SERINA POV
The knife was already at my throat when I woke up.
"Don't move, Zero trash," the thief hissed, his breath smelling like rotten fish. His hand trembled as he pressed the rusty blade against my skin. Probably his first robbery. Definitely his last mistake.
I drove my elbow backward into his stomach, rolled sideways as he stumbled, and kicked his knee hard enough to hear something crack. He went down screaming. I grabbed the knife from his hand and pointed it at his face.
"Get out of my house," I said quietly. "Before I decide you're worth the trouble of hiding a body."
He scrambled out the door, whimpering. I locked it behind him—not that our pathetic excuse for a lock ever stopped anyone in the Dustward slums.
"Serina?" Kael's voice came from the corner, small and scared.
I dropped the knife and rushed to his mat. My twelve-year-old brother was curled up under our only blanket, shivering so hard his teeth chattered. When I pressed my hand to his forehead, I jerked back. He was burning up.
"How long have you had this fever?" I demanded, trying to keep the panic out of my voice.
"Since... since last night." His brown eyes looked too big in his thin face. "Didn't want to wake you. You worked the night shift at the factory."
"Kael, you idiot." I checked his wrist where his rank tattoo marked him as a Three—way better than my Zero, but still low enough that nobody cared if slum kids like us lived or died. The skin around his tattoo looked swollen and red. Mage fever. If we didn't get medicine fast, it would burn through his magic core and kill him.
I had exactly twelve copper coins hidden in a loose floorboard. Medicine cost at least three silver—thirty copper coins. I needed eighteen more by sunrise, or Kael would be dead by tomorrow night.
"I'm getting medicine," I told him, pulling on my coat with the high collar that hid most of my Zero tattoo. "Stay here. Don't open the door for anyone."
"Serina, we don't have money—"
"I'll get money." I kissed his burning forehead. "I always do."
The market district was already crowded when I arrived. Rich people from the upper city came down here to buy "authentic slum goods" and feel charitable. I hated them. Hated their clean clothes, their full bellies, their rank tattoos ranging from Five to Nine glowing with magical power.
My Zero mark felt like it was burning through my sleeve.
I moved through the crowd like smoke, my fingers light and quick. A distracted merchant's coin purse. A noble lady's bracelet slipping off her wrist. A drunk soldier's extra dagger. By the time I reached the medicine stall, I had enough to buy what Kael needed—if I sold everything I'd just stolen.
The medicine seller was a greasy man with a Five tattooed on his wrist. He looked me up and down with disgust when I approached.
"What do you want, Zero?"
I dropped the stolen goods on his counter. "Trade for mage fever medicine. The strong kind."
He poked through my stuff with one finger, like touching it might contaminate him. "This is stolen."
"Does it spend differently than honest money?"
He glared at me but counted out a small bottle of blue liquid. "This is half what you brought. Rank Threes don't need the expensive medicine."
"He needs the dose for a Five or he'll die."
"Then maybe he should've been born stronger." The seller pushed the bottle toward me. "Take it or leave it, Zero trash. Your kind breeds like rats anyway. One less is no loss."
My hand moved toward the knife in my boot. I wanted to hurt him. Wanted to make him bleed for talking about Kael like he was garbage. But fighting would get me arrested, and Kael needed me alive.
I grabbed the bottle and walked away before I did something stupid.
The crowd seemed thicker on my way back. Dangerous. People kept staring at my wrist where my sleeve had pulled back, showing my Zero mark. A group of teenagers laughed and threw an apple core at me. An old woman spat at my feet.
I kept my head down and walked faster.
That's when I saw the Academy soldiers.
Five of them stood at the entrance to Dustward, their white uniforms too clean for this filthy place. They were checking people's wrists, looking for someone. My stomach dropped.
Had someone reported the theft? Were they looking for me?
I pulled my sleeve down and tried to slip past them into a side alley. Almost made it too.
"You! Girl with the black hair!"
I ran.
Behind me, boots pounded on stone. Shouts echoed off the narrow buildings. I knew these streets better than anyone—I'd lived here nineteen years, survived here when stronger people died. I ducked through a gap between buildings, climbed over a wall, dropped into someone's backyard and kept running.
By the time I reached our shack, my lungs were burning and I'd lost the soldiers somewhere in the maze of slum streets.
"Kael!" I burst through the door, holding up the medicine bottle. "I got it! You're going to be—"
The words died in my throat.
Our tiny room was destroyed. The mats were shredded. Our few possessions scattered everywhere. The floorboards where I hid emergency money were torn up.
And Kael was gone.
On the overturned table, someone had left a note written in elegant handwriting that didn't belong in a place like this:
THE BOY IS COLLATERAL FOR OUTSTANDING DEBTS. YOU HAVE 72 HOURS TO DELIVER 10,000 GOLD CROWNS TO THE ROYAL MAGE ACADEMY, OR HIS MAGIC CORE WILL BE HARVESTED FOR PARTS.
TICK TOCK, LITTLE ZERO.
The medicine bottle slipped from my numb fingers and shattered on the floor, blue liquid spreading like spilled blood.
Ten thousand gold crowns. That was more money than everyone in Dustward made in a year combined. It was an impossible amount. A death sentence.
But they didn't know who they were threatening.
My hands curled into fists as something hot and furious burned in my chest—something that had nothing to do with magic because Zeros didn't have magic. We were empty. Powerless.
Nothing.
I looked at my Zero tattoo and felt that burning sensation grow stronger. For just a second, the black mark flickered and I could've sworn I saw purple light underneath it.
Then it was gone.
I had seventy-two hours to find an impossible amount of money and save the only person in this world who loved me.
The Academy thought I was nothing. They thought Zeros were too weak to fight back.
They were about to learn how wrong they were.
I grabbed my knife, stuffed my pockets with anything useful from our destroyed home, and headed for the door. My hands were shaking—not with fear, but with rage so pure it felt like swallowing lightning.
Somewhere in this cursed city, my little brother was scared and alone and waiting for me to save him.
I'd burned down the whole kingdom before I let them hurt him.
But first, I needed to visit someone who dealt in the kind of desperate, dangerous solutions that people like me required. Someone who knew about the black market, forbidden magic, and places where even Academy soldiers feared to go.
I needed to find Nyssa Thornhart.
And I needed to ask her about the one place that might give a powerless Zero like me the weapon I needed to fight back—even if going there meant certain death.
The Forbidden Shrine of Endings.
Where legends said an ancient dragon slept, waiting for someone foolish enough to wake him.