The steel door shut with a heavy, echoing thud, locking me alone inside sterile silence. The room was cold, its walls a pale white, and one side was a pitch-black mirror that allowed no reflection. They were watching me. I knew it. This was standard procedure: isolation, observation, letting the subject rot in uncertainty to break their mind. A dull and predictable tactic.
I sat on a metal chair bolted to the floor, my back straight. I didn't show anxiety. I didn't pace or pound the walls. I simply sat, silent, turning this prison into my meditation chamber. I closed my eyes and turned my awareness inward. The nadir circuits in my body still pulsed faintly, digesting the remnants of energy from that sewer creature. The process felt like slow grinding—painful but efficient. The Bizarre Dao of the Outers didn't just give me power; it turned my body into a ruthless refining furnace, converting suffering into fuel.
Time passed. Maybe an hour, maybe three. Without windows or sound from outside, time lost all meaning. That was part of their tactic. I didn't resist. I made use of it. I mentally retraced every detail of my encounter with Dales Verneth and Lieutenant Grisa Rash. Their ranks, their gear, the name of their organization—Fravikveidimadr. Every bit of information was a puzzle piece.
At last, the door opened again. Grisa stood at the threshold, her expression unreadable.
"Come with me."
I followed her without resistance. She didn't lead me to a cell, as I'd expected. Instead, we arrived at a small room that appeared to serve as a staff break room. There were some lockers, a table, and a worn-out leather sofa.
"Wait here. Don't touch anything," she ordered before leaving me alone again, closing the door without locking it.
This was a change in tactic. I was no longer a prisoner under interrogation, but an "asset" awaiting evaluation. They had seen something that made them hesitate to treat me harshly. The emptiness Dales had seen within me. That was my trump card—and my curse.
The fatigue from the ritual, the sewer battle, and the mental strain finally took their toll. This child's body had limits. I lay down on the soft sofa. In an instant, darkness pulled me in. This sleep was deep and dreamless. My body worked in silence, repairing and assimilating.
…
"Welt, wake up. The captain's calling you."
A sharp voice pulled me from the depths of sleep. I opened my eyes. Grisa stood over me, arms crossed. The bright light from the ceiling lamp stung my eyes. I felt unusually refreshed, as if the sleep hadn't just cleared my fatigue but had restored something deeper within me. The nadir circuits felt more stable.
"What time is it?" I asked, my voice hoarse.
"Eleven in the morning. You've been asleep for over six hours," she replied, a note of impatience in her tone.
I didn't care about her annoyance. I sat up, grabbed my hat from the table beside the sofa, and straightened my still-dirty clothes. I stood and followed her out of the staff room. She led me down a hallway that ended in a large, heavy wooden filing cabinet. She ignored it and reached for a hidden lever on the wall above it. Even with her tall posture, she had to tiptoe a bit to pull it. With a heavy click, the entire cabinet slid aside, revealing a steel door.
The room beyond was a private library and office. The air smelled of old paper, leather, and ozone from Essence lamps. Towering bookshelves lined every wall, packed with thick, ancient-looking volumes. In the center of the room, behind a massive mahogany desk, Captain Dales Verneth sat reading a document, reading glasses perched on his nose.
"Good afternoon, sir." I bowed slightly, holding my hat to my chest. An empty formality, but a necessary one.
"Drop the act, Welt," he said without looking up from his document. "There's something I want to discuss with you." He put down the paper and looked at me, his glasses now reflecting the lamp light, hiding his eyes. "I'll get to the point. I'm giving you access to some of our books on the basics of Oneiromancy. With the hope that someday you'll be of use to the Association Control Bureau. They always need talent like yours."
I stayed silent, processing his offer. They wanted me to be their tracking dog, a seer bound to their bureaucracy. It was a dead-end path.
"Of course, you'll need to train here first," he continued. "I'll assign someone to guide you. Just wait."
A dull career path filled with restrictions. I needed freedom of movement, access to broader knowledge, and the chance to develop my power without constant surveillance. I needed an academy.
"Pardon me, Captain," I began, choosing my words carefully. "I appreciate your offer. But my abilities are raw and uncontrolled. I'm concerned that without a proper educational foundation, I'll become an unstable asset—even a liability. A formal academy will provide the structure I need to control Essence and understand the fundamentals of this world. In return, I will pledge my loyalty to whatever mission you assign after graduation."
I pitched it not as a desire, but as a logical investment for them. A better, more controlled asset.
Dales stared at me in silence, evaluating. "Formal education requires basics. I have a few questions. First, can you read?"
"Yes, sir. I learned slowly when I was younger." A blatant lie. A street child like me should be illiterate. I could see the doubt on his face.
"Second—and this is most important," he continued, letting the lie slide for now. "Can you reason logically? Solve math problems?"
"Yes, I can," I answered confidently. "If you doubt it, give me a problem."
This was a gamble. I was showing a skill I shouldn't possess, but it was the only way to prove my worth beyond the "weirdness" he saw.
"Very well," Dales said. A thin, almost imperceptible smile appeared on his lips. "A test."
He took a blank sheet of paper and a pen. He wrote for a moment before pushing the paper across the desk. I picked it up. On the page was a single, elegant, horrifying line of equation:
e^(iπ) + 1 = ?
Euler's identity. A concept likely unsolved in this world, at least as far as common knowledge went. This wasn't a test—it was a trap. If I failed, I was just a useless weirdo. If I succeeded, I would become a far greater anomaly, attracting far more intense attention.
I weighed the risk. Intense attention could be dangerous. But it could also mean access—access to resources, to forbidden libraries, to this organization's deepest secrets. Under the guise of a "prodigy," I could ask for things no ordinary person could dream of.
I accepted the gamble.
I took the paper, walked to the corner of the room where a large chalkboard stood, and picked up a piece of chalk. The silence in the room grew heavier as I wrote the solution.
e^(iπ) + 1 = 0
I didn't stop there. I turned to face Dales, who now stood, intently watching the board.
"This isn't just math, Captain," I began, my voice flat and emotionless—the voice of a lecturer, not a child. "It's a statement about the universe."
I pointed to each part with the chalk.
"'e'. The base of natural logarithms, the foundation of all growth and decay. Reproducing life, spreading disease, compounding capital—they all follow its pattern."
I moved to i. "Imaginary number. The square root of negative one. A concept that shouldn't exist in our physical reality, a pure abstraction. It symbolizes imagination, dreams, all realms beyond our senses."
Next, π. "Pi. The ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. An infinite, non-repeating constant, defining perfect cycles. Planetary rotations, wave oscillations, seasonal turns. A symbol of space and time, of eternal cycles."
I tapped the '1'. "One. Identity. A single unit that underlies all numbers. A symbol of existence—of defined, individual being."
Lastly, I circled the '0'. "Zero. Void. Absolute nothingness. The beginning and the end. A symbol of nonexistence."
I put down the chalk and looked Dales in the eye. "This equation says that when you take infinite growth (e), raise it to the power of imagination (i) multiplied by the perfect spacetime cycle (π), then add one unit of existence (1), you get absolute nothingness (0). Five of the universe's most fundamental and seemingly unrelated constants unified in a perfect relationship to yield emptiness. Absolute balance."
The room was silent. Dales's expression was beyond surprise—he looked like I'd just torn down an ancient building and shown him how fragile it really was.
He walked up to the chalkboard, touching the chalk symbols with his fingertips like they might burn him.
"A complete explanation," he said softly, his voice hoarse. He turned to face me, and for the first time, I saw something in his eyes beyond cold analysis. It was awe—quickly laced with deep suspicion.
"How," he asked, each word carefully chosen, "can I know that any of this is true?"
He wasn't asking for mathematical proof. I knew that. He was asking about the source of my knowledge. How could a supposedly illiterate street kid know this?
I looked him in the eye. The mask of innocence felt irrelevant now.
"You don't need to know it's true," I replied. "You just need to know that I know it. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Send me to the academy, Captain. Give me access. And I'll show you how deep this rabbit hole goes."
I had cast the bait. A massive, glittering lure made of impossible knowledge. Now, I only had to wait—to see whether he would bite, or decide I was too dangerous to be left alive.