Up close, the gilded spires felt oppressive, their weight a physical promise of judgment. I walked through the arched entrance, leaving the sun-drenched plaza and the chilling silence of Lyra behind. The interior was a cavern of cold, polished stone, lit by floating orbs of Aetheric light that cast no warmth. The murmur of the crowd outside died, replaced by a silence so profound it felt like a held breath.
I walked inside the area. It wasn't a chapel, but an antechamber, stark and functional. And there, waiting for me, was the face of the enemy.
Head Cardinal Cassian Valor was standing, waiting for me. He was an older man, his hair silver, his face lined with what looked like benevolent wisdom. His clothes were what a Head Cardinal priest wears—robes of pristine white and gold, intricately embroidered with symbols that my stolen knowledge identified as wards and seals, not prayers. There was no cross, no saintly icon. The symbols were geometric, primal. The uniform of a manager, not a holy man.
He smiled, a practiced expression of serene welcome. He spoke "Welcome, Zyphron of House Theodore. The preparation is complete. You just need to enter. Good luck. Hope you succeed."
The words were standard. But the phrase Good luck was a trigger. I instantly remember the system… "good luck " The blue screen, the spinning die, the cosmic joke of 'EXTREME NIGHTMARE.' A wave of corrosive irritation boiled up from my gut. This false priest, this dragon's puppet, was echoing the same hollow benediction as the indifferent universe that had dumped me here. But I controlled it as I entered. I gave a shallow, correct bow, my face a placid mask of noble-child nervousness.
The door he gestured to was not grand. It was a simple, heavy oak door. I pushed it open.
It was just a huge hall. Vast, empty, and utterly barren. The ceiling was lost in shadow. The floor was seamless grey stone. Inside there were only two people. They stood flanking a central object, dressed in simpler grey versions of the Cardinal's robes, their faces bland, forgettable. Administrators.
There were no statues, nothing. No altars, no images of founders or saints. It seemed the priests followed no one…only the dragons…. The emptiness was the truth. This was not a place of worship. It was a laboratory. A processing facility.
In the middle, there was a coffin.
It was not ornate. It was a oblong container of the same smooth, grey stone as the floor, like a sarcophagus freshly carved. The lid was slightly ajar.
A cold, practical dread settled over me. This was not the ceremony I'd read about. The texts described a circle of light, a ritual of channeling and focus, a public display of a child's emerging Kin. This was… industrial. Secretive.
"Am I supposed to enter it?" I asked, my voice smaller than I intended, the genuine confusion not entirely feigned.
One of the grey-robed figures turned. His face was neutral, but his eyes were flat, like stones at the bottom of a stream. One of them replied "Yes" with a bright smile.
The smile was the most horrifying thing I'd seen all day. But it didn't come close to the head's smile. It was a mechanic's smile, utterly disconnected from the eyes. Tch… I don't trust that smile. Something is wrong… Every instinct screamed trap.
Are they really planning something… if they are I will use it to my advantage… My mind, fogged by dread, scrambled for a plan. I had no Aether to resist. My physical strength was useless here. My only weapons were my knowledge and my will. I had to observe. To survive the process, whatever it was.
Let's see what they got for me.
I walked to the coffin. The stone was cold even through my boots. I climbed inside. The interior was smooth, contoured slightly for a body. I entered the coffin and laid inside. I was supposed to lay there. The position was supine, arms at my sides. It felt less like a ritual and more like being prepared for an autopsy.
But this is not normal. How would they open channels in this coffin? The theories in the books spoke of guided meditation, of external Aetheric pressure applied by masters. This felt passive. Terminal.
The two grey-robes moved to the head of the coffin. I heard a soft click, the sound of a mechanism engaging. Then, the lid began to slide shut from above, sealing me in absolute, pitch-black darkness. The sound of the stone grinding into place was final. The air was cool, stale.
Panic, raw and animal, threatened to erupt. I forced it down with sheer mental force, regulating my breathing. In. Out. This was just another test. A darker one.
After a few minutes… A new sound. A soft, liquid gurgle from directly above my face. Then, a sensation of cold wetness.
A black liquid poured on my face…
What the hell!? It was odorless, slick. It didn't drip; it flowed, as if alive, seeking my nostrils, my mouth, my eyes. I tried to turn my head, to spit, but the coffin held me fast. The liquid was insistent, invasive.
The liquid instantly moved inside my body. Not through swallowing, but through absorption. It seeped through my skin, my mucous membranes, a cold tide rushing into my veins, my nerves, my very cells.
A strange sensation followed—not pain, but a profound, spreading numbness. What-.... I started feeling dizzy and my nerves went calm… It was a disconcerting, chemical peace. It was the same feeling I got when I drank excess alcohol. A detachment from my own body, a softening of the edges of thought.
Is this what they are planning? To drug me?! To make me compliant? Or to ensure I didn't struggle during whatever came next?
The effects accelerated. I moved my hands and saw multiple of it. My vision, even in the blackness, was fracturing, hallucinogenic. Shit! It's hard to stay conscious. My thoughts became syrup, sliding away before I could grasp them. The potion wasn't just a sedative; it was a dissociative, breaking the link between mind and body, between perception and reality.
But deep within, the core of me—the observer who had watched two lives—held on. I couldn't control my limbs, but I could focus the shreds of my awareness. I pushed my hearing through the chemical fog.
Suddenly I could hear some faint voices. Muffled, arguing, from beyond the stone lid.
I focused on my senses. Even though I was high… I could focus on my hearing… It was an act of monumental will, like trying to thread a needle during an earthquake.
The voices became clearer, sharp with panic.
"Are you kidding me?! You idiots! I said to give him that one! You gave him the potion that destroys Aether!!"
A cold clarity pierced the drugged haze. Destroy Aether.
I heard slapping sounds. A sharp crack of flesh on flesh.
"If he's dead… it's over for us! House Theodore will destroy the church!! You were supposed to give him the one that destroyed the channels! There is no way that a human survives after their fundamental energy is taken!"
And in their panic, I found my salvation.
Well I do not have Aether, surely nothing will happen… oh that's why I'm alive. The black liquid was searching for something to destroy, a foundational energy to unmake. But in me, it found a void. It flowed through my Aetherless biology, a solvent with nothing to dissolve. It was making me horrifically ill, scrambling my nervous system, but it wasn't tearing my soul apart from the inside. I was alive precisely because I was broken.
"First let's chec-" The voice was cut off.
A loud bang… Not a slap. Something heavier. Duller. A body hitting stone.
That guy probably died. Internal cleanup. The dragon's puppets were tying up loose ends.
After some time, someone opened the coffin. Light, blinding and painful, speared my dilated pupils. A shape loomed over me, blotting out the light. He saw me. I couldn't make out features, just a dark silhouette.
A gasp. Then a shaky, relieved laugh.
"How… How is he alive???. "
He thought for some time and then-
"Well, I am really lucky… Hahaha… You scared me! Now. Let's proceed with the plan."
I was… right. They hadn't meant to kill me with that specific potion. It was a horrific mistake. But their original plan was still in motion. I was alive, but utterly helpless. The perfect victim.
Rough hands grabbed me. I was hauled out of the coffin. My legs wouldn't support me. I was a doll, limbs flopping. My vision got worse, as the things I saw became warped and swirled. I could not even speak or think. The world was a nauseating oil slick of color and shadow. I was carried, half-dragged, through corridors that bent and pulsed.
I was taken into another chamber, where the head was waiting. I heard the murmur of voices—Cassian Valor's serene tones, now layered with a sharp, worried edge. "…unexpected resilience… clearly a profound corruption… must be isolated immediately for the safety of all…"
The words were planning my narrative. My survival was being rewritten as a contagion.
Then, movement again. I was being taken somewhere public. The light changed, the acoustics opening up. I heard a crowd, a murmur of hundreds. I was propped up, held between two strong guards. My head lolled.
I was put up into a huge crowd. Through swimming vision, I saw a sea of faces on a grand staircase below—nobles, commoners, families who had come to witness the Awakenings. This was the public spectacle.
Cassian Valor stepped forward, his voice amplified by magic or architecture to ring across the courtyard. He pointed a dramatic, trembling finger at me.
"The result is Aetherless!" His voice was a thunderclap of condemnation. "This child is cursed! We must put him into an isolated place away from normal people! He is suffering from a disease! It's a taboo! It's a failure! We must send him to the Abyssal AER jail! Or this disease will spread!"
The crowd erupted. Not in anger, but in fear. A visceral, mob fear of the unknown, of contamination. The people started moving quickly for fear that the disease might spread. They recoiled, parents pulling children back, nobles looking on with disgust and horror. The word "Aetherless" was a trigger they'd been conditioned to fear. The Church had done its work well.
After saying that I was put in a spell and isolated from other people in a secluded room. One of the grey-robes gestured, and a shimmering, transparent sphere of force encapsulated me, cutting off all sound, muffling the panicked crowd. Inside the bubble, the world was silent, warped. They say they will lock me in the deepest part of Abyssal AER jail. A jail that is used to trap the most vicious criminals.
The guards lifted the bubble with me inside. As they carried me away, the last of my chemically-fueled consciousness burned out. The world, already distorted, faded to a deep, silent black.
As my consciousness wore off… I couldn't know what would happen to me next.
But one thought, pierced the final moment of awareness before the dark swallowed me whole:
They had called me a curse. A disease. A failure.
I was just a boy in a bubble, poisoned, powerless, and utterly, terrifyingly alone. I was no longer in a gilded cage.
I was in a buried one.