Night fell over the Vileth Estate, and the Archives became a kingdom of shadows. Azrakar sat at his desk, but he wasn't reading the genealogies of kings. He was looking at a pile of "Dread-Scrolls"—documents deemed useless or "heretical" by the clan elders because they didn't focus on Aura.
Among them was a fragmented text titled The Whispers of the Marrow. To a Knight, it was a boring medical treatise on bone density. To Azrakar, it was a missing piece of the Trinity puzzle.
"The Founder didn't just use three energies," Azrakar murmured, his finger tracing a faded diagram of a human skeleton. "He used the resonance between them."
He realized that by vibrating his Mana at the same frequency as his Qi, he could create a "Static Field." If he could apply this field to his skin, he would become virtually invisible to Aura-sensing—the primary way Knights tracked their enemies.
He began to practice. He sat perfectly still, his breath slowing until it vanished.
1. Phase 1: He stabilized his Dantian with golden Qi.
2. Phase 2: He wrapped his heart in a blue Mana-veil.
3. Phase 3: He allowed his Aura to bleed out of his veins, not as a shield, but as a fine mist.
Suddenly, his presence in the room changed. If a master had walked in, they would have seen a boy sitting at a desk, but their "inner eye" would have told them the chair was empty. He was a hole in reality.
This was the Void-Step Foundation.
CRACK.
The sound of a heavy boot hitting the floorboards echoed from the front of the Archive. Azrakar didn't flinch, but his Static Field intensified.
"I know you're in here, rat," a voice hissed. It was Kaelen. He wasn't supposed to be in the Archives after dark, but as the son of the branch leader, he had a set of master keys.
Kaelen walked into the aisle, a lantern in one hand and a wooden training sword in the other. He looked frustrated, his face flushed with the aftereffects of a day spent being praised but never truly challenged. He wanted someone to hurt.
"Captain Harl thinks you're 'interesting,'" Kaelen spat, kicking a stack of scrolls off a nearby shelf. "He thinks you have an eye for combat. I think you're just a Bronze-rank fluke who got lucky with a shove in the courtyard."
Kaelen scanned the room. He was looking directly at the spot where Azrakar sat, but his eyes kept sliding past him. The Static Field was working. To Kaelen's brain, Azrakar was just another shadow among the bookshelves.
"Where are you?" Kaelen growled, swinging his lantern. The light passed over Azrakar's face. Azrakar didn't even blink. He watched Kaelen with the clinical detachment of a scientist observing a particularly stupid insect.
Kaelen walked within three feet of him. The smell of expensive Aura-oil and sweat wafted off the older boy. Kaelen reached out a hand, touching the very desk Azrakar was sitting at.
"I know you heard me," Kaelen muttered, his voice trembling with a strange, instinctual fear he couldn't explain. His hair was standing on end. His own Aura was flickering, reacting to the "Void" that Azrakar had created.
He can't see me, but his instincts are screaming that death is sitting right in front of him, Azrakar noted.
Azrakar slowly, silently, picked up a small metal stylus from the desk. He held it like a dagger. He could end the "Kaelen problem" right now. A single thrust into the throat, a quick cleanup with the Dross-extraction technique, and Kaelen would simply "disappear" from a locked library.
But no. A disappearance would bring the High Elders. It would bring the King's Investigators.
Azrakar let out a tiny, microscopic breath.
Kaelen jumped back, his lantern swinging wildly. "Who's there?!"
He didn't wait for an answer. The "unseen" pressure was too much. Kaelen turned and bolted for the door, his boots thundering on the stone as he fled the "haunted" Archives.
Azrakar remained still for a long time after the door slammed shut. He slowly released the Static Field, and his presence returned to the room like a heavy weight dropping.
"Fear is a useful tool," Azrakar said to the empty room. "But I need to be careful. If I scare the sheep too much, they will bring in the dogs."
He looked down at his hand. The metal stylus had bent under the sheer pressure of his grip—not from his muscle, but from the concentrated energy of the Primal Spark. He was growing faster than he had anticipated. At this rate, he would reach the Second Level: The Trinity Veins before the year was out.
"Let them think the library is haunted," he smiled. "It only gives me more peace to work."