The Null Empire's ten thousand soldiers marched into the Academy district to find absolutely nothing worth conquering. Buildings stood empty but welcoming. Teapots sat warm but abandoned. Books lay open to pages that questioned whether reading was real. The entire district felt like a thought interrupted mid-sentence.
General Void of the Null Empire, a man who'd spent thirty years perfecting the art of feeling nothing, stood in the Academy's main courtyard experiencing the unprecedented sensation of confusion.
"Where is everyone?" he demanded of his scouts.
"Everywhere, sir. And nowhere. The locals are... around. But not in any organized way."
"What do you mean 'around'?"
"They're shopping, sir. Having lunch. Discussing philosophy. Some are in our ranks."
"In our ranks?"
"Yes sir. They joined the march. They're being aggressively helpful. Private Chen now has three locals carrying his pack while debating whether weight is real."
General Void turned to find his army had indeed become infected with locals. Citizens walked among his soldiers, offering directions to nothing, explaining the history of buildings that might not exist, selling maps that changed when looked at.
"Arrest them!" he ordered.
"For what, sir? Being present? They're not resisting. They're not even acknowledging us as invaders. One of them asked me if we were here for the Festival of Fascinating Failure."
"The what?"
Before anyone could answer, music started. Not martial music—the kind of chaotic jazz that suggested rhythm without insisting on it. The Null soldiers looked around bewildered as the entire district transformed into what appeared to be a celebration.
Cael emerged from a crowd of revelers, still carrying his broom, wearing festival clothes that clashed magnificently. "General Void! Welcome to our Festival. You're just in time for the competition of competitive incompetence."
"We're invading you," the General stated flatly.
"Are you? How exciting! We've never been invaded during a festival before. Do you want to register for events? The synchronized failure to synchronize starts in an hour."
"Stop this immediately. We are the Null Empire. We bring the end of meaning, the cessation of purpose, the—"
"Oh, you'll fit right in! That's basically our mission statement. Sara, get the General an entry form."
Sara appeared with paperwork that was already incorrectly filled out. "Just put your name where it asks for your favorite color and your reason for conquering where it asks for dietary restrictions."
The General's carefully maintained emotionlessness cracked. "This is not how invasion works!"
"How does it work?" Mei asked, genuinely curious. She'd been teaching Null soldiers the Shadow School method of successful failure. Several had already mastered failing at feeling nothing. "We've never been invaded properly before. Should we resist? We could try, but we'd probably fail."
"That's... that's not..." General Void looked at his army. Half were participating in festival events. A group of his elite guards were learning to juggle badly from Officer Tam. His lieutenant was in deep discussion with Master Kelwood about whether conquest without meaning was still conquest.
"Formation!" he bellowed. "Attack formation!"
His soldiers tried to comply, but locals kept joining the formations, creating shapes that suggested military might while achieving nothing. A phalanx became a conga line. A shield wall turned into a group hug. The cavalry charge transformed into competitive horse-petting.
"Sir," his aide whispered, "I think we're losing."
"Losing what? We haven't fought anything!"
"Exactly, sir."
The festival continued around them. The Academy students and Shadow School practitioners performed exhibitions of failed martial arts. Former soldiers from both the Imperial and Null armies demonstrated aggressive peacefulness. Someone started a tournament where the goal was to lose with style.
General Void found himself holding a cup of tea he didn't remember accepting. It was perfectly imperfect, too hot but somehow soothing.
"This isn't possible," he said to no one in particular.
"Nothing's possible," Cael agreed, appearing beside him like philosophy given form. "That's what makes everything so interesting. Have you considered that conquering us means becoming us?"
"We reject meaning. We embrace the void. We—"
"Sounds like us on Tuesdays. We reject meaning on Mondays, embrace void on Wednesdays, and Thursday we can't agree on anything. Very liberating. You should try having a schedule for your nihilism."
"Nihilism doesn't have a schedule!"
"Then you're doing it inefficiently. Look at your soldiers."
General Void looked. His perfect army of nothing-feeling warriors were laughing. Arguing. Participating. Feeling everything while claiming to feel nothing. The locals had infiltrated not through force but through aggressive normality.
"You're destroying us," he realized.
"No, we're completing you. You came to spread meaninglessness. We're showing you meaninglessness with joy. Your philosophy but better. We should merge schools. Think of the possibilities—an empire of nothing that celebrates everything!"
"That makes no sense!"
"Exactly! You're learning our curriculum already."
The Battle of Absent Presence, as historians would later fail to name it accurately, reached its climax when General Void challenged Cael to single combat.
"If I defeat you, this madness ends," the General declared.
"And if you lose?"
"I won't lose. I've trained for decades in the Null Blade technique. I feel nothing. Am nothing. Become nothing."
"Sounds restful. I've trained in sweeping. I feel confused. Am confused. Become more confused."
They faced each other in the courtyard while both armies that weren't armies watched. General Void drew his blade—a weapon that seemed to eat light, creating absence where it moved. Cael raised his broom.
"That's not a weapon," the General stated.
"Nothing's a weapon if you think about it right. Everything's a weapon if you think about it wrong. I try not to think about it."
General Void attacked with perfect absence. His blade moved without moving, struck without striking, existed in the space between existence. It was the culmination of the Null Empire's philosophy made martial.
Cael swept.
Not at the General. Not at the blade. Just... swept. Moving dust that wasn't there from here to there, maintaining the motion he'd practiced for years. The broom moved through the same space as the Null Blade, and something impossible happened.
The nothing met the something that was treated like nothing, and both got confused.
General Void's perfect technique faltered because Cael wasn't defending or attacking. He was just maintaining janitorial standards in a combat situation. The Null Blade, designed to negate meaning, found no meaning to negate. Just a man moving a broom through space with no more intention than cleaning.
"Fight me!" the General demanded.
"I am fighting. I'm fighting dust. Very stubborn opponent. Been battling it for years."
General Void swung again, faster, harder, with less nothing and more something. Cael continued sweeping, occasionally adjusting his angle to avoid the blade the way someone might avoid furniture while cleaning.
The crowd watched in fascinated confusion as the Empire's greatest warrior tried to fight someone who wouldn't acknowledge combat was happening. Every perfect technique met janitorial indifference. Every philosophical strike encountered practical maintenance.
Finally, exhausted and confused, General Void stopped. "This is impossible. You can't win by not fighting!"
"I'm not trying to win. I'm trying to clean. You're making it very difficult. Do you mind moving? You're standing on the spot I need to sweep."
"I'm trying to kill you!"
"That's nice. Everyone needs hobbies. Could you do it three feet to the left?"
Something broke in General Void. Not his spirit—that had been carefully eliminated through training. Not his will—that had been replaced with purpose. What broke was the certainty that had held it all together.
He laughed.
It started small, just a crack in his perfect emotionlessness. Then it grew, fed by the absurdity of trying to kill someone who was more concerned with cleanliness than combat. Soon he was laughing fully, his Null Blade forgotten, his nothing-feeling facade crumbling.
"I trained for thirty years," he gasped between laughs. "Thirty years to feel nothing. And I'm undone by a janitor!"
"Custodial engineer," Cael corrected. "We're very particular about titles here. Also about not being particular. It's complicated."
The General's laughter spread through his army. Soldiers who'd forgotten how to feel remembered through confusion. The perfect force of nothing became a very imperfect force of something, and that something was human.
"What do we do now?" General Void asked when he could speak again. "We can't conquer you. We can't destroy what's already destroyed itself. We can't bring meaninglessness where it's already celebrated."
"You could join the festival," Sara suggested. "We have a competition for Best Worst Army. You'd probably win. Or lose. Whichever's better."
And so the Null Empire's unstoppable force met the Academy's immovable absence and both discovered they'd been the same thing all along—humans trying to make sense of senselessness, just from different directions.
The festival continued for three days. Null soldiers learned to fail joyfully. Academy students learned nihilism with enthusiasm. The Shadow School taught everyone how to succeed at being invaded while failing to be conquered.
General Void eventually returned to the Null Empire with a report that made no sense: "We won by losing. They lost by winning. Conquest happened but didn't. Recommend immediate non-action."
Half his army stayed behind, not as deserters but as exchange students, learning advanced meaninglessness from people who'd made it an art form.
The Academy expanded again, absorbing its own invasion, teaching its conquerors how to fail at conquering. The building that had been empty was full. The festival that had been spontaneous became tradition. The battle that never happened became legend.
And in the center of it all, Cael continued sweeping, maintaining the eternal battle against dust while empires rose and fell around his broom.
"So we won?" Kess asked during a quiet moment.
"We didn't lose," Cael replied. "Or we didn't win. Or both happened while neither was occurring."
"That's not an answer."
"Good. Answers are just questions that gave up too soon."
The war continued by not continuing. The Academy grew by staying the same. The Null Empire conquered by being conquered.
And somewhere in the beautiful confusion, humanity remembered that the best battles were the ones where everyone forgot what they were fighting about and had tea instead.
The Age of Confused Conflict had reached its perfect imperfection.
The dance of meaning and meaninglessness continued.
And nobody kept score, which meant everyone won.
Or lost.
Or discovered the difference had never mattered as much as the discovering.