The brand didn't scald his skin. It seared everything else.
Not in flames but in silence.The silence that devours your name.
The Hall of Stars at the Arcane Academy was to resound with applause.
The mosaics on the arched ceilings sparkled with lively constellations. Magic pulsed through them like tributaries of shimmering light, each design changing to mirror what surrounded people below. For initiates fresh inducted, it was a welcoming ceremony—your mana signature would surge in a phantom burst, and stars above would whisper your True Name into existence.
This was the first test.
And Aelric was failing.
He stood in the solitary centre. Dozens gazed. Nobles and instructors, and initiates of the Five Dominions. Some in wonder. Most in amusement.
The glowing scrying orb above them pulsed dimly, then flickered… and went out.
No designation.
No flower.
Nothing but flat, colourless silence.
The term spread throughout the room like a malediction.
"Oh, there has to be a mistake," said the young overseer, his voice too cheerful, too artificial.
He struck it again. Once. And then again.
He looked at the gathered students. "Occasionally… mana signatures are slower to manifest in individuals brought up in cities beyond the major leylines. Lag in environment, possibly. He remains—technically—a candidate."
"Technically?" taunted a white-robbed girl with trim in storm-blue. She was Kessa Valeryn of one of Stormreach Dominion's most ancient magical lineages. Fingers sparkling with glyphs she hadn't even engaged. "Or pathetically?"
Snickers was
Aelric remained silent.
Because what was he to say?
The Trial Master vowed to be seen. That he had made contact with the source.
But now. And it was like the Crucible was a dream. And this—shameful silence—was reality.
He was taken to the side and around the dais into the Grey Hall—a hallway reserved for incomplete signatures. Not rejected. Not accepted. But pending.
There weren't any torches. There was only cold glyph-light and resounding footsteps.
A grizzled old man stood in scorched red robes beyond a stone table. He didn't glance in Aelric's direction when he walked in.
"Name," he grumbled
"No family."
The man scratched into a book. "Nullborn. Category: Unattuned. Provisional status: Rejected until proven otherwise."
He produced a small iron brand stamp. Cold to hold. "Hold out your wrist."
Aelric win
"I—." His voice broke. "What is it?"
The man didn't respond. He merely activated the glyph.
Pain flashed—temporarily and searing—as metal etched a bright line into Aelric's wrist skin. Scarcely a wound. Scarcely a scar.
A sigil.
A fractured circle, incomplete and empty.
The sign of the Nullborn.
Over the days to come, he was not banished—but worse.
He was disregarded.
Classes were also closed to him.
Spellcraft classes necessitated mana resonance to be present.
Ritual halls denied access to him.
Only into the Menial Wing was he admitted, where groundskeepers laboured beneath enchantments they were never permitted to employ, along with alchemical janitors and maintenance scribes.
The other pupils went by him like ghosts.
Kessa Valeryn and her group of friends ensured he was never completely forgotten.
"Oh, the librarian's boy," she would exclaim in a raised voice, "I nearly stumbled over his absence."
They once bewitched his books to ooze ink when he opened them.
Another time, they cursed his bed to freeze overnight, the mattress turning to a block of ice until dawn.
Aelric held
Because he was not brave.
But because he would not go away.
He retained possession of it. The one he received from Veynar. Still kept it in his coat pocket near his heart.
And at late hours, he would read in the corners of the deserted West Tower.
He read everything.
Textbooks that other pupils considered to be outdated. Scrolls written in long-forgotten languages. Journals abandoned by mages who'd disappeared into madness or myth.
And there, in the musty decay of abandoned wings, he discovered something else.
A book.
Not shelved. Not catalogued.
It throbbed with a dull red glow beneath a heap of fallen stones of its roof. Its exterior was scaled like wrinkled hide. The lock was distorted, and its interior was exposed.
And inside—
The Name.
His surname.
Not written. Not etched. Whispered.
The instant he made contact with the page, the library distorted. The room contorted, walls seeming to be peeled back by unseen hands.
Suddenly, Aelric was no longer in the West Tower.
He stood inside a room of moving glass, suspended in a space filled with dark stars.
The book hovered in front of him, pages rustling in a gustless breeze.
And then a deep, brittle-voiced voice spoke.
"Null is not lack.
It is potentially unfilled." Aelric stepped forward. "And what are you?"
"I am the Codex of All That Is Lost. And you, Aelric, are the first in a thousand years to bring me to life."
He swallowed. "No, I'm not a mage. And I don't even have mana."
The book pulsed brighter.
"Mana is false.A comfort.A leash."
Aelric furrowed a brow. "
"Will.Memory.The choice to shape the world without permission."
Aelric's hands were
You must know me.
Because I have always known it.Because someone kept you hidden from me.Because they were afraid of what you are.
He gazed blankly at words taking shape on the page.
Nullborn—the child whose magical core was damaged or sealed at birth to suppress the prohibited line.
Forgotten Sovereign—a name wiped out of the Codex of Kings.
Aelric sensed the earth beneath him move.
"Why now, then?" he whispered. "Why wake us now?"
Because the world is unravelling.And when the veil is torn, those who have forgotten everything will be those to make all the decisions.
When he was back in real life, several hours would have passed.
Nevertheless, he was not weak.
He felt awake.
He kept the book hidden.
Covered in threadbare cloth and stashed away beneath a floorboard in his maintenance compartment.
And every evening he went back to it.
It taught him things no other would deign to say. Sigils that distorted space. Runes that oozed memory into ink. Bloodcraft and truth-binding and the art of voiceless invocations—casting without a sound, without mana, without say.
The Codex referred to it as the Path of the Echo.
Magic for the unwritten ones.
It transformed him.
He started to notice things. The cracks in the wards that surrounded the school. The flicker of something beneath the stones in the garden—something listening. Watching.
He was not alone in this.
Something was moving in the shadows of the Academy.
And the Nullborn?
They were its initial target.
While cleaning out the east observatory one evening, Aelric discovered a young boy huddled against the scrying mirrors.
One such as he.
But this one was deceased.
His brand was pulsating black.
Scorched on the inside.
Next to him on the wall was a symbol written in blood:
A fractured circle—with gnash.
No magic.
No vandalism.
A message.
And for the first time since the Crucible, Aelric sensed something move in his bones.
No fear.
No pain.
But intention.
They gave up on him.
Named him Nullborn.
Dismissed him.
But power. real power. was not derived from birth, blood, or books written in gold.
It originated in what the world sought to destroy.
And now—
Aelric would insert himself into the tale. One forgotten word at a time.