A Web Novel Adaptation
The morning light fell through Caelumaris like scattered coins, illuminating the floating city's crystal spires and leaving the shadows below untouched. From where Artha crouched in the alley's mouth, the Academy students looked like gods—their robes catching wind and starlight as they drifted between towers on streams of conjured air, their laughter echoing off marble that had never known dirt.
He pressed deeper into the doorway's shadow as a group passed overhead, their conversation drifting down like ash.
"—heard the Shadowlands stirred again last night—" "—father says the demons are growing bold—" "—doesn't matter. The Celestial Guard will handle it. Always do."
Always do. Artha's fingers found the burned pendant at his throat, its metal cold against skin that remembered fire. Nine years since the night his world ended, and still the nobles spoke of demons like distant storms—something that happened to other people, in other places.
Something that had happened to him.
The memory came without warning, as it always did. One moment he was fifteen and hollow in a forgotten corner of the floating city. The next, he was six years old and suffocating in darkness while his mother's screams carved themselves into his bones.
"Artha... if the world turns against you—then you turn toward the sky. Always."
Her voice had been steady even as the demons tore through their village like hungry shadows. Even as his father—oil-stained hands gentle despite their strength—pressed him into the hidden space beneath their floor.
"Listen to me, Artha. You must watch. Even if you can't fight. Watch the world. Understand it." His father's eyes had held something Artha only now recognized as prophecy. "Protect your brother... Live."
The hatch had closed. The screaming had stopped. And when he'd finally crawled out three days later, there was nothing left but silence and the taste of smoke that still coated his tongue.
"Careful, dust-rat."
The voice yanked him back to the present. A boy his age hovered five feet off the ground, wind magic spiraling around his pristine Academy robes. His friends floated behind him like a constellation of cruelty, their faces bright with the particular malice of those who'd never known want.
"Don't burn your trash clothes."
A spark leaped from the boy's fingers, singeing the air inches from Artha's face. He didn't flinch. Couldn't afford to. In Caelumaris, showing fear was like bleeding in shark-infested waters.
The boys laughed and drifted away, already forgetting him. That was the worst part—not the cruelty, but how easily they dismissed him. In their world, he was less than nothing. A shadow that sometimes moved.
They had no idea what shadows could hold.
Artha waited until their voices faded before stepping into the light. His reflection caught in a shop window—dark skin marked by old scars, clothes that had been mended so many times they were more patch than original fabric, eyes that held too much knowledge for fifteen years of living.
"When the world forgets you... remember your name, Artha. It means purpose."
His mother's voice again, threading through his thoughts like smoke. She'd told him that the night she died, along with something else—something about the gods fearing truth, about power sleeping in broken bloodlines. He'd been too young to understand then.
He was beginning to understand now.
The first sign was always the trembling. It started in his hands, spread up his arms like ice in reverse. The world seemed to hold its breath—wind stopping mid-gust, voices cutting off mid-syllable, even the eternal hum of magic that permeated Caelumaris going silent.
Then came the breaking.
Reality hiccupped. A bird froze between wingbeats, suspended in air like a living sculpture. Sparks from a nearby forge hung motionless as jewels. The very light seemed to thicken, time itself becoming something he could almost touch.
And in the center of it all, Artha stood untouched while his eyes burned violet and cracks spread beneath his feet like fractures in glass.
The moment lasted an eternity. The moment lasted a heartbeat. When time resumed its flow, he was on his knees in the alley, gasping as if he'd run for miles.
Kala-Vritti. The word had come to him in dreams, in whispers at the edge of sleep. Time-turning. Reality-bending. A power that wasn't supposed to exist in a boy who wasn't supposed to matter.
But he did matter. Had to matter. Because somewhere in this vast floating city or the Shadowlands beyond, his brother lived. Kael, two years older and twice as clever, who'd been visiting their aunt when the demons came. Who'd returned to ash and blood and no trace of his family except for the rumors—stories of a boy with no magic who'd somehow survived.
Artha pulled himself upright, fingers closing around the locket at his throat. Inside were two tiny portraits his mother had painted: herself, smiling despite the hardships. And Kael, eyes bright with mischief and intelligence.
I'll find you, he promised the painted face. Whatever I am, whatever this power means—I'll find you.
The Academy gates loomed in the distance, ancient metal wreathed in protective wards that hummed with centuries of accumulated magic. Behind those walls lay answers—forbidden texts, forgotten histories, masters who might know what Kala-Vritti truly meant.
All he had to do was find a way inside. Past the guards who'd kill him for trespassing. Past the wards that would shred his mind if they detected his strange power. Past the weight of a thousand years of tradition that said boys like him didn't belong.
Artha smiled, the expression sharp as broken glass. The world had written him off as nothing—powerless, nameless, broken. But nothing could be molded into anything. Nothing could slip through cracks that something couldn't fit.
And he was very good at being nothing.
The wind picked up, carrying the scent of rain and distant magic. Above, the Academy bells began to toll, their bronze voices calling the worthy to another day of lessons in power and privilege.
Somewhere in that sound, Artha heard something else. Not quite a voice, not quite a memory. A whisper that might have been his mother's blessing or his father's warning or something older than both.
Watch the world, it seemed to say. Understand it. And when you're ready...
Change it.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, and Artha began to walk toward the Academy gates. He had nothing to lose and everything to find.
It was time to discover what a nothing could become.