Chapter 5: A Challenge and a Glimpse

Chapter 5: A Challenge and a Glimpse

The fragile peace Kaelen had carved out for himself—a quiet routine of mental agony in the lecture hall and silent meals in the refectory—was shattered by Marius. The sneering, blond-haired noble from the welcoming ceremony had apparently decided Kaelen’s continued presence was a personal insult.

Marius and his circle of high-born friends cornered Kaelen near the training grounds, a vast, open-air arena where students practiced their spellcasting.

"Still stinking up the academy, Blank-boy?" Marius began, his voice laced with the casual arrogance of inherited power. He pointedly looked at the iron Suppressor collar. "I find it offensive that I have to breathe the same air as a chained animal. I think it's time someone reminded you of your place."

Kaelen’s desire was the same as always: to be left alone. "I don't want any trouble."

"Too late," Marius sneered. "I'm challenging you to a sanctioned duel. Training grounds. Tomorrow at noon. Or are you going to cower behind the Warden's robes?"

A duel. The obstacle seemed insurmountable. The rules for sanctioned first-year duels were strict: only basic cantrips were permitted. For Kaelen, that meant he was allowed to do precisely nothing, while Marius could hurl fire and force bolts at him. It was a public execution of his dignity. To refuse would be to cement his status as a coward. To accept was to volunteer for humiliation.

The memory of Loras grinding herbs into the mud flashed in his mind. He was tired of being helpless.

"Fine," Kaelen heard himself say, his own voice surprising him with its steadiness. "I accept."

The next day, a small crowd gathered at the edge of the dueling pitch. Word had spread. The noble prodigies had come to watch the commoner with the Warden's collar get put in his place. Kaelen saw Elara among them, her arms crossed, her expression a mask of cold indifference. She was there to witness the inevitable triumph of order over chaos.

Master Valerius officiated, his scarred face impassive. "Standard rules apply," he announced, his voice carrying across the grounds. "First to be disarmed or yield, loses. The use of chaotic or spatial magic," he paused, his eyes locking with Kaelen's, "is grounds for immediate expulsion. Begin."

The moment the word was spoken, Marius acted. He was no Loras; his movements were practiced, his will focused. "Ignis!" he incanted, and a bolt of crackling orange fire, the size of a man’s fist, shot towards Kaelen.

Kaelen dove, the bolt searing the air where his head had been. He scrambled back to his feet, his heart pounding. He had no spells, no tricks, only his own two feet. Marius laughed, launching another, faster bolt. This one clipped Kaelen’s shoulder, his tunic smoking at the point of impact. A sharp, burning pain lanced through him.

He was on the verge of defeat before the duel had truly even begun. The crowd jeered. Humiliation was washing over him, hot and suffocating.

Focus, he told himself, the word echoing Valerius’s harsh lessons. He forced the pain and the jeers to the back of his mind, activating the skill the System had given him.

[Focus skill activated. Pain and external distractions partially suppressed.]

The roaring in his head lessened, the world coming into sharper relief. He couldn't fight Marius's magic with magic, but maybe he didn't have to. He activated his other skill, [Mana Sense], not to see the spell, but to see the intent.

While his senses were poor at perceiving the "river" of normal mana, they were hyper-sensitive to disturbances. The act of gathering mana, of shaping it into a spell, was a violent disturbance. To Kaelen’s unique sense, the air around Marius’s hand didn't just glow; it screamed a split-second before the spell was unleashed.

Marius began his next incantation, a more complex one. Kaelen saw—no, felt—the vortex of energy gathering around his outstretched hand. He knew, with absolute certainty, where the attack was coming from.

Before Marius could finish the word, Kaelen moved. His action was not one of magic, but of desperation. He dropped low, scooping up a double handful of loose sand and gravel from the dueling pitch. Marius, confident in his victory, smirked, seeing the gesture as a final, pathetic act of defiance.

Just as the noble’s spell coalesced, a blinding ball of concussive force, Kaelen threw the handful of grit directly at his face.

It was a dirty, commoner’s trick. It was unworthy of a mage’s duel. It was brutally effective.

Marius cried out, more in shock than pain, reflexively flinching and closing his eyes. His concentration, the bedrock of all magic, shattered. The concussive blast dissipated into a harmless puff of air.

In that one moment of vulnerability, Kaelen charged. He slammed into Marius's chest, the impact knocking the breath from both of them. They tumbled to the ground in a tangle of limbs. Kaelen, wiry and used to physical struggle, came out on top. He wrenched the polished oak practice wand from Marius's hand and pressed its tip against the noble's throat.

Silence. The entire training ground was utterly, completely silent.

Kaelen was breathing heavily, his shoulder screaming in protest, his knuckles scraped raw. He looked down at Marius, whose face was a mask of pure, unadulterated fury and humiliation.

"Yield," Kaelen rasped.

Marius spat a curse, but the wand at his throat was unyielding. "I yield," he choked out, the words tasting like poison.

The result was a victory, but one that earned him no friends. The crowd stared, their amusement having curdled into disbelief and distaste. He had won, but he had done it like a street brawler, not a mage. Elara’s expression had changed from indifference to one of active disgust. He had not only proven he was chaotic, but that he was crude.

Master Valerius strode forward. "Victor: Kaelen of Oakhaven." His face was as stern as ever, but as Kaelen stood up, brushing sand from his trousers, the instructor caught his eye. For the briefest of moments, Valerius gave a single, almost imperceptible nod. It wasn't praise. It was a grudging acknowledgment. You survived.

That night, the turning point came not in triumph, but in exhaustion. The adrenaline had faded, leaving only the throbbing pain in his shoulder and the deep, bone-weary fatigue from the constant mental battle against the Void. He collapsed into his bed, sleep pulling him under into a dark, waiting ocean.

He dreamt of the abyss. He was falling again, the silent whispers clawing at his mind, the ancient hunger pressing in on him. This time, however, something was different. The hunger was focused, directed. It was calling to him, pulling him towards something within the endless dark. The pressure built, a crushing weight on his very soul. The Suppressor collar on his neck felt like it was glowing red-hot, the only thing anchoring him to reality, and it was failing.

With a silent scream, his power activated in his sleep.

The world tore.

It was not a dream. For a single, heart-stopping second, he was no longer in his bed. The air was frigid, smelling of ozone and thousand-year-old dust. He stood on cold, rune-etched stone. All around him were the massive, iron-bound walls of a vault, the very wards he had sensed days before now blazing with contained power in his [Mana Sense].

And in the center of the chamber, floating a foot above a black pedestal, was the source of the call.

It was a crystal, the size of a human heart. But it wasn't made of crystal. It was a shard of captured midnight, a piece of the Void given solid form. It did not reflect light but devoured it, and it pulsed with a slow, malevolent rhythm, like a sleeping heart. Tendrils of pure shadow, ephemeral and smoke-like, writhed around it, reaching out into the cold air. The whispers were deafening here, a siren song of immense, terrible power.

[Unknown Void-touched Artifact Detected.] [Resonance with Host: 87%.]

The glimpse lasted no more than a breath. With a violent lurch that felt like being snapped back on a cosmic rubber band, he was slammed back into his own body, in his own bed.

He shot upright, gasping, drenched in a cold sweat. His room was silent and empty. But the image was burned behind his eyes: the glowing runes, the cold stone, the shadow-wreathed crystal.

It was real. The artifact the senior students had whispered about was real, and he had just seen it. He didn't know if it was a key or a cage, a cure or a curse. But as he sat there, trembling in the dark, the Scar of the Void on his hand tingling with a strange, hungry resonance, he knew one thing for certain.

He had to get back to that vault. His survival depended on it.