lake inside him shattered.
And in the dark, cold place where nothing had ever lived, something **woke up**.
The birthmark over his heart went cold. Not normal cold. Empty cold. A hungry cold.
It didn't fight the poison. It **ate** it.
Geummo felt a sucking pull deep in his chest. The mushroom's poison, the black crap he'd puked up, the bad energy from the valley—it all got dragged *into* the mark. Into the cold spot.
The pain faded. Not into feeling better. Into feeling **nothing**. A numb, hollow silence.
In the ruins of his core, a single, heavy drop of something new formed.
It wasn't energy. It was the **absence** of energy. A drop of liquid void.
**Void Qi.**
The last of the poison vanished. Geummo lay on the bones, shivering, empty. A sound echoed in his head. It wasn't a voice. It was the feeling of being alone in a dark, huge place.
**"More."**
Geummo opened his eyes. He pushed himself up with his good arm. He looked at the broken, bleeding mess of his body. He looked at the hell he'd been thrown into.
He understood.
They'd thrown him away. They'd broken him and thrown him in the garbage.
Fine.
He'd survive. Not for revenge. Not yet. Just to survive.
The cold hunger in his chest agreed.
***"More."***
Geummo stared into the grey mist. His face was still blank. But his eyes were different. Darker. Hungrier.
He had nothing. Not even a name.
Just a hollow space inside, and a need to fill it.