The air in the Ceremony Hall tasted like ozone and desperation. Kai Aris stood rigidly in line, the polished synth-stone floor cold even through the thin soles of his regulation boots. Above him, holographic banners flickered – the sigils of the major Houses: the roaring Phoenix of Pyros, the swirling Trident of Hydros, the jagged Snowflake of Cryos. Heroes of the Ender War stared down from murals, their sculpted faces grim, their elemental auras frozen in mid-battle. Guardians. Protectors. Everything Kai wasn't, yet.
He clenched his fists, nails biting into his palms. *Focus. Breathe. Find the spark.* The mantra felt hollow, rehearsed a thousand times in the cramped dormitory he shared with seven others in the Undercity Warrens. The air thrummed with barely contained energy. To his left, a girl whimpered, her hands glowing with an unstable, sputtering green light – Terrakinetic potential, weak but present. To his right, a bulky boy named Roric grinned fiercely as tiny arcs of electricity snapped between his knuckles. Electrogenesis. House Fulmen would claim him for sure.
Kai closed his eyes, shutting out the spectacle. He concentrated inward, searching for the wellspring everyone assured him was there. He pictured the holovids: warriors summoning gouts of flame to incinerate Ender drones, healers knitting shattered bone with threads of water, defenders freezing entire assault waves solid. He imagined the heat, the chill, the flow… anything. He strained until his temples throbbed, until sweat slicked his spine beneath the coarse grey tunic.
Nothing. Just the familiar, crushing void. The same emptiness he'd felt every time he'd tried in secret, every time hope had flickered.
"Next! Kai Aris!" The Overseer's voice, amplified and devoid of warmth, cut through the murmurs.
Kai's eyes snapped open. His mouth was dry as dust. He stepped forward onto the raised dais, the central focus of the vast hall. Hundreds of eyes bored into him – hopeful peers, assessing House representatives in their coloured sashes, bored officials. The Overseer, a stern woman with cybernetic eyes that glowed a steady blue, gestured impatiently towards the Awakening Node – a crystalline spire humming with resonant energy.
"Place your hands on the Node, Candidate Aris. Center yourself."
Kai's legs felt leaden. He forced them to move. The cool, smooth surface of the Node met his palms. A wave of energy pulsed through it, vibrating up his arms. This was it. The Node amplified latent potential, coaxed it into the open. *Please. Just something. Anything.*
He poured every ounce of will, every shred of longing, into that connection. He thought of his parents, names on a memorial plaque in the Warrens' central square, casualties in the last Ender probing attack near Mars. He thought of the sneers from the House scions, the pitying looks from the instructors. He thought of the endless grey grind of the Undercity, the only future for the Null. He *needed* this.
The Node pulsed brighter. The hum intensified. Kai held his breath.
Silence.
The resonant hum died down to a faint thrum. The Node's light dimmed. No flame erupted. No water coalesced. No ice formed. Not even a flicker of light, a tremor in the earth, a stray breeze.
The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. Then, a low murmur started at the back of the hall, swelling into a wave of whispers. Kai saw the Overseer's cybernetic lenses narrow, focusing on him with clinical detachment. He saw the faint curl of disdain on the lips of the Pyros House representative. Roric snorted, the sound loud in the sudden quiet.
"Null," the Overseer declared, her voice flat, final. The word echoed like a tombstone slamming shut. "No measurable Awakening. Dismissed."
The dismissal wasn't just from the dais; it felt like dismissal from life itself. Kai pulled his hands away as if burned, though the Node felt colder than ever. The walk back to the line was a blur of heat in his cheeks and ice in his veins. He didn't meet anyone's eyes. The girl who'd sparked green gave him a look of pure pity. Roric clapped him on the shoulder, a gesture meant to be friendly but landing like a hammer blow. "Tough break, Kai. Undercity needs strong backs too, eh?"
Kai mumbled something incoherent and pushed past, fleeing the hall before the next candidate was called. The grand doors hissed shut behind him, cutting off the sound of the next hopeful taking the stage. He leaned against the cool metal wall of the corridor outside, gasping, the sterile air doing nothing to cool the furnace of shame and despair inside him. *Null.* The word echoed in his skull. Worthless. Defective. Doomed.
He didn't go back to the dorms. He couldn't face them. Instead, he descended. Down the gleaming transit tubes, past the bustling mid-level hab-zones, down into the groaning, dripping labyrinth of the Undercity. The air grew thick with the smell of ozone, recycled sweat, and fried synth-protein. Flickering lumen-strips cast long, dancing shadows. Graffiti depicting stylized Enders or defiant human warriors scarred the rusted walls. The thrum of the planet-wide defense grid, the Shield, was a constant, oppressive vibration here, felt in the teeth and bones.
He found his usual spot – a crumbling service ledge overlooking a deep, dark maintenance chasm, the rhythmic *clank-thud* of ancient machinery far below a grim lullaby. This was his place to think, to disappear. Tonight, he didn't want to think. He wanted the darkness to swallow him whole.
"Why?" The word tore from his throat, raw and ragged. He slammed his fist against the grimy ledge, pain flaring bright and sharp. "Why me? What did I do?" He was screaming now, the sound swallowed by the cavernous depths and the Shield's drone. Tears, hot and furious, blurred his vision. He wasn't just crying for the power he lacked; he was crying for the future stolen, the respect he'd never earn, the crushing weight of being less than nothing in a world that demanded everything.
He slumped against the cold wall, the fight draining out of him, leaving only a hollow, aching void. The despair was a physical thing, a cold stone in his gut. What was left? Scraping a living in the Undercity factories? Begging for scraps? Waiting for the next Ender attack to finally end it? The thought wasn't frightening; it was a numb relief.
As the tears subsided, leaving salty tracks through the grime on his face, a strange sensation began. It wasn't an external energy, not like the Node. It was *inside*. A deep, resonant thrumming that started in his core, vibrating in sync with the distant Shield, but deeper, darker. It felt… hungry. A pressure built behind his eyes, sharpening into a pinpoint of pain.
He groaned, pressing the heels of his hands against his temples. *Not now. Just leave me alone.*
The pressure intensified. Then, his vision fractured.
Not blurred. *Fractured.* Like a cracked viewscreen. Jagged lines of static ripped across his sight. In the center of the chaos, text flickered violently into existence, jagged, corrupted glyphs burning with an unnatural, deep crimson light. It wasn't projected onto his eyes; it felt *implanted* directly onto his consciousness.
**>SYSTEM CORRUPTION DETECTED...**
**>PURGING FOREIGN ENTITY...**
**>...**
**>...**
**>ENTITY PURGE COMPLETE.**
**>PRIMARY SYSTEM REBOOT INITIATED...**
**>...**
**>WELCOME, USER.**
The text glitched violently, letters stuttering and reforming.
**>SYSTEM IDENTITY: [ERROR: DESIGNATION CORRUPTED]**
**>CURRENT DESIGNATION: DESTROYER SYSTEM.**
**>USER DESIGNATION: KAI ARIS. CONFIRMED.**
**>BIOLOGICAL INTEGRATION: 99.7%. STABLE.**
**>CURRENT USER LEVEL: 0.**
**>SYSTEM FUNCTIONS: [LOCKED]**
**>ACCESS REQUIREMENT: USER LEVEL 1.**
**>OBJECTIVE: [DATA CORRUPTED]**
**>...**
**>DESTROYER SYSTEM AWAITS COMMAND.**
Kai froze, breath catching in his throat. The pain behind his eyes subsided, replaced by a terrifying, icy clarity. The jagged red text burned in his vision, superimposed over the grimy ledge and the dark chasm. *Destroyer System?* The name alone sent a jolt of primal fear through him. This wasn't Pyrokinesis. This wasn't any Awakening he'd ever heard of. It felt invasive. Dangerous. Alien.
"What... what are you?" he whispered, his voice trembling.
The text flickered, letters scrambling momentarily before reforming.
**>QUERY NOT RECOGNIZED. SYSTEM STATUS: LOCKED. USER LEVEL INSUFFICIENT.**
Level 1. How? How did he reach Level 1? Panic warred with a terrifying sliver of something else – not hope, but a raw, desperate curiosity. Power. It promised power. Locked, but present. A path where none existed before.
He stared at the crimson words burning in his sight: **DESTROYER SYSTEM AWAITS COMMAND.** The command was misspelled, glitched. Imperfect. Terrifying.
A metallic screech echoed from the chasm below, followed by the heavy *thud* of machinery. Kai flinched, the sound shockingly loud in the sudden silence of his own terror. He looked down at his hands, still faintly smeared with grime from the ledge. They looked the same. Ordinary. Weak.
But behind his eyes, the Destroyer System waited. Silent. Hungry. Locked.
He pushed himself away from the wall, his legs shaky. The crushing despair was still there, a familiar weight, but now it was overlaid with a chilling new reality. He wasn't just Null anymore. He was something else. Something unknown. Something that bore the name 'Destroyer'.
Kai Aris took a shuddering breath, the stale air of the Undercity filling his lungs. The path ahead was darker than the chasm below, and infinitely more dangerous. But it was a path. He started walking, the glitching crimson words his only companion in the gloom. The hunt for Level 1 had begun.