Chapter 2: The Weight of Nothingness
The afternoon bell rang with a sharp, metallic finality, echoing through the wide corridors of the middle school. For most of the students pouring out of the classrooms, the sound signaled liberation. It meant the beginning of an evening filled with video games, hanging out at the local arcades, or practicing their flashy abilities in designated municipal training parks. For Soren, however, the bell was merely a transition from one form of quiet endurance to another. He packed his notebooks into his worn canvas backpack with methodical precision, ensuring the edges of the pages were perfectly aligned. He did not rush. There was absolutely no reason to hurry toward a life that seemed entirely stagnant.
He walked down the crowded hallway, keeping his gaze fixed straight ahead. The air was thick with the chaotic energy of adolescence mixed with superhuman biology. A boy to his left sneezed, unintentionally emitting a small cloud of harmless, shimmering pink dust. Two girls ahead of him were casually passing a heavy textbook back and forth without touching it, utilizing a shared magnetic resonance. Soren navigated through this everyday spectacle like a ghost moving among the living. He stepped to the side to avoid a student whose legs had transformed into coiled springs, bounding down the hall in massive leaps. No one bumped into Soren. No one engaged him in conversation. They simply parted around him, an unconscious reaction to the anomaly of his utter normalcy.
Physical Education had been particularly draining today. Not physically, but mentally. The instructor, a burly man with a minor density-altering ability, had organized a physical fitness assessment. While the rest of the class threw softballs into the stratosphere or ran the fifty-meter dash in fractions of a second, Soren had performed the standard, historical human baseline tests. He had recorded his push-ups, his sit-ups, and his unmodified running speed on a digital tablet. When he handed the tablet back, the instructor had given him that familiar, heavy look—a mixture of professional sympathy and profound awkwardness. It was the look of a man who did not know how to grade a student who was competing against a completely different evolutionary standard.
Soren pushed open the heavy double doors of the school's main entrance and stepped out into the damp afternoon air. The sky above Musutafu was a blanket of uniform, unbroken grey clouds. A heavy rainstorm had passed through the city during the third period, leaving the asphalt slick and reflecting the neon signs of the nearby commercial district. The temperature had dropped, carrying a chill that seeped through his school uniform jacket.
Instead of taking the main avenue that led directly to his family's apartment complex, Soren turned left, heading toward the older, industrial outskirts of his residential district. He wanted to avoid the crowds. He wanted to avoid the massive holographic billboards displaying the top-ranked heroes smiling flawlessly down at the populace. Today, the vibrant colors and the loud, heroic slogans felt like physical weights pressing against his chest. He needed silence. He needed an environment that matched the empty, hollow sensation echoing inside his own ribs.
He walked for nearly forty minutes, the urban landscape gradually shifting from modern glass and steel to weathered brick and rusted chain-link fences. He finally reached his destination: an abandoned municipal sports complex. It had been slated for demolition years ago to make way for a specialized quirk-training facility, but funding had stalled, leaving the grounds to the mercy of nature. The iron gates were padlocked, but the chain-link fence on the eastern perimeter had a large, jagged tear, perfectly sized for a twelve-year-old boy to slip through.
Soren squeezed through the gap, careful not to snag his jacket on the rusted wire. The facility was overgrown and silent. The large running track, once a pristine oval of red rubber, was now faded and cracked. Weeds pushed their way stubbornly through the fissures in the synthetic surface, reclaiming the artificial terrain. The metal bleachers on the side were oxidized and covered in a thin layer of damp moss. It was a forgotten place, discarded by a society that was constantly rushing forward. It was exactly where he needed to be.
He dropped his heavy backpack onto the lowest tier of the wet bleachers. He didn't stretch. He didn't perform any warm-up routines. He simply walked to the starting line of the faded track, took a deep breath of the cold, humid air, and began to run.
He started at a moderate pace, his sneakers hitting the wet rubber with a rhythmic, splashing sound. The first lap was easy. His body, though entirely ordinary by the standards of this era, was healthy and remarkably resilient. He focused on his breathing, inhaling through his nose and exhaling sharply through his mouth, establishing a steady cadence.
The doctor said it required an intense physical trigger, Soren thought, his amber eyes locked on the curved path ahead. A biological engine that hasn't found the right pressure to start. If it's pressure it needs, then I will provide it. I will push this vessel until it has no choice but to break or adapt.
By the fifth lap, the cold air began to burn in his lungs. The moisture in the atmosphere made every breath feel heavy and dense. He increased his speed. His arms pumped vigorously at his sides, his ash-grey hair sticking to his forehead as a thin layer of sweat broke out across his skin. He ignored the initial signs of fatigue. This was just the baseline. This was the barrier of normal human limitation, and he needed to completely shatter it.
Ten laps. The rhythmic splashing of his footsteps became erratic. The muscles in his calves and thighs began to tighten, sending sharp, warning signals up his spinal cord. The physical strain was mounting rapidly, but Soren refused to slow down. He forced his legs to maintain the relentless pace, grinding his teeth together. He visualized his internal biology, picturing the complex, dense pathways the doctor had identified on the X-ray. He imagined them as dried riverbeds, desperately needing a flood of energy to burst through the dams.
Fifteen laps. The world around him started to narrow. The rusted bleachers, the grey sky, the overgrown weeds—everything faded into a blurred periphery. The only reality that existed was the cracked red rubber directly beneath his feet and the agonizing fire consuming his chest. Every inhalation felt like swallowing crushed glass. His heart hammered violently against his ribs, beating so fast and so hard that it felt like a separate entity trying to violently escape his body.
Faster, he commanded himself, his internal voice echoing in the empty void of his mind. It isn't enough. It's still completely normal. Push harder.
He sprinted. He threw away all pacing, all strategy, and poured every single ounce of his remaining stamina into a desperate, reckless dash. His twelve-year-old frame was not built for this level of sustained, extreme exertion. His vision began to swim, black spots dancing at the edges of his sight. The metallic taste of blood seeped into the back of his throat. His legs felt completely disconnected from his brain, moving purely on sheer, stubborn momentum.
He was approaching the final turn of his twentieth lap. His body was screaming for oxygen, demanding that he stop, demanding that he collapse and rest. But the anger, the seven years of silent frustration, the heavy weight of his phantom diagnosis, propelled him forward.
Suddenly, his right foot caught the raised edge of a severely warped rubber tile on the track.
Soren didn't have the reflexes or the remaining strength to correct his balance. His momentum carried him violently forward. He pitched forward, the wet track rushing up to meet him. He hit the ground incredibly hard. The impact knocked the remaining air out of his lungs in a sharp, agonizing gasp. He rolled across the abrasive surface, the rough rubber tearing through the fabric of his uniform trousers and scraping the skin off his knees and elbows.
He finally came to a complete halt, lying flat on his back, staring up at the unforgiving, uniform grey sky.
For a long moment, there was only pain. A sharp, burning sensation radiated from his scraped joints, and his chest heaved in desperate, jagged attempts to draw oxygen back into his depleted system. He couldn't move. His muscles were entirely locked up, flooded with lactic acid and pushed far beyond their absolute breaking point.
He lay there, completely paralyzed by exhaustion. He waited for the rush of power. He waited for the dormant ability to violently awaken and heal him, to shield him, to do anything at all.
Nothing happened.
The rain began to fall again. Small, freezing drops hit his face, mixing with the sweat and the dirt. The profound silence of the abandoned complex returned, mocking his effort. He had pushed himself to the absolute brink of his physical capacity, and the result was exactly the same. He was just a battered, exhausted boy lying in the dirt. He closed his amber eyes, a crushing wave of despair finally washing over him. The doctor had been wrong. There was no dormant engine. There was only an empty shell.
Soren stopped fighting the exhaustion. He surrendered to the heavy, pulling sensation of his own fatigue. He let his mind drift inward, focusing entirely on the raw, unfiltered sensation of his failing biology. He felt the frantic, irregular thumping of his heart slowing down. He felt the heat radiating from his strained muscles. He focused on the blood rushing through his veins, the subtle, quiet flow of vitality that kept his organs functioning. In the absence of any external ability, he became acutely, hyper-aware of his internal life force.
Thump... Thump... Thump...
He listened to his own pulse. He sank deeper into his own consciousness, visualizing the sheer energy required just to exist. He wasn't looking for a quirk anymore. He was simply observing the fundamental core of his own life.
Wait.
Soren's eyes snapped open. The falling raindrops suddenly seemed to slow down.
The air immediately surrounding his body underwent a drastic change. It no longer felt cold and damp. Instead, it became incredibly heavy, dense, and viscous, as if he had suddenly been submerged in a pool of warm, thick liquid. The pressure was not coming from the atmosphere; it was emanating from within him.
A profound, rushing warmth began to seep out of his pores. It was not fire, and it was not electricity. It was a fluid, vital energy that wrapped around his skin like a heavy, protective blanket. It felt unimaginably thick, vibrating with a quiet, intense frequency. The sensation was terrifying yet deeply intimate. It was his own life force, his own vitality, spilling outward and taking physical form.
He slowly, agonizingly, pushed himself up onto his bruised elbows. He looked down at his hands. The air around his fingers was shimmering violently, distorting the light and the falling raindrops like intense heat radiating off a desert highway.
Before his mind could even begin to process the sheer weight of the invisible aura enveloping him, a crisp, perfectly synthesized mechanical sound echoed directly inside his cerebral cortex.
It was not a sound heard through his ears. It was a data packet delivered straight to his consciousness.
Directly in his line of sight, floating effortlessly in the empty air regardless of where he turned his head, a small, sharply defined rectangular window materialized. It was entirely translucent, emitting a faint, cool blue light that illuminated the falling rain around it. Crisp, white text began to scroll rapidly across the geometric surface.
[Biological Threshold Surpassed. Exhaustion Level: Critical.]
[Condition Met: Absolute Internal Focus Achieved.]
[Vessel Integrity Verified.]
Soren stopped breathing. He stared at the glowing blue text, his amber eyes wide with absolute shock. He reached out a trembling hand, trying to touch the floating window. His fingers passed completely through the light, feeling nothing but the heavy, vibrating pressure of his own aura.
The text on the screen shifted, the previous lines dissolving to be replaced by new data.
[Dormant Aura Pathways: Unlocked and Active.]
[Cognitive Interface Generation: Initiated.]
A sudden, sharp headache spiked behind his eyes, lasting only a fraction of a second before fading into a state of intense, hyper-clear perception. The heavy, warm energy wrapping around his body suddenly stabilized, retracting slightly to form a perfectly controlled, millimeter-thin layer of defensive pressure over his skin.
A final message appeared on the glowing blue interface, the letters solidifying with absolute permanence.
[Nen System Initialization: Complete.]
[Welcome, Soren. Your journey begins at Level 1.]
Soren sat perfectly still on the wet, cracked rubber track. The rain continued to fall, bouncing harmlessly off the invisible, dense layer of energy that now coated his entire body. The phantom diagnosis was finally dead. The extraordinary had finally arrived, but it was not a quirk. It was something far deeper, far more complex, and it was entirely his own.