Malanthir led Aether through the inner sanctum of the High City, a place where the very concept of a ground was forgotten.
They walked upon a bridge of solidified starlight that spanned a bottomless abyss. Far below, the clouds of Sylvaris swirled; far above, the twin moons were visible even in the day.
They entered the Spire of Sovereignty.
The architecture here was an impossible, eldritch scale. The ceiling was not a roof, but a swirling galaxy of mana, where the history of the world was written in constellations that shifted in real-time.
The floor was a dark, polished obsidian that acted as a mirror, reflecting not the room, but the Spectrums of those who stood upon it.
The air was thick—floating chairs and floating mirrors were abundant in this giant hall.
At the end of the hall sat the Representatives of the Species—the true rulers of the planet.
The Elf Lord Priscilla so ancient she seemed made of living marble, her eyes two infinite wells of violet magic.
The Dragon King, Zerathion was a titan in human form, his skin covered in gold-leaf scales, a constant heat haze shimmering around his massive frame.
The Daemon Matriarch, Lucifer was a figure cloaked in living shadows, her horns reaching toward the galaxy-ceiling like obsidian spires.
The Beast-Warlord, Grivon was a massive Lion-man sitting on a throne of jagged iron, his Physical Spectrum so dense it made the air feel like liquid.
Aether felt like a grain of sand before an incoming tide. The threads here were so thick and powerful they felt like they were crushing his lungs. Each False Lord was a sun, and he was a moth dancing in the heat.
I shouldn't be here, Aether's internal monologue was a frantic, looped prayer. Mama, please. They're so big. They're not like people. They're like mountains that can talk. If the Lion-man roars, I'll turn to dust. Why are they looking at me? I'm just a Human. I'm just a boy from the woods.
"Malanthir," the High Lord of Elves, Priscilla spoke, her voice echoing not in the ears, but directly in the soul. "Why have you brought this... 'thing' into the Presence? The human census was completed years ago. This one is lowly scum."
"Your Radiance," Malanthir bowed, pushing Aether forward onto the obsidian mirror. "This child did not light the Prism. He... unspooled it."
The Dragon-king Zerathion leaned forward, his golden eyes narrowing. The temperature in the room rose by ten degrees.
"Unspooled? Impossible. Only those with the Blood of the Gods Aetheros and Kraton can interact with the Raw Threads."
The Beast-Warlord Grivon let out a low, vibrating growl. "He is a human. He has no blood but the red mud of the earth. Prove it, Dean. Or I shall have the boy's head for this insult."
Malanthir looked down at Aether. "Show them, Aether. Show them the strings."
The atmosphere in the Hall of Sovereignty shifted from a courtroom to a butcher's block.
The galaxy-ceiling above began to swirl with a violent, rhythmic intensity, the constellations bleeding into long, jagged streaks of light. The obsidian floor beneath Aether's feet lost its reflective quality, turning into a hungry, pitch-black void that seemed to pull at his very existence.
Upon seeing this, the False Lord's immediately stood at attention.
"The variable must be isolated," the High Lord of Elves Priscilla whispered. Her voice carried the weight of a status that crushed Aether's lungs. To her, this wasn't a child; it was a glitch in the cosmic script of Sylvaris.
Before Aether could draw a breath to plead, the air around him solidified into chains of pure, translucent mana. They didn't just bind his arms and legs; they pierced his core—the one where all the Spectrums come from in all living beings. One chain wrapped around his throat, humming with a frequency that silenced his vocal cords, while others anchored his soul to the obsidian mirror.
The Dragon-King Zerathion rose from his throne. His presence was like a sun descending into a small room. "If a human—a zero-tier—can unravel the Threads, then the Threads are compromised. We shall peel back the layers of this soul until we find the source of the rot."
The extraction began.
It wasn't a physical incision. It was worse. The Daemon Matriarch Lucifer extended a clawed finger, and a needle of shadowy Magical Spectrum lanced into Aether's chest.
"M-MA... MAMA!" The scream tore out of Aether's throat as the silence-spell broke under the sheer force of his agony. It was a sound that should have shattered the heart of any living thing, but here, in the presence of Sovereigns, it was merely 'noise' to be filtered.
It hurts. It hurts like the winter frost biting my skin. It hurts like the time I fell from the oak tree, but everywhere. All at once. Inside my head. Behind my eyes.
Aether's vision fractured.
In the Omniscient view of the Spectrums, he saw the False Lords' hands reaching into his chest—not grabbing his heart, but grabbing the shimmering, silver threads that were woven into his very essence. They were pulling them out like silk from a spider, each tug feeling like his memories were being erased.
Stop it. Please stop it. I'll be good. I'll go back to the dark room. I won't look at the strings anymore. Papa, help me! The Lion-man is taking my breath! The Lady is taking my eyes!
"Fascinating," the Daemon Matriarch Lucifer murmured, her voice a cold silk. "The more we pull, the more the void within him expands. It isn't that he has a Spectrum... it's that he is a Null Point. A full on Zero. A hole in the world where magic goes to die."
The Lords increased the output. A kaleidoscope of violet, gold, and crimson energy flooded Aether's small frame, acting as a magical pump to force the core out. The pressure was immense.
To Aether, it felt like being at the bottom of the deepest ocean, with the weight of the entire planet pressing down on his skull.
His hazel eyes began to roll back, the whites showing, veined with burst capillaries.
His small fingers clawed at the obsidian floor, leaving streaks of blood that were instantly consumed by the void-stone.
As the memories of his parents began to blur—their faces dissolving into the white-hot agony of the extraction.
Aether passed out due to exhaustion and exertion.
"He is spent," the Dragon-King Zerathion rumbled, his golden scales dimming back to a steady, smoldering heat. "The anomaly is dormant. Begin the siphoning before the probability of this world shifts any further."
The extraction resumed, but this time, it was methodical. The Hall of Sovereignty transformed.
The galaxy-ceiling slowed its rotation, focusing all its celestial light into a single, burning needle of pure Order. The High Lord of Elves raised her hands, and the Magical Spectrum she commanded began to act as a metaphysical scalpel.
Pluck.
Deep within Aether's subconscious, the dream of the forest began to dissolve.
I'm walking with Papa, Aether's mind whispered in the dark. The trees are tall and they whisper my name. But the trees are turning into glass. Papa's face is melting into white smoke. Mama's voice... it sounds like a bell ringing from very, very far away. I'm trying to hold onto the potatoes she cooked, but they're turning into cold stones in my hands.
In the physical world, a swirling, oily sphere began to manifest above Aether's chest. It was the Null Point. The Point where no Magic could even reach it. It didn't glow; it was... He didn't know. It was a pocket of absolute nothingness that seemed to suck the very color out of the air.
"Look at the density of his null." the Daemon Matriarch Lucifer hissed, her eyes reflecting the void. "It isn't magic. It is the absence of the Gods. It is the silence that existed before Kraton spoke the first word of power."
She reached out with a shadowy tendril, carefully wrapping it around the dark orb. Each inch she pulled away from Aether's heart caused the boy's body to twitch—a primal, cellular protest against the theft of his essence.
Don't take it, Aether's internal monologue whimpered, now a tiny spark in a vast, freezing ocean. It's the only thing that's mine. Without the dark... I'm just... I'm just nothing.
"Almost there," the High Lord of Elves Priscilla murmured, her violet eyes wide with a mix of greed and relief. "Once this is contained, the human resistance will be neutralized. They will truly be the Zero-Tier once more. Slaves to the causality we dictate."
With a final, violent yank that made the obsidian floor beneath Aether crack in a perfect starburst pattern, the orb was separated.
Aether's body let out a sharp, final gasp before falling into a state of deep, unnatural catatonia.
His skin turned a sickly, translucent pale, and the silver threads he had seen earlier vanished from his vision entirely.
He was now truly empty. A human child with no Spectrum, and no memory of the power he had briefly touched.
The False Lords stared at the captured void, held within a cage of reinforced mana. It pulsed like a dying star.
"And the boy?" the Beast-Warlord Grivon asked, his voice returning to its arrogant, booming register now that his power was no longer being suppressed. "Do we discard the meat?"
Malanthir, who had been standing in the shadows, stepped forward. His expression was a mask of Elven perfection, but his mind was a storm of calculations. The probability hasn't settled, he thought. The boy survived the extraction. That shouldn't be possible. He is a character that has lost the narrative, and yet... he still breathes.
"The boy is a record, my Lords," Malanthir said smoothly, bowing low.
"Let him return to the Academy. He is a tool now. A broken tool. To kill him would be to acknowledge he was ever a threat. Let the students see what happens to humans who dare to reach for the threads."