The air in the Grand Oakhaven Academy didn't smell like magic; it smelled like expensive cedar and old money.
Kaelen knelt on the cold stone floor of the Great Sparring Hall, his reflection staring back at him from the polished marble—pale, exhausted, and utterly unremarkable. In his right hand, he held a jar of Ghost-Sap polish; in his left, a tattered cloth.
Before him stood Valerius, the Academy's "Golden Child." Valerius was everything Kaelen was not: a noble, a prodigy, and a holder of a Heartwood Grade mask. The mask, carved into the likeness of a snarling lion, sat atop Valerius's head like a crown. It glowed with a soft, confident amber light—the visual proof of his Ego.
In the world of the Arbor-Hollows, the soul wasn't an abstract concept; it was a liquid energy that leaked out of the human body and evaporated into the air unless it was contained. A mask was more than an accessory; it was a vessel for survival.
"Careful with the chin, servant," Valerius sneered. The resonant power of his mask made his voice vibrate, a physical pressure that forced Kaelen's shoulders to slump lower. "That's Iron-Bark trim. The wood was harvested from the Western Bough of the World Tree itself. One scratch, and I'll have your hands bound in Splinter-Cuffs."
Kaelen didn't look up. He couldn't afford to show the flicker of resentment in his eyes. In the hierarchy of the Hollows, the world was divided by the quality of your wood. At the top sat the Amber-Crowned royals who lived in the sun-drenched Canopy. At the bottom were the Faceless—those born with "Fragmented Ego," a condition where the soul was too fluid, too broken, to bond with a standard mask.
Without a mask to seal your soul, you were a "leaking vessel." You had no magic, no status, and eventually, no identity. To the Masquerades, Kaelen was just a ghost in a jumpsuit, a human tool used to make the true mages shine.
"Yes, Master Valerius," Kaelen whispered. His fingers were raw, the acidic polish stinging the small cuts on his knuckles. He felt a familiar, hollow ache in his chest—the quiet, crushing weight of being a nobody in a world of legends.
Suddenly, the floor shuddered.
A sound like a mountain snapping in half echoed from high above. The massive stained-glass windows, depicting the legend of the Grand World Tree shattering, exploded inward. Shards of colored glass rained down like jagged jewels.
"Hollowed!" a voice shrieked from the balcony. "The perimeter is breached!"
Through the dust and falling glass, a nightmare descended. It was a Class-2 Echo, a creature born from a human whose mask had shattered and whose soul had rotted into something monstrous. It looked like a ten-foot-tall man made of jagged, blackened bark. Where its face should have been, there was only a vertical, whistling hole that bled black smoke.
"Stay back, servants!" Valerius shouted. Fear flickered in his eyes, but his noble pride surged. He reached for his mask, sliding it over his face. "Persona Manifest: The Solar Pride!"
As the mask locked into place, the air around Valerius ignited. A spectral lion's paw, ten feet wide and glowing with golden fire, materialized in the air—a Sync Rate of nearly 40%. Valerius swung his arm, and the spectral paw swiped at the monster.
The Echo didn't flinch. It opened its void-like mouth and inhaled.
The golden fire was sucked into the monster's throat like steam into a vacuum. The Echo didn't just fight; it consumed. Valerius's golden lion dissolved into grey mist, and a sickening crack echoed through the hall.
Valerius's mask had fractured.
"My... my Ego..." Valerius gasped, falling to his knees. His strength vanished instantly; without the mask's seal, his soul was being siphoned away. The Echo loomed over him, its wooden claws lengthening into jagged spears.
Kaelen watched, frozen. The knights were fleeing. The teachers were trapped behind the rubble of the collapsed ceiling. He saw the terror in Valerius's eyes—the same terror Kaelen felt every day, the fear of disappearing into nothingness.
His hand hit the crate of "Trash Wood" he had been carrying to the incinerator. At the bottom lay a piece he'd found in the deep basement earlier that morning. It was a heavy, smooth slab of white Spirit-Wood. It had no eyes, no mouth, no carvings. It was a Blank Mask.
"Give me a face," a voice hissed in Kaelen's mind. It wasn't a voice of words, but a hunger that gnawed at his very marrow. It felt like a mirror in a dark room, waiting for someone to stand before it.
Kaelen looked at the monster, then at the golden boy dying on the floor. For sixteen years, he had been told he was empty. If he was a void, then he would show them how deep the void could go.
He slammed the white piece of wood onto his face.
There were no straps. The wood simply bit into his skin. White fibers dug into his cheeks, stitching themselves to his jawbone to find his soul.
[SYNC RATE: 1%... 5%... 12%...]
As the Echo's claw reached for Valerius's throat, Kaelen moved. He wasn't fast—he was a blur of static. He caught the monster's wooden wrist with his bare hand.
The Hall went silent.
The Blank Mask didn't produce gold or fire. Instead, the surface of the wood began to ripple like water. It was Mimicking. Black, jagged "Fray" threads erupted from the mask, wrapping around Kaelen's arm like a violent parasite, turning his skin into the same blackened bark as the monster.
[EGO-MIMICRY ACTIVATED: TARGET—CLASS-2 ECHO]
Kaelen's arm elongated, turning into a blackened blade that mirrored the Echo's limb. He didn't feel brave; he felt hollow. He felt the monster's coldness, its memory of being human, and the agony of losing its face.
"My turn," Kaelen rasped. His voice was no longer his own; it was a double-toned screech that vibrated the very stones of the hall.
He swung. The mimicked blade cut through the Echo's chest like hot wire through wax. The monster didn't bleed; it unraveled into piles of rotted sawdust and grey smoke.
Kaelen stood over the remains, breathing in gasps. The white mask was fused to his skin, pulsing like a living heart. He felt a sudden, sharp pang of loss—a memory of his mother's face seemed to flicker and dim in his mind, consumed by the mask as payment for the power.
"You..." Valerius stammered, backing away in horror. "That's a Cursed Mask! You're stealing its power! Guards! Arrest the Faceless!"
Kaelen reached up to pull the mask off, but it wouldn't move. He looked into a shard of glass on the floor. He saw a monster looking back—a man with a white, featureless void for a head. The very people he had saved were now leveling spears at his throat.
From the back of the hall, a slow, rhythmic clapping sounded.
A tall man in a tattered, long coat made of patched leather leaned against a pillar. A weeping theatre mask hung loosely from his belt, and he was flipping a blackened gold coin with a hole in the center.
"Well, well," the man said, his voice dripping with dark amusement. "I came here to collect the school's trash, but it looks like the trash just learned how to bite."
The Academy guards rushed toward Kaelen. "Drop the mask, boy! Or we'll splinter your soul!"
"Easy, boys," the tall man said, stepping lazily in front of Kaelen. He didn't draw a weapon, but the air around him grew heavy and thick with the scent of old graves. "This one belongs to the Pale Carnival now. He's got the look of a man who's already dead—and in my squad, that's a prerequisite."
The guards stopped, their faces paling. "Captain Vane? The boy is a Faceless who used a Forbidden Relic—"
"I don't care if he used a kitchen chair to kill that thing," Vane interrupted, catching his coin. "He saved your Golden Boy. And according to the Charter of the Roots, any Masquerade who manifests without a license is forfeit to the Carnival for 'rehabilitation.'"
Vane turned to Kaelen, his eyes sharp and yellow behind his messy hair. "Kid, you've got two choices. You can let them burn you at the stake for 'heresy'... or you can come with me and bet on how long it takes for that mask to eat your brain. Personally? I'd take the second bet. The food is better."
Kaelen looked at the guards who had called him trash his whole life. He looked at Valerius, who wouldn't even meet his eye. Then he looked at the Captain's outstretched hand.
He didn't have a face anymore. He didn't have a home. But for the first time in his life, he had power.
Kaelen took the hand.