The tower remained immersed in silence. The morning fog had yet to dissipate, and Kael slept under coarse blankets, his body feverish but stable. Lysa, seated with her back against the stone wall, stared into nothing.

  The memories returned without being summoned. Without her wanting them.

  But now she let them come.

  Accepted them.

  Felt them.

  It was the price of remembering the names.

  Sario Ulven.

  Not an executioner.

  Not a brute.

  Not a spoiled noble.

  Something else.

  A man who believed pain was a form of learning. That suffering was part of logic. A philosopher without a soul. And she had been his “living argument.”

  Lysa closed her eyes.

  And dove in.

  Cycle 818 — Belgrave, House of Ethical Studies

  It was like entering a living library. Walls of enchanted glass. Endless shelves. Whispering voices reading books in relay. Men in black robes walking in utter silence, like monks of pain.

  Sario Ulven received her with a smile. Thin, with a braided beard and cold gray eyes, he bowed as if each gesture were a lesson.

  “Behold this small wonder,” he said to the group gathered in the central hall. “A Zero. Without Value. Yet alive. And that brings us to the question: what does it mean to exist without purpose?”

  Lysa didn’t understand. She only saw the eyes.

  They stripped her in thought.

  Not of clothing.

  Of dignity.

  “She shall serve our thesis,” he continued. “‘Suffering as an essential element in the consolidation of being.’”

  If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  The room was small, clean, without a bed.

  At the center, a circle of runes. On the ceiling, an observation crystal. On the wall, a single inscription:

  “Every body is an idea under dispute.”

  She was the body.

  They were the ideas.

  The first “session” involved crossing a maze of illusions.

  Each wall showed a scene:

  Grenda laughing.

  Hadrik breaking bones with his hands.

  Lina Tyron ordering shocks.

  Sario watched from afar. He didn’t participate. He only took notes.

  “Subject demonstrates unexpected resistance to traumatic representation,” he said. “Hypothesis: the Zero adapts by denying narrative.”

  The next week, they placed her in the Chamber of Mirrors.

  There, her reflection multiplied infinitely. But none showed her real face. In all of them, she was a monster. An aberration. A thing.

  On the third night, she lost balance. Vomited.

  Sario smiled.

  “Finally, a fracture.”

  Gradually, the tests intensified.

  Days without light.

  Repetitive sounds in the ears for hours.

  Water trickling slowly down her neck while she slept.

  And questions. Always questions.

  “How do you define yourself?”

  “What do you feel knowing you’re a null number?”

  “If you could erase one memory, which would it be?”

  She never answered.

  Not out of courage.

  Out of survival.

  But Sario was patient.

  And one day, he threw her before an audience.

  “Today, we shall demonstrate the paradox of value. The girl who should not exist will prove her existence… by suffering.”

  She was tied to a metal structure. The nobles sat around her like in a theater.

  The first shock struck her legs.

  Then her arms.

  Then, with an enchanted needle, they inscribed negative runes on her skin.

  “Unworthy.”

  “Useless.”

  “Disposable.”

  She did not cry.

  Until the third day.

  On the third day, she screamed.

  And he smiled.

  “Behold existence. The scream of absence becoming presence.”

  Days later, she tried to kill herself.

  Not out of despair.

  But for control.

  She found a decorative blade. Hid it under her tongue for hours. And when she was finally alone...

  She missed.

  Was caught before she could deepen the cut.

  Sario did not punish her.

  “Fascinating. She wishes to choose the end. The Zero begins to become One.”

  And he wrote it down.

  “Begin final phase.”

  The final phase was the Essay.

  She would be confronted with the Code itself.

  Isolated, placed before a crystal sphere where real-time System data was streamed. Images of war. Famine. “Zeros” burned as offerings.

  She was supposed to react.

  But she didn’t.

  Not from strength.

  But from being too broken.

  Sario was disappointed.

  “She has grown too cold. The experiment lost emotional plasticity.”

  And so, like a dissatisfied artist, he discarded the piece.

  “Sell her. Trade her for something more… expressive.”

  That was how Lysa returned to the market.

  Burned, marked, hollowed inside.

  But the Code had already begun to hum differently in her blood.

  Present

  Lysa sat curled up, Veyla’s dagger resting on her lap, her breathing irregular.

  Kael still slept.

  The name echoed inside her:

  Sario Ulven.

  She searched in the System.

  Status: Active

  Location: Belgrave Tower

  Current Position: Counselor of Applied Ethics

  She smiled. Almost laughed.

  Ethics.

  Applied.

  She made a mark on the floor:

  Sario Ulven.

  And then closed her eyes again.

  One name remained.

  The one who didn’t see her as an aberration or a tool — and still managed to take away what little hope she had left.

  Baron Vexil.