Chapter 46 — Where Silence Bleeds
Rowan woke without breath.
He wasn't sure when it happened—whether his eyes opened or if his mind simply wrenched itself back into awareness—but suddenly, he was there.
Floating.
Standing.
Falling upward?
He couldn't tell.
The world around him was… everything.
And nothing.
Color bled across the horizon in shades no human tongue could name. Not just reds and blues and greens, but hues that trembled, breathed, whispered. He turned his head and the sky—or what he thought was sky—melted into a fluid wall of writhing color. Shapes formed, then dissolved, like thoughts left unfinished.
He was both above a landscape and buried inside it.
The ground pulsed faintly beneath his feet, though he floated inches above it. It was solid, yet had no texture—no temperature. A sensation more than a surface. It rippled with every heartbeat, although he wasn't sure if the heartbeat was his.
The horizon didn't end. Instead, it curved in on itself, folding and blooming in endless directions. Trees grew sideways and upside-down, fractals of bark splitting into spirals and dying in an instant. Vast mountains of shimmering ice exploded into flocks of black birds before reassembling into glass palaces that wept glowing vines.
Every time he blinked, the world shifted.
Not slightly—completely.
One moment, the sky was a dome of mirrored ocean. The next, it was a ceiling of teeth, gently grinding like a mouth too tired to chew. Beneath his floating feet, cities grew and died in seconds. Towers reached up only to melt into rivers that sang in fractured voices.
It was beautiful.
And horrifying.
And wrong.
He turned in place, slowly, his breath catching as time itself pulled and warped. Sometimes his own thoughts sped past him. Other times, they arrived late, trailing behind like echoes with no source. His limbs didn't feel like limbs. His body didn't feel like a body.
The air—if it was air—was heavy with meaning. Not sound. Not scent. Just… weight.
Emotional. Metaphysical.
Existential.
He staggered forward.
Or maybe backward.
The motion made no difference. Direction had become an opinion.
Still, he walked.
Each step sent ripples of light across the world. The ground—so bright and smooth it looked polished by dreams—flared underfoot with symbols he couldn't read. They didn't stay. Just flickered. Whispers of a language older than breath.
He felt them in his teeth.
In his blood.
In the deep pit behind his sternum, where fear had long since died and been replaced by something quieter, colder.
Rowan kept moving until the air thickened—until it shivered, and something shifted inside him.
The world paused.
Just for a second.
Everything held its breath.
And then—
The System appeared.
Not with light or sound.
With knowing.
A cold clarity slid into his mind, wrapping his thoughts like silk soaked in frost. The world dimmed around him, falling into shadow, and something burned into the center of his being—words etched in truths no one was meant to carry.
They carved themselves inside him like scars.
Like a brand that did not need fire.
---
Class: Nameless Bound
Rank: Awakened (I)
> "A shard of silence. A wound in the world. Those marked by the Nameless One do not obey fate — they unravel it."
You are bound to a forbidden legacy, powers born from contact with the incomprehensible entity beneath the Rift. Your abilities manifest as anomalies beyond the Veil's control.
---
Threads of the Unspoken
"Where language dies, threads are woven. They carry intent, not words — and purpose, not mercy."
Function: Manipulate invisible threads to anchor to objects, emotions, or people for subtle influence.
---
Fracture of Self
"To survive what cannot be faced, one must fracture. To fracture is to forget which part was real."
Function: Split pieces of your soul into temporary, unstable copies to act independently.
---
Mask of the Forgotten
"Wearing memory like skin, he becomes what he remembers. But the mask remembers him too."
Function: Temporarily adopt partial aspects of emotionally entangled individuals (voice, mannerisms, skills).
---
Sight Beyond Veils (Passive)
"Falsehoods melt before the Nameless gaze. What is hidden will bleed through."
Function: Passively perceive illusions, glamours, false timeflows, and metaphysical lies.
---
Whisper of the Nameless
"Silence is not absence — it is presence beyond sound, a voice that speaks only to the mind."
Function: Send inaudible psychic whispers within a limited radius, silently communicating with one mind at a time.
---
Veil of the Silent Maw
"A void of silence that swallows all noise — a hunger that suffocates sound and isolates the wielder in stillness."
Function: Generate an aura nullifying sound within a small radius, for stealth or sensory disorientation.
---
He felt the words settle deep into him, like chains and wings all at once. They didn't feel like blessings. They didn't feel like tools.
They felt like truth.
And that was worse.
His knees buckled.
He dropped to the not-ground, hands sinking through the surface before meeting something firm. Like glass coated in oil. The air folded in on itself, the stars above bent into strange glyphs, and something laughed without laughing.
He stared at the list burned into his vision, each word soaking into his bones like venom that whispered promises he didn't understand.
These weren't normal Bound powers.
They weren't meant to exist inside the Trial.
He wasn't supposed to have this.
You only got your Class after surviving.
That was the law. The one constant everyone believed. Once you completed the Trial—if you completed it—you returned to your body. Then came the Marking. The Crucible. The Class.
Not this.
Never this.
The world around him shook.
The sky cracked into a thousand mirrored pieces, each reflecting his face—a hundred Rowans, all watching him with hollow, sunken eyes. Some smiled. Some wept. One bled from the mouth.
He pressed his hands to his head.
Too much.
Too much.
The silence around him screamed.
It wasn't real sound. But it carved into his skull all the same. Every color. Every movement. Every drifting emotion that had no name.
He'd felt a thousand kinds of fear since entering the Trial.
None like this.
This wasn't fear of pain or death.
This was fear of becoming.
The System faded, slowly peeling itself from his mind like a whisper vanishing into wind. But the mark remained. He could feel the Brand inside him now—nestled beneath skin and soul, pulsing faintly with every breath.
No. Not a Brand.
A wound.
He had been branded by something that should not have seen him. Something the Veil couldn't cage.
Rowan remained on his knees as the world began to dissolve again.
Shapes folded inward.
The sky collapsed.
The ground rippled into black glass.
And somewhere behind it all—beneath it—something was watching him.
Not judging.
Not waiting.
Just watching.
He closed his eyes.
But the light still came.