void scholar

Chapter one ; The forgotten origin

In the suffocating, backwater streets of the lower rings of Obi, the reality seemed to rot from the edges.

Just before the jagged entrance to the dark, forgotten alleys running alongside the city's slummest sectors, stood a small, dilapidated building that was barely recognizable as a human shelter. The rotted wood of its frame sagged under centuries of neglect. Tonight, the heavy atmospheric air smelled strictly of rusted iron and freezing rain.

A boy stood completely barefoot on the cracked, uneven stone of the porch. His thin, malnourished body was trembling violently—not from the biting chill of the midnight wind, but from the absolute terror of what he knew was inevitably coming next.

“Stand up.”

The voice originating from the shadows behind him was incredibly heavy. Unyielding. Final.

Jesse tried to comply. His frail arms shook hysterically as he attempted to push his weight off the wet ground, his bruised knees scraping painfully against the rough, splintered floorboards. A thin mixture of dark blood and stagnant rainwater pooled beneath his palms—helpless, fragile, and utterly pathetic, matching his current condition perfectly.

“I said stand.”

“I… I am…” Jesse’s voice barely held together, the syllables fracturing in his throat.

A sharp, deafening c***k violently split the night air.

An explosive wave of blinding pain tore across his bare back as a heavy wooden rod connected with his skin. Jesse collapsed instantly to the floorboards, the absolute force of the blow knocking every single molecule of oxygen cleanly out of his lungs.

Pathetic.

The word didn’t even need to be vocalized in the damp room anymore. The insult lived implicitly within every single strike, every icy glare, and every suffocating silence that had defined his existence for a decade. High above the broken roof, the imperial sky rumbled with deep thunder, dark storm clouds twisting into grotesque shapes like a living, predatory beast. The downpour began to fall harder now, each icy drop stinging his raw skin like needles.

“You were born an error,” the man stated coldly, looking down at the broken boy. “No hereditary Path. No elemental talent. Absolutely zero value to this world.”

Jesse didn’t bother to reply. He had learned a long, agonizing time ago that speaking up in this house only made the violence escalate.

Another crushing blow descended upon his shoulders. Then another. And then another, rhythmic and merciless.

But the physical pain… wasn’t the force that truly broke Jesse’s spirit tonight. It was the sudden, uninvited eruption of a memory. A phantom sensation slicing through his consciousness.

A pair of warm, delicate hands. A soft, melodic voice.

A smile he knew he could never forget as long as he lived.

“Jesse… no matter what horrific things happen to you in this life… don’t ever succumb to the absolute darkness.”

Her slender fingers had brushed against his pale cheek so gently, treating him as if he were something incredibly fragile… something immensely worth protecting in a cruel world.

“You too can be the light.”

That was the absolute last sentence she had ever spoken to him. The final sound he had ever heard from her lips before the room turned cold.

A heavy drop of water hit the stone floor beside his face. Then another. Then another. But these particular drops… weren’t originating from the storm clouds above. They were scorching hot.

Tears.

Jesse violently clenched his fists into the dirt, his nails drawing blood from his palms.

«Light…?»

his mind screamed into the void. «What light?! Where was that light when her heart stopped beating?! Where was the light when I screamed for help until my throat bled?! Where the hell is it now?!»

Another vicious strike came down through the dark—

—but it never landed.

Suddenly, something… fundamentally shifted within the fabric of space.

The ambient air didn't merely freeze. It completely stopped.

The heavy, falling raindrops instantly hung perfectly in place, suspended in mid-air like millions of sharp glass beads pinned to the sky. The booming resonance of the thunder vanished from existence. The entire physical world… went absolutely, terrifyingly silent.

Jesse’s breath caught violently in his windpipe. “…What…?”

Slowly… shakily… he forced his aching neck to lift his head.

The imposing man in front of him stood perfectly frozen mid-motion, his arm raised with the wooden rod, his eyes wide with an expression locked somewhere between volatile anger and sheer, primitive confusion. He wasn’t moving a millimeter. He couldn’t. Time itself had been violently stripped of its authority around them.

And then, Jesse saw it. He didn’t perceive it with his physical eyes… but rather somewhere infinitely deeper within his consciousness.

A space. A vast, endless… absolute nothingness.

There was no light.

There was no darkness.

There was no sound. There was no conceptual existence.

And yet—it was undeniably there. Hovering behind reality. Waiting. Watching. Calling out to his hollow soul.

Jesse’s heart began to pound like a war drum against his ribs. “What… is this…?”

The exact millisecond his desperate thoughts touched the vacuum—something answered from the deep.

The thousands of suspended raindrops hanging in the air… instantly vanished. They didn't fall to the earth. They didn't evaporate into mist. They simply ceased to exist. Erased from history. As if the concept of water had never occupied that coordinate of space.

Jesse’s green eyes widened to their absolute limits. “No… that’s…”

Impossible.

The man in front of him was suddenly slammed backward by an invisible, catastrophic pressure, his boots staggering over the stones as if an unseen god had forcefully shoved his chest.

“What did you just do—?!” the man’s voice trembled violently, his authority instantly shattering. For the very first time in his adult life… he was looking at his son with pure, unadulterated fear.

Jesse slowly, meticulously rose to his feet. His physical body was still incredibly weak. Still broken. Still trembling from malnutrition and trauma. But something fundamental had altered within his spiritual core.

“I didn’t do anything…” Jesse whispered. His voice was quiet. Too quiet. It sounded hollowed out, as if the syllables were being actively swallowed by a vacuum before they could fully exist in the atmosphere.

The air surrounding his thin frame distorted slightly, warping the light like heat rising from asphalt. Reality itself seemed entirely unsure how to behave in his presence. Jesse looked down at his own trembling, bloodied palms.

“…I didn’t… cast anything…”

There was no magical spell active. There was no summoning array on the floor. There was zero mana flowing through his channels. No runic circle. No vocal incantation. So what was this terrifying authority pulsing behind his ribs?

Suddenly, a cold, systemic whisper echoed—not within the biology of his ears, but directly within the architecture of his mind.

『You possess no Path within the established grid. Therefore… you shall walk entirely beyond them.』

The physical world violently trembled for a single, brief second. But that second was more than enough to alert the cosmos.

***

Far away… deep beneath the foundation of the most prestigious, heavily fortified institution in the country…

An ancient, monolithic mechanism crafted from forbidden metals—one that had not moved a single gear or reacted to a human signature in over three centuries—suddenly groaned. With a deafening, metallic hum, its interlocking wheels violently activated, spinning with an unnatural, celestial speed.

High above the vault, in a quiet, sprawling study lined with countless thousands of forbidden books, an elderly man paused mid-sentence, his quill hovering over a piece of parchment.

Chris Merlindec slowly lifted his sharp, calculation-filled gaze toward the window, his magical senses registering the distant, localized micro-vacuum that had just opened in the lower districts. His lips curved into a profound, intrigued expression.

“…Interesting,” the Grandmaster murmured to the empty room. “An error has just overridden the system.”

***

Back in the freezing rain of the slums— Jesse stood completely alone.

The suspended storm abruptly resumed its chaotic downpour. The physical pain of his wounds rushed back into his nervous system. The ordinary timeline of the world continued its march.

But absolutely nothing… would ever be the same again.

And somewhere, deep within the forgotten space existing between mortal existence and total nothingness—something ancient had finally located its perfect, broken vessel..

....... .