Beneath the Academy and beyond the public archives of Myrian, there were tunnels older than memory—catacombs twisted into the ribs of the earth like roots from a dying god.
Most thought they sealed.Most forgot they even existed.
But the forgotten—like Aelric—have a way of finding the places made for them.
It began with a name.
Not his own this time.
But one scrawled in jagged ink inside the Codex:Kaemir the Hollow-Blooded.
An exile. A warlock.A mage who had walked beyond the Veil and returned mad… or enlightened.He had vanished beneath Myrian nearly four centuries ago, leaving behind a trail of spells no one dared use—and theories so radical they were banned across all Six Dominions.
Aelric was supposed to ignore him.
Instead, he followed his shadow.
The entrance to the catacombs wasn't locked. That was the first warning.No arcane barriers. No sentinel wards. Just a rusted iron grate tucked behind a rotting alchemy shed near the outer gardens of the Academy.
He pried it open with a whisper from the Codex—one that cracked the hinges like bone.
Stale air poured out.It smelled of old blood, wet stone, and something older.
Aelric lit a torch, though he didn't need it. The Codex hummed faintly in his satchel, its blood-runes warming against his ribs.
"Guide me," he whispered.
Not to the Codex.
To whatever it feared.
The catacombs sloped downward in spirals—hallways carved by claw or tool, it was hard to tell. The walls were marked with glyphs, ancient and half-erased. Most were warnings. Some, curses. One simply said:
ALL WHO ENTER MUST UNBECOME.
He kept going.
Past ossuaries filled with broken bones and half-melted runes.
Past old dormitories hollowed into the rock, where apprentice mages had once been buried alive as part of their pact rituals.
He found a cracked mirror mounted to a wall, blackened with age. His reflection didn't follow his movement.
That should've stopped him.
It didn't.
Because something else was calling.
It was nearly dawn when he reached the chamber.
A dome of stone, circular and silent, where the air felt thicker.
In the centre stood a slab.Rough. Unmarked at first glance.
But when Aelric stepped forward—
The Codex pulsed.
And the symbols rose.
Not ink. Not etchings.
They shimmered out of the stone like mist drawn from memory. Thousands of them. Writing not made for human eyes—script from a time before the leylines were tamed.
And in the centre of the slab was a handprint.
Smaller than his. Not human. But close.
Aelric didn't hesitate.
He pressed his palm into the mark.
The slab breathed.
And the whispers began.
Not voices. Not truly.
Echoes.
Half-thoughts. Broken fragments of will pressed between time.
"He is unmade.""The Codex turns again.""Wake the sleeper—wake the heir.""Null is the seed. Void is the fruit.""Aelric…"
He staggered back.
But the slab didn't stop. The symbols writhed now, burning with a dull violet glow. The room was shaking—but silently, as though sound itself had been muted.
The whispers grew louder.
He grabbed the Codex.
"What is this?!" he shouted.
"The Anchor," the book answered, opening itself."One of three. Buried beneath the old capitals. This is where they sealed the first truth."
"What truth?"
"That mana was not given.It was stolen."
Aelric dropped to his knees.
He saw flashes behind his eyes.
A world before the Six Dominions.
A time when power did not belong to bloodlines or spells, but to intention—when every being could shape reality with thought alone. The Echo Age, it was called.
Then the Shattering happened.
The Dominion Kings severed that power.
They fractured the ley lines. Bottled magic into blood. Bound it to privilege. Erased every trace of the original truth.
And those who resisted?
They were made Null.
Not because they had no magic.
But because they had too much—unfiltered, wild, ungoverned.
They were born sovereigns.
The slab glowed hotter.
Rings of runes encircled Aelric, lifting him into the air.
The whispers turned to screams.
He saw faces. Names. Lives that weren't his but somehow were.
A boy with silver eyes summoning flame without words.
A girl who bent time backwards to save her dying mother.
A child sealed in a tomb, branded Nullborn, even as her veins sang with lightning.
They were all his.
Or part of him.
When the energy finally faded, Aelric collapsed onto the stone floor.
His torch was long gone.
But his eyes glowed faintly in the dark now.
And the slab?
It was empty.
The handprint went.
The runes dissolved.
As if it had passed something on to him—something living.
The Codex whispered:
"The Anchor has been broken.The first gate is open.They will come now."
Aelric rose, unsteady.
He felt… wrong.
But also right.
His body hummed with power, but it wasn't mana. It didn't bend to incantation or wand.
It bent to will.
His fingers twitched. Stone around him cracked.
He breathed—and for a moment, the shadows moved with him.
He was still Nullborn.
But now he knew what that meant.
Not cursed.
Not weak.
Untethered.
He returned to the surface as dawn painted the Academy towers in pale fire.
No one noticed him slip through the side gate.
No one saw the violet light fade from his hands.
But from that day on, the world would begin to remember.
And the name Aelric—once an echo—would become a roar.