6.5 The Shape of Absence

I stepped into the Hall, and I felt the weight of the mountain press down on my chest.

The interior was broad and low-ceilinged. It felt designed to compress me, to squeeze the air out of my lungs until only the truth remained. The air smelt of ozone, dried ink, and the sterile cold of polished stone. Tables were arranged in a half-circle, a tribunal of wood and iron. Instruments lay waiting like surgeon’s tools.

Each one looked like a question I didn't know how to answer.

What are you? Do you matter? Where do we put you?

Mistress nudged me forward. I stepped onto the seal of inlaid silver. I felt small. I felt like a speck of dust floating in a clockwork mechanism, waiting for the gears to crush me.

I didn't resist. She had instructed me not to.

The first examiner approached with a thin slate and a stylus. He didn't look at me. He looked at the space I occupied. His voice was steady, reciting a script worn smooth by centuries of use.

"Subject will remain calm. Subject will not interfere. Subject will respond verbally when addressed."

I nodded.

They treated me like a role to be played. Compliance was assumed. They didn't realise that my compliance wasn't a surrender. It was a weapon that Mistress was aiming at them.

The first test measured Density.

The examiner raised a crystal rod. It hummed with a low, headache-inducing thrum. He brought it toward my chest, expecting the resistance of a living soul. He expected the pushback of life against the instrument.

I braced myself for the pressure. I expected to feel the weight of my own soul being weighed.

It never came.

The rod passed through the air in front of my chest as if I were a ghost. The hum didn't change pitch. It simply scanned the void where my heart should have been.

I looked down at my own chest. I could see the fabric of my tunic. I could feel the beat of my heart against my ribs. But the machine said I was empty.

A cold panic seized me.

Am I hollow?

If I cut myself open, would there be nothing inside but wind?

It was a verdict I hadn't expected.

I wasn't just light; I was absent.

The examiner frowned. He looked annoyed, not afraid. He adjusted the angle. He muttered a correction, wiped the crystal with his sleeve, and tried again. He pushed harder this time, as if he could physically force the world to acknowledge me.

Nothing.

A murmur passed through the hall. It wasn't awe. It was the sound of a clerk dropping a stack of papers. Inconvenience.

A second examiner leaned in, checking the instrument. "It’s functioning," she said. "Tested this morning."

"Environmental interference?"

"No fluctuation recorded."

They exchanged glances. One made a note.

Equipment malfunction.

They tried a different method. They were persistent. I wished they weren't. Every failure made the silence in the room louder.

A Field-Response Lattice activated around me.

I saw the emitters glow. I knew this test. It projected a web of pressure, designed to irritate the qi, to make the body flinch and defend itself.

I blinked, waiting for the squeeze. I wanted the squeeze.

Pain would prove I was real.

Pain would mean I was still part of the world.

The lattice shimmered into existence, a grid of golden light. It clamped down on my skin.

And then it slid off.

It felt like oil running off glass. There was no friction. The light tried to grab me, to hold me, but it couldn't find a support. It warped around my outline, greasing off my shoulders, pooling on the floor.

"That should have created resonance," someone said, their voice tight.

"It did," another replied slowly, staring at the output. "It just... didn’t resolve."

I swallowed, looking at the distorted light curling away from me.

I felt a profound sense of rejection. It wasn't that I was strong enough to resist the light. It was that the light refused to touch me. I was something the world couldn't grip.

"Am I doing it wrong?" I whispered.

No one answered me. They were looking at their equipments, not at the boy who broke them.

They moved on to Resonance Testing.

They brought out heavy forks of spirit-metal. I flinched as they struck them. The pure, clear note rang out, a sound meant to vibrate in the marrow of my bones, to make my spirit sing back in harmony.

The sound hit me and died.

It didn't echo in my chest. It didn't dampen. It simply ceased to be sound the moment it touched me.

The forks vibrated, then stilled instantly. One of them cracked cleanly along its spine with a sharp snap.

I stared at the broken metal. Guilt washed over me. I hadn't touched it. I hadn't moved. I had just existed, and that existence was enough to break their tools.

I am not a person.

I am a silence that eats noise.

"That’s impossible," someone muttered.

"Replace it," the lead examiner snapped.

A replacement was brought. Then another.

One rusted before my eyes, turning orange and brittle. Another grew freezing cold, frost creeping up the examiner's handle until he dropped it.

They began arguing. Not loudly, but with the sharp, clipped tones of people who are losing control and terrified to admit it.

"This suggests suppression."

"No. Suppression leaves remains. There is no remains."

"Artifact interference?"

"Then displacement would be visible."

"Unless the container is internal."

"That would imply..."

They stopped.

They looked at me then. Really looked at me. The implication, that a boy in burlap rags held a container sophisticated enough to fool a city-grade array, was a thought too heavy for them to carry.

I stood very still. I looked at Mistress, seeking an anchor.

She leaned closer to my ear, her voice sliding under the ambient hum.

"Remain cooperative," she said softly. "Let them fail honestly."

The next test was Biological.

Blood.

I hesitated when they produced the needle. Pain was real. I knew that much. My fingers curled, then relaxed. I extended my arm, jaw tight.

The puncture was clean. A drop of red welled up. It fell into a prepared basin etched with silver lines.

The basin reacted.

Not violently.

The surface tension broke.

The blood didn't spread. It didn't sink into the reagent. It sat there, a perfect, dark pearl of red, resting on top of the liquid like it was disgusted by it. It refused to mix. It refused to be analyzed.

I stared at the drop. It looked otherworldly. It came from my veins, but it refused to join the world outside of me. It was a perfect, lonely sphere.

Even my blood is alone.

Even my blood knows it doesn't belong here.

One examiner paled.

They transferred the sample to a new bowl. Then again.

The result persisted. My blood refused to be chemistry. It remained geometry.

I looked at my arm, then at the basin. I felt a wave of nausea. Not from the wound, but from the wrongness of it.

"Is something wrong with me?" I asked, my voice trembling.

"No," Mistress said, stepping slightly closer. "Something is wrong with their questions."

That earned her several sharp looks.

"Who are you?" the lead examiner demanded, noticing her for the first time.

"An observer," she replied calmly. "You invited oddities, did you not?"

"This is a controlled evaluation," he snapped.

"And yet," she said, gesturing at the broken fork and the impossible blood, "control is not manifesting."

They moved to the final test.

Identity Mapping.

I saw the hesitation in their hands as they placed the Talismans around me. This was expensive magic. Desperate magic.

They commanded me to state my name.

I hesitated.

I felt the reflex surge. The need to comply, to make this stop, to compress myself into something they could write down so I could leave. I wanted to scream a name. Any name. Peasant. Farmer. Beggar. Anything that would make the static stop.

But Mistress didn't stop me. She wanted them to hear the silence.

"I... don’t know," I said.

The mapping construct activated.

Then stalled.

Then fractured.

I saw the projection flicker in the air. Each observer gasped. They weren't seeing a name. They were seeing static. A thousand faces superimposed, a void, a grey noise that hurt the eyes.

I squeezed my eyes shut. That was me. That chaos on the screen was my soul. I wasn't a person. I was a glitch in the Heavens.

Voices rose now. The veneer of efficiency cracked.

"This cannot be recorded."

"It must be. The protocol demands entry."

"If we submit this report, the Central will reject it."

My breathing grew shallow. I looked at the arguing adults. To them, I wasn't a boy anymore. I was a fracture in their world.

Mistress placed a hand against my shoulder. It was the only real thing in the room.

"Observe," she told me.

The lead examiner stepped back, wiping sweat from his brow. He looked at me with something new in his eyes. Not curiosity.

Revulsion. The revulsion of a mathematician looking at an equation that equalled zero and infinity simultaneously.

"This subject cannot be categorised," he said finally. "Not with current frameworks."

Silence followed.

Then:

"Containment may be necessary."

I felt cold. Containment. A cage.

Mistress smiled.

Not because of danger. But as if she had won a bet.

We were escorted out. Not detained like criminals, but deferred like paperwork.

Outside, the city continued as normal. The sun was setting, casting long, orderly shadows.

I glanced back once at the hall.

"They looked afraid, Mistress," I whispered.

"No," she said. "They looked inconvenienced. Fear comes later."

The System heard her.

The word containment hadn't landed as a command.

It had landed as a suggestion.

The examiners didn't move immediately. They stood there, looking at their slates. One began drafting a report, stopped, and struck it out with a violent scratch of his stylus.

I watched them, my shoulders drawn inward. I wasn't afraid of the cell. I was afraid of the decision.

The realisation came to me slowly, like cold water seeping through my tunic.

If they succeeded here, if they found a name for me, I would never leave.

If they failed, I might.

That inversion unsettled me more than any threat.

"Escort the subject to provisional holding," the lead examiner said at last, his voice sounding tired. "Pending determination."

"Which block?" the head guard asked. "Mortal detention requires a census ID. Cultivator containment requires a suppression grade. The wards won’t accept a prisoner without parameters."

The lead examiner hesitated.

The System had hit another wall. Even the cages in this city were built on definitions.

"He fits neither," the examiner admitted, the words tasting like ash in his mouth.

"Then where do we put him?"

A pause followed. A long one.

"Use the Isolation Annex at the Eastern Gate," the examiner said finally. "The structural cells. They rely on stone, not resonance."

"That’s half a mile away," the guard grumbled.

"Then walk," the examiner snapped. "And don't lose him."

That was the concession.

Because I couldn't be processed by their magic, I had to be processed by their legs. I had to be walked across the city like common livestock because their teleportation arrays refused to acknowledge I existed.

Mistress signalled for me to follow them.

The guards flanked us. They were higher rank than the functionaries, but they looked less certain. Their gazes flicked to me often, sharp and assessing, as though my ambiguity was contagious.

They still didn't look at Mistress.

Outside, the city’s order persisted. Bells rang. Markets closed. Disciples hurried past.

We walked down the main thoroughfare, a hole in the world surrounded by structure.

I stopped just for a moment as the path turned toward the heavy, unlit silhouette of the Eastern Gate.

"They’re going to talk about me," I said quietly, watching the people pretending not to stare.

"Yes."

"For how long?"

She considered that.

"Until speaking about you costs them more than ignoring you."

My mouth tightened. "And then?"

"Then they will decide you are dangerous."

I nodded once, absorbing that with a calm that surprised me.

The gates ahead loomed larger now. Older stone. Older authority. The Isolation Annex was not a place for criminals. It was a place for things the city wanted to pause.

Mistress looked at me. For a moment, I didn't feel like a fracture. I felt like a student.

"You did well," she said.

I frowned faintly. "I didn’t do anything."

"Exactly."

Behind us, in the examination hall, I knew they were writing reports. Writing down errors. Framing contradictions. They still believed this was solvable.

I looked at the darkening sky. I knew, with a terrifying certainty, that their belief would not survive the night.