A little boy, not older than eleven, stood naked on cracked, barren earth under a black sky. He wasn't on an ocean like the one he would come to know, only a black desert stretching out, dotted with countless isolated puddles of that same black water. In this massive place, the boy was small and utterly alone.
Then a voice ripped through the space, not inside his head, but from outside, echoing throughout.
"Alright, kid. How many soul cores can you see up there?"
The boy looked up. Three dim lights hung in the sky: one like a fading ember, one a trapped flash of lightning, and one a hole of perfect darkness that seemed to eat the space around it.
"I see three."
His own voice sounded too loud.
"Alright, three. That's good, you—"
The voice outside gasped.
"Sorry... three? You said three?"
The boy nodded at nothing.
"Yes. And they look really cool."
The silence on the other side had texture to it.
"Okay, Ashley. Look again. Take your time. Could be a trick of the light. Could be your eyes adjusting. Could be a lot of things."
Ashley tilted his head, considering this with the sincere effort of a child who genuinely wants to be helpful.
"Hmm. You know what, maybe you're right, Mister Examiner."
An audible exhale of relief from outside. Then:
"Okay, good. You almost got me there. If you had three, that would be news for all of Varagos. No one's ever reported three before. So tell me, what do you actually see?"
Ashley pointed.
"I see a fire star in the sky."
"Sure, sure. Burns family, makes sense. Go on."
"And a lightning one. Like lightning someone trapped in a bottle."
"Ha! That explains the hair... that's your mother's soul core. She's going to love hearing this. Alright, two cores, one fire, one lightning. Completely normal for a hybrid. Very exciting. Now, you should—"
"Mister Examiner?"
The examiner stopped.
"There's another one. So dark it almost hides in all the other dark. But I can see it moving."
The silence that followed was a different kind entirely.
"...Mister Examiner?"
The examiner cleared his throat.
"Okay... Ashley. I think it's time to come back now."
Ashley looked down at a puddle. His own reflection smiled back. He gave a little wave and, to his surprise, the reflection waved back. He smiled, closed his eyes, and left the Soul Space.
***
Ashley opened his eyes to a bright, sterile room. Training equipment lined the walls. In front of him stood a tall man in a lab coat, brown hair badly in need of an opinion, glasses slightly crooked, a tablet clutched to his chest like a shield.
The examiner stared.
"So… three soul cores."
Ashley nodded.
The examiner looked down at his tablet. Looked back up. Looked back down. Started typing.
"This... This has never happened. Not once. Not in any record I've ever read."
He stopped.
"Do you have any idea what you are?"
Ashley thought about it.
"I have both my parents' soul core types?"
The examiner opened his mouth. Closed it. Pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Yes, but... do you not see it?"
He sighed.
"Right… You're eleven. Of course you don't."
He pulled up a stool, sat, and looked the boy in the eye.
"Have you ever, in your entire life, heard of anyone having three soul cores? A story, a rumor, anything? Don't answer yet. Actually think about it."
Ashley thought about it.
"No."
"No," the examiner repeated. "Because it has never happened. For someone to receive a soul core, they need to inherit it from a parent. Your father has the fire soul core, that's normal for a Burns. Your mother has lightning and dark, making her a hybrid. But you inherited all three. One from your father, both from your mother. Which is unheard of."
He laughed, small and disbelieving.
"The academic community is going to have a breakdown over this."
He sat back.
"The world is going to lose its mind."
Ashley's eyes lit up.
"So I'll be as popular as Dad?"
A sound escaped the examiner that was almost a laugh.
"What are you... you're already popular! You're a Burns! Your father is one of the strongest Ascended alive. Your mother is the world's last Dark Soul Core wielder and one of the finest sword saints living. Your brother Max is a scientific prodigy, they write papers about him. And Tyrin is..."
He searched for words.
"Tyrin is a force of nature in human form. And now you walk in here with three soul cores."
The examiner shook his head.
"What lottery did your parents win?"
Ashley smiled for only a moment. Then he grew serious.
"Okay. Where do I go to check my Vessel Tier? Mom said that's the important one."
The examiner blinked, then clicked back into professional mode.
"Right. The Vessel Tier."
He stood and started walking.
"The foundation everything else is built on. It sets your physical baseline — strength, speed, healing, endurance and the ceiling of how far your soul can grow. It's fixed at birth. And there is no known means of altering it."
Ashley frowned.
"So my body limits my soul?"
"Exactly. Grow your soul as large as you like, but if the vessel isn't big enough..."
He made a quiet shattering gesture.
"It doesn't end well."
Ashley was quiet.
"So even if I train every day and work harder than everyone else, I still can't go past what my body allows."
"You can reach incredible heights. But yes, the frame is fixed. Train smart, develop your soul stage well, and you'll go further than most people with a higher tier."
He glanced sideways.
"Besides, with what I'm seeing now, being a Burns, you've almost certainly won that lottery too. Deeply unfair to everyone else, but here we are."
Ashley didn't smile. A small, cold weight had settled behind his ribs.
"What if I get a weak tier? Wouldn't that make the three cores useless?"
"Only if you were Tier 0. And no one who can enter their Soul Space is Tier 0. You're at minimum Tier 1. Your brother tested at Tier 2, and look at everything he's accomplished."
Ashley's face fell.
"I don't want to be like Max. Max is okay with being weak because he's brilliant at everything else. I'm not like that. If I come out with a low tier, Mom and Dad might not like me anymore."
The examiner looked at him. Really looked. Then cleared his throat.
"I genuinely don't think that's possible. But standing here guessing won't help either of us."
He gestured ahead.
"That's why you're here. Let's find out."
***
The next chamber held a line of transparent walls stretching ahead, each slightly thicker than the last, each tinted a faint sterile green. The nearest had two large letters etched into it.
T0.
Ashley stared.
"Mister Examiner."
His voice had gone very small.
"Why does the first one say Tier 0? Does that mean I'm Tier 0? Can we go to a different room? The next room will be better, I know it—"
The examiner's laughter bounced off the walls.
"This never gets old. Every single kid, every single time."
He composed himself when Ashley's expression didn't change.
"You are not a Tier 0. You already entered your Soul Space. Tier 0s can't do that. They're regular people. Normal, perfectly fine, just regular people. That's not you."
He crossed to a drawer and returned with a heavy gauntlet.
"When you punch through each wall, this absorbs most of the feedback. You'll still feel it, but it won't rearrange the bones in your arm."
He paused.
"Probably."
He tapped his tablet.
"Don't hold back. I'd hate to file a disappointing report for a Burns."
Ashley took the gauntlet. It hummed and tightened around his small hand. He turned to face the T0 wall.
"I'm not a zero," he said quietly.
He pulled back and punched. The wall dissolved like it had been waiting for permission.
Ashley stared at the dust, then beamed.
"Good. Next one."
The examiner's voice echoed as the T1 wall slid into place. Ashley didn't pause. He ran at it, and the moment his fist connected, it was gone. He was, officially, an Ascended. His grin was getting out of control.
The examiner's tone shifted.
"The next one is where it actually starts. A fair number of people stop here. Some hurt themselves. I would tell you to be cautious, but..."
He looked at the boy.
"Just go ahead."
Hearing that, Ashley charged the T2 wall. His fist hit with a heavier thud, but it spider-webbed and came apart. He shook out his hand and barely slowed.
Then he saw the T3 wall and stopped. The flutter returned to his chest.
The examiner watched him standing still and said, almost gently:
"Yeah. That's the face. This is where it gets rare. Your brother couldn't break this one, if I recall."
Ashley stared at it.
"He couldn't. But I will. No, I must. If I don't, Tyrin will bring it up for the rest of my life."
The examiner pressed his lips together.
"Then go. Don't let him win."
Ashley exhaled, coiled every part of himself, and threw a punch from the floor up.
The T3 wall didn't crack. It exploded. Shimmering dust drifted in the light. Ashley stood in it, breathing hard, the gauntlet glowing against his small fist.
He didn't wait for the examiner. He was already moving toward T4. It fell almost before it finished sliding into place.
The examiner's eyes went wide.
"Are all Burns children just built differently?"
Ashley was already a blur. The T5 wall shifted into position; he didn't give it time to settle. When he hit it, a deep gong rang through the room. For a half second the wall held. A single crack appeared at the top, moved diagonally, and the whole thing came down.
He had done it. He was Tier 5. He had reached his mother's tier. But that wasn't enough. He wanted more. He wanted to surpass her, to surpass all of them. Ashley turned, breathless, already looking past the dust at the next wall.
T6.
That's Tyrin's tier.
A loud clatter rang through the room as the examiner dropped his tablet.
"Unbelievable," he whispered, picking it up slowly. "Extremely. Un. Believable."
The words landed on Ashley like sunlight. Three cores. That was truly unbelievable. So if he, who is an unbelievable person, found this Tier 6 wall to be nothing, he could even reach Tier 7 and match his father. No, what if he could go even further and reach Tier 8. That would make him stronger than the strongest man in recorded history. Stronger than his dad.
The thought was intoxicating. A wild, giddy smile broke across his face.
Ashley took off running.
The examiner looked up from his tablet. Saw the boy in motion. Saw the direction. The T6 wall was a different thing from every wall before it — the wall that stopped legends. He'd watched Ashley on the T5 wall. From what he saw, the boy shouldn't be able to break this one easily, maybe not at all. Something cold seized him.
"NO. ASHLEY. STOP—"
Too late.
Ashley threw the punch of his life: perfect, joyful, devastatingly confident, aimed at a future he was already certain he could taste.
The sound that answered was not a wall breaking.
It was the wet, sickening snap of his own bone.