"What are we going to do?" Victoria murmured.
Breakfast had barely begun, yet no one was eating with appetite. Chopsticks hovered. Cups cooled untouched. Even the room felt restrained, as if the walls themselves were listening. The arrival of the police lingered like empirical proof—solid, irrefutable. The kind only a fool would dismiss.
"Hazel," Li Hua said evenly, chewing her vegetables, "whatever you are planning, do not proceed with it."
Miss Hazel flinched. Not dramatically—just enough to betray how close the words had landed.
"That woman was not an ordinary police officer," she shot back, her voice tight. "Everyone here knows that. Or should."
Her gaze drifted, unwillingly, to Zinnia, who sat on the floor attempting to feed a wooden doll with solemn concentration.
"The government demands control," Hazel continued more quietly. "And for the most part, they already have it. I don't want to lose what little I've built. I don't want to be made into something useful to them."
Her hands curled in her lap.
"I only wanted to help," she said. "Was that so wrong?"
Something in my throat tightened, dry as dust.
"No one is blaming you," Mr. Mumei-shi said gently, looking at me as though the words were meant for more than one person. "But what feels right is not always what is right."
Li Hua exhaled softly. "Nations have been at each other's throats since the idea of 'each other' was invented."
She placed a piece of tofu into Zinnia's bowl with deliberate care.
"Heiwa," she said suddenly, "have you heard of a Void Cultivator?"
I shook my head.
"They are," she said, "what cultivators—and mages—use to frighten themselves into obedience."
She took a sip of wine.
"There was once a tribulation called The Empty Vessel. Others named it The Starvation of Heaven."
Her voice did not change, but the room did.
"It occurred on a mountain. Or a hill. The records disagree. The man who attempted it was called odd. That is the only detail everyone agrees on."
She paused, watching the wine settle.
"His goal was to crack the Singularity Core and birth what he called the Hollow Phantom."
I frowned. "So… was he a Gold Core cultivator?"
Li Hua looked at me then. Really looked.
"This is not a path you choose," she said. "It is a path that notices you."
She resumed.
"The first stage was known as The Gathering Storm—or Pressure Error, depending on who survived to name it. His dantian began spinning too fast. Not metaphorically. Literally."
She handed Zinnia a cup of water.
"The atmosphere thinned around him. Air was dragged inward. Heaven noticed."
"Heaven's Strike," she continued. "The first bolt of blue-gold lightning descended. Not electricity. Pure Truth Qi. Designed to overwrite impurity."
She glanced at me. "You've felt something like that before."
I shook my head, though my skin prickled.
"The Void responded," she said. "He did not shield. He performed the Inward Claw Seal."
Her fingers curled unconsciously.
"He opened his pores completely. The lightning didn't strike him. It refracted. Pulled into his meridians. His skin glowed white—neon, unbearable—as the vacuum inside him drank the world." Victoria exhaled. Only then did I realize I'd been holding my breath too. Exhaling, the air felt thin but the atmosphere was still heavy.
Hazel's expression had gone rigid. "Can I have some fish too," Zinnia asked causing Miss Li Hua to pause and feed her a piece.
"At the second phase," Li Hua continued seamlessly, biting into a peach, "his Black Star Core fractured. Normally, that ends things. Explosively."
She smiled faintly at me.
"But his core was a vacuum engine. He said it felt like his organs were being pulled through a needle."
She refilled her wine.
"Heaven's Strike: Nine-Fold Deletion. Nine bolts. Simultaneous."
My fingers searched for Victoria's hand. Found nothing.
"He answered with the Shattered Bell Seal. He screamed—but no sound emerged. Instead, a sonic vacuum. The bolts stalled. They could not advance. No medium. No Qi. No air."
Her smile sharpened.
"They hovered. Buzzing. Trapped."
She looked at Zinnia and handed her a piece of meat.
"He reached out and pulled the lightning into his mouth."
Silence swallowed the table.
"The core shattered. From the debris, the Hollow Phantom emerged. No face. Only a vortex where the heart should be."
She let the words settle.
"Final tribulation. Purple Grand-Dao Lightning. Soul-targeting."
Her voice dropped.
"The Phantom did not resist. It wrapped itself around the lightning and began to strip it. Energy consumed. Light discarded. Sound discarded."
"The mountain vanished," she said. "Not destroyed. Erased. A perfect hemispherical crater remained. Smooth as glass."
She passed her bowl to Hazel for more rice.
"Ascension successful. Nascent Soul achieved."
Mr. Mumei-shi spoke quietly then.
"He no longer breathed," he said. "A closed loop of nothingness."
Li Hua nodded.
"A Void-Shell at that level is an anomalous entity. Mages cannot calculate them. Spells return nothing. Null pointer errors."
She took a drink of water.
"They walk through battlefields, and magic dies around them. Five meters of silence."
"He was the pause between notes," she said. "The silence in the song."
"I heard sharing fears makes them smaller," she added lightly.
"Not all fear shrinks," Victoria muttered.
Mr. Mumei-shi sighed. "Void cultivators do not condense Qi. They cultivate absence. Their Qi is hungry. It exists only by consuming others."
"Their Dao Integration," he mused.
"The End of All Paths," Li Hua supplied.
"Yes," he smiled. "Everything comes from nothing. And returns."
He frowned. "Mages have something similar. Null mages. Poorly understood."
By then, the food was cold.
"Why are they called arcana?" Victoria asked suddenly.
Li Hua turned to her.
"Because that's what they are, secrets and mysteries," she said. "Not by choice. But because understanding itself breaks when approaching them."
Hazel stood. "Breakfast is ruined. I'll make tea."
As she left, I watched Li Hua bite into an apple.
To kill fear, I thought, you introduce a greater one.
And wondered which of us had just been named.