Sitting on the floor of his room with eyes closed, Kael outwardly looked as though he were simply resting after a hard day. His breathing was steady, his body relaxed—yet behind that stillness, a fire raged in his mind.

  Before his inner sight, the pages of the Canon of Primordial Void flared to life—one after another, surrounding him on all sides. They shimmered in the darkness of his inner world, revealing countless texts.

  Most of them had little to do with practical exercises. No—these were writings of another kind, filled with philosophical reflections, deep and heavy. It was as though the author had left behind fragments of his own meditations, conclusions he had reached through years of practice and a harsh life.

  Kael frowned as he read lines that carried a strange, almost hypnotic calm.

  “There’s much here about the nature of the Primordial Void,” he noted inwardly. “Its philosophy, how it interacts with the world, and… about the author’s soul form—the Formless Void. Interesting…”

  Some lines glowed brighter, tugging at his focus. Kael fixed on one page and read:

  “I am cursed and blessed at once. My soul form made the path unbearably long, yet in that I found truth. I could not walk another’s canon, could not bear another’s patterns of magic—all that fell into my hands was useless. Each step forward ended in a dead end, but it was not in vain.”

  “But when I found the ancient ruins where they bowed before the Void, I saw another truth: my soul is not crippled, but faceless—and thus can contain all. The curse became a blessing: I can bind myself to any spirit. In each of them I allow a fullness to unfold that they lack within ordinary bonds.”

  “Thus was born the idea of a Canon that seeks no compromise. It reveals the spirits’ potential in its entirety, letting them become anything. The Canon grows from the Primordial Void itself—where there is no form, and thus anything is possible.”

  Reading this, Kael scowled, the corners of his mouth twitching as if he were suppressing irritation.

  “Such a florid, muddled style of writing…” he grumbled inwardly.

  He read the lines again, searching for layers of meaning.

  “As for his soul, he’s right,” Kael continued in thought. “The Form of Soul must match the spirit, otherwise the contract cannot be sealed. The Formless Void, though… it’s an extremely rare and inconvenient form. Almost no magic canons suit it. But the universe always balances weaknesses with some compensation.”

  He pressed his eyes shut tighter, and his memory cast up dozens of pages from the Divine Library, things he had once read in captivity.

  “My soul can contain any spirit,” he noted. “And it won’t restrict their power. On the contrary, I’ll be able to unlock the full potential of any spirit. But there’s a price—my own mana will always be slightly weaker than other mages’…”

  A slow smile spread across Kael’s face. His eyes gleamed with lively interest.

  “So… I need to think about who would suit me best as my first spirit…” Possible candidates were already flickering through his mind.

  But then he shook his head sharply, as though casting off useless fantasies.

  “Enough—I need to focus. I’m slipping back into bad habits, straying from the main research,” he muttered aloud, forcing his attention back to the pages.

  At once, his mental projection cleared away all distractions. Only the pages with the author’s handwritten notes remained. Now he wanted to learn about the man himself—the mage who had created the Canon.

  Kael focused, and the lines flared before his eyes on their own. The very first words that caught his gaze made him freeze:

  “They call us Shards. As if we were pieces of broken glass. But we are beings whose souls at birth fused with fragments of the Primordial God’s soul. That is why they fear us! They fear our innate powers, which will fully awaken when we become Gods!”

  Kael’s brows knit at once, and a sharp wave of distrust rose in his chest.

  “I know there are other Shards in the universe… And that each one, like me, carries a unique innate ability,” he thought calmly.

  In his mind, he summoned a projection of old memories. That cold, mocking voice surfaced—the words of the God of Knowledge and Madness spoken in the Divine Library.

  “You should be grateful to me, Kael…”

  Kael inhaled deeply, continuing silently:

  “My Master always said Shards disrupt the balance of the universe. That some Gods prefer not to use us… but simply kill us before we grow.”

  He tapped his knee without opening his eyes and went on in thought:

  “Everything I know, everything I’ve read… it’s all based on the idea that the Primordial God is only a myth. A symbol, not a real being. How true are the author’s words?”

  He mentally turned to the next page, and at once his gaze caught on a note that seemed to tremble, barely holding back from vanishing. The words flickered unevenly, as though the memory of them resisted:

  “My Shard ability—Negation—is truly mighty. Once I could erase wounds and memories, but I never thought I could use it to make the Gods believe in my death…”

  Just below, in smaller, hastier script, another line appeared:

  “I must abandon my current spirit and attempt to form a bond with the Spirit of Time and Space. Next time the Gods will be ready. And if my Negation fails, that spirit can turn time back and grant me another chance.”

  Kael stilled, imagination sparking. The word Negation pierced his mind, echoing within. Before his inner vision rose an image: Gods, certain of their victory, standing over a fallen foe…

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  But his thoughts stayed clear, analyzing what he’d read.

  “This note was written before he contracted the Spirit of Time," Kael observed, narrowing his eyes. "So he fought the Gods at least twice. The first time he survived and fooled them. But the second…”

  He exhaled softly, his gaze darkening.

  “The second—he fell.”

  Kael continued flipping through the projected pages, until his eyes landed on lines scrawled with a heavy hand, as though the writer was torn between grief and rage:

  “I saw how the Gods hunt those like me. Or set us against one another. Some cut us open to extract the shard. Others keep us in cages like rare beasts. Still others… collect us. They believe they can awaken the Primordial God from us. Arrogant bastards.”

  Kael’s gaze grew grim, his thoughts swirling like a storm.

  “The way the author of this Canon speaks of Shards… it’s unusual. In the Divine Library, I never saw anything like this. And this is the second time he mentions the Primordial God…”

  A pang stirred inside, as if someone had gripped his heart.

  “Could it be that the God of Knowledge and Madness deliberately hid this knowledge from me?”

  That thought sent a chill over him—an unpleasant discomfort, a flicker of fear.

  “Even though I know much… I can’t be sure of everything,” he muttered inwardly. “It seems my Master truly limited me in some information. And who knows how much else I’ve been deliberately cut off from…”

  His fingers twitched slightly on his knees, and a shadow of tension crossed his eyes.

  “This is bad… But at my level, not critical.”

  Kael shook his head, as if brushing off excess worries, and thought:

  “There’s no point in dwelling on knowledge of this scale right now. I need to focus on my own development. I’m still just a teenager, far from the Gods. When I have enough strength and money, I’ll craft myself a concealment amulet.”

  His gaze returned to the pages, and he kept reading. After several minutes, a torn page rose before his eyes. The words came in jagged fragments, as though written by a hand barely able to hold a pen, and part of the lines blurred, as if time itself had eaten them away:

  “I succeeded. I became a God. But my body is cracking like a clay vessel. I am broken, incomplete. I exist in defiance. It seems these are the consequences…”

  The text broke off abruptly, leaving only dirty stains where letters should have been. Just below, in a line that looked trembling and hurried, came the next entry:

  “I managed to form a contract with a Divine Spirit. But I am not sure… if victory is possible…”

  A shiver ran down Kael’s spine. Even now, after an unknown span of time, those words carried such weight it felt as though they pressed directly upon his chest.

  “Well then… it seems his fate was no better than mine…”

  Kael continued flipping through the projections, studying the scattered lines. Some pages were filled with heavy philosophical musings, others with fragments of memory, still others read like delirium. The chronology was lost; certain notes seemed torn from different years and events, and to piece them into a whole picture was nearly impossible.

  At some point Kael exhaled in frustration, rose from the floor, and moved to his desk. With a swift but careful motion, he pulled out fresh sheets and an inkwell.

  “If order is hidden—I’ll create it myself,” he muttered.

  The first phrase landed on the paper, then the second, then the third… Lines from the projections passed one by one into reality. The sheets filled with a fine, steady hand. Phrases about the Void intermingled with confessions of hatred, elsewhere pain and despair broke through, and next to them suddenly appeared vivid, concrete descriptions of memories.

  “He too was a Shard… and his soul form was also the Formless Void,” Kael noted inwardly, his pen moving quickly. “There is too much that binds us. And at times it feels as though it’s no accident that I was the one to receive the Canon of Primordial Void. Is this fate?”

  ? ? ?

  Time dragged viscously, like tar. Several dozen filled sheets already lay on the table, and Kael did not stop working. The candle at his side burned down; its wick crackled, each pop pulling him from the concentrated flow. He would irritably straighten the stub, shielding the wavering light with his hand, as if afraid to lose even a moment or a single word of what the Canon’s author had left.

  Kael worked methodically, almost obsessively. Sheets were shifted from place to place; in some he crossed out whole sentences, then rewrote them in another order. On one page he tried to assemble a chain of events, on another he jotted down discrete facts about the Canon’s author, piecing together a fragile, incomplete portrait.

  The more he compared, the clearer the picture became. Yet that clarity was deceptive—as if the fog only cleared to reveal new voids.

  “Tough...” he thought, bending over the paper. “Almost nothing is known of his past. From the notes I can only guess at the final chapters of his life. But one thing is clear—he was human too…”

  Night quietly slid past midnight. The room was silent except for the candle’s crackle and the scratch of his pen. Kael’s face had hollowed from strain, sweat stood on his temples, but ice-cold, stubborn focus burned in his amber eyes.

  At some point he finally set the pen down, rubbed the bridge of his nose tiredly, and stared at the collected pages. For a while he simply looked at them, then nodded, as if admitting to himself:

  “Now the picture begins to make sense… or at least to take shape.”

  His voice was hoarse, weary, but threaded with satisfaction. He leaned back in his chair, tipped his head, and stared at the ceiling. The words slipped from his lips as if sealing the outcome of his work:

  “His name was Morvein… or the Void Hermit. He was like me—a Shard. His soul form—the Formless Void. His ability—Negation, the power to affect reality on a local scale.”

  He continued, his voice almost detached, as if recounting another man’s fate while trying it on for himself:

  “Most likely, when he neared the Divine threshold, the Gods decided to kill him. Judging by Morvein’s words, none of the Shards are permitted to possess such power and are destroyed at the boundary of Divinity. But thanks to his innate ability he managed to fool them, to feign death. And only afterwards, in secret, he did break through to a new level.”

  Kael clenched his fists; his expression darkened.

  “But his Divinity was broken. Wounds would not heal, the body cracked, the mind crumbled…”

  He leaned forward slightly; the flickering candlelight trembled in his amber eyes.

  “According to the notes, written in a crooked, deathbed hand…” he muttered with a hint of disbelief, “even in that state he managed to kill as many as five Gods.”

  The words hung in the air. Kael fell silent, and an oppressive quiet settled in the room. Only the candle crackled, bathing the walls in golden light.

  Kael passed his hand over the written sheets as if gathering their weight into his palm. A crooked grin twitched his lips:

  “Still too blurred. And nothing is known about who he was before all these events. Such a figure could not fail to leave a mark on history. Perhaps in time I’ll learn more about him.”

  He leaned back, watching the candle flame.

  “But, at the very least… now I know to whom I owe my life.”

  Rising, Kael slowly straightened his back and, bowing his head, made a respectful salute toward the scattered pages.

  “With the Canon of Primordial Void you reached the level of Gods,” he said gratefully, and a quiet resolve rang in his voice. “Which means… earlier I did not even realize the level of the magic canon that fell into my hands.”

  He raised his gaze. His amber eyes glittered in the dark like a cold flame. Kael pressed his palm to his chest and spoke firmly:

  “Thank you, Void Hermit. Though you could not turn back time—I did.”

  He paused a moment, letting the words echo in his own soul, then went on, harder now, a shadow of a grim vow in his voice:

  “I don’t know what your history was. But I too have scores to settle with the Gods. And if fate allows… I will take vengeance not only for myself but for you as well!”

  Kael fell silent again, showing respect to the dead Void Hermit. Then he produced the mana elixir, a satisfied smile spreading across his face.

  “And now… it’s time to cultivate my mana core!”