The First Trial of the Void

The seventh day after the Resonance began without light.

Not that the sun ever shone there.But even the torches of the lower wing seemed dimmer that strange morning,as if the prison itself had closed its eyes for a few moments.

Mo Han didn't need a clock.His body tracked the cycles with surgical precision:he counted minutes through heat fluctuations between stone and metal,sensed time in the pulses of thermal currentsthat coursed through the tunnels like ancient veins.

And in that moment, everything pulsed… differently.

The air was dense. Reverent.

They're watching me again.

He didn't see them.But he felt them.The averted gazes as he passed.The footsteps that halted the moment his shadow bent around a corner.The words born as whispers and buried in silence.

There was a pattern.

And Mo Han was good with patterns.

The collective fear has reorganized.I'm no longer a threat.Now... I'm a reference.

He hated that.

Turning a curve through the central galleries—a forgotten sector, avoided even by the oldest prisoners—Mo Han found them.

Five figures, kneeling on damp stone.They wore rags rearranged like robes.They were clean—or at least clean enough to seem distinct from the rest.Each had drawn primitive symbols on the floor,made from dried blood, charcoal, and shards of polished bone.

At the center, one held a cracked stone,trying to carve into it runes that clumsily mimicked the ones Mo Han had etched into the ground during the Resonance.

They didn't look up immediately.They only murmured, in unison:

— "He has arrived."

Mo Han stopped.The silence around him thickened, like heavy fog.

— "What are you doing?"

The eldest lifted his head.His eyes were bloodshot,but glowed with something Mo Han recognized with a twinge of sorrow:faith.

— "Waiting."

— "Waiting for what?"

— "You.We all had the same dream.On the same night.The same vision."

Mo Han raised an eyebrow.It sounded like madness.But the pattern...was consistent.

— "What vision?"

The youngest among them answered, voice cracking:

— "You. Standing.At the center of the prison.The light vanished.Sound stopped.And then... a door opened.A door that remembers.You were the key."

A chill ran through Mo Han's spine—but his face stayed neutral.

— "That's superstition.What you saw was fear projected onto the mind.The brain invents meaning where there is none."

The eldest replied with unexpected firmness:

— "No, Void.You showed us the way.Pain... isn't punishment. It's code.The body... isn't a prison. It's a machine.The world... can be simulated."

The words made something fracture inside Mo Han.

They're repeating what I said.What I thought.What I calculated...But not as science.As ritual.They're building religion atop reasoning.

— "This isn't religion," Mo Han growled.— "This is internal engineering.You've understood nothing."

The youngest, trembling, tried to rise.Took a step and fell to his knees.

— "Then… teach."

The others followed.Kneeling again—but no longer like worshipers.There was something more painful, more honest.

It wasn't salvation they sought.

It was understanding.

— "Show us the structure.The logic.The pattern," the elder murmured.

Mo Han closed his eyes.

If I reject them, they'll find something else.A myth. A blind symbol. Maybe a demon.Something to feed their ignorance.

If I accept… I become a leader.I become what I most despise.

But if I teach properly…maybe I'll create thinkers, not worshipers.

He drew a deep breath.

And opened his eyes.

— "If you want to follow... then listen.And forget the miracle."

The air froze.

— "Here, there is only calculation.Pain.Adaptation.And if any of you calls me master...I'll break your jaw with a rock."

Silence.

Then a faint smile from the elder.

— "Yes, Void."

Mo Han scoffed.But said nothing more.

— "First lesson," he said, crouching.— "Pain has three layers.The first is stimulus.Physical. The flesh, the nerves."

He drew a circle on the ground with charcoal.

— "The second is interpretation.The mind decides if it's tolerable, a threat, or a lesson."

He drew a second circle around the first.

— "The third is choice.You decide whether that pain shapes or destroys you."

He drew the third, final circle—then connected them with lines.

— "Most people live between the first and second.They're animals—reacting.If you want to walk the Path of the Void...you'll have to operate on the third."

The five improvised disciples watched in absolute silence.None dared to interrupt.

Mo Han studied them with clinical eyes.

The elder, who spoke for all, had the gaze of someone who had both tortured—and been tortured.The youngest trembled at every word—but not from fear. From anticipation.

The third... was writing.Scratching symbols into his forearmwith the tip of a sharpened bone.

Fanatic.He'll be a problem.

Mo Han stood up.

— "Next lesson at dusk.Each of you will bring me a pattern of pain you've experienced.And a hypothesis: why did it hurt?"

The elder nodded.The others followed.

But the third... smiled.

Subtle.Barely visible.

Mo Han saw it.

And understood.

That night, in a forgotten gallery of the prison,was not the birth of a cult.Nor a sect.Nor a religion.

It was the birth of a method.

And even if he wouldn't admit it, Mo Han knew:

Ideas are more dangerous than blades.And an idea that gives meaning to suffering...can set the world on fire.