The silence of room 402 was broken only by the sharp sound of the bandages Leon was tightening around his torso. Every movement drew a wince, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the anxiety gnawing at his gut. On the rickety table, Silas's tin box awaited him.
He sat down heavily, staring at the oxidized metal. He had weighed the pros and cons all evening. The yellow core, though more prestigious, was cracked; the instability of the mana risked shattering his Heart of Magic before it could even awaken. The light orange one was the choice of reason. Less power, certainly, and almost no chance of awakening a rare affinity, but it was a solid foundation. A foundation for survival.
After swallowing a piece of black bread as dry as stone, he made up his mind. He reached out, opened the lid of the box... and his blood ran cold.
Emptiness.
Inside the box, the yellow and orange cores had vanished. Only one thing remained: the black and purplish monstrosity the size of an apple, which seemed to glow with a sinister luster under the oil lamp.
— No... Leon stammered. This isn't possible.
He overturned the box, shook his blankets, and emptied his bag onto the dusty floor in a desperate frenzy. He searched every corner of the small room, his fingers clawing at the dead wood of the floorboards. Nothing. The two stones he had spent months saving for had evaporated.
Rage supplanted despair. He rushed down the stairs, ignoring the searing pain in his ribs, and slammed his hands onto the inn's counter.
— Someone entered my room! he roared, glaring at the innkeeper.
The bald man slowly looked up, a toothpick wedged between his lips.
— We don't yell here, kid. And no one enters the rooms. I've had an eye on those stairs the whole blessed day.
— My cores are gone! I had three in a box, and only one is left! If you did this...
The innkeeper placed his heavy hands on the counter, his gaze turning threatening.
— Listen to me, Nameless. If I wanted to rob you, I would've done it while you were sleeping and tossed you in the gutter. Why would I steal two and leave you one? It makes no sense. Maybe you lost your stones at the market or dropped them in an alley. Now, get back upstairs before I charge you for being a nuisance.
Leon stood there, fists clenched until his knuckles turned white. He knew the man had a point. Why would a thief leave the largest core, even if it looked strange?
He returned to his room, empty-handed, and slumped onto his straw bed. The darkness of the room seemed to close in on him. He thought of all those years of hard labor, every plate washed, every insult endured in greasy kitchens to save piece after piece. All of that just to end up with a dead stone.
Why? The question haunted him. Why had his family been sacrificed? Was it for the territory of Scala ad Caelum? For political power? Or was there a darker truth behind the accusation of diabolization?
Deep down, Leon didn't dream of bloody vengeance or reclaimed crowns. He had never wanted to rule; he had only followed in his parents' wake out of duty. His true wish was of a heart-wrenching simplicity: a peaceful life. He often imagined opening a small café, preparing the dark brew he loved so much himself, far from plots and swords.
But in this world, peace was a luxury bought by strength. An immense strength, so that no one could ever come to disturb his rest.
That was why he had to join the Aetheris Academy. It was the only institution that looked neither at lineage nor money, but only at potential.
But time was against him. It was now the fifth day after his seventeenth birthday. At seven days, the Heart of Magic fossilizes permanently. If he didn't awaken now, he would never be more than an ordinary human, barely fit to be a common knight. He had only fifteen silver pieces left. Impossible to buy anything other than a red core, the lowest on the scale, and the market wouldn't open until tomorrow.
The night wore on, heavy and suffocating.
Leon stared at the black core. The stone seemed to be watching him back. The purplish veins throbbed gently, a rhythm that strangely matched the beating of his own heart.
A crazy thought crossed his mind. What if it wasn't a theft? What if this black core had... "eaten" the other two? The idea was absurd, but in this world of magic and science, the absurd was often the norm.
— Darned if I do, darned if I don't, he whispered, his voice cracking with fatigue.
He no longer had a choice. If he waited until tomorrow, he risked losing his last chance. He sat cross-legged on his bed and placed the black and purplish sphere against his chest, right above where his biological heart was pounding.
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and began to project his will inside the stone. He was no longer praying for a rare affinity or divine power. He was just praying that this core wouldn't kill him. He was praying to have, at least, a chance to fight.
— Awaken... he murmured.
Suddenly, a wave of absolute cold spread from the core. It wasn't the usual warmth of a magical awakening, but a glacial chill that seemed to want to freeze the blood in his veins. Leon screamed silently as the darkness of the core rushed into his chest, searching for its path toward his future heart of mana.
The pain was not constant; it mutated. The wave of polar cold was followed by a heat of molten magma that seemed to liquefy his organs. Leon fought with all his might, teeth clenched until they nearly broke, trying to keep an anchor in the reality of his small room. But the walls of the inn began to ripple, the sounds of the city were muffled as if he were plunged underwater, and his consciousness finally began to fray.
Leon sank.
When he finally opened his eyes, or at least what he perceived as such, he was no longer on his straw bed. He was floating.
He was plunged into an infinite space, an abyss of absolute blackness where the notion of up and down did not exist. It was a total void, devoid of air, light, and sound, where only the darkness seemed to have a consistency, almost liquid. He tried to scream, to move his limbs, but his body did not respond.
He was nothing more than a spark of consciousness drifting in the void. He did not know if minutes or centuries had passed in this oppressive silence until a voice, or rather a vibration resonating directly in his mind ,rent the void.
— What is such a fragile creature as you doing here?
The voice was disembodied, monumental, like the rumble of a distant earthquake.
"Who... who are you?" Leon thought, his thoughts seeming to float like gas bubbles. "Where am I?"
— I see you are ignorant of the place where you have failed, the voice resumed with a hint of amused curiosity. My fragile little friend, you are in the Chaos. It is a space beyond the void, a realm that only creatures of chaos can tread.
"What?" Panic seized Leon's mind. "I was on the continent of Aetheris... I was in my room! How did I get here? And what is... a creature of chaos?"
— Hmmm... very strange, the voice vibrated, and Leon felt an immense gaze weigh upon him. You do not know what a creature of chaos is? Yet, you are one. Your very essence is imbued with this primordial force.
"Impossible!" Leon protested internally. "I am a human! I was about to awaken my Heart of Mana... I cannot be a monster! How could I become such a thing?"
— Become? the voice laughed, a sound that made the void around Leon tremble. One does not "become" a creature of chaos by chance, little human. One is, or one is not. The core you consumed was merely a key. It did not create what you are... it simply unlocked the door to your true nature.
Leon felt a glacial terror invade him. If this voice spoke the truth, then everything he thought he knew about himself, about his family, and about Scala ad Caelum was a lie.
— But look at yourself, the voice continued. Your human shell rejects the transformation. You are breaking apart. Do you want to survive, little heir of the void? Do you want the strength to return to your world of flesh?