Chapter 46: A Year Later [Volume 3]
Volume 3: The Successor’s Trial
A year had passed since Null became the Weaver.
The Academy had changed. Not in the dramatic, world-shattering way that Jake had grown accustomed to—in the quiet, gradual way that time changes everything. New students had arrived who had never met Null. New professors joined who knew the former Eraser only as “Professor Kael, the Dimensional Ethics guy who gives really hard exams.”
Jake was still Jake. Infinite mana, infinite appetite, infinite capacity for getting into trouble. But he was also, quietly and without anyone quite noticing, becoming something else: a teacher. A mentor. The person younger students came to when they were scared of their own power.
“It’s because you’re approachable,” Lyra told him during lunch. She was a senior now, leading her own expeditionary team, still the most competent person Jake had ever met. “You’re the most powerful being in thirteen dimensions and you still can’t cook rice properly. It’s relatable.”
“I can cook rice perfectly. The rice just doesn’t cooperate.”
“That’s not how rice works, Jake.”
Pi, now significantly larger than the baby math entity they’d found in the geometric dimension, chirped from the table. It had grown from baby to toddler—if toddlers were made of equations and occasionally proved theorems that made professors weep with jealousy. It projected a formula for optimal rice-to-water ratios. Jake ignored it.
Vex sat across from them, glowing faintly. Her control had improved enormously—she could now absorb and redirect mana with surgical precision—but she still lit up like a Christmas tree when she ate spicy food. The dining hall had learned to keep sunglasses handy.
Kael taught his classes, ate his meals, and slowly healed. The guilt of four thousand years of destruction didn’t vanish overnight, but it softened. He started a garden on the Academy’s southern terrace—growing things instead of erasing them. The irony wasn’t lost on anyone, but the tomatoes were excellent.
And above it all, woven through the fabric of every dimension, Null watched. Not as a distant god—as a friend who happened to be everywhere. She left messages in the dimensional fabric like cosmic Post-it notes:
Jake—you left your training gear in Dimension 7. Again.
Lyra—your expedition proposal looks great. Watch the mana currents in Sector 12, they’re shifting.
Pi—stop eating the library’s theorems. Thessa is upset.
Everyone—the cherry blossoms on Jake’s Earth are blooming. They’re beautiful this year. Go visit.
Life was good. Which, in Jake’s experience, meant something was about to go spectacularly wrong.
It did. On a Wednesday.
The dimensional fabric shuddered. Not the gentle ripples of Null’s communications—a violent tremor, like an earthquake in the space between worlds. Every mana-sensitive being in the Academy felt it. Several students fell. Three enchantments shattered. Pi shrieked and projected emergency equations.
Then Null’s voice filled the Academy—not as a written message, but as sound, desperate and afraid:
“Jake. Something is wrong. Something is breaking through from outside the dimensions. Outside everything. I can feel it pressing against the fabric and I can’t stop it. I need—”
Silence.
“Null?” Jake reached out with his mana, searching. “NULL!”
No response. For the first time since she’d ascended, the dimensional fabric was silent.
The new Weaver had gone dark.