THE KING OF NOTHING

  Chapter I: The Echo of Silence

  The sky had forgotten blue. It had misplaced it in some fold of time, leaving in its place a golden, static, and oppressive agony.

  It wasn’t sunset. It was its mummified corpse, nailed to the western horizon forever. The sun, a vast and pallid ulcer, hung low, strengthless, bleeding a coppery light that stained the world in ochre and rust. Under that sickly brightness, shadows did not dance; they lay stretched, black and ravenous, like scars the earth couldn’t close. A total silence, dense as liquid lead, smothered every sound. No birds sang. No wind whispered. Only the weight of time, halted.

  On the edge of a cliff of black stone, polished by eons of that false twilight, a figure remained seated.

  He was a silhouette of tatters and oblivion. His clothes, black as a torn-off piece of night, didn’t reflect the light; they devoured it. The fabric, worn thin beyond any memory, only stirred when a sigh of frigid air, laden with the dust of dead mountains, deigned to pass.

  His skin held the pallor of marble in a crypt. Cold, smooth, without the slightest blush of life. In the serene oval of his face, two wide-open eyes broke the monotony: they were a deep, absorbed green, the green of a forest lake in its quietest hour. They didn’t observe the landscape; they absorbed it, with the glacial calm of one who has seen continents born and stars extinguished.

  The man’s lips parted in a near-imperceptible movement.

  —...—It wasn’t a sound. It was the ghost of one.

  He turned his head with a ritual slowness toward his right. There was nothing there. Only still air and the carmine light of the dying sun.

  But for him, the space was occupied.

  He saw her with a clarity that traversed the eons: a woman made of solidified moonlight. Her skin shone with the softness of crystal under a full moon, and her hair was a cascade of liquid silver that defied, by its mere brilliance, the dominion of the blood-red sky. She gazed at the same motionless horizon. She did not smile. There was only a slight, infinitely subtle tension at the corner of her pale lips. A quiet satisfaction, a secret shared only with him.

  The man contemplated her. In that halted world, she was his only calendar, his only measure of something that was no longer time.

  —Everything remains just as still —he whispered. His voice was deep, rough from disuse, lacking all urgency. A whisper that seemed to consume what little sound there was in the air—. This light… still lacks the decency to go out.

  The woman of light in his mind did not respond. She kept her gaze fixed on the distance, a beacon of cold beauty in their shared solitude.

  He turned his gaze forward. Kilometers away, the walls of a citadel rose, black and jagged against the coppery glare. Small columns of smoke rose straight and weak, the last death rattles of life trying to endure in the stillness.

  —Let’s see what they’ve done with the time I left them —he said, in a flat tone. There was no judgment, no hatred, no expectation. Only the mild, almost botanical curiosity of one observing the slow withering of forgotten flowers.

  He stood up. It was a fluid, natural movement that didn’t shatter the silence but rather merged with it. An elongated, unnatural shadow etched itself against the red ulcer of the horizon.

  He took a step forward, toward the abyss.

  Gravity took him gently, like an old acquaintance. He let himself fall, vanishing into the golden haze enveloping the valley, without a sound, without a ripple. The cliff was left empty, as if no one had been there for centuries.

  Days later. 4th Battalion Recruit Camp. Northern Frontier.

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  Mud was the absolute sovereign, the deity and the executioner of that place.

  A thick, stinking, and cold mixture that sucked boots up to the knee and spat an obscene slurp with every step one managed to wrench free. It smelled of rotten earth, sour sweat, and hopelessness.

  —One, two! One, two! Move that ass, you’re not ladies at a tea party! —Instructor Rolk’s shout tore through the damp air. He was a man as wide as a barrel, with a scar that split his nose in two and a voice that could splinter rock.

  Thirty recruits, turned into a single panting, filthy mass, ran around the camp’s perimeter carrying sacks of sand on their shoulders. The sacks weighed like corpses.

  Among them, one lagged behind. Not a little. Completely.

  Vael ran with a posture that was an insult to anatomy. Hunched, as if the sack held the weight of ancestral guilt, he dragged his large, clumsy feet. His eyes were squinted, almost closed, and on his face was etched a foolish, perpetual smile, as if all this were a funny misunderstanding.

  —Come on, come on! —he encouraged himself in a panting whisper, but his feet, in an act of coordinated betrayal, tangled in a twisted root protruding from the mud.

  The sack flew in a pathetic arc. Vael followed its trajectory, landing face-first in a puddle of black sludge with a splash so loud it silenced the instructor’s shouts for a second.

  The laughter of the other recruits was immediate, a chorus of scorn and relief that it wasn’t them.

  —Look at the scarecrow! —roared Kaelen, from the front of the group. He was a broad-shouldered youth with a square jaw and eyes that shone with simple cruelty—. Hey, Vael! The enemy’s ahead, not on the ground! You giving up already?

  Vael stood up quickly, a specter of black mud. He didn’t seem angry or humiliated. He shook his face, spitting out muck, and a nervous laugh bubbled from his lips.

  —Sorry! —he exclaimed, his voice light and out of place—. I think the ground’s fond of me today. It’s very persistent!

  He picked up the sack, which now weighed double soaked, and broke into a run to catch up with the group with that ungainly trot that seemed to defy the laws of gravity and dignity at once.

  Training Yard. Afternoon.

  The pale sun, filtered through a perpetual haze, barely warmed their bones when the instructor ordered the change.

  —Enough running, dogs! I want to see if you can hold something sharper than a spoon! —bellowed Rolk—. Partners! Practice weapons! And if you break your partner’s bone, it’s your problem!

  The sound of wood hitting wood filled the air, a rhythmic, dull clack-clack-clack. The recruits wielded heavy, splintered oak swords.

  Vael held his as if it were a venomous snake. He looked at it with genuine perplexity, weighing it, turning it, as if trying to decipher its purpose.

  —On guard, useless —Kaelen growled, planting himself in front of him. The hulk grinned, slapping his own practice sword against his palm with dry thwacks—. I’m gonna teach you what real pain feels like. Maybe then you’ll learn to keep your feet still.

  Vael nodded, too fast, obedient as a frightened dog.

  —Right, right. Guard… —he murmured, raising the sword so clumsily he left his entire left side open, a perfect target.

  Kaelen didn’t wait. He lunged with a low, sideways chop, aiming for Vael’s skinny ribs. It wasn’t a practice blow; it carried the intent to leave a mark.

  Anyone else would have yelled, jumped back, tried to block. Vael simply… tripped.

  His right foot slipped on the same oily mud an instant before impact. His body tilted back at a strange, almost comical angle, and Kaelen’s sword whistled past a millimeter from his nose, cutting only air.

  Vael sat down hard on his backside in the mud. Again.

  —Whoa! —he exclaimed, blinking—. That sounded fast. You almost got me.

  Kaelen snorted, frustration reddening his neck. Missing such an easy shot in front of everyone was a humiliation.

  —Stop falling and fight, damn you! —he shouted, raising the sword for a descending strike aimed at the shoulder.

  —Kaelen, enough!

  A wooden sword intercepted the blow with a dry crack. Irina had stepped between them, pushing Kaelen back with a fluid movement that spoke of technique, not brute force.

  —It’s supposed to be combat practice, not an execution —she said, her blue eyes gleaming like chips of ice—. If you want to hit something that doesn’t fight back, go to the woods and hit a tree. It’ll make you more useful.

  Kaelen glared daggers at her, spitting on the ground at her feet.

  —Always protecting the mascot, Irina. We’ll see what you do when we’re out there and he’s dead weight. A drag that’ll pull you straight to hell.

  He stalked off to find another partner, his wounded pride seeking an easier victim. Irina turned to Vael, who was still sitting in the mud, looking at his wooden sword with curiosity, as if it were a mysterious artifact.

  Irina offered him her hand. It wasn’t a gentle gesture; it was an order.

  —Get up.

  Vael took her hand, calloused and strong, and pulled himself up. His fingers, long and pale, seemed fragile against hers.

  —Thanks, Irina. Kaelen’s very… energetic, huh?

  —Kaelen’s a muscle-brained idiot, and you’re going to get yourself killed on the first patrol —she reprimanded him, letting out a sigh that spoke of a weariness deeper than the physical—. Look how you’re holding the sword. It’s ridiculous. Your fingers are loose, like you’re afraid of hurting it.

  Irina positioned herself beside him. She took his hands firmly, correcting his stance. Her movements were practical, impersonal.

  —Squeeze here, on the pommel. Until your knuckles hurt. And feet shoulder-width apart. Like this. —She gently nudged his feet into place—. If you’re pushed, you don’t fall. You have a base.

  Vael let himself be manipulated like a mannequin. He did as she said, spreading his legs and raising his elbows, adopting a pose that seemed lifted from a manual, rigid and awkward.

  —Like this? —he asked, that innocent smile never fading—. I feel a bit like a duck. Stiff.

  —You’re supposed to be firm, not comfortable —Irina looked into his eyes, searching for some spark of understanding, of concentration, and finding none—. Vael, we leave tomorrow. This isn’t a game. If a Shade gets you… you won’t have time to trip. It’ll tear you apart.

  Vael held the stance for a second, serious. Then, he lowered the sword and scratched the back of his neck, relaxing his whole body at once, like a ragdoll whose strings are cut.

  —I’ll try, Irina. I swear. But these things are heavy. —He shook the wooden sword—. I think I prefer running. At least if I trip, I just get dirty.

  Irina shook her head, giving up for the moment. The instructor’s whistle blew for rest.

  —You’re a lost cause —she murmured, almost to herself, before turning and walking toward the barracks.

  Vael lingered for a moment, alone in the muddy yard. He held the wooden sword. He looked at it. It was a poorly carved piece of oak, heavy for a human, fragile as a twig against anything from the North.

  He let it go. Let it fall into the mud with a dull, final thud.

  Then, with his foolish smile back in place, he ran after Irina, splashing noisily, as if the world were nothing but a big, fun puddle to move through.