Null Craft
[Description]: A Method to craft empty spaces or solid spatial shapes in external and internal environments.
[Limitations]: Spaces crafted are stable and remain as long as the practitioner wants. but when in manifested form these spatial constructs use mental stamina as the fuel. The cost of maintaining the shape will eat away at mental strength compounding with every passing minute.
[Method]: Mold it with your intent into the shape you want
Mastery: 0%
(2 / 5)
[Edit]
[Karmic Coins Remaining: 50]
[You can only make 3 more changes in this Art] the Archive reminded me
"Hmmm"
Sometime later the lights dimmed to a dark gold, inertia pressed me gently into the seat, and the engine settled into a steady hum.
The captain's announcement came in three languages.
Fast French first, then measured English, then a Hindi carefully enunciated.
Seatbelts. Descent. Welcome to Lyon.
My hands found the belt automatically.
The sudden lightness in my stomach as the plane dropped through clouds made my lungs tighten, then adjust.
[Twelve percent elevation in heart rate,] the Archive said. It was Archive’s way of asking “Are you nervous?”
"A lot," I admitted.
The wheels met the runway with a double impact that travelled up through the frame of the plane and settled somewhere in my stomach.
The cabin lights brightened.
People stood too early, were told to sit again, pretended they had meant to stand up only to stretch.
I waited until the aisle had cleared, then stood and followed the slow shuffle toward the exit.
The air at the top of the external stairs hit like a different kind of exam hall.
Cold, sharp, clean.
It slid into my lungs in a way Vasantpur air never had — less resistance, more bite.
For a moment I just stood there, one hand on the rail, letting my body recalibrate to the idea that oxygen could arrive without the taste of dye and exhaust.
[Oxygen saturation slightly improved,] the Archive said, almost surprised. [External particulate load: low.]
"So this is what non‑industrial air feels like," I whispered.
I noticed some people coming towards us in a Dark Formal uniform.
They led us towards the rope line
An Institute representative waited near the rope line, dark coat buttoned tight, the Institute of Inter‑World Studies emblem hanging from a lanyard at her chest.
She took our passports one by one, added a sheaf of printed forms with barcodes and sponsorship codes, and fed the whole stack to the officer at the counter with the efficiency of someone who had done this many times.
When my turn came, the officer glanced from passport to screen to me and back again.
He stamped the passport, returned it with the faintest of nods, and spoke to the representative.
The words slid through my Omnilingual interface with bureaucratic clarity: “This one looks young. Are you sure he's cleared for the programme?”
"That's the point of the programme," the representative said lightly. "We start when they're still young enough to change."
[Accurate,] the Archive muttered
Beyond the glass doors, Lyon waited in sodium‑orange and white.
The air was colder there, the wind more direct.
Our breath clouded in front of us as we followed the liaison out to the line of vehicles waiting under a covered bay.
There were three buses.
Long, low, painted a non‑threatening grey that didn't fool anyone paying attention.
The Institute of Inter‑World Studies emblem glowed discreetly on the sides — the radiating‑lines map from the letterhead, rendered in pale blue.
A man in an Institute jacket stood beside a folding table at the head of the bay, tablet in one hand, tray of narrow bands in the other.
His hair was thinning, his back was straight in the particular way that said I have shouted at recruits in worse weather than this.
"Line up by track," he called, his French‑accented English clipped but clear. "Guardian and Combat to my left. Research and Phenomenology in the centre. Engineering and Logistics next. Ambassadorial and support to the right."
We drifted to our assigned sides with the resigned shuffle of people who had been segmented by exam choices for most of their lives.
Coloured bands waited on the tray.
Red, thick and obvious, for Guardian and Combat.
Blue for Research.
Green for Engineering and Logistics.
White, edged in a fine thread of silver, for Ambassadorial.
[Visual classification markers,] the Archive said. [Useful for logistics. Also for prejudice.]
I joined the knot of white‑track candidates.
There were seven of us.
The Dhaka Gate School girl was there, backpack hugged close, eyes moving over everything with quick, precise interest.
The Central City boy with the too‑clean shoes hesitated a heartbeat between red and white, then stepped to our side, jaw clenched hard enough to creak.
The man with the tablet checked our names off his list, then took a white band and snapped it gently around my wrist.
The material was cool, too light to be metal but too deliberate to be plastic.
It tightened once, settling into place without pinching.
A tiny emblem pulsed at the centre — the same stylised map — before dimming to a soft, steady glow.
"White band," the man said. "Ambassadorial track. Do not remove it unless instructed. It carries your identification and access permissions within Institute grounds."
[You have been officially colour‑coded,] the Archive remarked.
I rubbed my thumb along the edge of the band.
It did not spark or sing or unlock hidden stats.
It just sat there, a quiet circle of authority around my wrist.
The Guardian candidates collected their red bands with the casual pride of people who had grown up being told their bodies were weapons.
The Research kids compared blue bands and immediately began arguing about energy phenotypes.
The Engineering group checked their green bands and fell into a conversation about support grids.
"Board by colour," the man called. "Red first. Then blue and green. White last."
Inside, the seats were wide and the lighting was kind to tired faces.
I took a window seat halfway down.
The Dhaka girl slid into the seat across the aisle, pressed her hands briefly over her band as if confirming it still existed.
No one spoke for a long stretch of road.
Streetlights thinned, then disappeared.
Trees appeared instead, black shapes on blacker hills, and the road began to climb.
Ahead, a band of light stretched horizontally across the dark: a perimeter.
When the Institute finally appeared, it did not rise; it unfolded.
First came the wall.
Tall, pale stone mixed with darker bands of metal, the kind of architecture that cared more about function than charm.
Embedded along the top were slender towers — not quite watchtowers, not quite antennae — each crowned with a cluster of sensors and, if I was any judge, weapons that were only pretending to sleep.
The bus rolled toward a wide gate.
Energy shimmered faintly where the arch met the ground, a translucent curtain that parted just enough to let us through.
Something scanned us as we passed — a prickling across the skin, a momentary tightening around the Null Frame as if it were being weighed and filed.
[Layered defensive grid,] the Archive said, grudgingly impressed. [Whoever designed this expected worse than teenagers.]
Inside the wall, the world widened abruptly.
Buildings rose in rings.
Closest to us were the training domes, their curved roofs catching hidden light.
Beyond them, residential wings stepped up the hillside, balconies stacked like careful folders.
Further in still, a cluster of taller structures gathered around a central tower whose glass skin reflected stars and security lights alike.
Even in the dark, the layout made its point clear: this was not a campus built to impress parents; it was a fortress built to withstand things that did not care about brochures.
Five thousand candidates, the brochure had said.
Seeing the scale of the place now, the number felt conservative.
"This is a city," I breathed.
[A city with its own jurisdiction,] the Archive corrected. [Population: approximately five thousand candidates, one thousand faculty and staff, plus rotational Gate specialists.]
The bus slowed at an inner checkpoint.
Metallic arcs swept over us with a soft buzz, followed by the click of mechanical locks disengaging.
Guards in darker uniforms than the outer staff checked the driver's codes, the representative's credentials, and gave our bands a cursory, practised glance.
No one looked surprised to see seven exhausted teenagers arriving at midnight.
We pulled into a covered bay and stopped.
The doors opened; cold air rolled in, carrying the scent of stone, cleaning agents, and the faint metallic tang of recent energy work.
A man waited at the base of the steps.
His uniform was a shade darker than the others', his shoulders broader, his face lined in the way that suggested he had once shouted orders on actual battlefields and had not yet fully forgiven the world for making him trade them for corridors.
"Welcome to the Institute of Inter‑World Studies," he said. His voice was level, carrying without needing to rise. "From this point onward, you are under Institute's jurisdiction. You will move when told, stop when told, and ask your questions when time permits."
He let silence sit on that for a beat.
"Look at your bands," he went on. "White track — Ambassadorial. Your dormitory cluster is North Wing Three. Your provisional identification and access levels are keyed to those bands. Lose them, and you will spend an unpleasant week explaining yourselves to administrative security."
I glanced down at the bracelet.
The soft light along its edge pulsed once, as if agreeing with the threat.
"You will meet your track coordinator in the morning," he finished. "Tonight, you will follow the junior warden to your quarters. You will not wander. You will not explore the domes.
[Tragic,] the Archive said. [They insist on delaying your inevitable bad decisions.]
"Later," I told it. "First I need a bed that isn't held together by habit."
I stepped down from the bus.
The stone under my shoes was cold, the air colder, my lungs working a little harder in air that was somehow both thin and clean.
Above us, beyond the ring of bay lights, the sky over Lyon — or whatever lay beyond Lyon — stretched vast and dark, punctured by five narrow columns of starlight falling through the open panels of a distant martial dome and the heaven touching Central tower with a thick river of pure plasma flowing in between it's structure.
Behind high walls and layered shields, five thousand candidates slept, or studied, or trained.
I adjusted the strap of my bag, felt the weight of the white band on my wrist, and followed the others into the fortress‑city that was now, for better or worse, my home for next several years.