The scanner buzzed like it always did—low, sharp, dismissive.
Red.
Jason stepped through the arch doorway, with hands in his coat pockets, eyes low. The students behind him didn't even glance at the alert. Red bars were for the forgettable.
Coreless, empty files in the academy's registry.
But Jason knew better now.
The sigil under his sleeve pulsed faintly, reacting to the barrier's suppression field. His interface flickered quietly in the corner of his vision:
[Suppression Field Engaged – Core Signature Masked]
[Stability: 11% – Transient]
[Risk of Detection: Contained]
He exhaled.
No one knew.
Not yet.
The system's voice whispered faintly in the back of his skull, almost like a thought that wasn't his:
"Stay steady. Don't crack the surface."
Jason didn't answer. Just kept walking. Past the security checkpoint, past the students with glowing wrists and perfect Cores, past the one place where truth might've broken through.
He hadn't expected the system to cloak him.
But it had.
And now… the only question was how long it would last.
The courtyard shimmered with heat and energy, even in the cold.
Clusters of students sparred in tightly looped drills, their auras flickering in visible waves. A kinetic enhancer launched himself across a padded zone with a sound like thunder. Two flame-forged twins battled each other using mirrored strikes, the air between them rippling with pressure.
Jason watched from the edge, under a synthetic tree. The roots pulsed with grounding nodes—meant to keep ambient Erisflow from interfering with drills. But even here, he could feel his Core thrum faintly, like it was trying to breathe beneath layers of damp earth.
A soft clack echoed nearby.
Milo Venn twirled a weighted baton idly between his fingers, lounging nearby with that same unreadable calm Jason had come to expect.
Their eyes met.
Jason gave a nod.
Milo didn't smile—but he didn't look away either.
And then, from behind them—
"Yo, Custodian!"
Jason stiffened.
Orion Vex strode up, his interface glowing bright blue, pupils still faintly lit from his last sync session.
He tossed a broken baton at Jason's feet.
"See if you can clean this up. Maybe they'll finally give you a support badge or something."
Laughter echoed from behind him—other students trying too hard to matter.
Jason didn't move. Didn't speak.
But something had changed.
His chest didn't tighten. His fingers didn't curl into fists. His breathing stayed slow, even. The sigil on his arm flared softly beneath the bandage, and with it came something unexpected:
Clarity.
Not numbness.
Not rage.
Just… stillness.
"Their power rides them like a drug."
"Yours is growing like a root system under stone."
The thought wasn't his. Not entirely.
Jason bent slowly, picked up the baton, and handed it back.
"Try not to break it next time."
And walked away.
The hallway emptied with the final bell's echo. Most students scattered toward lunch or meditation chambers, some toward the awakening yard for re-test prep.
Jason moved slower. Every step felt too loud. Every light, too bright.
Instructor Veil stood by the threshold to Lecture Hall Two. Her coat was buttoned tight despite the heat. Embedded biosensors on the lapel flickered in unreadable colors.
"Charon," she said.
Jason paused.
"I noticed your presence at the back of today's session."
"I'm in every session," he replied. Voice flat. Controlled.
Veil's eyes were still. Like watching a snake that hadn't decided whether to strike.
"Then you heard the part about unstable threads," she said. "About what happens when an internal shift occurs without oversight."
Jason's heartbeat stayed level. The system helped. It muted adrenaline spikes now. Regulated internal chemical floods like a personal firewall.
"I did," he said. "It was... memorable."
Veil studied him a moment longer, then took a small step closer.
"If you've felt anything recently—anything abnormal—you should self-report. Early stabilization can prevent cascade failures. Or worse."
Jason met her eyes. His jaw clicked slightly as he clenched it, but otherwise… nothing.
"If I become something dangerous," he said, voice low, "you'll be the first to know."
For a moment, her expression shifted.
Not surprise.
Not fear.
Almost… approval?
Then she nodded once and turned away.
Jason walked on.
His sigil pulsed beneath his sleeve like a ticking clock.
The holopad glitched twice before stabilizing. Jason wiped a sleeve across the cracked screen, squinting as the interface came into focus.
[Core Status: Active – 11%]
[Stabilizer Degradation: 64%]
[Projected Regression in: 17 hours, 32 minutes]
[Collapse Risk: Moderate]
He exhaled, slow and steady.
One night.
Maybe two if he starved his flow. But that would make him sluggish—vulnerable. And tomorrow, they were scanning him.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, sliding the Black Book overlay across his vision. The formulas scrolled by like runes etched in fire: compound trees, sigil diagrams, reaction pathways all dancing with layered logic.
Most of the Tier II stabilizers he couldn't make again. Not without banned compounds or rare nootropics. But maybe… he didn't need to. Maybe if he rerouted the stack through an external glyph—used the sigil itself as a chemical trigger—he could stabilize the Core using intention and biology combined.
He pulled a piece of scrap polymer from the pile near his bed. Snapped it into a flat panel. Then began to sketch, white chalk smeared across surface like bone dust.
Spiral.
Triangle.
Fractured line through the middle.
"What if the stabilizer isn't the medicine?"
"What if it's the language the system understands?"
The thought rang through his skull like a chime in a dead cathedral.
He started redesigning the formula around his biology. Around him.
Not borrowed science.
Not remembered diagrams.
Jason's own logic.
Something twisted and raw. Something only someone who'd been outside the system could see clearly.
….
The courtyard was quieter at dusk—fewer students, softer light, the faint buzz of shield gates powering up for night mode.
Jason was reviewing thread diagrams on his holopad when he heard the footsteps. Heavy. Confident. Familiar.
"Yo, ghostboy."
Kale.
Jason didn't look up. Just saved his schematic.
Milo followed a few steps behind, arms crossed, face unreadable.
Kale cracked his knuckles. "We're running spar drills. Figure we'd give you a turn. Can't let you graduate without at least pretending to fight."
Jason stood.
"Not interested."
Kale smirked. "Not asking."
He moved forward, fast—too fast.
Jason dodged the first shove, side-stepping instinctively. But Kale grabbed his wrist mid-movement, jerking him back.
Flash.
The bandage slipped.
The sigil flared, alive beneath his skin, light curling through the inked lines like liquid fire.
Kale recoiled.
"What the f—"
Jason didn't move.
Kale's hand sizzled, steam rising from the skin where their contact had lingered. He stumbled back, shaking it furiously, his expression shifting from arrogant to afraid.
Milo stepped forward. "Kale. That's enough."
Kale's eyes locked on Jason.
"You're hiding something," he growled.
Jason didn't blink. "Everyone is."
Then turned and walked away.
Behind him, Milo said nothing. But he watched with a gaze too sharp to be neutral.
Blackridge Surveillance Hub – 6:41 PM
The feed flickered. Frame by frame, a moment froze:
Two students. One hand grabbing the other.
A flare of light.
Unregistered energy spike.
Thread pattern: non-standard. Unmapped. Unscannable.
The AI paused the feed and zoomed into the flare point.
[UNCLASSIFIED SIGIL DETECTED]
[Eris Harmonization: 87% confidence]
[Core Signature: NULL]
Instructor Veil leaned in, one hand braced on the console.
A line of code ran down the side of the interface.
THREADMATCH: ALTERNATE-LINEAGE?
QUERY: GHOST PATH?
RESPONSE: UNCERTAIN.
She didn't smile.
Didn't speak.
She simply opened a classified file marked PRIORITY WATCH: ANOMALOUS TRAITS – 7/12.
And typed:
Subject under active development. Maintain proximity. Do not engage yet.
She tapped one final word into the command queue:
OBSERVE.
The scanner bar buzzed like it always did—low, sharp, dismissive.
Red.
Jason stepped through the archway, hands in his coat pockets, eyes low. The students behind him didn't even glance at the alert. Red bars were for the forgettable. Coreless. Empty files in the academy's registry.
But Jason knew better now.
The sigil under his sleeve pulsed faintly, reacting to the barrier's suppression field. His interface flickered quietly in the corner of his vision:
[Suppression Field Engaged – Core Signature Masked]
[Stability: 11% – Transient]
[Risk of Detection: Contained]
He exhaled.
No one knew.
Not yet.
The system's voice whispered faintly in the back of his skull, almost like a thought that wasn't his:
"Stay steady. Don't crack the surface."
Jason didn't answer. Just kept walking. Past the security checkpoint, past the students with glowing wrists and perfect Cores, past the one place where truth might've broken through.
He hadn't expected the system to cloak him.
But it had.
And now… the only question was how long it would last.
The courtyard shimmered with heat and energy, even in the cold.
Clusters of students sparred in tightly looped drills, their auras flickering in visible waves. A kinetic enhancer launched himself across a padded zone with a sound like thunder. Two flame-forged twins battled each other using mirrored strikes, the air between them rippling with pressure.
Jason watched from the edge, under a synthetic tree. The roots pulsed with grounding nodes—meant to keep ambient Erisflow from interfering with drills. But even here, he could feel his Core thrum faintly, like it was trying to breathe beneath layers of damp earth.
A soft clack echoed nearby.
Milo Venn twirled a weighted baton idly between his fingers, lounging nearby with that same unreadable calm Jason had come to expect.
Their eyes met.
Jason gave a nod.
Milo didn't smile—but he didn't look away either.
And then, from behind them—
"Yo, Custodian!"
Jason stiffened.
Orion Vex strode up, his interface glowing bright blue, pupils still faintly lit from his last sync session.
He tossed a broken baton at Jason's feet.
"See if you can clean this up. Maybe they'll finally give you a support badge or something."
Laughter echoed from behind him—other students trying too hard to matter.
Jason didn't move. Didn't speak.
But something had changed.
His chest didn't tighten. His fingers didn't curl into fists. His breathing stayed slow, even. The sigil on his arm flared softly beneath the bandage, and with it came something unexpected:
Clarity.
Not numbness.
Not rage.
Just… stillness.
"Their power rides them like a drug."
"Yours is growing like a root system under stone."
The thought wasn't his. Not entirely.
Jason bent slowly, picked up the baton, and handed it back.
"Try not to break it next time."
And walked away.
The hallway emptied with the final bell's echo. Most students scattered toward lunch or meditation chambers, some toward the awakening yard for re-test prep.
Jason moved slower. Every step felt too loud. Every light, too bright. He passed walls embedded with flickering node panels and faint humming cables. The hum of regulation fields pressing through the academy's interior gave the entire hallway the feeling of a living lung—breathing, watching.
Instructor Veil stood by the threshold to Lecture Hall Two. Her coat was buttoned tight despite the heat. Embedded biosensors on the lapel flickered in unreadable colors.
"Charon," she said.
Jason paused.
"I noticed your presence at the back of today's session."
"I'm in every session," he replied. Voice flat. Controlled.
Veil's eyes were still. Like watching a snake that hadn't decided whether to strike.
"Then you heard the part about unstable threads," she said. "About what happens when an internal shift occurs without oversight."
Jason's heartbeat stayed level. The system helped. It muted adrenaline spikes now. Regulated internal chemical floods like a personal firewall.
"I did," he said. "It was... memorable."
Veil studied him a moment longer, then took a small step closer.
"If you've felt anything recently—anything abnormal—you should self-report. Early stabilization can prevent cascade failures. Or worse."
Jason met her eyes. His jaw clicked slightly as he clenched it, but otherwise… nothing.
"If I become something dangerous," he said, voice low, "you'll be the first to know."
For a moment, her expression shifted.
Not surprise.
Not fear.
Almost… approval?
Then she nodded once and turned away.
….
Jason walked on.
His sigil pulsed beneath his sleeve like a ticking clock.
He kept his face still, but inside, his thoughts spun in tight spirals.
Why now? Why Veil?
He replayed her words in his mind—each tone, each pause. There was something in the way she said "internal shift."Like she was probing for confirmation. Like she knew more than she was allowed to say.
Was she testing him? Or warning him?
The hallway dimmed as he passed beneath a malfunctioning panel. Shadows clung to the seams between each reinforced wall plate. His footsteps echoed—half swallowed by the active noise buffers but still there, like whispers chasing him.
And the system stirred again.
"Do not dismiss her."
Jason blinked. Slowed.
"She was once bound to an older protocol. One that still remembers the Alchemist."
A chill worked its way down his spine.
He hadn't said anything aloud.
But the system knew. It always knew.