Gathering

I lay on my narrow iron bed, staring at the ceiling. The cracks above me formed a pattern I had traced a hundred times before, yet my mind wasn't in that room. It was somewhere far below the academy grounds, buried in the dark, circling the same thought: what have they done with him?

The organization holding me here, Fravikveidimadr, wasn't what I had believed. They weren't merely exploiting my abilities. They were digging deeper, dissecting the very thing that set me apart. The source of my power wasn't just being observed; it was being studied, measured, maybe replicated.

The Raven's Nest, where they claimed to "contain" dangerous anomalies like me, wasn't a separate cage. It was another piece on the same board. The academy above, the Nest below, they were tools serving the same purpose. Only now did I realize I didn't know the rules of this game. Worse, I didn't even know all the players.

And then there was the man in the cell, the one I thought of as Silas. His existence was a problem. Or a chance. His link to this body, my body, was something Fravikveidimadr could use against me. But a vulnerability could also be a weapon, if handled carefully.

Information was what I lacked. Not the official kind from Grisa's sterilized reports, or the heavily censored books they allowed us to read. I needed what people whispered when no one else was listening. Rumors. Secrets traded for favors. Words said through clenched teeth or between muffled sobs. That was the only truth that mattered in a place like this.

That night, after Roshtov Valerius, my dour, perpetually suspicious roommate, finally drifted into a heavy sleep, I moved. Not physically. I closed my eyes, reached inward, and sank into the aperture at the core of my being. There, I plucked a single thread of Void Essence. It was thin, nearly invisible, like a hair of shadow.

The thread slid free from my chest and passed through the door without sound. It stretched outward as my senses extended, moving down dim corridors, brushing against the echoes of dreams and fragments of idle thoughts.

The male dormitories first. The thread drifted between closed doors, passing through faint auras of slumber. Most were worthless, boys dreaming of duels, some muttering curses about instructors, a few sweating through nightmares of battlefield exams. The emotional residue was stale. Nothing I could use.

On the second floor, something more promising. Four older cadets, nobles by their accents, sat cross-legged around a small card table. Their voices were low, half-swallowed by the room, but my thread could taste every syllable.

"…another commendation for the Chimera Project. My father said the funding tripled this year."

"What are they actually doing? Everyone knows there's something beneath the West Wing, but no one asks questions."

"I heard they're trying to stabilize the Flux. Some claim it's connected to the energy before the Broken Moon Cataclysm."

"Old campfire stories. More likely they're developing a new steam weapon to sell to the generals."

Their certainty was thin. They didn't know details. But their words left a trail: Chimera Project. Flux. Primordial energy. Smoke rising from a fire I hadn't yet seen. I tucked the fragments away for later.

I withdrew the thread and pushed it outward again, threading it carefully through the courtyard toward the female dormitory. The journey was harder; the wind outside tugged at the thin line of Essence as if trying to tear it apart. Still, I reached the opposite hall.

Here, the air was different. Fewer dreams of combat, more of rivalry and calculation. Girls maneuvering through imagined conversations with sponsors, whispering names of noble houses, debating arranged marriages and alliances. Power struggled here, but with smiles and whispers, not steel.

In one room, a girl wept in her sleep. The dream was heavy, like a memory replaying itself. A tall man in a general's uniform loomed over her, his voice sharp as a whip:

"You've shamed the name Valerius."

The girl's Essence trembled with humiliation. Valerius. Roshtov's sister. So the family's burdens were not limited to my roommate. That could be turned to something, if needed.

I was about to withdraw when something shifted nearby.

A presence.

Not human.

I thinned the thread, letting it coil close to the shadow of a pillar. From beneath the door of an unused storage room, something emerged. A creature no larger than a child, its shape flickering like ash and shadow fused together by will alone. It limped, leaving faint trails of soot as it moved, and its rasping voice scratched against the walls.

"…fracture… the moon weeps… dust eats the light… hunger…"

It was heading toward the Valerius girl's door, drawn by the residue of her nightmare. I recognized it immediately, a low-grade Aberration. Not sentient, just a byproduct of tainted Essence feeding on the vulnerable.

I had no intention of interfering. But when it brushed against my thread, my body acted before my mind.

The Outers' Dao within me surged. The thread snapped taut, lashing around the creature like a striking serpent. The Aberration didn't resist. It didn't even have time to make a sound. Its unstable body collapsed inward, and its Essence streamed along the thread back into me.

A flood of cold energy hit my aperture, filthy and writhing. Flashes of alien thought burned in my head: a sky split by a shattered moon, an endless hunger gnawing at the edges of reality.

I pulled back violently, gasping. My heart raced. I hadn't wanted that. Hadn't even chosen it. My power had acted on its own, viewing the Aberration as food.

That was a problem. A dangerous one. If I couldn't restrain the instincts of whatever lived in me, it would feed again. On things I might not be able to justify.

...…

Across the room, Roshtov Valerius waited an hour after my breathing evened out. He didn't trust me. How could he? Welt Rothes had no traceable origin, no family, no history, yet could solve equations Royal Institute scholars still debated. Welt's gaze unsettled him, he'd once admitted, not to Welt, but to someone else. He looked too old for Welt age, too empty.

He slid out of bed without a sound. From beneath the frame, he lifted a loose metal panel and revealed a narrow ventilation shaft. Roshtov had been crawling through these passages for years, mapping them like arteries. This so-called prison was full of doors no one saw, if one looked carefully.

Tonight, his destination lay beneath the main library, the Scriptorium, the forbidden archives no student was supposed to know existed.

The shaft carried him to a grate overlooking the entrance hall. Two Warden Golems stood motionless, their gemstone eyes glowing faintly. Roshtov didn't move. At exactly two in the morning, they would deactivate for three minutes to recharge. He had timed them for months.

When the lights dimmed, he dropped down, landing without a sound. The heavy oak doors gave way to a push, their hinges muffled by oil he'd applied during a previous visit.

Inside, the Scriptorium was a tomb of knowledge. The air was dry, heavy with the scent of alchemical preservatives and parchment that had outlived empires. Roshtov didn't need a light, he knew the path by heart.

He searched the maritime section. Behind three thick volumes of naval history, his fingers found what he sought. A black, unmarked spine. The cover bore its title in archaic script: Testamentum Errvasa Ghrae, The Testament of the Broken Moon.

He carried it to a far corner, shielding it from any patrol that might glance inside. A single lantern flickered to life, dimmed to a whisper of flame.

The book's pages told of a time before the Cataclysm, when Essence, then called Primordius Manas, was unrefined. Practitioners had no structured Paths, no regulated cycles. They devoured Manas directly, drawing godlike strength while teetering on the brink of madness or transformation.

Modern Evolvers, with their carefully designed Paths, were children drinking watered wine. The ancients had swallowed the raw sap of the tree, and most had paid the price. Some became near-divine. The rest became Aberrations.

Roshtov flipped through until he found what he truly sought: records of the "Lands of Thousand-Sage," a variety of Manas said to descend from stars, from wounds torn in the heavens when the moon fractured. Channeling it didn't cause madness, the book said. It emptied the soul. Left the body a vessel.

He paused on a diagram: the Graham Circuit, a network drawn across the human body, a system designed to house Primordius Manas without tearing its host apart.

Footsteps echoed faintly from the hallway. Earlier than expected. Roshtov extinguished the lantern, slid the book back into its crevice, and vanished into the ventilation shaft just as the Warden Golems' eyes reignited.

When he returned to our room, Welt was still lying still, his breath slow, feigning sleep. But he was caught the scent clinging to him, old paper, and the sharp tang of the preservative oils used only in the oldest archives.

Roshtov was not just suspicious of Welt. He was hunting his own truths.

Welt kept my eyes closed. Filed away the observation. Another player on the board, though his side remained uncertain.

...…

By dawn, the Aberration's residue had been burned away inside my aperture, leaving only a faint aftertaste. But the images it carried, cracked moon, gnawing void, lingered. They aligned too well with the footnotes I had once read on the Broken Moon Cataclysm. This world's history was a fabric riddled with holes, stitched over to hide what bled through.

The sun rose pale. Roshtov returned to his bed without a word. I did not greet him when he woke.

The chessboard was filling quickly. Fravikveidimadr and their secret Chimera Project beneath the academy. Wandering Aberrations whispering of a weeping moon. Silas, whose link to my body grew more dangerous by the day. Roshtov, sneaking into the dark to study forbidden texts.

And me. A mistake turned piece, learning to play before someone removed me from the board.

Later that morning, during a dull lecture on obsolete siege tactics, I felt something. A pulse, deep beneath the floors. Stronger now. Erratic. Whatever they were doing with Silas, or with the artifact they had stolen, it was accelerating.

Observation wouldn't be enough anymore. I needed to see it. To get inside the West Wing facility.

But its security was layered, designed to smother intrusion before it began. No key, no forged papers, no quiet escape would suffice.

Unless they brought me in themselves.

A plan began to take shape. Fravikveidimadr already viewed me as unstable, an Oneiromancer whose power threatened to spiral. Perhaps it was time to give them a reason to isolate me. A staged episode, dramatic enough to demand medical containment, but carefully tailored so I wouldn't be exposed as more than they already suspected.

The academy would be the stage. Students and instructors, the unwitting actors.

And I, for once, would stop being a piece. I would be the one setting the pieces in motion.