The Horizon Primary Academy's central plaza hummed with the nervous energy of five-year-olds. Gone were the sterile quiet of the Veyron estate and the analytical calm of the private training chamber. Here, the air vibrated with unfiltered emotions and chaotic Ribbon signatures.
Kaelen walked beside Mina, his crimson thread, still only Level 5, pulsing gently beneath his skin. He missed Astra's constant data stream, the soft overlays that would tell him the emotional calibration of each child he passed. Now, he had to guess.
"You're frowning," Mina observed, nudging his elbow. Her silver thread, a beacon of serene stability, seemed to absorb the ambient chaos. "Are you calculating the optimal path through the crowd?"
"I'm just trying to understand why that boy is crying," Kaelen admitted, pointing to a small figure near a water fountain, his ribbon aura flickering with distress. "His emotional signature is... incoherent."
"He probably just dropped his snack," Mina said with a shrug. "Some things don't need a Ribbon-scan, Kael."
The First Lesson in Empathy
Their class entered the Ribbon Synchronization Chamber—a vast, open space where hundreds of children could practice their nascent cultivation. The chamber was designed to suppress individual Ribbon feedback, forcing students to rely on collective stability.
Their teacher, a kind-faced woman with a faint, calming emerald ribbon, smiled. "Today, class, we learn empathy. Your individual threads are like single instruments. Together, they can form an orchestra. We will attempt a basic Collective Thread Stabilization."
The goal was simple: extend one's ribbon thread gently and collectively maintain a steady energy field for sixty seconds. Most children managed twenty before their threads wavered.
Kaelen extended his deep-red thread. It was stable, almost unnaturally so for a Level 5. He could feel the chaotic energy of the other children's threads—some flickering with impatience, others trembling with anxiety. He felt the impulse to impose order, to force his crimson thread to align theirs. It was the Vale Family's instinct for Systems Integration, his father's direct approach to compression.
But then he remembered Lyra, his mother, the Mentalist. She wouldn't force. She would model. She would create a structure that invited alignment.
He focused, not on controlling the other threads, but on creating a perfectly stable, internal frequency. His red thread glowed, a steady, unwavering line. Around him, the other threads didn't snap into place. They simply found his rhythm. Like tuning forks, they began to resonate.
The teacher's eyes widened. She had never seen such rapid, organic synchronization from a class of five-year-olds. A collective field, usually patchy and uneven, now pulsed with soft, coherent light.
The Architect's Intuition
After the session, a boy approached Kaelen. His ribbon aura was a turbulent yellow, prone to bursts of uncontrolled energy. He was from a prominent sub-branch of the Drakmor Family, known for their volatile, brute-force reactors.
"My thread always goes crazy," the boy admitted, looking at Kaelen's calm crimson glow. "My dad says it's because I have too much power. He says I'll be good for Heavy Mecha Frames."
Kaelen thought of his mother's lecture on the Thread Phase. "Your thread isn't too powerful," he corrected gently. "It's just inefficient. It's expelling energy in all directions because it doesn't have a stable breadth-to-length ratio."
The Drakmor boy blinked. "What?"
"If your thread broadens correctly every ten levels, it can handle more power without fracturing. You're trying to build a fortress on a single string, aren't you?"
The boy's yellow thread flickered with confusion, then a flicker of understanding. "Yeah, my dad just says to push harder."
Kaelen shook his head. "Pushing harder breaks the structure. You need to grow it correctly."
The Future of Fortresses
Mina, who had been listening silently, nudged Kaelen. "You just redesigned the entire Drakmor cultivation philosophy. That's probably going to cause a diplomatic incident in about fifteen years."
"I was just explaining the math," Kaelen replied, genuinely perplexed.
"That's what your mother means when she says the Vale Family integrates what others cannot," Mina mused. "You see the flaws in their core designs. My family builds Space Fortresses," she added, her gaze drifting toward the orbital rings again. "We focus on making the ultimate unmoving object."
Kaelen looked at her. "And you want to be a pop star."
"Yes," she confirmed, her silver thread shimmering with a deeper, more confident pulse. "My ancestors, the Valerius line, have been anchored to the Universal Nodes since before the UCC was fully formed. They're Level 500+ beings who literally hold the fabric of reality together. They want me to be another one. I just want to make music."
Kaelen considered this. The First Scientist had discovered the Ribbon as a tool for stabilization, not just power. The Twelve Sovereign Families had specialized, creating powerful, but isolated, domains. His family, the Vale, specialized in integrating these disparate systems.
"A song is a type of wave, Mina," Kaelen said, his crimson thread momentarily synchronizing with her silver. "And a wave is a type of structure. If your music can stabilize the emotions of an entire planet… isn't that just a different kind of fortress?"
Mina stared at him, her usual composure cracking slightly. "I… I never thought of it like that."
The Whispers of the Multiverse
As the children were dismissed, Kaelen felt a faint tremor. It wasn't the ground shaking; it was a subtle shift in the ambient Ribbon density. It was too faint for most, but Kaelen's zero-leakage sensitivity, a legacy of his parents' combined power, detected it.
It was a whisper from beyond. A tiny stress fracture in the universal membrane, far beyond the reach of any Weave-phase Destroyer.
He thought of his mother's warnings about the Level 500+ entities that caused Dimensional Stress. He thought of the war that raged at the border, a war the Unified Council of the Cosmos filtered from public knowledge.
Mina caught his gaze. "You're doing that serious thing again."
"The universe is a very big, very complicated place," Kaelen said, his crimson thread momentarily flaring with a hint of concern.
Mina just smiled. "Good thing we're here to sort it out then, right?"
She started humming a simple, catchy tune. Her silver thread pulsed in time with the melody. It wasn't a fortress. It was a song. But Kaelen realized, as he felt the slight tremor in the fabric of reality, that a song could resonate just as deeply as any wall. And sometimes, a resonance could bridge gaps that force could never cross.