Training began at dawn.
Not with weapons. Not with spells. But with silence.
"You'll learn by watching," Serapha said, her coat still spotless despite the dew-soaked earth beneath them. "The Arcanum has rules. I'm already breaking two of them by speaking to you without report."
They stood near the ruins again, the shattered tower stones darkened by time. The place buzzed faintly with leftover magic. Echoes, she'd called it.
"I'm not here to be a student," Caelum said. "I'm here to understand what I am."
"That's the only kind of student that matters."
She drew a circle in the dirt using her staff. It hummed faintly as it moved—Lux Vein. Light-threaded magic. Elemental, radiant, powerful. Serapha's specialty.
"Sit."
He obeyed.
"Now listen," she said.
"To what?"
"To everything."
He closed his eyes.
The air was cool. Still. The ashes of the ever-clouded sky drifted softly, like winter never left. But beneath that, Caelum began to feel something.
Not hear. Not see.
Feel.
The trees had a weight. The ground buzzed faintly beneath him. The ruins whispered something beyond memory. It wasn't noise—it was structure. A pulse.
Mana.
It was all around. But when it came close to him, it dimmed. Stilled.
"Your body doesn't channel mana," Serapha said. "It cancels it. The more potent the field, the stronger the negation."
"So I'm anti-magic?"
"No. Magic is still magic. It's just… not magic to you."
He opened his eyes. "How do you know all this?"
She didn't answer right away.
Instead, she stepped into the circle, and pressed her staff into the stone. A glyph lit beneath it—six-pointed, intricate.
"This is the Seal of the Concord," she said. "Created after the fall of the Ascendants. Five kingdoms. One law. All bound by the Arcanum."
She tapped the first point. "Aurion: high seat of light magic. Where I was born."
Second. "Tharnoss: the Ironblood realm. Vira Core dominant. Berserkers, bound knights, and sacred steel."
Third. "Lareth: scholars of weather, memory, and truth. Lux Vein and mindcraft."
Fourth. "Durell: the lost realm. Destroyed in the Weave Wars."
Fifth. "Verent: the only neutral land. Where the Concord was signed. And where all forbidden magic was buried."
Caelum watched her trace the last point in silence.
"And the sixth?" he asked.
Her hand hovered over the center, where no rune was drawn.
"That's the place no one speaks of. The forgotten gate. The point of origin. It has no name now." Her voice was lower, almost reverent. "But that's where the first Nullform was born."
His heart thudded. "So it's real. This whole time, the Arcanum's been hiding it."
"Hiding it? They fought it." She stepped back from the glyph. "The Weave Wars began when the sixth path tried to take a seat among the Five Currents."
"And what happened?"
"They lost. Their magic didn't make armies. It unmade them. And so, the Arcanum erased every mention. Every scroll. Every name."
Caelum stared at the circle.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because knowledge is dangerous. But silence is worse." Her gaze was sharp now. "And if I'm right about you… the world will try to silence you before it ever listens."
Later that night, Caelum sat alone outside Marek's hut, scribbling lines into the dirt.
Six points.
Five with names. One empty.
The thought of power no one else could touch—it should have been exhilarating.
Instead, it felt like carrying a torch into a cave lined with oil.
"Nullform," he whispered. "I don't want to erase people."
"But you might have to," came Marek's voice from behind.
Caelum turned. "You were listening."
"I always listen when nobles teach the forbidden." Marek sat beside him. "Serapha Vale, daughter of House Aurion. Arcanum's youngest Inquisitor. She's not here on whim."
"You knew?"
"I knew something. Her coat's too clean for war, but her eyes are full of ghosts."
Caelum looked down at the six-pointed star.
"I don't think I belong in this world."
Marek smiled grimly. "Then change the shape of it."
At the same time, in the Arcanum's traveling sanctum, Serapha knelt over an obsidian book bound with metal thread—the Codex Obscura.
A page had been marked with a faded name: The Silent Current.
Only a handful of lines remained, most burned out by Arcanum censors.
"Not born of Light, nor forged in Core. The Sixth Path lies beyond the Veil of Naming. Its wielders erase not to destroy, but to unmake structure. To silence patterns. To rewrite the base weave of Aether."
She traced the phrase "rewrite the base weave" with her finger.
A Nullform wasn't destruction.
It was something worse:
Correction.