Mali was invisible, and he was used to it.
He was a shadow in a world ablaze with light. On Toten, your worth was written in your very aura, a visible measure of the Karma you held. You could see it in the way a baker at a Level 2 Spark coaxed his oven flames to life with a lazy flick of his wrist. You could see it in the Level 3 Acolyte town guards, their armor faintly humming with the energy of a hardened Air shield.
Then there was Mali. Level 0. The Unclassified. The void.
He had no aura. He had no hum. When he tried to call upon the elements, the elements did not answer. He was a blank page in the Great Ledger, a statistical impossibility that the world had decided, for simplicity's sake, to ignore.
"On your left, Mali!" a voice barked.
Mali grunted, shifting the heavy crate of luma-fruits onto his other shoulder, his muscles straining. He was strong, at least. The universe had denied him Karma, but it had left him with sinew and bone, and he used them for all they were worth. He was a porter, a stock-boy, a cleaner—whatever job required a strong back and no questions about why he couldn't light a simple candle with his mind. He kept his head down, he did his work, and he never, ever complained. Complaining, he had learned, was a privilege reserved for those who mattered.
He navigated the bustling morning market of his village, a place of vibrant, chaotic energy. Merchants shouted their wares, their voices competing with the sizzle of elemental fire on food stalls and the chime of wind-mages clearing the air. It was a symphony he could hear but not join. It was this longing, this deep, aching emptiness, that defined him far more than the muscles in his back. He was an orphan, raised by a kind couple at the very bottom of the karmic ladder, and had been truly alone since The Corrupted had taken them. He was grateful for his life, for the food he earned, but he was so desperately tired of being nothing.
That's when he saw her.
He had heard the commotion, of course. A real noble was visiting their small, backwater market. Not just the usual Level 4 Elementalist landowner, but someone from the high court. They called her Princess Riri, a woman spoken of in awed, hushed tones. A Level 7 Anomaly, they whispered, a being with so much Karma her body could barely contain it. A ticking time bomb of divine power.
She was there, surrounded by a tight-knit phalanx of royal guards, but she looked… miserable. Her face was pale, drawn, and beaded with sweat, her hands clenched at her sides as if she were in constant, agonizing pain. She wasn't just walking; she was enduring.
Mali, busy gawking, failed to notice the merchant's child darting in front of him. He stumbled, the crate lurching.
"Watch it, void-boy!" the merchant snapped.
Mali corrected his balance, his face burning with a familiar, dull shame. He hated that name. It was in that moment of recovery, as he turned his head, that it all happened.
Princess Riri, perhaps desperate for a single breath of normal air, had suddenly ducked away from her guards, pushing into the thickest part of the crowd. The guards, in their panic, surged after her, creating a wave of shoving, frantic bodies.
"Make way! Make way for the Princess!"
The crowd, a mix of curious and terrified, pushed back. Riri was caught in the middle. A large, burly man, shoved from behind, stumbled backward, colliding hard with the Princess.
She was already unsteady. The impact was too much. Her eyes, wide with panic and pain, met Mali's for a fraction of a second. She tripped over a loose cobblestone, her arms flailing, and fell.
Mali didn't think. He dropped the crate.
He was invisible, he was nothing, he was a void. But in his heart, he was the boy who had been raised to be kind.
He took two lunging steps, pushing past the stunned merchant, and caught her.
His right hand shot out, grabbing her upper arm. His left hand, calloused and dirty, wrapped around her bare wrist as she fell toward him.
Flesh on flesh.
The universe stopped.
For Mali, it was not a touch. It was an explosion. For the first time in his life, the silence in his soul was broken. A roaring, deafening, beautiful symphony of everything slammed into his being. He felt the fire from the baker's oven, the air in the sky, the water in the well, the light from the sun. He felt Riri's power, a tidal wave of it, not as a crushing burden, but as a cool, intoxicating river... and it was flowing into him.
For Riri, the touch was a miracle. The lifelong, crushing pressure, the agony that had defined her every waking moment, vanished. It was gone. The noise in her head, the scream of a thousand rivers, was suddenly... silent. The relief was so profound, so absolute, she gasped, her knees buckling as she clung to the strange, strong boy who had caught her.
And the universe, finally, saw the blank page. The paradox. The void touching the spark.
And it registered the equation.
-----
The observation deck of the Sovereign was a void of a different kind. It was not empty, but vast, a curved obsidian chamber that looked out not on a planet, but on the swirling, violet-blue arms of the Aethel-Prime galaxy.
In the center, a man stood before a holographic map, his form cloaked in the severe, immaculate white uniform of a Grand Admiral. His golden armor sat on a nearby dais, gleaming in the starlight. Before him knelt another man, clad in a skin-tight black sensory suit.
The man in the suit, "Rod," did not move, but his voice was trembling with a controlled euphoria.
"My Lord General. The beacon is lit."
The Admiral did not turn. His voice was like stones grinding together, a bass rumble of pure authority. "Are you certain, Control-master? We have had... false hopes."
"There is no doubt, my Lord. The signal is not just a hope; it's a scream. The young prince's energy signature, the one her Majesty the Empress used her own life-force to shield, has been unbound. It's... it's interfacing with a high-energy local system. It's bright, General. Blindingly bright."
A single, tense silence filled the deck. The Admiral turned, his face a landscape of battle-worn scars, his eyes burning with a sudden, terrifying fire.
"Good work, Rod. Our enemies will see it, too. They will feel this ripple."
He strode to the command throne, his boot-falls echoing with finality. He slapped his hand on the activation panel. "Helm! Set a jump coordinate for the signal's origin. Sigil-Sector 774, local designation 'Toten.' Deploy the First Royal Scion Guard. Scramble all fighters. I want a perimeter locked before that ripple even settles."
The Admiral looked back at the kneeling man.
"Let's go take him back before our enemies find him."
-------
Mali and Riri were frozen, staring at each other. The market had gone silent, everyone watching the bizarre tableau of the peasant boy holding the Princess. Riri's eyes were wide, not with pain, but with a dazed, confused wonder. Mali was trembling, the ghost of a million new senses thrumming in his veins. He had never felt so full.
And then the sky screamed.
It was not a sound, but a vibration, a tearing of the very fabric of the world. Everyone looked up.
Directly above the village square, the air was... wrong. It shimmered, like a heat-haze, then cracked. A line of brilliant, impossible gold appeared in the sky, a wound in the blue.
"What is that?" someone whispered.
The wound tore open, expanding into a perfect, shimmering circle of blinding energy—a portal. From its depths, three sleek, angular ships, black as obsidian and trimmed in gold, descended. They were silent, moving with a grace that was an insult to gravity. They took up positions high above, a triangle of silent, menacing watchfulness.
The portal pulsed again, and they came.
They didn't fly. They landed. A beam of golden light shot from the portal, striking the center of the market square. When the light faded, they were there.
Fifty of them. An army.
They stood in a perfect, five-by-ten formation. Their armor was not the simple steel plate of the town guard. It was a seamless, golden alloy, sculpted to look like the muscles of gods, glowing with a soft, internal power. They held rifles, not crossbows—sleek, terrifying implements of black metal. They wore no insignia Mali recognized. They just stood, their helmets dark, reflective, and utterly inhuman.
The market was dead silent. A fruit dislodged by the landing rolled across the cobblestones, the sound like a thunderclap.
The royal guards, the ones who had been so terrifying moments before, were pale, their Level 3 and 4 abilities feeling like a child's toy in the face of this.
One of the golden soldiers, taller than the rest, with a white cape draped over his pauldrons, stepped forward. His armor was more ornate, his presence heavier. He moved with an impossible, liquid grace, his golden boots making no sound on the stone.
He ignored the gasping princess. He ignored the terrified-looking local guards fumbling for their swords. His dark, helmeted gaze swept the crowd, dismissing everyone, until it landed...
On Mali.
The boy who was nothing. The boy still holding the princess's wrist.
The General walked forward, each step a judgment. He stopped five feet from Mali. The entire, impossible army moved as one. They raised their rifles, not in aggression, but in a strange salute, pointing them to the sky.
And then, in a move that shattered Mali's entire reality, the General, this impossible god-like warrior, went down on one knee. His armored form sank to the ground, his helmet bowed before the boy who carried crates.
The fifty soldiers behind him slammed their fists to their chests and knelt in perfect, thunderous unison.
The General looked up, his voice amplified by his helmet, a sound like a proclamation, echoing across the silent square, clear for all to hear.
"My Prince. We are here to bring you home."
Mali's mind, which had just touched the edges of infinity, shattered. He stared at the kneeling general, at the golden army, at the alien ships in the sky. He looked at his own dirty hand, still clutching the Princess.
Prince?
A single, hysterical thought, the only one his broken brain could form, bubbled up.
This has to be a mistake.