The rain had been falling for three days straight.
Cold, tedious, unending. It drummed on the rotting roofs of Lower Harrock, streamed down the grimy walls of narrow alleys, mixed with the refuse, and turned the ground into a sludge that sucked at boots up to the ankle. Lower Harrock was the very bottom of the free city of Serhan. Not because the poor lived here. The poor lived everywhere. This was where those no longer considered human dwelled.
Vlad Abyss was squatting under the wooden awning of a burnt-out warehouse, watching the rain.
He was seventeen years old. Thin, with dark circles under his grey eyes, his short-cropped black hair matted with damp. He wore a jacket he'd taken off a dead man three weeks ago. The dead man wasn't using it anymore, so it was only fair.
Vlad wasn't thinking about anything.
This was his usual state. Not sadness, not anger, not boredom. Just absence. Emptiness. He'd long noticed that other people were always filled with something. Desires, fears, malice, hope. He wasn't filled with anything. Inside, there was only silence, steady and deep, like a bottomless well.
He didn't consider this a flaw.
Nearby, footsteps sounded. Heavy, confident. Vlad didn't turn around, but everything within him instantly tensed, sharpened. He had long ago learned to hear footsteps and gauge a person's intent before they even came into view.
There were four sets of footsteps.
Four people. Not hurrying, but not strolling either. Walking purposefully. So, either they were after him, or they were looking for someone specific in this alley.
There was no one else here.
"So, they're after me."
He rose slowly, making no sudden movements. From around the corner of the burnt-out warehouse, four men emerged. Vlad knew them. Not personally. But he knew their type. Grott's men. A minor street king of Lower Harrock who collected tribute from everyone with the misfortune to live or work on his turf.
Vlad lived here. Worked. Sometimes.
The one in front was a broad-shouldered man of about thirty with a broken nose and a tattoo of a chain on his neck. The other three hung back like shadows.
«You Abyss?» the broad-shouldered man asked.
«Depends on who's asking.»
«Grott's asking. Through me. You haven't paid your spot fee for three weeks.»
Vlad looked at him without expression.
«I don't take up a spot. I'm just here.»
«In Lower Harrock, everyone takes up a spot. Even air costs money.» The broad-shouldered man stepped forward. «Grott's a kind man. He's willing to forgive the debt if you do a little job for him.»
«What job?»
«A simple one. Need to find a man and bring him in. Alive.»
"A job for Grott. That never ends well. First one job, then another, then you're in for good."
Vlad was silent for a second. Then he said:
«No.»
The broad-shouldered man squinted.
«You don't get it. That wasn't a question.»
«I got it. My answer hasn't changed.»
Silence. The rain continued to drum. One of the three behind him reached for the club hanging at his belt.
Vlad reacted before the man could even pull it out.
He wasn't a mage. Didn't have a combat class. It was simply that after seventeen years of living in places like Lower Harrock, the body itself had learned what it needed to learn to avoid dying before its time. He sidestepped, letting the first punch sail past, grabbed the broad-shouldered man's arm, pulled it down and sideways. The man lost his balance. Vlad hit him in the temple with his elbow. Not hard. Just enough to stun.
Two of them rushed him at once.
Vlad stepped back towards the wall, dodged, let one run past him, and stuck out a foot. The man fell face-first into the mud. The second one finally got his club out and swung, landing a glancing blow. Vlad took the hit on his forearm. A dull, angry pain flared up. He clenched his teeth and struck out with the palm of his hand, connecting with the man's nose. A crunch. A cry.
The fourth man just stared at him, not moving.
«You're crazy,» he said quietly.
«No,» Vlad replied, rubbing his forearm. «Just don't want to work for Grott.»
He turned and walked away down the alley. Mud squelched under his feet. The rain didn't let up.
"Grott won't let this slide. Need to get out of Lower Harrock for a few days. Or for good."
'For good' didn't sound bad.
He walked without any particular direction until he reached the eastern edge. Where Lower Harrock bled into the Grey Wastes. That's what the locals called the abandoned quarries and dead fields beyond the city limits. Once, they'd quarried stone here for construction. Then the vein played out, and the quarries were abandoned. Now, only those with nowhere else to go came here.
Vlad came here because there was no one else.
He found a dry corner in an old, roofless utility shed, pulled out the piece of bread he'd been saving since morning from inside his jacket, and ate it slowly, without pleasure, simply because his body needed fuel.
Then he sat and stared into emptiness.
Literally. In front of him was an old stone wall with a crack in it. He stared at that crack and thought about nothing. It wasn't meditation. It was just his usual state when there was nothing to do and no one to run from. His mind would stop. Grow quiet. Like dark water.
Vlad didn't notice the exact moment when something changed.
At first, there was only silence. Then, within the silence, a sound appeared. Not a real sound, heard with the ears. Something else. As if, far away, at the very edge of perception, something had begun to breathe. Steadily, slowly. In time with his own breathing.
He wasn't afraid.
"What is that?"
He didn't know. But he wasn't afraid. Fear requires something you stand to lose. Vlad had nothing he stood to lose.
He sat motionless and listened.
The sensation grew. It came from within, from that place in his chest that had always been empty. That place began to… expand. Not physically. Vlad felt no pain. It was simply that the emptiness inside him became larger. Deeper. As if a door had opened inside, revealing another emptiness beyond. Infinite.
And then he saw it.
On the palm of his right hand.
Darkness. Not a shadow. Darkness itself. A small, dark spot that reflected no light. It simply was, like a hole in space. The size of a coin. Vlad stared at it without moving. The spot pulsed. Breathed. As if alive.
"What is that."
Not a question. Just an observation of fact.
Vlad slowly raised his hand. The darkness remained on his palm; it didn't fall or dissipate. He tilted his hand. The darkness stayed put. He tried to move it with his mind, just by thinking about it, and it obediently slid to his fingertips, then returned to the center of his palm.
He sat like that for a very long time.
The rain outside stopped. The sky began to darken. Vlad stared at the dark spot on his palm and methodically tried different things. Moving it. Changing its shape. Making it larger. Making it smaller. Some things worked immediately. Some didn't work at all. The spot obeyed his thoughts, but not just any thoughts. Only those that came from the same inner emptiness it had appeared from.
When he tried to think about it with effort, with desire, with expectation, it grew weaker. When he simply allowed it to be, it grew stronger.
"Interesting."
It was the only word he could find.
By nightfall, he had learned to shape the darkness into a sphere. A small one, about ten centimeters in diameter. It hovered above his palm, quiet and dark, and Vlad could feel that there was something inside it. Not space. Not air. Simply… nothing. An absolute nothing that could be felt as a presence.
He put a small pebble that was lying nearby into the sphere.
The pebble vanished. It simply ceased to exist within that small patch of darkness. Vlad waited. The sphere remained. He closed it, mentally compressed it, and dismissed it. The darkness collapsed in on itself. The pebble was nowhere.
"It consumes."
Vlad lay down on the cold stone, laced his fingers behind his head, and stared up at the sky, which was beginning to clear. Stars were emerging through the parting clouds. Cold, distant, indifferent.
Like him.
"So, I have a power now."
He felt no joy. He felt no fear. Just a statement of fact. In a world where mages existed, fighters with classes, system users, he had always been a nobody. An orphan with no parents, no name, no lineage. Lower Harrock didn't ask about lineage; Lower Harrock only took.
Now there was something new.
Vlad closed his eyes.
"Need to figure out what it can do. Before anyone finds out."
This was important. He understood it immediately, without unnecessary deliberation. In a world where power is everything, a person with an unknown power either becomes a weapon in someone else's hands, or ends up dead. Vlad intended to be neither. He would figure it out himself. Quietly. While no one was watching.
In the morning, he returned to the city.
Lower Harrock looked the same as always. The mud was drying on the walls. Merchants at the small market by the eastern gate were laying out their goods. Children were running off somewhere on their own business. A few drunks were sleeping right on the street, propped against the walls.
Vlad walked through it all as he always did. Not hurrying, not attracting attention. Gaze slightly downcast, shoulders relaxed. He had long ago learned to be invisible not through magic, but through his manner of carrying himself. A person who isn't looking for trouble and isn't running from anyone simply melts into the crowd.
He found work by noon. Unloading carts for one of the small-time traders. The man paid little, but paid immediately, without unnecessary talk. Vlad worked for three hours, took the coins, and left.
All the while, something dark pulsed quietly in his chest.
In the evening, he found a new place. Further from Grott's people. An old wood store in a dead-end alley between two tenement buildings, clearly unused for a long time. The lock on the door was broken. Vlad went in, looked around. Dark, dry, the smell of old wood and dust. It was fine.
He sat down in the middle of the empty shed and opened the void again.
This time, it came faster. He already knew the way to it. He just had to stop his thoughts and let the inner silence deepen. The darkness appeared on his palm, soft and obedient.
Vlad began to work.
He spent hours with it. Methodically, without haste. Forming it into spheres of different sizes. Small ones, the size of a fist. Medium ones, the size of a head. He tried larger ones. Larger ones were harder, required more concentration, drew something from within, something that wasn't physical fatigue but felt similar.
"A resource. The power has a resource."
He consumed various things into the spheres. Wood, stones, scraps of fabric. Everything vanished. He tried to pull them back out. It didn't work immediately. But it worked. The objects returned from that nothingness, whole and unharmed. The space inside the sphere didn't destroy; it preserved.
Or destroyed, depending on his intent.
He understood this later, when he put a piece of wood into the sphere with the intent to destroy it. When the sphere closed and he dismissed it, the wood was nowhere. At all. As if it had never existed.
"Consumption or destruction. My choice."
This was important.
On the third day, he caught a rat.
Not on purpose. The rat just ran out from a corner while he was sitting in the middle of the shed, and he reflexively created a sphere right in front of it. The rat flew inside and vanished. Vlad held the sphere open and watched. Nothing was visible inside. Only darkness.
But he could feel that the rat was there.
Alive. He could feel it the way one feels someone else is in a room, even without seeing them. He just knew. The rat was there, inside his void, and it was alive.
And it was completely within his power.
The feeling wasn't pleasant. It wasn't unpleasant either. Just a fact he accepted and filed away somewhere deep in his memory.
"Living things can also be placed inside. And they stay alive, as long as I want them to."
He released the rat. It darted out and scurried into a corner. Vlad watched it go.
"What if I keep them longer. What if for a long time. What happens to something that stays inside the void for a long time."
He didn't know. But he intended to find out.
On the fifth day, something new happened.
He was working with a small sphere he held before him when he felt something inside it. Not a rat. Not an object. Something else. As if, within the void, something stirred on its own. He tensed and peered into it, not with his eyes, but with that sense he used to perceive the void.
Inside the sphere was something small. Dark. Alive.
He carefully enlarged the sphere and allowed this something to come out.
A creature the size of a fist fell onto the floor of the shed. It was made of darkness. Literally. As if someone had sculpted a small, clumsy figure from dense shadow, with four limbs and something resembling a head. No eyes. No mouth. Just a dark mass in the shape of a living being.
It sat on the floor and didn't move.
Vlad stared at it for a long minute.
Then he mentally sent it a command. A simple one. Rise.
The creature rose.
Vlad slowly exhaled.
"So, that's how it works."
The void didn't just consume. It birthed. Something from nothing. Little servants from the darkness itself, obedient and mute. He had no idea where they came from. From the void itself, probably. From its depths, which he hadn't yet had time to explore.
He spent several hours with the small creature. Giving it commands. Move. Stop. Bring that stone over there. Climb up onto that beam. It did everything. Without hesitation, without mistakes, without questions.
The perfect servant.
Vlad looked at the small dark figure sitting before him, waiting for the next command, and thought.
"This is just the beginning."
Outside, over Lower Harrock, clouds were gathering again. Life went on as usual. Grott's people were looking for him somewhere. The city lived and rotted simultaneously, as always.
But in the dark shed, amidst the dust and old wood, something had changed.
Vlad Abyss sat in the silence, looking at his first servant from the void, and felt something he almost never felt. Not joy. Not pride. Just a quiet, steady understanding.
The world had never given him anything. Parents, a home, a name. Nothing. And he had never asked it for anything. He just lived. Survived. Existed within his inner emptiness, which he had always considered just a part of himself.
It turned out, it was something more.
It turned out, the void inside him and the void outside, between the stars, between the molecules, beneath the surface of reality, were the same. And it heard him. Responded. Gave him what the world hadn't.
Power.
Vlad closed his eyes. The void within was steady and quiet. The small dark servant sat beside him, waiting.
"Time to begin, then."