The basalt doors of the Monastery of the Unbound slammed shut with a finality that felt like a
coffin lid. Inside, the air was dead—no wind, no heat, not even the comforting vibration of the
Grim Ledger. It was a vacuum of power.
Outside, the world was screaming.
Prince Valerius stood at the mouth of the narrow pass, his twin golden swords—Sun-Shear
and Dawn-Bringer—held in a low, defensive guard. His 500-count aura was flared to its
absolute limit, a brilliant amber dome that pushed back the freezing mountain fog. Behind
him, Sir Kaelen and Captain Thorne had formed the thirty-odd loyalists into a serrated
wedge.
But against the three figures approaching, the formation looked like a toothpick fence
against a tidal wave.
The Ebon-Guard did not run. They did not need to. Each step they took cracked the frozen
shale beneath their boots, not from physical weight, but from the sheer gravitational
pressure of their 5,000-count Ledgers. The air around them was black, a swirling vortex of
ash and screaming whispers—the spiritual residue of five thousand lives harvested with cold,
surgical precision.
"Steady!" Valerius roared, though the marrow in his bones felt like ice. "Thorne, the archers!
Use the Sunder-tipped bolts! Aim for the joints in the bone-plate!""Loose!" Thorne screamed.
Twelve bolts, tipped with rare crystals designed to shatter Ledger-shields, hissed through
the air. In any other battle, these would have pierced a knight's plate like parchment.
The lead Ebon-Guard didn't even raise his shield. He simply tilted his head. The black mist
around him intensified. As the bolts entered his "Vortex Zone," they didn't hit; they
decelerated. The kinetic energy was literally sucked out of the wood and metal, absorbed
into the guard's count. The bolts clattered to the ground, harmless as autumn leaves.
"Gods help us," Kaelen whispered, his violet aura flickering with primitive terror. "They aren't
just warriors. They're black holes."
The first Ebon-Guard reached the line. He swung a flail made of human vertebrae, the
morning star at the end glowing with a sickly, necrotic purple light.
BOOM.
The impact didn't just hit the shields of the front-line loyalists; it shattered the ground they
stood on. Three men were vaporized instantly—not killed by the blow, but erased as their own
small Ledgers were violently ripped from their bodies and inhaled by the flail.
Valerius dived into the fray. He was a streak of amber lightning, his blades singing. He knew
he couldn't win a clash of strength. He had to use the one thing a 5,000-count monster
lacked: the agility of a man who still felt the wind. He slid beneath the second guard's swing,
his blade Sun-Shear biting into the back of the creature's knee.
A spark of gold met the black mist. The Ebon-Guard let out a sound like a grinding tectonic
plate—a low, rhythmic vibration of annoyance. He turned, his speed suddenly doubling as he
"burned" a hundred counts to enhance his reflexes.
"Kaelen! Help him!" Elara shouted, her staff glowing as she cast a shimmering ward over the
Prince.
Inside the spire, the silence was even more terrifying than the battle.
Archibald followed Vesperas deeper into the darkness. The floor was polished obsidian,
reflecting a sky that wasn't there. As they walked, Archibald felt the "68" in his chest—the
count he had taken from the kitchen knight and the Oakhaven chaos—start to boil.
"It hurts," Archibald wheezed, clutching his ribs. "It feels like... like there's a hook in my
heart pulling me toward the doors."
"That is the Debt, boy," Vesperas said, his sightless eyes staring into the void. "You think you
are lucky? You think the world just happens to save you? Look at the walls."
Vesperas struck a match, and a thousand candles ignited simultaneously.
The walls were covered in intricate, moving carvings. Archibald gasped. It was him. He saw
the scene in the kitchen—the knight's sword missing his neck by an inch. He saw the chimney
falling in the slums. He saw the avalanche on the pass.
But there was a detail he hadn't seen before.
In every carving, when "luck" saved Archibald, something else suffered. When the knight
missed Archibald, his blade struck a support beam that later collapsed on a family in the
cellar. When the chimney fell on Vorg the Butcher, it also crushed a small orphanage three
streets away that Archibald hadn't even known existed."Luck isn't created, Archibald," Vesperas said, his voice cold and clinical. "It is stolen. You
are a Void-Anchor. You subconsciously reach into the future and pull the best possible
outcome toward yourself. But for every 'good' outcome you take, the universe balances the
scale by dumping the 'bad' outcome on someone else."
Archibald stared at the carvings, horror dawning on him. He wasn't a hero. He wasn't even a
survivor. He was a parasite.
"Every time you 'tripped' and survived, someone died in your place," the Hermit continued.
"That is your 68-count. It isn't kills you made. It's the lives the world took to keep you alive.
You are a debt-collector for the Grave."
Archibald fell to his knees, tears stinging his eyes. The memory of the Princess Elara smiling
at him, thanking him for "saving" them, felt like a hot blade in his gut. He didn't want this. He
never wanted to be a monster.
"I don't want it," Archibald sobbed. "Take it back. Give the luck back to the world."
"You can't give it back," Vesperas said, kneeling beside him. "The only way to stop being a
parasite is to become a Master. You must stop reacting to the luck and start directing it. But
to do that, you must face the Backlash. You must endure the weight of every life that was
traded for yours."
Vesperas pulled a jagged dagger made of clear glass. "This is a Null-Blade. I am going to
open the seal in your chest. The 68 lives will rush back into your consciousness at once. If
your will is weak, you will become a 'Negative-Wraith'—a creature like the Shadow-Stalkers.
If your will is strong..."
"I'll be able to fight?" Archibald asked, his voice trembling.
"You will be able to do more than fight," Vesperas said. "You will be able to rewrite the
Ledger itself. But Archibald... the pain will be unlike anything a human was meant to bear.
Why do you want to be strong? Is it for the Prince? For the girl?"
Archibald thought of the villagers in Oakhaven. He thought of the Prince, who had seen
something in him when he was just a boy with a frying pan. But mostly, he thought of himself
—the boy who was tired of being the reason people died.
"I want to be strong," Archibald said, his eyes hardening, "so I can finally pay my own way."
Vesperas nodded. He plunged the glass dagger into Archibald's sternum.
Archibald didn't scream. He couldn't. His entire world turned white as the spiritual pressure
of the monastery's "Zero-Zone" rushed into his soul.
Back at the pass, the situation was catastrophic.
Captain Thorne lay in the snow, his arm shattered. Half of the loyalists were dead, their
counts absorbed by the Ebon-Guard, who were now glowing with an even more terrifying
intensity. Sir Kaelen was fighting like a man possessed, his violet aura bleeding out into the
wind, but he was being pushed back toward the monastery doors.
Valerius was the only one left standing between the lead Ebon-Guard and the spire. The
Prince was covered in blood—most of it his own. His left eye was swollen shut, and one of his
golden blades was snapped at the hilt.
The Ebon-Guard raised his bone-star flail for the final blow."The bloodline ends," the Guard rumbled, the sound vibrating through Valerius's very teeth.
"Not today," Valerius gasped, coughing up crimson. He prepared to burn his entire 500-
count in a suicidal explosion, hoping to at least take one of them with him.
Just as the flail began its descent, the basalt doors of the monastery didn't just open—they
vanished.
A wave of pure, colorless energy erupted from the spire. It wasn't the heat of a Ledger or the
cold of a Shadow-Stalker. It was a silent ripple that made the falling snow stop in mid-air.
A figure stepped out of the darkness.
It was Archibald. But he didn't look like a scullery boy anymore. His hair had turned the color
of ash, and his eyes were no longer brown—they were a swirling, deep silver, like a storm
trapped in glass. He wasn't carrying a sword. He wasn't carrying a pan.
He was carrying nothing but the weight of sixty-eight lives, and for the first time in history,
the "Luck" had an owner.
The lead Ebon-Guard paused, his 5,000-count aura flickering in confusion. He sensed a
'Zero.' But it was a Zero that felt like a mountain.
"You," the Ebon-Guard hissed, swinging the flail at Archibald.
Archibald didn't dodge. He didn't trip. He simply took a step forward.
The Ebon-Guard's flail, a weapon forged from the literal weight of five thousand souls,
whistled through the air with the sound of a falling star. It was a blow designed to shatter
mountains, let alone a boy.
Archibald didn't raise a hand. He didn't flinch. He simply stood in the center of the silent
ripple he had brought from the monastery.
When the necrotic iron of the flail entered Archibald's "Zero-Zone," the laws of the world
stopped applying. The momentum of the strike—the massive, magical kinetic energy granted
by the 5,000-count Ledger—simply vanished. The flail didn't hit a shield; it hit a vacuum. It
slowed to a crawl, the heavy spiked ball floating inches from Archibald's face as if it were
submerged in thick honey.
The Ebon-Guard's hollow, bone-masked face tilted in confusion. He pulled back on the chain,
but it was like trying to tug a rope embedded in dry concrete.
"Your count is high," Archibald said. His voice was no longer the high-pitched squeak of a
scullery boy. It was a hollow, layered resonance, as if sixty-eight people were speaking
through his throat at once. "But high numbers only matter if there is a world to count them
in."
Archibald took a step forward, his silver eyes locking onto the void within the Guard's helmet.
"You've taken five thousand lives," Archibald whispered. "I have sixty-eight debts to pay.
Let's see which weight is heavier."
Archibald reached out and touched the Guard's blackened bone breastplate. He didn't
punch; he just rested his palm against the center of the warrior's chest.
Suddenly, the "Luck" that had always protected Archibald inverted.
Instead of pulling a good outcome toward himself, Archibald pushed a "Bad Outcome" into
the Ebon-Guard. In the language of the Null-Master, it was called Probability Collapse. Everymicroscopic flaw in the Guard's armor, every tiny crack in the bone-plate, every rusted link in
the chain—all of them failed at the exact same microsecond.
CRACK.
The 5,000-count armor, designed to withstand a siege, disintegrated. The bone-star flail
shattered into a thousand shards of calcium. The Ebon-Guard let out a sound of pure agony—
not a physical scream, but the collective shriek of the five thousand souls inside his Ledger
suddenly being exposed to the vacuum of Archibald's Null-state.
The black mist that composed the Guard's body began to leak out, swirling into the gray sky
like smoke in a gale. The warrior stumbled back, his physical form flickering.
"The... the Void..." the Guard hissed, his voice fading. "The King... must know..."
Before he could finish, Archibald closed his hand into a fist. The air around the Guard
imploded. There was no explosion, just a silent, violent compression of space. When the air
rushed back in, the Ebon-Guard was gone. Not dead—erased.
Archibald stood still, his chest heaving. The silver in his eyes dimmed slightly, and a trickle of
blood ran from his nose.
The other two Ebon-Guards, witnessing the impossible erasure of their captain, did
something they hadn't done in a century. They hesitated. They looked at the boy, then at the
blind Hermit standing in the doorway of the monastery.
"The boy is a Null!" one of the Guards shouted, his voice metallic with fear. "Withdraw! To the
Capital! The Chancellor must be warned!"
They didn't wait for a counter-attack. They turned and blurred into the mountain fog, their
massive counts allowing them to move with a speed that defied the eye.
The silence returned to the Grey Peaks, but it was a broken, jagged silence.
Valerius slumped against a rock, his broken golden sword clattering to the ground. He stared
at Archibald, his gaze shifting from the boy's ash-white hair to his silver eyes. The Prince
looked like he was seeing a ghost.
"Archibald?" Valerius gasped, his voice barely a whisper.
Archibald turned. The colorless aura retreated, snapping back into his skin like a whipped
cord. The silver in his eyes vanished, replaced by the familiar, tired brown, but the ash-white
hair remained—a permanent scar of the ritual.
He tried to speak, but his legs gave way. He collapsed into the violet snow, gasping for air.
Princess Elara was the first to reach him. She skidded through the slush, pulling his head into
her lap. "Archibald! Look at me. Breathe. Just breathe."
"I... I felt them," Archibald wheezed, his voice returning to its normal, shaky tone. "The sixty-
eight. I felt the orphans. I felt the families. Every time I survived... they paid. I have to pay
them back, Highness. I have to..."
"Shh," Elara whispered, her own eyes brimming with tears. She looked at his hand—the violet
mark was gone, replaced by a faint, white scar in the shape of a broken circle. "You saved us.
You didn't steal that. You gave it."
Sir Kaelen approached slowly, his violet aura flickering like a dying candle. He looked at the
spot where the Ebon-Guard had been erased. His face wasn't filled with gratitude; it wastwisted in a complex knot of fear, jealousy, and a deep, gnawing insecurity.
"What did you do to him?" Kaelen demanded, his hand trembling on his sword hilt. "That
wasn't combat. That wasn't the Ledger. That was... heresy."
"It was the Truth, Sir Knight," the Hermit, Vesperas, said as he walked toward them. His blind
eyes seemed to pierce right through Kaelen. "The Ledger is a lie. It is a ladder built on the
corpses of the weak. The boy has simply stepped off the ladder."
Vesperas looked at Valerius. "Prince, your path is clear. You have your army. You have your
strategist. And now, you have your Void-Anchor. But know this: Malakor now knows what the
boy is. He will not send soldiers next time. He will send the Siphoners—men who have spent
their lives learning how to eat the Void."
Valerius stood up, using a rock to steady himself. He looked at his remaining twenty-two
men. They were battered, bleeding, and half-frozen. But as they looked at Archibald, their
eyes weren't filled with the pity they once felt for a scullery boy. They were filled with a
terrifying, desperate hope.
"We move down the mountain," Valerius commanded. "We head for the Southern Reach. If
Draksis has invaded, we don't fight them—we recruit the survivors. We build our count, and
we prepare for the Capital."
The Prince walked over to Archibald. He didn't offer a hand to help him up; instead, he knelt
so he was at eye level with the boy.
"Archibald," Valerius said, his voice solemn. "From this moment on, you are no longer a
servant of the Royal House. You are a Seeker of the Unbound. You walk beside me, not
behind me. Do you understand?"
Archibald looked at the Prince, then at Elara. He felt the weight in his chest—the 68 lives. It
was no longer a heat; it was a cold, steady purpose.
"I understand, My Lord," Archibald said.
As the sun dipped below the jagged horizon, the small group began the long trek down from
the Grey Peaks. They were a broken army, but they were no longer just fleeing. They were a
weapon, sharpened by the frost and tempered by the void.
High above them, on a peak that should have been empty, a single figure watched them
descend. He was dressed in the silver and blue of the Kingdom of Draksis, a long-range far-
glass held to his eye.
"The Null has awakened," the scout whispered into a small, glowing communication crystal.
"The Prince has found the Anchor. Tell the High King... the plan must be accelerated.
Aethelgard is no longer just a prize. It is a threat."
In the distance, the sky over the Capital glowed a sickly, necrotic red. The war for the Ledger
had only just begun.