Morning light crept through the dorm window, soft and golden.Mist drifted over the academy grounds, coiling around the training posts before vanishing in the sun.
Rin sat on his bed, watching the faint shimmer before his eyes. For two days, the interface within him had been silent pulsing faintly, like a heart refusing to stop beating.
Then, at last, the silence broke.
[System Update Complete.][New Protocols Integrated.][Welcome back, Rin.]
The familiar voice sounded calmer now steadier, almost human. The interface blinked to life in a faint green hue, replacing its usual silver-blue.
Rin exhaled. "Finally awake?"
[Adaptive Interface: Active.][Flux Analysis Core: Installed.][Synchronization Level: 1%.]
He blinked, the words catching his attention.Flux Synchronization.
That shouldn't have been possible not for someone like him.
He had no Root Seal, no channel for flux to flow through. Yet the system responded again, alive, like the faint pulse he'd felt after the forest encounter.
He closed his eyes and reached inward. Deep in his chest, a flicker answered a quiet warmth, steady as breath. Not strong, but real.
"Still there," he murmured. "Still alive."
He dressed quickly and stepped into the hall as the morning horn sounded a long, low note rolling through the corridors, signaling the start of training.
The Day Begins
The dormitory buzzed with energy. Students hurried past carrying flux gear and sparring scrolls. Some greeted him with a nod; others avoided his gaze.
The nickname still followed him the Rootless anomaly.
"Hey, Rin!" called Jerrin, a data-track senior. "Your system still acting weird?"
Rin's expression stayed calm. "Just updating."
Jerrin laughed. "Still? Maybe it's rewriting your personality."
Rin half-smiled but didn't answer. His thoughts were elsewhere on that quiet pulse flickering deep inside him, the one no one else could hear or even sense.
The Training Dome
By the time he arrived, sunlight poured through the dome's curved ceiling. The air shimmered faintly from the residual flux of earlier tests.
Students lined up before the resonance slabs, waiting to measure their roots. Blue for elemental, gold for spirit, violet for hybrids.
Rin waited near the end.
He already knew what would happen the slab would stay dark. Still, after the system's update, he wanted to see if something had changed.
When his turn came, a few whispers rippled through the group.
"Why's he even bothering?""He's rootless. Always will be."
The instructor, a tall man with silver hair and a scar along his jaw, gave a quiet nod. "Place your hand on the slab."
Rin obeyed.
At first, nothing happened. Then faint and brief a flicker of green rippled beneath his palm. The instructor's reader jumped, scattering with static before freezing entirely.
"What…?" the instructor muttered. "Unstable flux pattern?"
The glow vanished. Silence fell.
He frowned, then shook his head. "Residual interference. You can step back."
Rin nodded and moved aside. The tremor in his hand lingered and then, the voice only he could hear whispered:
[Synchronization Level: 4%.]
A quiet smile touched his lips.
It wasn't a glitch. It was progress.
After the Test
Outside, sunlight spilled through the courtyard flux trees, their crystalline leaves scattering shards of color.
Rin sat beneath one, focusing. That pulse inside him responded soft, rhythmic, alive.
Maybe the system's upgrade wasn't just analyzing cores anymore.Maybe it was copying them.Or awakening something the academy's scanners couldn't detect.
Then a soft tone echoed in his mind.
[Warning: Unknown Flux Signature Detected.][Source: East Quadrant — Barrier Edge.]
He frowned. The east quadrant was restricted too close to the academy's outer defense field.But that signature carried the same resonance he'd felt before.
After a brief hesitation, he rose.
The Barrier Edge
The eastern forest was silent, the air thick with static from the barrier field.
Faint green lines traced across Rin's vision the system's scan markers. He followed them until the trees opened into a small clearing.
There, half-buried in moss, a shard shimmered softly the same jade hue from his dream.
He crouched. The shard pulsed beneath his touch.
"The same light…"
Then the ground trembled. Flux surged outward, bending the air like rippling glass.
[Caution: Energy density exceeds safe threshold.]
From the light's center, a shape began to form tall, human-like, made entirely of flowing green energy.
Rin's breath caught. The same figure from his visions.
It moved with slow, deliberate grace not words, not chant, only rhythm.
Rin's body moved before thought. His hand rose to mirror the motion, and green threads shimmered faintly beneath his skin.
For a single heartbeat, their rhythms aligned.
A vast stillness fell and within it, Rin heard something ancient: the whisper of forests, the pulse of living wind.
Then the figure dissolved. The shard dimmed.
[Synchronization Level: 10%.]
Rin knelt, breath uneven, his heart racing with the echo of that rhythm still inside him.
Return
Night had fallen by the time he reached the dorms.Amber lights hummed softly through the corridor as he sat on his bed, holding the jade shard.
[New Data Acquired.][Origin Trace: Verdant Core Fragment.][Quest Initiated — "Echoes of the Verdant Order."][Objective: Discover the Source of the Verdant Fragments.]
"Verdant Order…" he whispered. The name felt older than the academy, older than any record he knew.
He closed his hand around the shard. "Then I'll find it."
Outside, the wind brushed the windows, carrying the hum of distant flux storms.And deep within him, that strange, living pulse continued steady, ancient, awake.
No one else could hear it.No one else even knew it existed.