The silence of the Academy dormitory was a different quality from the silence of his own mind. Out in the ossuary, silence was a predator, a gap between screams and the skittering of vermin. In the PSO vault, it had been sterile and absolute. Here, in the small, single-occupancy room they'd assigned him, the silence was… padded. It was filled with the faint, regular hum of climate control and the distant, muffled sounds of other Sleepers in the complex. It was a silence of order, of institution, and to Adam's newly honed senses, it was full of flaws.
The room itself was a perfect cube of off-white polymer, containing a bed, a desk, and a small privy. The bed was too soft, its give inefficient for spinal alignment during rest. The desk had a minute but perceptible tilt to the left. The seam where the wall met the floor was imperfect, a wavy line of caulk that made his eye twitch. His Perfectionism, that divine grinding drive, cataloged each offense, a constant, low-level static of dissatisfaction.
He stood in the center of the room, the Hungry Pouch a comforting weight in the pocket of his standard-issue tracksuit. He had survived. He was inside. But this was just another cage, albeit a gilded one. The real battle began now—the battle to understand the terrifying tools the Spell had given him and to prepare for the Dream Realm without being dissected by the Academy's politics in the process.
His thoughts kept returning to the [Lord of Reality/Physical World] Aspect ability, Biomass Control. He had felt it, the terrifying, intimate power to command flesh. But his first, fumbling attempt had shown him its limits and its cost. He had stitched a cut by cannibalizing his own arm, a crude, brute-force solution. A master carpenter does not build a chair with a rock; he uses precise tools and detailed plans. Adam had the ultimate tool, but he was missing the plans. He needed to understand the blueprint of life itself. He needed biology.
Furthermore, to gain the ability to move without suspicion, he needed to present a plausible reason for his ignorance. An ossuary rat wouldn't know the difference between a tendon and a ligament. A prodigy with a rare Aspect and a terrifying True Name, however, would be expected to seek knowledge aggressively. He could use that.
The next morning, he presented himself at the Administration Hub. The clerk who had verified his True Name flinched when he saw him. Good. Fear was a lever.
"I need to see Administrator Kael," Adam stated, his voice flat.
A few minutes later, he was seated in an office that was a masterpiece of controlled chaos. Data-slates were stacked in perilous towers, but each stack was perfectly aligned. A holographic model of the solar system spun slowly in one corner, its orbits precise. The man behind the desk, Administrator Kael, was sharp-featured and wore immaculate robes, his fingers steepled under his chin. He was the embodiment of the Academy's facade—orderly on the surface, calculating beneath.
"Sleeper Adam," Kael said, his voice a smooth, cultured baritone. "The 'Origin of Evil'. To what do I owe the pleasure so soon after your arrival?"
Adam had rehearsed this. He leaned forward slightly, projecting an intensity that was only half-feigned. "I have a unique Aspect. You've seen my file. To optimize it for the Dream Realm, I require specialized, accelerated training. Standard classes are… inefficient for my needs."
Kael's eyes gleamed with interest. "Go on."
"I need a private tutor. In biology. Advanced human anatomy, physiology, cellular biology," Adam said. "The [Origin Mimic] aspect, its secondary healing function… it's like trying to fix a clock with a sledgehammer. I need to know how the clock works. Down to the smallest gear."
"And why private?" Kael asked, a knowing smile playing on his lips. "We have excellent lecturers."
Adam met his gaze. "Two reasons. First, I learn fast. A private tutor can move at my pace. Second," he paused, letting the implication hang in the air, "my methods may be… visually disruptive for other students. I plan to practice. On biological samples. There will be blood, viscera. It would be poor form to unsettle the scions of the great clans before their first real nightmare, wouldn't it?"
It was a decent plan that seemed to somehow work, probably due to the Academy wanting to sway favor with him. He was a True Name holder, an unaffiliated asset. A valuable piece on the board. His request showed drive, a willingness to get his hands dirty, and a pragmatic—if gruesome—approach to self-improvement. All qualities they would want to cultivate and, ultimately, control.
Kael steepled his fingers again. "A private tutor in advanced biology. Granted. We have Professor Thorne, our resident neurobiologist and physiologist. He is… eccentric, but brilliant." He made a note on a data-slate. "Is there anything else? Perhaps a more conventional combat tutor?"
"Two more things," Adam said, pushing his luck. "I need a butcher. Not a chef. A butcher. Someone who can teach me to dismantle a body, any body, with efficiency. To understand the architecture of muscle, the pathways of sinew. This relates directly to the physical application of my Aspect."
Kael blinked, thrown by the specificity. "A… butcher."
"And a physical education instructor," Adam continued. "But not for weightlifting. For kinetics. The physics of movement. Leverage, balance, the transfer of force. I learn by watching and doing. I need to understand the principles."
Administrator Kael was silent for a long moment, assessing Adam as he would a complex equation. Finally, he nodded. "Very well. We have Master Rorke, who handles field survival. He was a hunter before he was a soldier. He can teach you dissection. And for kinetics… I will assign Ascended Kael. Do not let his name fool you; he is our foremost expert in biomechanics. You will have your private room in the old laboratory wing for your… practical work. We are investing in you, Sleeper Adam. I trust you will make the return worthwhile."
And you hope to tie that return to your own faction, Adam thought. Good. Let them think they were buying his loyalty. All they were buying was time.
The room he was given was perfect. It was old, the air smelling of dust, bleach, and old iron, but it had been cleaned with a thoroughness that satisfied the most demanding edges of his Flaw. The stone floors were scoured, the single metal table in the center spotless, and the drainage grate in the floor gleamed. Shelves lined one wall, empty and waiting. It was a canvas.
His first lesson was biology. Professor Thorne arrived exactly on time, a wisp of a man with wild white hair and eyes that burned with a feverish intelligence. He carried no data-slates, only a worn leather satchel.
"Adam!" Thorne's voice was a reedy chirp. "The Origin of Evil, here to learn about mitochondria! The poetry of it! I am Professor Thorne. You wish to understand the cathedral of the body so you can better be its devil? A magnificent premise!"
Adam simply nodded. "I need to know how it works. All of it."
"Then we begin not with the devil, but with the angel in the details," Thorne said, pulling a piece of chalk from his bag and beginning to draw on the clean surface of the metal table. "The cell. The fundamental unit of life. Think of it not as a blob, but as a city-state. A walled city."
He drew a circle. "The cell membrane. The city walls. Not a solid barrier, but a smart one, a lipid bilayer with protein gates that decide what enters and exits. Security, you see?" He scribbled inside the circle. "The cytoplasm is the city's streets, the fluid where everything happens. And here," he drew a smaller circle, "the nucleus. The royal palace. It contains the DNA, the sacred scrolls, the blueprint for everything. You wish to control biomass? You must first respect the sanctity of the blueprint."
For an hour, Thorne built the city of the cell, his passion infectious. He described the mitochondria as power plants, the ribosomes as factories building proteins, the Golgi apparatus as the postal service packaging and shipping goods. It was a vibrant, living metaphor that made the abstract concepts stick.
"Now, cities do not exist in isolation," Thorne continued, erasing the table with a sweep of his sleeve and starting a new drawing. "They form communities. Tissues." He drew four distinct patterns. "Muscle tissue—the labor force, the soldiers. They contract, they create movement. Nervous tissue—the communication network, the messengers and the king's decrees, firing electrical impulses along wires of neurons. Epithelial tissue—the border guards and merchants, lining your surfaces, absorbing nutrients, protecting you from invaders. Connective tissue—the mortar and scaffolding, the bones, the cartilage, the fat, the blood! It holds the city together, stores energy, and transports resources."
He looked at Adam, his eyes blazing. "Your Aspect, this 'biomass control'… you are not a god waving a hand. You are a city planner. To heal a cut? You are directing the fibroblast construction crews in the connective tissue to lay down new collagen scaffolding, the keratinocyte merchants to rebuild the epithelial wall. It is not magic. It is logistics. It is directing traffic on a microscopic scale. The energy it costs you? That is the resource expenditure for such a massive, coordinated public works project!"
Adam listened, rapt. This was it. This was the language he needed. His Perfectionist mind didn't just memorize the facts; it began to map them onto his ability. He saw the cut on his palm not as a wound, but as a broken section of city wall, and he understood, for the first time, what his power had actually done to direct the repairs. The draining fatigue was the tax for such rapid, centralized planning.
The next day, Master Rorke arrived, hauling the carcass of a large, six-legged jungle hare. He was a man of few words, his face a roadmap of old scars.
"You wanna cut," Rorke grunted, slamming the carcass onto the table. "We cut. But we cut smart." He laid out a set of knives, each with a specific purpose—a skinner, a boner, a cleaver. "First rule: respect the form. You don't fight the body; you follow its seams."
For two hours, Rorke dismantled the hare with an artist's grace. He didn't just chop; he dissected.
"See here?" he said, pointing with the tip of his knife to a glistening white sheet between muscle groups. "Fascia. The body's plastic wrap. It separates the muscles, lets 'em slide against each other. You cut this, you understand how the pieces fit together. Your Aspect… if you can feel this, control this, you could separate a man's arm from his shoulder without breaking the skin. Just unstick the fascia."
He moved on to the joints, popping the hip and shoulder balls from their sockets with precise leverage. "The body is a machine of levers and pulleys. The bone is the lever, the joint is the fulcrum, the tendon is the rope that pulls. You understand the machine, you know where to apply force to break it… or to fix it."
After Rorke left, the room stank of blood and viscera. Adam stood alone, the hare now a neatly organized collection of parts. His Perfectionism was sated by the orderly dissection. He picked up the skinner.
He focused, not on mimicking Rorke's movements with [Origin Mimic], but on understanding the principle—the angle of the blade, the gentle tension on the hide, the way it parted from the underlying fascia. He tried it himself on a remaining section, his movements clumsy at first, then refining with each pass as his Aspect absorbed the underlying blueprint of the action.
Then, he took a smaller knife. He looked at his own forearm. He needed to feel it, not just see it.
He made a shallow, precise incision. Pain, sharp and clean. Blood welled. He watched it, not with fear, but with the analytical eye of Professor Thorne's city planner. He saw the breach in the epithelial border. He felt the damage to the underlying connective tissue streets.
He activated [Biomass Control].
This time, he didn't just pour energy in. He directed it. He focused his will on the fibroblasts, imagining them swarming to lay down new collagen. He pictured the keratinocytes multiplying at the edges, migrating to seal the breach. He felt the energy drain from his core, a focused siphon, not a chaotic flood. The crimson filaments emerged, but their work seemed more ordered, more efficient. The wound closed in forty-five seconds, leaving a finer, less noticeable line.
The cost was still significant, the familiar hollow ache returning to his right arm, but it felt less wasteful. He had been a better manager this time.
His third tutor, Ascended Kael, was a surprise. He was a short, compact man who moved with such fluid, silent economy that he seemed to teleport. He entered the room, his eyes scanning the bloodstained table and the clean, healed cut on Adam's arm without comment.
"Kinetics," Kael said, his voice a soft whisper that somehow filled the room. "Is the study of motion. Your body is a weapon. A poorly designed one, full of compromises evolution made for climbing trees, not killing monsters. We will re-educate it."
He had Adam stand in the center of the room. "Show me how you punch."
Adam threw a basic, ossuary-born haymaker. All shoulder, no hip.
"Wrong," Kael stated. "Inefficient. You are pushing with your arm. The power for a punch comes from the ground. Watch."
Kael didn't punch a bag. He simply shifted his weight, his back foot pressing into the floor. The force traveled up his leg, coiled through his torso in a kinetic chain, and snapped out through his shoulder, his arm a whip that cracked the air. There was no wind-up, no telegraphing. It was pure, distilled force.
"The ground is your anchor. Your legs are the engine. Your core is the transmission. Your arm is merely the delivery vehicle," Kael explained. "You are not throwing a punch. You are projecting a force wave that originates from the earth itself. Your Aspect, this [Origin Mimic]… you can see the sequence, yes? The timing of the muscle contractions, the alignment of the joints?"
Adam nodded, his mind replaying the motion in slow motion. He could see it—the perfect, sequential activation of the glutes, the obliques, the latissimus dorsi, the pectorals. It was a symphony, and Kael was the conductor.
"Good," Kael said. "Now, try. Not to copy me. To understand the principle. Feel the ground. Be the chain."
For the rest of the session, they didn't throw a single punch. They worked on the stance. The weight transfer. The subtle rotation of the hips. Adam's Perfectionism latched onto the challenge, analyzing every micro-adjustment, every flaw in his own posture. It was frustrating, maddening work, but with each failure, his body, guided by his Aspect, learned the true map of efficient movement.
Weeks blurred into a grueling, perfect routine. His days were a trinity of disciplines. Mornings with Thorne, building the mental map of the biological city. Afternoons with Rorke, learning the brutal, practical art of deconstruction. Evenings with Kael, reprogramming his body's physical language.
He was a ghost in the Academy. He didn't eat in the main hall, preferring to take his rations to his room or his lab. He didn't speak to the other Sleepers, who had already formed their cliques and hierarchies. They saw him as the pale, intense boy with the strange eyes who smelled faintly of blood and formaldehyde, the one with the ominous True Name. They gave him a wide berth, which suited him perfectly.
In the deep silence of the night, in his sterile, flawed room, he would lie in bed and feel the changes. He could feel the individual muscles in his back, could consciously relax or tense them. He could trace the pathways of his own circulatory system, feeling the pulse of blood as a flow of resources. He was becoming the sovereign of his own physical world, learning its laws, its geography, its hidden potentials.
He had entered the Academy to hide and to learn. But as he pieced together the architecture of the self, he realized he was building something far more dangerous than a simple facade. He was building an understanding of power . He was learning that the greatest mastery was not over others, but over the fundamental principles that governed oneself .
And he was only just beginning. The winter solstice, and his first mandated trip to the Dream Realm, was still a few month away. He had so much more to learn, so many more flaws to correct, so much more perfection to demand from himself and the world. A slow, cold smile would often touch his lips in the dark.
"Thank you," he would whisper to the silent room. This time, it was a promise.