The slums of Kharos Spire never truly slept; they only dimmed when the massive Aether lanterns suspended from the upper districts were dialed down to a sullen orange glow. Even then the alleys remained alive with the low hum of illegal card forges, the clink of copper shards changing hands in back rooms, and the occasional muffled scream that everyone learned to ignore. The air hung heavy with the metallic bite of raw Aetherite dust, the sour stink of unwashed bodies packed into single-room hovels, and the faint sweet-rot smell of spirit herbs burned in desperate rituals meant to strengthen failing veins.
Nineteen-year-old Vihan Riven moved through the maze like a shadow that had learned long ago that shadows survived longer than heroes. His patched coat—once dark gray, now faded to the color of old ash—hung loose on a lean, corded frame forged by fourteen-hour shifts in collapsing mine tunnels. Straight black hair tied back with a frayed leather cord framed a face sharpened by constant hunger: high cheekbones, a straight nose that had been broken once in a street fight and never quite reset, and storm-gray eyes that gave away nothing unless he chose to let them.
Tonight his battered satchel weighed heavy against his hip, thirty-seven low-grade Aetherite shards clinking softly inside. Each one was the size of a knucklebone, dull and lifeless until properly bound into a card. He had spent the entire previous day crawling through Vein-17, a half-flooded collapse zone where the air was so thin that veteran miners carried spare breath cards just to stay conscious. Vihan had no such luxury. While others summoned faint light orbs or reinforced their picks with common earth cards, he worked by feel alone, hands raw, lungs burning, back screaming from the awkward angles forced by narrow fissures. One wrong shift of weight and the ceiling would bury him alive. The pay was three copper per ten shards—barely enough for two days of stale bread and watery millet soup.
He kept his head down as he passed the usual suspects. Outside the Broken Fang gambling pit, Garrick and his surface-gang crew lounged against the wall, cheap fire cards glowing on their belts like warning beacons. Their laughter cut through the damp night air.
"Oi! Blank Trash!" Garrick's voice boomed, thick with cheap liquor and the easy cruelty of someone who could actually use his deck. "Still crawling out of holes like a worm? Thought the mines would've finished you by now, same as your old man."
Vihan didn't break stride. The nickname had stopped stinging years ago. Blank Affinity. The death sentence every aspiring card artisan feared more than monster venom or Vein Death. While normal people could open their Aether veins and bond with cards—feeling the mana flow warm and alive like blood in their arteries—Vihan's pathways were smooth, unmarked, and utterly unresponsive. Paper that refused ink. Glass that would not shatter no matter how hard you struck it. The healers who had examined him as a child had all shaken their heads with the same pitying finality: "Nothing we can do. Some are simply born empty."
A broken shard whistled past his ear and clattered against the wall. More laughter followed. Vihan's fingers tightened around the strap of his satchel until the leather creaked, but he kept walking. Anger was a luxury he could not afford; it clouded judgment and got people killed in the slums.
Three days.
The Arcane Crown Academy entrance trials began in three days. The only legal path for a slum-born nobody to ever touch prime Aether Veins, ancient ruins, or the kind of cards that could rewrite a bloodline's fate. The entry fee was forty silver. He had scraped together eleven after weeks of double shifts. Twenty-nine more by dawn of the third day or the registrars would turn him away before he even reached the testing gates. Without the academy, he would spend the rest of his life exactly where he was—crawling through darkness for pennies while the Seven Houses feasted above.
He slipped through a half-collapsed archway into the cramped stone room he called home. Four walls of cracked black-veined rock, a thin straw mat on the floor, a single flickering lantern, and a small wooden box that held everything he owned: a chipped eating knife, three copper coins, and the one object he would rather starve than sell—a fingernail-sized fragment of a shattered card. The last surviving piece of his father's deck.
Vihan sat on the mat, back against the cold wall, and turned the fragment over in his callused fingers. Even in the weak lantern light it caught a faint, sorrowful shimmer. The memory crashed over him without warning, as vivid as the day it happened.
Seven years ago, almost to the day.
He had been twelve, small for his age, standing in the cheap outer seats of the Grand Arena while fifty thousand voices roared for blood. The air had reeked of incense, sweat, and the sharp ozone crackle of high-rank cards being activated. Banners of the Seven Houses snapped in the artificial wind created by wind-element artifacts: the black eclipse of House Vesper, the crimson war hawk of House Valorian, the golden quill of House Fatescribe, and the others. Vendors moved through the crowd selling roasted spirit nuts and watered-down ale, their voices hoarse from shouting over the noise.
In the center of the blood-stained sand, bound by glowing chains of Orderon Law that pulsed with binding runes, stood Master Elar Riven.
Vihan's father.
Lord Darius Vesper lounged on the golden dais above the arena floor, a deck of shimmering shadow cards fanned in one gloved hand like a royal flush of death. His voice, amplified by a Sovereign-grade artifact, rolled across the stands like thunder.
"Elar Riven, you stand accused of forging a counterfeit Legendary card—Eclipse Devourer—and attempting to sell it to House Valorian for personal gain. The penalty for such treason is public Shattering. However, in the mercy of the Houses, we grant you Trial by Manifestation. Survive one duel and you walk free."
Elar's face was bruised, lips split, clothing torn, but his eyes still burned with that quiet, unbreakable defiance Vihan remembered so clearly. The same eyes that had once stayed up late teaching a small boy the theory of card synergies by lantern light when they could not afford real cards to practice with.
"I forged nothing false," Elar said, voice steady even though his wrists were raw from the chains. "The card was genuine. You simply could not stomach the idea that a slum artisan had created something your own spoiled son could never match with all your purchased bloodline advantages."
The crowd roared—some in bloodlust, others in the hollow cheer of people who knew better than to speak against a Great House. A few even threw rotten fruit, the impacts wet and heavy against the barrier shields.
They tossed Elar a deliberately crippled deck: twenty cards, missing key synergies, mana crystals deliberately cracked along the edges so they would shatter on first use. Vihan watched his father pick it up with steady hands, no tremor, no plea.
The duel began.
Elar fought like a cornered wolf. His Silverback Guardian bear materialized in a roar of silver light, smashing aside the first wave of shadow wraiths summoned by Darius's retainers. The Gale Blade danced and sliced, drawing real blood from two of the minor duelists. For thirty impossible seconds the entire arena actually fell into stunned silence. A slum rat was holding his own against House Vesper's chosen champions. Vihan had felt pride swell in his small chest so fiercely he thought his ribs might crack.
Then Darius played his trump card from the dais.
"Devourer of Light."
A colossal maw of living darkness erupted from the sand and swallowed the bear whole. The backlash hit Elar like a physical hammer. Blood sprayed from his mouth in a bright arc that caught the arena lights.
Vihan screamed, but the sound was swallowed by the thunder of fifty thousand voices.
Elar looked straight up into the stands—straight at his son. Their eyes met for one heartbeat. In that look was everything: pride, love, regret, and a final silent command that Vihan still heard in his dreams every night.
Survive.
Lord Vesper snapped his fingers.
"Shatter."
Every card in Elar's deck exploded into black dust. The soul-anchor backlash tore through him. Veins turned black across his skin as Aether poison flooded his body. He dropped to his knees, coughing blood that steamed on the hot sand.
Darius descended the steps slowly, boots crunching on broken card fragments.
"You were never worthy of touching Legendaries, rat."
He pressed his palm to Elar's forehead and activated the final card. Soul Anchor. Elar's eyes widened in agony as his very soul was ripped out and sucked into the card. His body collapsed, empty—nothing but a broken husk left on the sand.
The crowd cheered.
Vihan had felt something inside his chest tear that day. Not just grief. A vast, yawning void that had never quite filled since.
Back in the present, nineteen-year-old Vihan tucked the fragment away and lay down on the straw mat, staring at the water-stained ceiling where the cracks formed shapes like shattered card borders. Sleep came in fits, haunted by old screams and the echo of his father's final look.
The next morning the slums buzzed like a kicked hornet nest.
Word had spread that House Vesper was sending a minor delegation to "grace" the opening of the academy trials—a public display of benevolence that everyone knew was really a reminder of who held the strongest decks on the continent. The main road leading to the outer academy plaza was already packed shoulder-to-shoulder with hopefuls from every district. Rich young masters in embroidered silk robes with personal retainers carrying their deck cases. Merchant sons flaunting mid-tier decks on proud display, the cards glowing with bound mana. Frontier kids with dust still on their boots and wild cards earned from actual monster hunts in the outer Veins.
Vihan joined the very back of the longest registration queue just after sunrise. The line stretched nearly a kilometer, winding past broken fountains and vendor stalls selling overpriced spirit buns and cheap mana-recovery pills. His stomach growled loudly; he had eaten nothing since yesterday's single bowl of millet. He ignored it.
Hours dragged. The sun climbed higher. Sweat trickled down his spine under the coat. People in front of him chatted excitedly about their decks, comparing rarities and synergies. A girl two spots ahead summoned a small illusion butterfly to entertain her younger brother—House Mirage blood, no doubt. Vihan watched the mana flow from her veins to the card and felt the familiar hollow ache in his own chest.
An old man in front of him—a retired miner missing three fingers on his left hand—turned and offered a sympathetic nod.
"You're Elar's boy, aren't you? I worked the same vein as your father once. Good man. Knew more about card theory than half the academy instructors. Shame what they did to him."
Vihan gave a small nod. "Seven years ago today."
The old man sighed, rubbing his scarred hand. "Blank Affinity's a cruel joke on a good bloodline. If you had even a Common deck… but rules are rules. Word is the trials this year are stricter than ever. They want to weed out anyone who might challenge the Houses later. Be careful, lad. Don't give them reason to remember the Riven name."
Vihan thanked him quietly and the line shuffled forward.
When he finally reached the registration desk, the clerk—a thin man in crisp Orderon House colors—didn't even look up from his ledger at first.
"Name, district, deck rank."
"Vihan Riven. Kharos Slums. No deck."
The quill stopped mid-stroke. The clerk raised cold eyes and scanned him head to toe with open disgust.
"Blank Affinity?"
The words rippled down the line like poison dropped in still water. Heads turned. Whispers spread like wildfire. Someone behind him laughed outright.
Vihan kept his voice level. "Yes."
The clerk let out a short, ugly laugh. "Then you're wasting everyone's time and the Houses' air. The academy requires at least Common-rank compatibility for the physical test. Blank veins can't activate a training dummy, let alone a real card. Rules are rules."
"I have part of the fee," Vihan said, pulling out the eleven silver wrapped in cloth and placing them on the desk with steady hands. "Let me take the written theory exam. I know the material better than most."
The clerk stared at the coins like they were filth scraped from the bottom of a boot. "Eleven silver? The fee is forty. Come back when you're not begging in the gutter."
He waved sharply. Two guards in light plate stepped forward, hands resting on their batons.
Vihan felt the familiar heavy weight settle in his chest—the same weight he had carried every single day since the arena. Before the guards could grab him, a clear voice cut through the murmurs like a silver blade through silk.
"Hold."
A young woman stepped out from the shaded pavilion behind the desks. Silver-and-violet robes of House Mirage. Silver hair braided with tiny glowing runes that shifted colors subtly. Amethyst eyes that studied him with open, almost hungry curiosity. A small deck case hung at her hip, shimmering with illusion runes that made the air around it ripple faintly.
The clerk bowed so fast his forehead nearly hit the desk. "Lady Seraphine."
She ignored him completely, tilting her head as she examined Vihan from head to toe.
"You're the son of Elar Riven." It wasn't a question.
Vihan met her gaze without flinching. "Yes."
A faint smile curved her lips—not kind, not cruel, simply intrigued, as if she had found a rare and slightly dangerous specimen in a collection of common stones.
"Most sons of executed traitors would have changed their names and crawled into a deeper hole by now. Yet here you are, trying to walk through the front gate with nothing but theory and eleven silver." She leaned closer, voice dropping so only he could hear. "Tell me, Vihan Riven—do you truly believe you belong among those who can actually wield the Concepts?"
"I believe the academy is supposed to test talent," he answered quietly, "not bloodlines or the strength of one's veins."
Seraphine laughed, a soft sound like wind chimes made of fragile glass. "Bold. I like that." She glanced at the clerk. "Let him sit the written theory exam. No fee required. Consider it entertainment for the delegation."
The clerk looked like he had swallowed broken glass but nodded immediately.
Seraphine's eyes lingered on Vihan a moment longer. "Be careful what you wish for, slum rat. Some blanks are better left empty."
She turned and disappeared back into the pavilion, robes whispering against the stone.
The guards stepped aside.
Vihan collected his coins with hands that did not tremble and followed the clerk to the side tent where the written exam was held. Inside, thirty other hopefuls sat at low tables, already scribbling furiously on parchment under the watchful eyes of two proctors. The air smelled of fresh ink and nervous sweat.
He was given a single sheet of thick paper and a fresh quill.
The questions began.
Question 1: Name the Seven Core Concepts of the Great Houses and explain why the Grand Weaver sealed the possibility of an eighth Concept seven hundred years ago.
Vihan wrote steadily. He knew this history better than most nobles. The Grand Weaver had created the card system to bring order to chaos after the Age of Wild Magic. Seven Concepts. Seven Houses to balance them. The eighth—whispered only in the darkest alleys as "The Unwritten" or "The Blank"—had been sealed because any card forged from it could rewrite reality itself. The Houses had agreed never to let such power exist outside their control.
Question 2: Describe the difference between bound mana and free Aetherite, and why over-mining free veins leads to Vein Death.
He answered in detail, remembering the collapsed tunnels he had crawled through yesterday and the way the walls sometimes groaned like living things when too much free Aetherite was stripped away.
Question 3: If a duelist's deck has 40 cards and they activate three high-cost creatures in succession without synergy, what is the maximum backlash damage they can expect on a standard training field? Provide the formula.
He calculated it mentally and wrote the exact formula along with an example of a real duel he had once witnessed in the Ghost Circuit.
Question 4: Explain why House Mirage's illusion cards are uniquely dangerous in political duels compared to House Valorian's direct combat cards.
He wrote for nearly three hours, hand cramping, stomach hollow, but mind strangely calm. Theory was the one battlefield where his Blank Affinity did not matter. Here he was equal to any young master.
When the final bell rang, the proctors collected the papers without looking at him.
"Results posted on the main board at dusk. Next."
Vihan stepped back into the bright afternoon light. The queue had grown even longer. He found a quiet corner near a broken fountain and sat on the stone rim, watching two rich young masters duel for fun in the open plaza.
Their cards manifested in brilliant displays: a flaming direwolf from one, countered perfectly by a stone golem from the other. Synergies flared—fire feeding into earth for increased durability. The crowd cheered every perfect play. Vihan watched every move, every mana flow, every tactical choice. He analyzed their decks in his head the way a starving man studies a banquet he can never touch.
Just once.
Just once he wanted to feel mana surge through his veins and watch something answer his will.
The thought brought an unexpected pressure behind his ribs—not pain, not quite. A vast, ancient emptiness. As if something that had been sleeping for centuries had finally noticed him.
For a single heartbeat the entire plaza seemed to tilt, colors bleeding at the edges.
Vihan's eyes snapped open.
The plaza was exactly the same. The duel continued. No one else had reacted.
He pressed a hand to his chest. The emptiness had already vanished, leaving only the familiar hollow ache of hunger and seven years of unbroken silence.
He told himself it was exhaustion. Nothing more.
The sun was setting, casting long shadows across the plaza. Vihan stood up, brushing dust from his coat. The results would be posted soon. He had done his best. Tomorrow would tell if it was enough.
But as he turned to leave, a faint pressure lingered in his chest, like the ghost of something waiting. He ignored it and walked back toward the slums, the weight of seven years pressing on his shoulders.
The Houses thought they had crushed the Riven name forever.
They were wrong.