Kaelen and Kelvin stood frozen, their breaths shallow in a void that seed to swallow every ounce of sound and sensation.
Darkness.
Not the kind you find at night—but a suffocating, absolute black that pressed in from all directions, erasing the world and warping ti itself. It felt like standing in a coffin made of shadow, the air tight and unmoving, the silence thick enough to scream.
And worst of all—
No mana.
Kaelen gritted his teeth, clenching his sword tighter. "I can't even feel Pandora," he muttered, his voice barely escaping his throat.
Kelvin, beside him, drew in a breath and held out his palm—only for nothing to happen. No spark. No shimr. Not even a flicker of light.
"…Mana's gone," Kelvin said grimly. "We've been cut off completely."
Then—
A voice echoed from nowhere, like wind slipping through bones.
"Welco to the Abyssal Crucible."
It was Naeva's voice, but detached—ancient, almost inhuman.
"To wield the art of the Nullcarvers, you must abandon your dependence on external power. In this space, your soul is your sword. Your instincts are your shield. And your will… is your only light."
Kaelen and Kelvin tensed as the temperature dropped.
"There are wandering souls in this realm—fragnts of warriors who failed before you. If you cannot defeat them, then you do not deserve to learn our ways."
Just as her voice faded—
They ca.
The air twisted.
Shapes ford within the darkness—translucent humanoid figures shrouded in wailing mist. Their eyes were like burning cracks in glass, flickering with agony and hunger.
And then—
They attacked.
Kaelen barely managed to sidestep the first swipe, the soul's claws slicing through the air like ethereal daggers.
Kelvin spun backward, his arm getting nicked across the shoulder. Blood sprayed.
"Damn it!" he growled. "They're real! That thing—!"
Another ca from behind.
Kaelen ducked, raised his sword on instinct, and parried. But the mont his blade clashed with the ghostly form, a shockwave tore through his muscles like needles.
Their strikes had weight. Their shrieks pierced the mind.
More souls erged—five…ten…fifteen.
Each one a flickering remnant of a warrior who once walked the path they now stumbled into. Each one furious. Hungry.
And there was no magic to help them.
The next few minutes were hell.
Kaelen swung wildly at first, relying on muscle mory and brute strength, but the souls moved erratically—so crawling, others flying, their limbs stretching at impossible angles.
Kelvin got clawed across the thigh and was yanked backward, nearly pulled into the void by two screeching wraiths. He kicked one away, slamd his scythe downward, barely making it back on his feet.
"We're going to die in here!" he roared, panting.
"Not if we stop fighting like mages!" Kaelen spat back, blood trailing from his lip.
They backed into each other—breathing hard, senses burning. Every twitch, every movent in the blackness was a threat.
Kaelen closed his eyes.
He rembered what Naeva said.
Your instincts are your shield. Your soul is your sword.
He slowed his heartbeat. Felt the direction of the air shift. Heard the faintest tremor of movent to his left—strike.
His blade lashed sideways—direct hit.
The soul let out a piercing scream and dissolved like mist.
Kelvin watched, wide-eyed, then narrowed his own gaze. He focused, let go of the need for mana. He bent his knees, tightened his stance like a beast about to pounce.
Another soul ca lunging.
He moved.
No thinking. Just motion.
The flat of his scythe slamd into the soul's head, flipping it over. A follow-up slash severed its torso cleanly.
More ca.
The two boys adapted, step by step.
But even as they grew sharper—quicker—more focused, the number of souls only increased. The Crucible didn't care for progress. It wanted results.
And it was slowly pushing them to their limit.
Kaelen's breathing was ragged now. Every movent was pain. His hands were blistered from the grip of his sword.
Kelvin staggered back after being slamd by a massive soul twice his size.
The blackness was starting to feel heavier.
Ti blurred.
But still—they fought. Their forms were sloppy but improving. Their slashes started finding rhythm. Their eyes began to see through the black.
And sowhere in the void—
Naeva watched in silence.
"…Good," she whispered, as the boys finally began to understand:
The technique of the Nullcarvers is not learned. It is survived.
And so, within the hollowed mountain temple that served as the heart of the Nullcarver enclave, Naeva stood silently at the edge of the scrying stone—its milky-white surface rippling with ghostly shadows as it projected the vision of Kaelen and Kelvin's trial below.
The darkness surrounding the boys twisted and churned, haunted by dozens of wandering souls. Blood streaked Kaelen's cheek, and Kelvin's stance was faltering. Still, they endured—raw, primal instinct slowly giving way to precision. Naeva's eyes narrowed with cautious pride.
Then—
Footsteps.
A figure entered the chamber quietly.
He was a middle-aged man, broad-shouldered, with long grey strands tied behind his head and a deep scar running down the left side of his face. His robes bore the etched runes of the Nullcarvers' higher council.
He leaned forward slightly and whispered.
"The Leech is stirring again."
Naeva's lips tightened. "Where?"
"Beneath the fourth cavern," he replied. "The air is… breathing. The stone's pulsing again."
She looked away from the scrying stone, her voice low but unwavering. "We're finally seeing progress. Give them a little more ti. A few more minutes."
He hesitated, concern flickering across his stern face. "We may not have that luxury. The wards are thinning. The chains holding it—"
CRACK!
A violent tremor ripped through the sanctum. The stone walls of the observation hall groaned under pressure, dust spilling from the high ceiling like sand from a cracked hourglass.
Naeva whirled toward the quake, her expression grim.
From deeper within the mountain, a low, guttural sound echoed—like sothing ancient and imnse was dragging itself awake. The shriek of tal against stone rang through the halls, followed by distant screams.
Her granddaughter, seated not far from the scrying stone, stood up quickly, eyes wide. "Grandmother—!"
"Stay calm," Naeva ordered, though the tremor didn't subside. "It's early... too early."
The few Nullcarvers present had stopped what they were doing, their postures tense. So reached for their weapons. Others began inscribing ergency wardings in the air, fingers shaking.
BOOM!
A shockwave hit the enclave.
One of the upper tunnels collapsed in the distance with a thunderous crash.
But in the scrying pool—Kaelen and Kelvin remained locked in the Crucible, oblivious to the chaos above them. Kaelen had just impaled a soul through the chest, gasping, his shirt half-ripped and sweat pouring from him. Kelvin rolled across the shadowed ground and shoved his scythe into the back of another screeching wraith.
Their eyes were locked on survival.
Not fear. Not confusion.
Just the fight.
Naeva stared at them, then clenched her fists.
"They don't even realize it," she whispered. "Good."
The middle-aged man turned back to her. "Naeva, we can't ignore this."
"I won't." She turned to her granddaughter, placing a firm hand on her shoulder. "I need you to stay here. Watch them. Don't let your eyes leave that stone."
Her granddaughter's voice trembled. "But if it's really the Leech—"
"Then we may already be too late. But they," she nodded toward Kaelen and Kelvin, "they're our only chance. If they survive this, they must be ready. They must."
She didn't wait for more questions. Her steps were brisk, her cloak billowing as she vanished into the shadows of the sanctuary hallway, where chaos was beginning to churn.
Behind her, another tremor echoed through the mountain, and the faint sound of what could only be described as wet breathing rose from the deep cracks below.
The Leech was no longer slumbering.
anwhile....
The shadows were relentless.
Kaelen's breath heaved from his lungs as he swung the Blade of Eternity, its edge nothing more than steel in this realm devoid of mana. Sweat rolled down his face, and blood dripped from a gash along his side. His blade t the translucent form of a wandering soul, the impact sending vibrations up his arm, but not dispelling the creature.
Beside him, Kelvin gritted his teeth, his Scythe of the Abyss arcing wide. The weapon hissed as it cleaved through another shrieking spirit, dispersing it into mist. Even without mana, their weapons—reforged in blood, death, and sheer resolve—remained tangible. Yet they were growing heavier with every swing.
They had no ti to think.
No ti to breathe.
No ti to rely on the gifts they'd always known.
The souls wailed and rushed, hissing, clawing, forcing them to fight with nothing but instinct, footwork, and sheer will. For minutes stretched into what felt like eternity, Kaelen ducked, rolled, stabbed. Kelvin countered, spun, and struck, their movents ragged, desperate—but gradually, sothing subtle began to shift.
Their stances.
Their breathing.
Their presence.
---
Above, watching through the scrying pool, the girl—Naeva's granddaughter—had remained quiet. Until now.
Her brows furrowed.
"What...?"
She leaned closer, her eyes squinting as the visual distortion from the Crucible dimd.
Then she saw it—sothing she had only seen in the eldest of Nullcarvers during the final stages of awakening.
Their aura.
It was no longer frantic or inconsistent. There was a stillness forming at the center of their movents, like a storm pulling in on itself. Kaelen's steps, once erratic, now glided across the dark floor like liquid. His blade humd even in this deadened space. Kelvin's scythe no longer flailed—it flowed, graceful in its lethal arcs.
Then—
BOOM.
A soul lunged at Kaelen's exposed side, claws raised.
Kaelen didn't flinch.
His foot slid, his torso shifted—not to dodge, but to draw the spirit in.
Slash.
One strike.
It disappeared.
Kelvin did the sa—stepped past an incoming spirit, spun on one leg, and drove the blunt end of his scythe into its core with surgical precision. The spirit screeched, then shattered.
The girl jolted. Her breath hitched in her throat.
Sothing flickered.
Not from the weapons, nor from so external magic—but from within them.
A faint, warm spark.
So brief.
So small.
But real.
From Kaelen's chest, and then Kelvin's—the shadows pulled back ever so slightly as sothing lit up inside them like a sliver of starlight trying to escape a prison of darkness.
Her eyes widened in disbelief. Her lips parted.
She took a step back, whispering:
"I… I can't believe this."
Her voice trembled.
"In less than three hours… they've already begun to exude sparks of Qi… sothing that took three months…"
She couldn't stop staring. Her hands clenched.
This wasn't normal. It wasn't even rare—it was unprecedented.
And the terrifying part?
It wasn't done.
The sparks were still there. Flickering, faint, but slowly growing. Each swing, each breath, each move they made brought that flicker a little closer to ignition.
A little closer to breaking through the veil that had separated mortals from the primal force that birthed all weapon masters:
True Qi.
---
anwhile, Kaelen's eyes were sharp, focused. Not a single thought lingered in his head—only instinct. Kelvin had long abandoned the rage and confusion that had fueled his strikes earlier. Now, he fought with clarity, his body dancing with the scythe in a rhythm as ancient as bloodshed.
And sowhere in that suffocating dark, the souls hesitated.
Not because they were afraid.
But because sothing had changed.
The hunted were becoming predators.
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