Rumors moved faster than light inside the Academy.
By sunrise, the story had already changed three times.
First: Sebastian broke the Neural Sync record.
Then: He bypassed the system's safety limits.
Finally—whispered with the hush of sacrilege—the simulation bled.
No one agreed on the details.
Everyone agreed on the feeling: something beneath the Academy had shifted.
In the central plaza, morning light spilled over the stone fountain that marked the Academy's heart. Students gathered in clusters—robes of every faction and color—trading versions of the same impossible tale.
> "Twelve seconds. Six top cadet models."
"No, he dismantled Zone Zero itself—Professor Enra nearly fainted."
"You think they'll re-rank him?"
"You can't re-rank a god."
Every mention of Raizen drew silence. Even the air seemed to listen.
On the balcony above them, Luna Blossomveil watched, arms folded against the chill. Her violet eyes caught the reflections in the water below—faces lit by equal parts admiration and fear.
Jovhan joined her, a mug of bitter tea steaming between his fingers.
"They talk like he's ascended already," he said.
"He's still here," Luna answered.
"For how long?"
Neither spoke after that. Beneath their feet, faint tremors passed through the marble. It could have been the wind. Or the echo of something waking under the school's foundations.
Far from the noise, in a forgotten training annex near the South Gate, Garet Caelren faced his reflection in the fractured mirror wall.
Sweat poured from him, pooling at his feet. His palms were blistered raw, the wooden haft of his spear slick with blood. Each breath rasped like torn fabric.
Again.
He stepped forward—weight balanced, left foot rooted, right sliding on the inhale. The spear moved, cutting arcs through the air sharp enough to whistle.
Step. Rotate. Anchor. Thrust.
Over and over until form dissolved into instinct.
He wasn't thinking of rankings.
Not of nobles or fame.
Only the rhythm—the conversation between muscle and will.
Outside, he could hear students shouting about Raizen's new record.
Each voice struck him like a hammer.
He's on a different plane, the whispers said.
You'll never reach him.
Garet exhaled slowly, letting the ache speak. The spear wavered, then steadied.
"I'm not chasing him," he murmured.
"I'm forging my own measure."
He pivoted, spear sweeping in a circular cut that snapped the training post in half. Splinters scattered like ash in sunlight.
Silence returned. His pulse slowed.
Somewhere within that silence, faint and uninvited, came a hum—deep as the earth, soft as breath.
He frowned, listening. It wasn't mana. It wasn't Ki.
It was … something else.
A heartbeat not his own.
Then it was gone.
Sebastian opened his eyes to endless black.
Zone Zero had changed since the last synchronization.
The mirror-glass horizon was cracked, edges bleeding faint light. Equations floated like ash. The geometry of reality itself pulsed irregularly—alive, diseased.
He took one step forward and the plane reacted—ripples of data-dust spreading beneath his boots.
> [Warning — unverified coordinates.]
"Then verify," he said quietly.
> [Impossible. Zone Zero core unstable.]
Sebastian smiled faintly. "So even voids can fear corrosion."
He lifted his hand. White motes spiraled from his palm, circling like dust caught in moonlight. When they touched the air, color died; rules bent.
He could feel the residual signatures of the 1 % Operatives still hanging here—echoes of ideologies half-erased by his previous battle. Fragments of their logic whispered through the dark:
> Order must preserve pattern.
Chaos must consume to breathe.
He closed his eyes, listening—not with ears, but with something deeper. The Abyssal Essence within him stirred, faint as a dream.
Each heartbeat matched the world's rhythm.
Then surpassed it.
> [Synchronization rate … rising.]
[Cognitive pattern deviation at 0.02%.]
Sebastian's voice was calm. "Deviation is progress."
He lowered himself into stance—no weapon, no armor. Only breath.
Shapes emerged from the distance—failed simulations clinging to corrupted code, glitch-phantoms clawing through collapsing equations. Their outlines flickered between human and machine, between meaning and memory.
He welcomed them.
They attacked in silence.
He responded in poetry.
Each movement was a stanza: a parry that erased existence, a counter that rewrote causality.
His strikes made no sound; they left impressions—echoes of what should have happened but didn't.
When the last phantom fell, Zone Zero itself screamed—a metallic distortion that rattled infinity.
> [System breach. Entropy level: Critical.]
Sebastian straightened, wiping bloodless dust from his arm. White cracks ran up to his shoulder before sealing with a breath.
He whispered into the void, "You call this instability. I call it pulse."
Something answered.
Not in sound, but in sensation—the faint pressure of a vast consciousness brushing his own.
He looked upward, though there was no sky.
And somewhere far beyond Zone Zero, in a universe none of his peers could reach, Abyssia shuddered.
High within the Academy's forbidden sector, a ring of light hovered above a black table.
Within it sat the Conclave—professors, nobles, and overseers cloaked in anonymity.
Holographic sigils rotated between them, replaying Sebastian's simulation data. The recordings glitched every few seconds—frames missing, readings redacted by reality itself.
Professor Enra spoke first. "He's breached Zone Zero again. Without authorization."
"Define breach," another voice demanded.
"He reached the Core Layer. No human should even perceive that frequency."
"Then he's no longer human."
Silence.
One of the noble delegates adjusted her gloves. "If Raizen continues deviating, containment becomes priority."
"Containment?" Enra barked. "Do you intend to cage entropy? He's beyond the classification scale."
Another voice—cold, precise—cut through.
"If he deviates from control…"
The pause was deliberate.
"…we strike."
Enra's expression hardened. "You'll strike what you don't understand?"
"We strike before we can't."
The holographic circle dimmed as consensus fractured. Outside, thunder rolled though the sky was clear.
Deep below, the Academy's mana reactors pulsed irregularly—subharmonic beats aligning with Sebastian's last recorded heart rate.
Back in Zone Zero, Sebastian knelt, palm pressed to the fractured plane. He could feel the vibrations now—waves spreading through unseen threads, passing through universes like whispers through water.
Each pulse carried a signature identical to his own.
He realized with clinical detachment that the signal wasn't echoing outward.
It was coming back.
Something was calling to him.
He let it in.
The black around him fractured into color—impossible hues twisting and folding into landscapes that changed with every breath. Jiyeon's mountains, Verneville's spires, Nova Terra's neon canyons—all superimposed in an impossible collage. At the center of it, a silhouette—a man, or maybe something older—stood with his back turned.
The pulse synchronized with his heartbeat.
Sebastian reached out. "Who are you?"
The figure's voice was everywhere and nowhere.
> "Raizen."
Just his name.
But it carried weight enough to bend the realm.
White light consumed everything.
Sebastian opened his eyes to the real world.
He was lying on the cold floor of the Neural Chamber, breathing hard. The system alarms blared, crimson lights pulsing in rhythm with the same beat that had followed him from the void.
He ignored them, sitting up slowly.
On the chamber's central screen, new data scrolled in languages no one had programmed—strings of Abyssian glyphs looping infinitely.
He stared, recognition flickering behind his eyes. "So it's begun."
He stood, shoulders steady, expression unreadable.
Outside, thunder cracked across the twin suns' sky.
Students flinched; instructors checked the weather wards. There was no storm in forecast.
Only resonance.
That night, the Academy's mana-networks suffered temporary blackouts. For five seconds, every light on campus flickered—five heartbeats of darkness.
During those five seconds, across every universe—Jiyeon's monasteries, Verneville's mage towers, Nova Terra's datacities, Xianjing's temples—the same tremor rippled through the ground.
And in Abyssia, the realm between existence and erasure, the Dusk Core of the world beat once.
> Raizen.
The name spread through shadow and starlight alike, awakening things that had forgotten the concept of sound.
Sebastian stood again atop the Southern Wall, cloak fluttering against the night wind. Below him, training lights blinked on and off, erratic. He watched them calmly, eyes half-lidded.
Luna approached quietly, the scent of plum blossoms following her.
"You felt it too," she said.
He didn't deny it. "The world blinked."
"That wasn't the world."
He turned to her, faint amusement curling his mouth. "Then what was it?"
She hesitated. "Something answered you."
Sebastian's gaze drifted to the horizon. "Then it knows I'm listening."
For a moment, neither spoke. The wind carried the scent of ozone and ash.
Finally Luna asked, "What are you becoming?"
He smiled—not arrogance, but inevitability.
"Something the system can't simulate."
Lightning split the clouds, silent and white. For an instant, the entire Academy was reflected in his eyes—upside-down, trembling.
He whispered, almost to himself,
> "Every law begins as a pulse. Mine's just louder."
Far away, in the Conclave's sealed chamber, Professor Enra reviewed the corrupted feed one last time. He slowed the footage frame by frame until he reached the instant before Sebastian reappeared.
For a single frame, a symbol glowed behind him—five intersecting circles orbiting a dark core.
He magnified it. The center pulsed once on the screen.
His breath caught. "Abyssia…"
The recording went black.
Across the multiverse, unseen observers looked up from their rituals, machines, and meditations as the same vibration passed through their worlds.
Old priests whispered prayers.
Engineers checked failing circuits.
Martial masters paused mid-form.
A single word resonated within them—foreign, heavy, inevitable.
> Raizen.
And in the depths of Zone Zero, beneath even the layers Sebastian had reached, a presence opened its eyes for the first time in epochs. The sound it made was not a roar or a cry, but a slow, deliberate heartbeat.
Thump.
Thump.