8. The First Awakening

My heart pounded in my ears as the grey letters loomed above. A hundred thousand people held their breath. I squeezed my eyes shut—tried to shut them out. Tried to shut everything out.

The sound hit me like a wave; gasps, murmurs, and whispers crashed together into a wall of noise. I couldn’t parse the individual words. Didn’t need to

Tiernan heir. F-Grade. Forty-one generations, and this is what they produced.

Officials materialised around me. Hands under my arms, lifting. Someone pressed a cloth to my face, and the white fabric came away red. I’d been bleeding from my nose, too, apparently.

“Can you walk?”

“I can walk.”

They didn’t believe me. Kept their hands ready as I straightened. The crowd’s noise shifted. Less shock morphing into something else. Pity from some sections. Satisfaction from others, the Commons, especially.

I took a step. Then another. The pod gleaming behind me, as if it hadn’t just ended my life.

Then something shifted.

It was subtle, like a pressure I hadn’t known existed, suddenly releasing. Like my eyes had adjusted to darkness. The air looked different—fuller. Stillness held movement, with currents flowing through everything.

Ether? I was seeing Ether.

Awakening… right here, on the arena floor, my blood still wet and vivid on my palm. To be branded F-Grade and to awaken, all within the same moment. The murmur of the crowd pressed in on me, a backdrop to officials steering me forward. The silence from the Legacy boxes was absolute.

The back corridors were grey and industrial. Nothing like the gilded hallways I’d walked through earlier.

This was where they took the failures.

Staff moved past me with careful neutrality. Eyes that didn’t quite meet mine. Voices that dropped to whispers after I passed.

“…Tiernan boy…”

“…such a shame…”

“…father must be devastated…”

I kept walking, the official’s hand still steadying my elbow. The ever-present sensation of Ether thrumming through me, the awareness of currents flowing through walls, people and air. It should have felt like victory, instead it felt like a mockery.

Congratulations. You can see the thing that’s going to kill you.

A holoscreen on the wall cycled through the test’s highlights. Chen Wei’s S-Grade result, purple letters blazing. Alexei’s impossible result; the crowd going mad. The two Commons testing A-Grade whose faces I didn’t recognise. Their lives forever changed.

My result wasn’t shown.

Of course it wasn’t.

Trying to distract myself from the world, I reached for that presence I felt before. Something was there. I could feel it, coiled and waiting. Cold text flickered across my vision, though it wasn’t quite visible. Not quite there.

[T̷R̸U̷E̵-̶N̷O̸O̵S̷P̸H̷E̵R̷E̸ ̵-̷ ̵P̶R̸I̵M̸E̵R̴]

[STATUS: WAITING]

I tried blinking it away. It remained hovering in the darkness, as though it were an afterimage burned into my retinas. Unsure of what it was, I reached for it, mentally probing it. The interface shuddered, malformed, then resolved into something else.

[T̷R̸U̷E̵-̶N̷O̸O̵S̷P̸H̷E̵R̷E̸ ̵-̷ ̵P̶R̸I̵M̸E̵R̴]

[REQUIREMENTS: ■■■■■■]

[STATUS: WAITING]

Waiting. For what?

An official touched my elbow. “This way, Mister Tiernan. Your family is waiting.”

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Mother rose as I entered, crossing quickly to pull me into her arms. Her shoulder shook. I let her hold me. I had no strength for anything else.

Over her shoulder, I saw the room. Modest furniture, a single table sat in the centre with a few chairs surrounding it. A window overlooking nothing, just grey walls and empty corridors. Grandfather was nowhere in sight, his chair empty.

I stared at it. The absence felt louder than any words he could have spoken. He hadn’t even stayed. Couldn’t even face me…

Father stood at the window, his back to the room. Still, ever since I entered. Hadn’t so much as turned… His shoulders were rigid, hands clasped behind him in parade rest. A soldier’s posture.

The silence stretched.

Mother finally let go, her eyes red yet dry. She parted her lips, hesitated, then led me to a chair and sat me down. Her hand clung to my shoulder for an agonising moment before slipping away.

“You awakened.” Father cut in. Not a question. A statement.

“You saw?” I replied.

“Everyone saw.” A pause. “Everyone who mattered.”

Father’s hands tightened behind his back. I could see the tension in his shoulders, the rigid line of his spine. When he finally turned, his face—

I expected anger. Disappointment. That cold Tiernan mask I’d seen him wear a thousand times.

This was neither. He looked wrecked. Eyes hollow with lines I’d never noticed carved deep into his face.

“There are options,” he said. His voice was controlled, but something underneath it cracked. “Medical exemption. I know doctors who owe me favours. We can claim neurological damage from the testing. Or administrative deferment. I have contacts in the Bureau. We can push the paperwork, lose it in the system, buy time-“

“Father.”