Cold Steel

The steel door closed with a heavy, echoing thud, trapping me alone inside the silence, since there was no activity within it at all. The room was cold, its walls a pale white, and on one side there was a pitch-black mirror that reflected nothing. They were obviously watching me, and I knew it. This was standard procedure: isolation, observation, letting the subject rot in uncertainty to break their mind. A tactic like this was shallow and, in fact, very easy to predict.

I sat on a metal chair bolted to the floor, forcing my back to stay straight. I showed no signs of anxiety, nor did I pace around or pound on the walls. I just sat still, turning this prison into my personal meditation chamber. I closed my eyes and focused my awareness inward. The nadir circuits in my body still pulsed faintly, most likely still digesting the leftover energy from that sewer creature. The process felt like slow grinding, painful but unmistakably real. Whoever created the Bizarre Dao of the Outers must have been a genius, or even beyond that, completely insane. Turning suffering into power was one of the most terrifying things I had ever heard of since, ten years ago, I read about it in fiction.

Time passed. Maybe an hour, maybe three. Without any windows or sound from outside, time lost all meaning, or to put it simply, there was no clock. That was part of their tactic. Meanwhile, in my mind, I retraced every element from my encounter with Dales Verneth and Lieutenant Grisa Rash. Their ranks, their gear, the name of their organization, Fravikveidimadr.

Eventually, the door opened again. Grisa stood in the doorway, her expression hard to read and even harder to describe, maybe because my choice of words was too shallow.

"On your feet. Don't make me drag you."

I followed her without resistance. She did not take me to a cell, as I had expected. Instead, we arrived at a small room that seemed to serve as a staff break room. There were a few lockers, a table, and a worn-out leather sofa.

"Wait here. Don't touch anything," she ordered before leaving me alone again, closing the door without locking it.

This was a change in their plan. Maybe my status as a prisoner had been revoked, and they now openly wanted to make it clear that I was an "asset" awaiting evaluation. They had seen something that made them hesitate to treat me harshly. The emptiness Dales had seen within me. That was my trump card, and at the same time, my curse.

The exhaustion from the ritual, the sewer fight, and the mental strain finally took their toll on me. This child's body had its limits. I lay down on the soft sofa, thinking it would be just for a moment, and darkness pulled me in. This sleep was deep and dreamless. My body worked in silence, repairing and assimilating the organism within it and, of course, the nadir.

...…

"Welt, wake up. The captain is calling for you."

The sharp voice pulled me out of deep sleep. I opened my eyes and saw Grisa standing over me, arms folded. The bright light from the ceiling lamp stabbed into my eyes and almost blinded me for a moment.

I felt incredibly refreshed. The nadir circuits felt more stable.

"What time is it now?" I asked hoarsely.

"Eleven in the morning. You've been asleep for more than six hours," she replied, her tone dripping with impatience.

I did not care about her annoyance. I got up right away, grabbed my hat from the table beside the sofa, and straightened my still-dirty clothes. I stood up and followed her out of the staff room.

She led me down a hallway that ended at a large, heavy wooden filing cabinet. She ignored it and reached for a hidden lever on the wall above it. Even with her tall build, she had to stand on her toes a little to pull it. With a heavy click, the entire cabinet slid aside and immediately revealed a steel door.

The room beyond was a private library and office, probably just that for now. The air inside smelled of old paper, leather, and ozone from the Essence lamps. Towering bookshelves lined every wall, packed with thick, ancient-looking volumes. In the center of the room, behind a massive mahogany desk, Captain Dales Verneth sat reading a document, reading glasses perched on his nose.

"Good afternoon, Sir." I bowed slightly, holding my hat to my chest. An empty formality, but necessary.

"Drop the act, Welt," he said without looking up from his document. "There is something I want to discuss with you." He put down the paper and looked at me, his glasses now reflecting the lamp light and hiding his eyes. "I will get straight to the point. I am going to give you access to a few basic books on Oneiromancy. With the hope that one day you will be useful to the Association Control Bureau. They always need talent like yours."

I stayed silent, processing his offer. They wanted me to be their tracking dog, perhaps a seer tied to their bureaucracy. This was clearly a dead-end path.

"Of course, you will need to train here first," he continued. "I will assign someone to guide you. Just wait."

A dull career path full of restrictions. What I really needed was freedom of movement, access to broader knowledge, and the chance to develop my power without constant surveillance. I needed an academy.

"Excuse me, Captain," I began, choosing my words carefully. "I appreciate your offer. But my abilities are still raw and uncontrolled. I am concerned that without a proper educational foundation, I will become an unstable asset, maybe even a liability. A proper academy will give me the structure to control Essence and understand the fundamentals of this world. In return, I will pledge loyalty to any mission you assign after I graduate."

I offered it not as a desire but as a logical investment for them. A better and more controllable asset.

Dales stared at me for a long moment, evaluating. "Formal education requires basics. I have a few questions. First, can you read?"

"Yes, Sir. I learned slowly when I was younger." A blatant lie. A street child like me should have been illiterate, and the moment I said it, I could see the doubt on his face.

"Second, and this is most important," he continued, letting the lie slide for now. "Can you reason logically? Solve math problems?"

"Yes, I can," I answered firmly. "If you doubt it, give me a problem."

This was my wager on this plan. I was showing a skill I should not have had, but it was the only way to prove my worth beyond the 'weirdness' he saw.

"Very well," Dales said. A thin, almost invisible smile appeared on his lips. "A test."

He took a blank sheet of paper and a pen. He wrote for a moment, then pushed the paper across the desk. I picked it up. On the page was a single, terrifying line of equation:

e^(iπ) + 1 = ?

This… Euler's identity. This concept might not have been solved in this world yet, at least not in common knowledge. This was no longer a test; he was clearly baiting me. If I failed, I was just a useless weirdo. If I succeeded, I would become an abnormality far greater, drawing much more intense attention.

I weighed the risk. Intense attention could be dangerous, but it could also mean access, access to resources, to forbidden libraries, to the deepest secrets of this organization. Under the guise of a 'prodigy,' I could ask for things ordinary people could never dream of.

I accepted this gamble for reasons that were already solid.

I took the paper, walked to the corner of the room where a large chalkboard stood, and picked up a piece of chalk. The silence in the room grew even heavier as I wrote the solution.

e^(iπ) + 1 = 0

I did not stop there and immediately turned to face Dales, who was now standing, staring intently at the board.

"This is not just a simple math equation, Captain," I began, my voice flat and emotionless, trying to become a 'genius' at this moment. "Or to put it simply, this is a statement to uncover a few mysteries of the universe."

I pointed to each part with the chalk.

"'e.' The base of natural logarithms, the foundation of all growth and decay. Reproducing life, spreading disease, compounding capital, all of it follows its pattern."

I moved to i. "This one is the imaginary number. The square root of minus one, I mean, it is a concept that should not exist in our physical reality, purely abstract. It symbolizes imagination, dreams, all realms beyond the senses."

Next, π. "Pi. The ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. An infinite, non-repeating constant that defines perfect cycles, things like planetary rotation, wave oscillation, seasonal turns. And one more thing, Captain, pi is infinite; no one will ever find its end until the universe itself ends."

I tapped the '1.' "This is the clearest. One means identity. A single unit that underlies all numbers. A symbol of existence, or an individual being that is defined."

Finally, I circled the '0.' "Zero. The void, or maybe it could be called absolute nothingness. The beginning and the end. A symbol of nothingness."

I put down the chalk and looked Dales in the eyes. "This equation says that when you take infinite growth (e), raise it to the power of imagination (i) multiplied by the perfect spacetime cycle (π), then add one unit of existence (1), you get absolute nothingness (0). Five of the most fundamental and seemingly unrelated constants in the universe merge in a perfect relationship to produce emptiness."

The room was silent. Dales's expression went beyond shock; he looked like he had just been given a massive explosion show right before his eyes.

He walked up to the chalkboard, touching the chalk symbols with his fingertips as if he was a bit afraid of them.

"A complete explanation," he said softly, his voice hoarse. He turned to look at me, and for the first time, I saw something in his eyes other than cold calculation. It was awe, quickly covered by open suspicion.

"How," he asked, each word chosen carefully, "can I know that any of this is true?"

He was not asking for mathematical proof. He was implicitly asking about the source of my knowledge. How could a street child who was supposedly illiterate know something that had never been solved before?

I looked him in the eyes, dead serious. The mask of innocence felt irrelevant now.

"You do not need to know if it is true or not," I replied. "You only need to know that I know it, and this is just the surface. Send me to the academy, Captain. Give me access and I promise I will show you how deep this rabbit hole goes."

I had cast my bait. A lure too tempting to ignore and too risky to swallow. It would force Dales Verneth to work his mind harder than ever, at least for now.