If darkness were a person, would you welcome it into your home?
My answer… yes.
If light were a welcomed guest, then what makes you automatically decide that darkness should be the enemy?
An Astral plane of ancient darkness beat a throb of life into a world of vast nothingness.
An absorbed world permeated with white tendrils. Tendrils that hummed with the equation of life.
In that plane, a melodic tune was played. One that sang hymns of solemnity around a figure which hovered within it.
Like a log of wood in a tranquil stream, he moved with the flow formed by nonexistent waves.
His eyes were wide open at that moment. And with it, he observed the world around him.
"This…"
He began as he shifted upwards.
"Is this the trial I've heard so much about?"
Luca wondered as he perceived the world with his senses.
With his limbs, eyes, nose and even tongue. He attempted to assess the new world…, but like his result, he would realise he perceived nothing.
"My nose doesn't work… I hear… nothing distinct… my limbs seem movable, my eyes function."
He nodded slowly.
"What a weird sensation."
He glanced around once more.
"So this is the Null state."
They called it limbo. A bridge between life and death, but describing neither.
Books in his primary education taught him that it was referred to as the Mind's eye. Or, in better terms, our consciousness.
"Impressive."
He turned around slowly. Moving as if he swam through water when his brows furrowed.
"Father had believed that it would skip me since no record has been found in our family… but, I guess he was wrong."
The Trance was an unpredictable anomaly, yes.
But it brought opportunities that Luca knew he wanted.
As for whether he would pass such a strange trial of passage… he would find out soon.
At that moment, the void spun, and the darkness seemed to tip downwards with it.
Luca, bewildered and shocked, was suddenly pulled by a force resembling a vortex.
Starved and powerful, tugging him deeper into the world. His world.
Within, where the reaches of his consciousness stood strongest, they existed. The test he was meant to face.
Luca spun for what felt like eternity in the depths. Swallowed whole, but like every seed of disturbance, he was spat out.
Thrown back suddenly into the abyss.
He heaved greatly. Panting as if he had just run a marathon, and perhaps he had.
"Wha– what was that?"
He wondered when the world, still devoid, stirred to his presence.
His gaze flared, and his body went still as a gust of something ancient and black surged around him.
He frowned deeply at the sensation.
'This feeling… It's the same as before.'
Just then, the darkness began to swell around. Surrounding him like mist.
"The shadows…" He muttered when the image of the apparition which had followed him through most of his life flashed in his head.
The Obsidian Knight, otherwise the Phantom Knight, now stood before him. Forged from the dark mist with six others.
They rose slowly like golden clay. A clad of regal dust forging the precipice of their existence.
Within us all, there stand the parts of us that we never see, but feel.
A depth without an end… an abyss withholding many secrets.
Secrets long forgotten. Forged in place to strengthen the parts of us that we ignore.
Luca took a glance at them once and immediately recognised these beings.
But more than that… he finally understood a long secret that had gnawed at him.
"So you really were one of them." The young lad said with a firm gaze.
The Knight had seemingly been there from the start.
From the days he crawled on the ground… wary of himself and his actions. And the days he fell ill, locked under the house from the gnashing cold.
And the nights of love. Familiar warmth gushing through his body and bones like holy oil.
The Knight had stood there. Watching. Waiting.
As if it saw Luca for more than what others saw him for.
The ancient stalker.
"You were an archetype." He squeezed his fist tight. "My archetype."
They call them Inner Demons. Alter Personas turned to Archetypes, from which Egoists gain their abilities.
They were the forsaken selves that wish to consume us whole.
Archetypes were of seven variants. Listing from Knights, Spellcasters, Snipers, Harmonics, Brawlers, Shifters and Rogues.
Each of the seven is represented by a trait, a quality that we grow through in life.
A definitive factor that makes us who we are.
These archetypes were the sources of the Egoist's abilities.
The powers that await to be tapped and used by us. Awakened only by the success of the Null Trance.
But this was strange.
Luca's brows furrowed as he watched the seven shadows forge into various archetypes.
No, not various, but the seven Archetypes.
"The rules… the books from my school say that everyone is born with one archetype. A trial is forged to defeat our Inner demon to become Egoists… but they are singular. They were always singular."
In other words, they existed one per person.
He assessed them once more.
Indeed, he wasn't seeing things.
"Why… why are mine seven?"
Seven archetypes.
Seven demons.
Seven battles waiting in the dark.
Seven steps that would shape the man he could become.
Seven trials — and failing even one meant oblivion.
***
Meanwhile, in the real world, events leading after Luca's sudden Trance were being handled by the Patrol guardians.
Patrol guardians were adult civilians who had not experienced the trance.
Instead, they relied on advanced military training and technical knowledge. Fostered with the bare minimum for controlling situations such as this.
But like today, the Team leader, Captain Khealon, would come to realise the issues with their routine procedures.
The young leader, Captain Khealon, stood in front of a barricade made of technologically advanced slabs of metal and electric motors.
Moving in synchronised motion around the area marked out.
He was observing from the sides while his subordinates handled the heavy work.
Though he seemed distracted by his thoughts, an unease had begun to fester in his chest, spreading like an open wound. He was troubled. Deeply.
'Third time.'
He thought to himself as he stared at the boy under the trance.
They stood nearly fifty meters away from the home of the Elarics and the houses neighbouring them. Building their protective barricade at that distance.
Residents who were within the vicinity during the sudden blast of energy were locked in their homes within the barricade, while the others were quickly moved away.
'Why do they keep doing this to themselves?'
It had not been long since he was put in charge of District 13 of the Verdant State when he experienced two incidents of Trancers who didn't follow the procedures.
And every time, he stood the chance of losing people who could have easily been protected.
'Why do these people not follow the law?'
His expression grew stern as he watched Luca.
Specifically, his eyes.
Even from the distance between them, it was difficult not to notice the trance's most typical symptom as well as its most delicate stage. Black eyes.
Ordinary civilians who wander too close to a Trancer in this stage are dragged into the same vision.
The trance spreads like a quiet plague, ignoring age and reason, pulling everyone in its radius into the dreaming trial.
For adult norms, it feels like a second chance — a chance they were never meant to have.
But the truth is far crueller.
The trials shaped for children become insurmountable for grown minds, and almost every adult fails.
And from each failure, a Null Spawn is born.
Khaelon sighed heavily and shook the thought away. "People fail to realise the disparity of the situation when a child reaches that age."
At times like that, the only thing left to do was a clean sweep of that area.
He turned to the side where he met the gaze of one of his subordinates.
"Sergeant Yusef."
A dark-skinned fellow with white hair and hazel nut eyes saluted and approached the Captain.
Their bulky armour of dark brown thumped lightly as he walked.
"Yes, Captain."
Behind the man were the parents of Luca. Liora and Mavrik were seated on one of their transport vehicles.
It was a large, compact locomotive.
With monster wheels and reinforced steel that seemed to absorb light, not reflect it.
Painted in silver with distinctive corners.
They assumed the shape of present Cyber trucks, but with a grander… stoic form. Cyberbullies, they were called.
Seated quietly at the back were the couple whose hands were clasped with handcuffs.
"Have you contacted the Guilds? We will be needing the Egoists' aid soon."
Yusuf glanced at the boy from where he stood. A silent contemplation before turning to his Captain.
"I think Alen went back to the Station to handle that."
Khaelon nodded in response.
"Watch the kid and his parents for a moment. I need to confirm the conditions of the other Trancer."
At that moment, Liora looked up from the ground. Her gaze darted to the two men in the middle of their conversation.
'There was another child?'
"Oh, I don't think there's anything to worry about on their side, Captain," Yusef said with a shrug. "It's the Mayor's son. He went to one of the major Academies in the Verdant State. There's no way he could fail his trial."
Khaelon tapped his Sergeant's shoulders and walked past him.
"There's nothing wrong with being too careful."
With purpose, he headed to the second compact vehicle parked beside the former.
A carbon copy of the first.
A woman rested on the vehicle, engrossed in a phone tab. She was on the same distinct armour of elite dark-brown plate with black obsidian trims, an angular knight-like helm, and sharp pauldrons.
An armour that took a ceremonial appeal, yet brutal for every battle with the Null creatures.
On their chest plate was the insignia of the Ostaria Federation.
A jagged black tower piercing a bronze sun.
The woman looked up from her tablet, shaking her purple bangs from her face.
"Captain?" She muttered in startlement as she stood straight.
"At ease, Miraza. I'll need a quick trip to the other side of the District."
Miraza arched her brow in curiosity. "The Mayor's son? But he doesn't require our help."
Khaelon shrugged.
"Wasn't that what we thought the last two times?"
Miraza's eyes bulged slightly in realisation.
She nodded and headed towards the vehicle's door.
"Should I leave the barricade controls to Yusef?"
As she pulled the door open, Khaelon hopped onto the back with a strained groan.
A testament to the height of the vehicle.
He turned around and observed the scene for a moment. Taking in the view of the neighbourhood and the boy under the trance.
"The Egoists will be here anytime now; let them handle the spawn. No need"
He closed the door with a jolt, and soon, the vehicle purred to life.
His expression grew stern as they drove into the street.
'They will be dead soon anyway.'