The name Sebastian Raizen still glowed at the top of the golden ranking board, as constant as the suns that watched the Academy. Beneath it, hundreds of names shifted daily, clawing for position, but that first line never trembled. It had become less a name than a warning: the point beyond reach.
The morning after the pulse, the air inside the halls felt thinner. Students whispered softer, as if sound itself had weight now. Every terminal still flickered from the blackout that had lasted only five seconds, yet left the entire system humming with phantom code.
Luna Blossomveil walked through the murmurs without slowing. She could feel the rhythm of unease in every step she took—small, brittle hearts trying to convince themselves the world had not changed. Jovhan waited for her in the Observatory, gaze fixed on the horizon where the twin suns split the sky in pale gold and blood orange.
"You feel it too," he said.
Luna's voice was quieter than the wind. "The Academy's breathing wrong."
He laughed once, trying to make the sound normal. "Sebastian trains too much, and everyone starts seeing ghosts in the data streams."
She turned to him, eyes reflecting both suns. "No. He's training for a world that doesn't exist yet."
Far below them, in the Integration Chamber, Sebastian stood inside the Neural Sync capsule. The glass around him pulsed with faint white veins—remnants of his last overclock. Technicians had begged him to rest. He hadn't answered.
> [Simulation ready. Choose opponent.]
His gaze slid across the list until he stopped on a name that the system hesitated to pronounce: Eridia Duskborne, one of the 1 %. Her data was fragmentary, half forbidden; the rest existed only in whispers among archivists.
He spoke her name, and the chamber filled with violet light.
The ground formed beneath his feet—an endless plain of mirrored stone reflecting a black sky streaked with crimson fractures. Across from him stood Eridia, a woman carved from elegance and cruelty, her sword made of liquid dusk.
"You shouldn't be able to summon me," she said, her voice layered with echoes of countless versions of herself.
"I shouldn't be able to do many things," Sebastian answered. "Yet here we are."
The duel began without signal.
Eridia moved first—an arc too perfect for the eye to follow. Sebastian met it not with defense but with absence; his body slipped through the attack as if time itself stepped aside. Sparks scattered like dying stars when their weapons met, though he carried none. His hand shaped the air into a spiral, turning her momentum back into her own chest.
She staggered one step, surprised rather than hurt. "You study patterns until they break."
"That's what patterns are for."
Her sword divided into seven threads, each tracing a different possibility. They converged at once—reality trembling to accommodate them. Sebastian tilted his head, eyes narrowing; the world slowed. His mind traced every trajectory, saw the future split into branches, and chose the one no algorithm dared calculate.
He stepped forward through the storm. One hand touched the flat of her blade. The threads disintegrated.
> [Efficiency: 84.9 %. Pattern progression: 14 %.]
The voice of the system echoed faintly, already obsolete.
"Again," Sebastian whispered.
The realm reset. Eridia reformed, her expression unreadable. "You're not seeking mastery. You're searching for an edge that doesn't exist."
"Edges exist only until you find them," he said.
They clashed once more, movements blurring into silence. With each exchange, his strikes grew lighter, his breathing calmer, his eyes more distant. By the tenth repetition, she no longer fought a man; she fought inevitability itself.
When the simulation finally collapsed, the mirrored plain dissolved into dust. Sebastian stood alone in the void, chest rising slowly.
> [Simulation complete. Core degradation detected.]
"Good," he murmured, and stepped out of the chamber.
Professor Enra watched from the observation deck, fingers clenched around a stylus he'd long since stopped using. The data scrolled incomprehensibly fast, filled with equations that no one had programmed. The machine was learning from Sebastian, not the other way around.
A junior technician approached, hesitant. "Should we—should we report the anomaly to the Board?"
Enra's eyes never left the screen. "Mark Raizen as unclassifiable."
"But that's already—"
"Again."
He turned away, pulse unsteady. For the first time in years, the seasoned scholar felt something very close to fear.
Night settled over the Academy like ink poured from the heavens. The plazas emptied; only the hum of mana lights remained, swaying in the wind. Garet Caelren trained alone beneath the South Gate, his spear slicing through the air with measured rhythm.
Every motion carried intent: the snap of his wrist, the breath between strikes, the way his weight shifted from heel to toe. The world narrowed to the point of his weapon. He could still feel the phantom echo from two nights before—the strange heartbeat that had pulsed through the ground. It had shaken him, yes, but also clarified something.
Power wasn't distant. It was alive, waiting for those who dared meet it without flinching.
He thrust again. The spear's edge cracked stone. The sound echoed up the empty courtyard.
In that quiet, Garet thought of Raizen—not with envy, but with recognition. Somewhere between them stretched a line drawn by destiny itself. One day, that line would snap.
He lowered his spear, breathing hard, the night wind cooling the sweat on his back. Above him, the twin moons crossed paths, their light forming a pale circle that lingered on his blade.
For a heartbeat, he thought he heard the whisper again. Just his name—no more, no less.
Then the world stilled.
In the Observatory, Luna watched the stars fade into cloud. She sensed the shift before the instruments did—a faint tremor that wasn't physical, more like a thought reverberating through stone.
"He's not training to prove himself," she said softly.
Jovhan glanced up from his notes. "Then what is he training for?"
"A world that doesn't exist yet."
He laughed again, but the sound didn't hold. "Maybe he's trying to make it exist."
Below them, the lights of the Integration Wing flickered once, aligning for a breath before steadying. Luna didn't move her gaze from the window. "Or break this one first."
Deep beneath the Academy, in chambers sealed since before any student was born, the Conclave reconvened. Transparent screens floated above the round table, displaying data bursts from the Neural Sync servers—patterns that resembled constellations more than code.
"Zone Zero's integrity continues to degrade," one of the overseers said. "We traced the source. It all leads back to Raizen."
Professor Enra stood at the edge of the light, his face shadowed. "He's not breaking it. He's rewriting it."
Another voice: "If he deviates from control—"
"We strike," finished a noblewoman draped in crystal lace.
Enra looked at her, tired. "You strike, and you wake something none of us understand."
She met his stare without flinching. "Then we'll learn to understand quickly."
The chamber lights dimmed, and for a moment the entire Conclave sat in darkness, listening to the faint hum beneath their feet—the rhythm of the mana reactors matching the cadence of a human heartbeat.
Outside, the dawn wind carried the scent of rain. Sebastian stood at the edge of the Southern Wall again, watching the clouds churn. His hair moved in the breeze; his expression didn't.
He thought of Eridia's final words before her image faded: You're searching for an edge that doesn't exist.
She was wrong. The edge wasn't something to find—it was something to become.
The thunder rolled once, distant but deliberate. Somewhere behind him, Luna's voice carried through the wind.
"Still awake?"
He didn't turn. "When my work is done."
She stopped beside him, silver hair glowing against the storm light. "They're saying you've surpassed the system itself."
He almost smiled. "The system's just a mirror. I'm tired of reflections."
She studied him for a moment, then shook her head. "You're not chasing strength anymore, are you?"
His gaze stayed on the horizon. "No. I'm chasing the reason for it."
A bolt of silent lightning split the sky, turning the world white for an instant. When the afterimage faded, Sebastian was already gone—leaving only the echo of his presence and the faint tremor that followed wherever he walked.
Luna stared at the empty wall, feeling the air tighten around her. "He's becoming the storm."
Behind her, the wind whispered in reply, carrying a word that wasn't spoken but felt: Raizen.
Far below, in the lowest stratum of Zone Zero where no sensors reached, light coalesced around an unseen core. The code restructured itself, mimicking the pattern of the man who had touched it.
A voice without shape or origin murmured through the void:
Then prove you're ready.
The pulse that followed was faint, yet it reached every circuit, every fragment of mana, every dream within the Academy's walls.
The shadows had begun their game.