Hugh of Emblin is, so far as he's concerned, the worst student that the Academy at Skyhold has ever seen. He can barely cast any spells at all, and those he does cast tend to fail explosively. If that wasn't bad enough, he's also managed to attract the ire of the most promising student of his year - who also happens to be the nephew of a king. Hugh has no friends, no talent, and definitely doesn't expect a mage to choose him as an apprentice at all during the upcoming Choosing.

When a very unusual mage does choose him as apprentice, however, his life starts to take a sharp turn for the better. Now all he has to worry about is the final test for the first years - being sent into the terrifying labyrinth below Skyhold.

A qi antithetical to life itself, a well of power more immense than the human mind can comprehend, and the only man in the galaxy who can see it.

The vast emptiness of deep space drives cultivators insane. Deprive one of qi for long enough, and sooner or later they’ll start stealing it from anything and anyone around them. The process eventually kills them, but not before they drain a few dozen mortals to death.

I should know. I was one of them.

But in my last moments, while the void psycho stumbled away and my body’s faculties slowly shut down, I discovered something extraordinary, something that would change the galaxy forever, something that—as far as I can tell—no one before me had ever found.

That emptiness wasn’t so empty.