Chapter 3: Departure
Azure City stood like a modest settlement against the horizon, its weathered buildings reflecting the morning light. As one of the smaller cities on the Origin Continent, it held the humble designation of Rank 3—significant enough to house an Origin Association facility, but far from the gleaming metropolises where the truly powerful resided.
A fifteen-year-old boy walked slowly along the main road leading out of the city, his steps heavy with the weight of finality. Aetheris moved with the measured pace of someone who had nowhere urgent to go, no destination that mattered. His empty hands swung at his sides, carrying nothing but the clothes on his back.
Three days had passed since the awakening ceremony. Three days since his failure had sealed his fate.
The Origin Association's educational system was absolute and universal. Every child on the continent, regardless of their parents' wealth or status, was required to attend Association schools. It was a system designed for efficiency—mandatory education made it easier to identify and cultivate those with potential, while ensuring that no awakened individual slipped through the cracks due to poverty or neglect.
For orphans like Aetheris, the system had provided everything: housing in the Association's residential facilities, education, meals, and basic necessities. It was a safety net that kept parentless children from falling through society's gaps, while also serving the Association's interests. Those who awakened would be grateful for the care they had received, their loyalty to the Association assured from childhood.
But the system had no place for failed orphans.
Within hours of his discharge from the school hospital, Aetheris had received the official notice. His housing allocation was terminated. His educational support was concluded. At fifteen, with no family and no awakened abilities, he was deemed no longer worthy of the Association's investment.
The housing facility that had been his home for years now stood behind him, its institutional walls already feeling foreign. Other children still lived there—younger ones who hadn't yet faced their awakening, and a few older students who had shown promise but hadn't yet graduated. None of them had come to see him off. In the Association's system, failure was contagious, something to be avoided rather than acknowledged.
Aetheris continued walking, his footsteps echoing hollowly on the empty road. The city grew smaller behind him with each step, but he felt no sadness at leaving it behind. There was nothing left for him there, no reason to stay. No money to survive independently, no prospects for work that didn't require Association certification, no friends who would risk their own standing by associating with a failure.
The world stretched out before him, vast and indifferent. He had heard stories of the wilderness beyond the cities, of places where the Association's influence was minimal, where someone might disappear entirely from the system that had rejected them. Perhaps he could find such a place—somewhere quiet and remote where he could simply... fade away.
The thought brought him no fear, only a dull sense of relief. He was tired of struggling, tired of hoping, tired of the constant ache of loss that had defined his existence since his parents' death. The fragments of memory that had surfaced during the awakening ceremony continued to haunt him—glimpses of torture, of helplessness, of a truth he would never be strong enough to uncover.
His hand drifted unconsciously to his pocket, where his fingers closed around the only thing he had left from his former life. A small cube, smooth and warm to the touch, made of some material he couldn't identify. It was the sole remainder of his parents' possessions, the only thing that had survived whatever had happened to them.
The Origin Association had returned it to him when he was placed in their care, claiming it was of no value—just a simple trinket with no power resonance. But to Aetheris, it was everything. The last connection to the people who had loved him, the final proof that he had once belonged somewhere, to someone.
He pulled the cube from his pocket and held it up to the light. It was perfectly smooth, about the size of a child's fist, with a surface that seemed to shift between different shades of gray depending on the angle. No seams, no markings, nothing to indicate its purpose or origin. Just a simple object that had somehow meant enough to his parents to keep.
Aetheris closed his fingers around it again and continued walking. The road ahead led into the wilderness, away from civilization and toward the empty places where someone like him could disappear without consequence. He had no plan beyond finding somewhere quiet and isolated, somewhere he could sit with his memories and his failures until the struggle finally ended.
The sun climbed higher as he walked, Azure City becoming nothing more than a distant smudge on the horizon. With each step, he left behind the world of the awakened, the world of the Association, the world that had no place for someone like him.
In his pocket, the cube grew slightly warmer, but Aetheris was too lost in his own despair to notice.