“Void-chosen from the future, this is our message to you. We have known about your coming, though we do not know who you will be. Fate has been cruel to use Apostates, we are being hunted down as we speak, so we do not have much time. It must’ve been a terrifying journey, a confusing one. To become void-chosen, you will have to be favored by the so-called-Monarch, but in betrayal, dismembered - eyes, tongue, ears and then the limbs, in that order. We not know why the Void needs those specifications, but that is all that we know. And for THE SECOND COMING to be happen, there will be a small child, plagued by a modern disease in their lungs and veins, healed with the resurrected Void. Do not worry, for the child is only a key, no burdens will be given to them, but you on the other hand, this is only the beginning.” An ethereal voice spoke to Devon

  “The Seminary is our gift to you, we thought it would be our stronghold, where we bid our time unti we struck out in rebellion, but it was not our time, the Monarch was too strong then. We offer you the Void Dungeon, we foresee famine and droughts that are to come, and smog-barren lands. The Dungeon will provide with food, materials and experience, while the SECOND COMING will trigger a spell that will anchor the void to the Seminary - to clear the air and revive nature. This will be the first time you will see sunlight, and the first green. Be sure to savor it and keep it close to your heart, to remind yourself what you are fighting for.” It continued.

  [Apprentice trial initiated]

  Devon’s consciousness clawed its way back into existence, unspooling bone first. Ribs erupted from the nothingness like jagged splinters, cracking and snapping into a gnarled lattice that shuddered with every phantom breath. Vertebrae slithered into place, fused crookedly before snapping straight with a wet pop. His skull bloomed next—a hollow chrysalis of yellowed bone, jaw unhinged in a silent scream as tendons crawled up its curves like parasitic vines, squirming to anchor a throat that wasn’t there yet.

  Muscle came in clumps, raw and quivering, fibers knotting themselves into sinew that spasmed uncontrollably. His arms writhed into shape, fingers sprouting in uneven bursts—knuckles swelling, nails peeling upward from bloody beds before retracting into translucent slivers. Legs followed, bones elongating too fast, cartilage bubbling and hardening mid-stretch. He felt every grotesque ripple, every nerve igniting in jagged fireworks of pain as they wove through his flesh, misfiring, burning his phantom skin with sensations of ice and fire.

  Organs materialized like afterthoughts. A heart ballooned in his chest, thrashing against its cage of ribs, valves fluttering open and shut as blackened blood oozed from mismatched arteries. Lungs inflated abruptly, choking on the void itself, convulsing as they leaked viscous fluid that pooled in his trachea. His stomach unfolded in slick, glistening layers, bile-less and cramping, while his intestines coiled like serpents, tangling tighter, tighter—until something ruptured.

  Skin arrived last, parchment-thin and translucent, stretched taut over the nightmare beneath. It split at the joints, peeling back to expose pulsing blue veins and twitching muscle, only to seal itself moments later in shiny, hairless patches. His face was a melting mask—eyes liquefying and reforming, pupils dilating into abysses before shrinking to pinpricks, teeth pushing through gums in jagged rows, too many, then too few, biting down on a tongue that regrew itself in fleshy, gagging spurts.

  Just as the agony crescendoed—a symphony of cracking bones and squelching tissue—the void shuddered. Golden light speared through the darkness, scouring his mangled form. The mutations hissed and dissolved; oozing gaps sealed, bones realigned, muscles smoothed into symmetry. Pain bled away as warmth flooded him, knitting his skin into something whole, unblemished, human.

  When the light faded, Devon collapsed onto unseen ground, heaving breaths into lungs that no longer faltered. His hands—steady, slender, alive—raced over his body, now taut and lean, carved with the faintest traces of muscle beneath smooth, sun-kissed skin. A young man’s body, no older than twenty, crowned with tousled hair and eyes wide with terror and wonder. He trembled, not from pain, but from the eerie perfection of it all, as if the void had sculpted him anew… and left only echoes of the horror in his marrow.

  [The Void-chosen has been bestowed a new body]

  Devon now was breathing raggedly, the pain was still fresh, every second of it. He lost his balance and fell on the ground. After a few moments to realize where he was, what he was doing - he pushed himself up, his muscles seemed to not recognize him, but his mind still had the instincts he had.

  [Apprentice trial stage 2]

  Devon was transported to the grassy pasture, it was surrounded by a lush dense forest. “Why do I feel mana everywhere ? When have I ever felt mana without even trying?” He experimented with the mana there, it was pure and alive. He tried to breathe in the mana in the air, it was a success, he could feel it in his blood, in his every muscle. He got so obsessed with it that he kept doing it for what felt like hours.

  When he realized how he was lost in the moment. He asked himself “Is the Void even the Void?”

  [Apprentice progression 10%]

  “Do I have to do this for the whole trial ?”

  Then seemingly years passed by inside the void.

  Here’s an expanded, enriched version of the meditations, diving deeper into their philosophical and narrative resonance while maintaining the story’s thematic core:

  Meditation 1: The Illusion of Hierarchy

  The void whispered through Devon’s veins like a toxin and a tonic: Power flows upward, but life flows outward. He watched mana pool in the pasture, not as a resource to hoard behind loyalty sigils, but as a river fractaling into tributaries, each droplet finding its own path through stone and soil. “The Monarch’s pyramids—loyalty tiers, census sigils, execution quotas—they’re dams,” he realized, his new fingers curling around a clump of earth. “But mana isn’t a reservoir to be owned. It’s a watershed—a cycle that demands release, not control.”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  He thought of Claire’s diner, where hunger was met not with ration stamps but shared bread crusts and smuggled honey. Decentralize or die. The Apostates hadn’t failed from lack of fervor; they’d been crushed by their own rigidity, replicating the Monarch’s obsession with hierarchy even in rebellion. “Anarchism isn’t chaos,” he murmured, crushing the soil in his palm. Grainy truths sifted through his fingers. “It’s refusing to build cages, even for your enemies. Even for yourself.”

  Meditation 2: The Language of Soil

  Mana pulsed in the grass, speaking in root and mycelium—a syntax older than seraphim hymns. Devon pressed his ear to the earth, hearing the land’s slow breath beneath centuries of smog. The smog isn’t pollution—it’s amnesia. The Monarch hadn’t just poisoned lungs; he’d severed the people’s connection to the soil, replacing symbiosis with extraction. Farms became factories, harvests became quotas, and the earth’s whispers were drowned by the clang of soul engines.

  “The void isn’t a weapon,” he whispered, shaping mana into a seed. It sprouted in his palm, then blackened, rot spreading like a confession. “It’s compost. It breaks down what’s dead to feed what’s alive.” From the decay sprouted a thorned vine, its flowers blooming with rebel sigils that stank of honesty. Decay as praxis. Rot as revolution.

  Meditation 3: The Tyranny of Ends

  A shadow loomed—not the Void’s, but the Inquisitor’s blade, its edge glinting with the lie of greater goods. “The Monarch justifies torture as ‘purification,’” Devon spat, static crackling in his molars. “But liberation can’t be bought with purges. You don’t drown a fire in blood.”

  He recalled Natalie’s scars, jagged as her laughter; Lapen’s rage, honed sharper than any glaive; Lissa’s purifier addiction, her veins mapped in silver betrayal. Every act of violence echoed. The Void could annihilate the throne in a heartbeat, but Devon’s hands—translucent, trembling—would still be stained. “The means are the ends,” he vowed, watching his reflection warp in a pool of rainwater. “A free society can’t be built by tyrants-in-waiting. Even benevolent ones.”

  Meditation 4: The Ethics of Rot

  The Void’s static hummed a question: Is your rebellion a garden or a fire?

  Devon’s fists clenched. “Fire’s easy. It clears fields but leaves ash. Ash breeds nothing but more ash.” He knelt, tracing the pasture’s roots—gnarled, stubborn, surviving beneath boot and blade. “Gardens demand patience. Unplanting the Monarch’s lies, seed by seed. Watering truths in stolen moments.”

  Mana coiled around his fingers, resisting his control. It stung like a reproach. “Even the Void must be tended,” he realized, sweat beading on his reborn brow. “Use it to heal, and it becomes a scalpel. Abuse it, and it’s a scythe. The difference isn’t in the tool—it’s in the hand.”

  Meditation 5: The Myth of Sacrifice

  The pasture’s mana thinned, revealing cracks in the earth—fissures that pulsed like open wounds. Devon’s void-sight pierced them, showing the Monarch’s factories below: smog-belching leviathans fed by broken bodies. They call this sacrifice, he thought, bile rising. As if the people owed their lives to the machine that devoured them.

  “Sacrifice is a lie,” he growled, shaping mana into a mirror. It reflected the workers’ faces—exhausted, defiant, their eyes holding embers the throne couldn’t extinguish. “The Monarch demands blood to hide his fragility. To make us complicit in our own chains.” He shattered the mirror with a thought. “Liberation isn’t a ledger. It’s refusing to pay.”

  Meditation 6: The Anatomy of Freedom

  A dandelion pushed through the soil, its roots threaded with void-energy. Devon marveled at its resilience—how it thrived in cracks, unasked and unallowed. “Freedom isn’t a sigil or a slogan,” he said, plucking the weed. Its sap stained his thumb gold. “It’s the right to exist without permission. To grow where you’re planted, even if they call you a pest.”

  He thought of the rebels’ council—Claire’s curt pragmatism, Natalie’s blade-sharp wit, Georg’s grief-channeled fury. A cacophony of voices, no leader, no vote. Consensus over command. The Void had no center; why should their resistance? “The Monarch fears us not because we’re strong,” he realized, crushing the dandelion into salve for a phantom wound. “But because we don’t need him.”

  Meditation 7: The Currency of Care

  Pain flared in Devon’s new body—a phantom ache from limbs that no longer existed, a tongue that once begged for death. “The throne monetizes suffering,” he hissed, clutching his ribs. “Purifiers, rations, ‘protection’—all debts. All traps.”

  But the pasture offered another economy. Mana pooled where comrades had bled, nurturing wildflowers that smelled of Lapen’s sister’s licorice-root syrups. Solidarity as antidote. Devon’s hands trembled as he wove the blooms into a garland. “We don’t fight for revenge. We fight to remember: care is the ultimate rebellion. The one thing they can’t tax.”

  Meditation 8: The Lie of Separation

  The Void dissolved the boundary between self and land. Devon’s veins became rivers; his bones, bedrock; his breath, the wind that stirred the meadow. “The Monarch’s greatest trick?” he whispered, moss blooming where his tears fell. “Convincing us we’re separate from the world. That the earth is a resource, not a relative.”

  He thought of Lissa’s lungs, choked by smog, and the ISB’s propaganda echoing in his skull: The earth is hostile. Tame it. Break it. “No,” he said, pressing his palm to the soil until his heartbeat synced with its rhythm. “The earth is us. To heal it, we heal ourselves. To kill it—” His voice broke. “—is suicide.”

  Meditation 9: The Practice of Unmaking

  Devon’s void-blade flickered—a tool of precision, not conquest. “The throne is a knot,” he mused, slicing through spectral chains only he could see. “Not a fortress to storm, but a system to unravel. Thread by thread.”

  Every spell he cast became a question: Does this empower the collective? Does it open doors or close minds? He thought of Bruno’s betrayal, the holy oil gleaming on his knife. Even allies carry cages. “Liberation isn’t a destination,” he vowed, sheathing the blade. “It’s the daily work of unmaking chains—starting with the ones we’ve wrapped around our own hearts.”

  Meditation 10: The Alchemy of Reciprocity

  The pasture faded, leaving only the Void’s hum—a sound like Georg’s forge and Lissa’s laughter fused into song. Devon’s final lesson crystallized: The Void is a mirror. It reflects not your power, but your responsibility.

  “Mana isn’t a weapon or a reward,” he whispered, tendrils of energy curling around his fingers like question marks. “It’s a relationship. Take only what the land offers. Give back more than you borrow.”

  He stood, new body humming with purpose. Somewhere beyond the Void, the rebels awaited—Claire’s diner-turned-sanctuary, the seminary’s smog-stained spire, Lissa’s silver-veined hands cradling hope like a live grenade. “No messiahs,” he vowed, stepping into the light. “Only gardeners. Only comrades. Only this.”

  [Apprentice trial completed]

  Name : Devon Vael

  Age : ???

  Art : Liberation

  Title : Prophet of the Second Coming

  [Acclimatize with your body and newfound skills before you leave]