The words stopped inside Nir's mind.
"You are not the mistake."
It wasn't just a passing sentence.
It felt like a key sliding into a lock that had remained sealed since his birth.
Nir slowly raised his head.
The colossal eye was still gazing at him from the depths of the earth, as if it weren't looking at his physical body, but at something far deeper.
Something he didn't even know was inside him.
Nir said:
"What do you mean that I am what should have returned?"
The answer didn't come immediately.
The eye remained still.
Then the voice came.
"Because you were never a return."
"You were a possibility."
Nir froze.
"A possibility?"
"A possibility that should have ended before it ever began."
Silence fell.
Lyra stood at a distance, unable to comprehend what was happening, while the mysterious entity alone remained capable of grasping the true meaning of the words.
The entity said:
"Stop."
Nir turned to him.
"Why?"
"Because you don't want to know everything all at once."
"I want the truth."
"The truth doesn't ask if you're ready for it."
Nir looked back at the eye.
Then he said:
"Then speak."
The earth trembled.
Fine cracks spread across the ancient walls.
Then the voice rang out once more:
"Before this world knew the meaning of magic, there was only one thing."
"Will."
"The will of existence to endure."
"And from that will, the Aura was born."
Nir slowly raised his hand.
He looked at his fingers.
How many times had he looked at that hand as a child, wondering why that gentle light never appeared around it the way it did for others?
How many times had he heard a single word repeated before him?
Failure.
Weak.
Flawed.
Without a future.
Yet the truth...
Was entirely different.
The voice said:
"The Aura was never a gift."
"It was a shackle."
Nir's eyes widened.
"A shackle on what?"
"On what this world cannot comprehend."
A pause.
Then came the reply:
"On nothingness."
Nir's breath caught.
For a moment, he felt everything around him drift away.
The Academy.
The teachers.
Lyra.
Even the entity standing beside him.
Only a single word remained.
Nothingness.
Nir said:
"Then... I am without an Aura because—"
"Because the Aura found no place within you."
The eye completed.
"You were never empty of it."
"You were filled with something too vast for it to contain."
Nir's hand dropped.
He felt no triumph.
Strangely, he didn't feel happiness either.
After long years of believing he was incomplete...
Discovering that he was merely different proved far more cruel than he had ever imagined.
Because the question had changed.
It was no longer:
Why don't I have an Aura?
Instead, it was:
Who made me this way?
The entity stepped forward.
He said:
"There is something else."
Nir looked at him.
"What?"
"You were not born from nothingness."
A pause.
"Nothingness was born with you."
A profound silence descended.
Then the earth began to quake anew.
This time, violently.
Lyra staggered backward.
Some of the teachers collapsed to the ground.
As for Nir...
He stood unshaken.
Yet something inside him was breaking apart.
He said:
"That's impossible."
"And that is precisely why this world fears you."
Nir raised his eyes.
"But I haven't done anything."
The entity answered:
"And that is what terrifies them the most."
He paused slightly.
"You don't need to desire their destruction."
"It is enough for you to simply stop desiring their continuation."
Nir's eyes widened.
For the first time...
He understood the true weight of his power.
Its danger didn't lie in its ability to destroy the world.
It lay in its ability to make the world...
Cease to exist.
Nir looked up toward the sky.
Then he said quietly:
"I won't do that."
The entity looked at him.
"Even if the world becomes your enemy?"
"Yes."
"Even if it hates you?"
"Yes."
"Even if it tries to kill you?"
Nir fell silent.
Then he said:
"I will protect those who bear no guilt."
Silence settled.
Then, a faint smile touched the entity's face.
"Then you are beginning to understand."
"True power is not possessing the ability to erase everything."
"It is holding that power... and choosing not to use it."
At that exact moment...
The colossal eye flickered out.
And the earth returned to stillness.
Yet before it vanished entirely, the final voice reached Nir:
"Go."
"And seek the place where the first void was born."
Then, everything went dark.
Nir raised his head.
The sun had begun to rise over the Academy.
And for the first time in years...
He did not see the sunrise as something beautiful.
Instead, it felt fleeting.
For the truth he had just uncovered was greater than his world.
Older than magic.
And more perilous than nothingness itself.
He had to find the origin of the void.
And deep within his soul, he knew...
The answer awaiting him there might be the only thing capable of telling him...
Why he was ever born at all.