"John! Hey, over here!"
The loud, frantic shouting cut through the low hum of the cafeteria like a blade. John turned his head slowly, his eyes heavy and stinging, to see Luke Lockheart waving both arms wildly from a sun-drenched table in the far corner.
Every swing of Luke’s arms seed to vibrate with an annoying level of energy that John simply wasn’t prepared to handle.
"I honestly thought you’d sleep the entire day away," Luke said by way of greeting as John slumped into the chair opposite him.
John didn’t answer imdiately. Instead, he let out a long, deep yawn that made his jaw ache. He had forced himself out of bed after only five hours of restless shut-eye, his mind still buzzing with the wirefra images.
"I can’t afford to ss up my sleeping routine," John finally muttered, rubbing his face with his palms. "Five hours are enough for any normal human being to work properly. Any more than that is just indulgence."
"You are one of those ti-managent freaks, aren’t you?" Luke shook his head, his expression shifting to one of mock pity as if he was looking at a tragic figure. "Take it from , John: there is nothing in this world that is worthy enough to cut into your sleeping hours. Sleep is sacred!"
Luke pointed a thumb at his own chest, puffing it out as if he was the world’s leading expert on the philosophy of sleep. John opted for a dignified silence. He knew from experience that debating with Luke was a circular journey to nowhere.
"Wait here," Luke said, suddenly standing up with a burst of vigour. "I’m treating you this ti. You look like a zombie, so we’re getting you a decent lunch."
Before John could even voice a preference or suggest a simple sandwich, Luke had already bolted toward the kitchens to place a massive order with the staff.
"Yawn..."
John leaned back, the wooden chair creaking under his weight. He fought the overwhelming urge to just rest his forehead on the table and drift off. He knew he had pushed himself too far the previous night.
From the mont he had finished the hack attempt and completed the quest, until the sun began to peek over the horizon, he hadn’t allowed himself a single second of respite.
He had been obsessed. Driven by the novelty of his new ability, he had spent thirty ntal Points in a focused marathon, activating [Wirefra Sight] thirty tis.
The data he’d gathered was invaluable, but the most interesting discovery had been the colour-coding of the security asures in different places. Whenever his vision passed over an office with a high-level security setup, the usual green grid of the building’s skeletal structure would bleed into a sharp, threatening red.
It had startled him at first—a crimson warning in a world of erald code. When he had ventured a hand toward one of those red-coded zones, the system had hissed a warning into his mind, advising him in no uncertain terms to stay back.
’At least I mapped out almost the entire administrative building,’ he thought, a small sense of pride cutting through his exhaustion. ’I know where the "no-go" zones are now.’
His musings were interrupted by the sound of clattering plastic. Luke had returned, and he wasn’t alone; he was carrying a mountain of food across several trays, looking as if he were catering for a small gang rather than just two.
"I didn’t know what you preferred, so I just got everything that looked edible," Luke said, sliding plate after plate onto the table in front of John. He looked ready to turn around and head back for a second round.
John grabbed Luke’s arm, stopping him before he could retreat. "It’s enough," John said, his voice laced with impatience. "We have more than enough to feed a dormitory here, Luke."
"Cool," Luke sat down, though he looked slightly regretful that he hadn’t brought a few more side dishes.
John ignored the excess and picked up a fork, though his appetite was dampened by a nagging, dull headache—the lingering "hangover" of staying up and walking around without rest.
"So, I heard the teacher spoke quite well of you this morning," Luke said suddenly, his mouth already half-full of bread. "He said you did a marvellous job on your night patrol. Apparently, you didn’t sleep or rest for even a minute. He even joked that he might consider giving you the job as a permanent part-tir if you wanted it! Hahaha!"
John nearly choked on a sip of water. "He must be kidding, right?"
He knew the teacher had been tracking his movents via the GPS map, but he hadn’t expected the man to be genuinely impressed by his diligence. To the teacher, it must have looked like John was a more dedicated guard than the best he expected from him.
"It almost killed with boredom," John added, trying to downplay the night’s events.
"Ah, well, no sane person would ever actually consider doing that job for fun," Luke said, stuffing more food into his mouth. "I know the feeling. Once, when I was younger, I made a massive mistake—don’t ask—and my father decided the best punishnt was to make pull night guarding patrols around the family estate..."
Luke began to ramble, launching into a long-winded story about his childhood. Usually, this was the point where John would tune him out, letting the tall youth’s voice beco background noise. But then, Luke dropped a phrase that acted like a cold bucket of water on John’s drowsy mind.
"...Of course, that was back in the tis when my family was still part of the Guardian families of our Paragon," Luke sighed.
"You were?"
John cut him off mid-sentence, his exhaustion montarily forgotten. He knew Luke was the type to jump from topic to topic with the erratic energy of soone with ADHD, often burying gold under piles of useless chatter. He had to stop him here and drag him back to that specific point.
"Oh... yeah."
Luke’s face changed instantly. The boisterous, energetic mask crumbled, replaced by the sa heavy, depressive shadow that had crossed his features the last ti they spoke about his family. He poked at his food, his appetite suddenly gone, as the weight of his family’s history settled over the table.
"You know..." John began, leaning forward as he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial hum. He could see the gears turning in Luke’s head; he knew that if he left the youth to his own thoughts, Luke would find a conversational escape hatch and bolt through it, leaving his secrets buried.
"When you’re carrying a painful trauma like that, it’s always recomnded that you speak openly about it with a friend. Keeping it locked up just lets it rot."
"What’s the point?" Luke asked, his eyes downcast as he picked listlessly at a piece of fruit on his plate. He was clearly looking for an exit, his body language tense and guarded.
John wasn’t about to let him go—not when he was this close to uncovering the truth behind the mysterious terms like "Paragon" and "Guardian Families."
"It helps more than you’d think," John said, pausing for a mont to construct a believable lie. He needed a hook that appealed to Luke’s sense of logic. "It’s a specific type of psychological therapy I read about once.
The core idea is simple: if you can find the strength to speak about the trauma openly with soone you trust, it ans you’ve already begun to conquer it. By naming it, you crush the power it has over you."
"Hmm... I’ve never actually tried to look at it that way before," Luke admitted. He sounded thoughtful, the bait successfully taken. He took a deep breath, his shoulders dropping an inch. "Alright... I’ll talk to you about it then. You rember that kid from our class? Bernard?"
"The one who ca up to you earlier, trying to make a scene using your family na?" John intentionally injected a bit of steel into his voice. He wanted to prick Luke’s pride, to make his blood boil just enough to loosen his tongue.
The trick worked perfectly. Luke’s grip tightened on his fork until his knuckles turned white.
"That bastard!" Luke hissed. "His uncles—on his mother’s side—belong to a Guardian family that has been competing with mine for generations under our Paragon’s banner.
You know how the rules of the hierarchy work... There can only be one official ’Sword’ and one official ’Shield’ family serving any single Paragon’s na.
My family, the Lockheart, held the title of the official Shield for generations. Our strongest warrior, the one who kept that title pinned to our chest, was my grandfather."
Luke began to recount the fall of his house, and as the story unfolded, the sheer scale of the tragedy beca clear. It wasn’t just a loss of status; it was a massacre.
It seed the Lockheart’s elite warriors had been lured into a ticulously planned trap orchestrated by Bernard’s uncles. In a single night of betrayal and bloodshed, the family’s strongest were wiped out in one fell blow.
With their power shattered, the Lockheart lost their official standing almost overnight. Bernard’s uncles hadn’t stopped at murder, either; they had spent the months since spreading rumours, painting the ambush as a failure of the Lockhearts’ own making—a disgrace to a once-famous na.
"...It all happened last sumr," Luke whispered, his voice cracking slightly. "Luckily, my grandfather had the foresight to secure my spot here at the academy before the hamr fell. If he hadn’t... Soone like , in the position I’m in now, wouldn’t stand a chance of even stepping foot inside these gates."
John sat in stunned silence. Beyond the tragedy of the story—which John recognised as a classic, brutal power struggle—he was struck by a realisation. If a fallen noble like Luke felt lucky to be here, then this academy was far more grandiose and exclusive than John had initially perceived. It made him wonder: ’How the hell did I get in?’
’It seems Mark’s blabbering was right,’ John thought, his mind racing. ’There has to be soone—soone on the sa level as these Paragons—who is either sponsoring the programs or calling in massive favours to win this war. Soone wanted here. Soone must have helped many others join here!’
He turned his gaze back to Luke. The tall youth had transitioned from the tragedy to a rambling stream of consciousness, reciting his father’s old adages, his grandfather’s stoic teachings, and various morable monts from his childhood that wouldn’t an anything to anyone but him.
"You know I co from a very humble background," John said, abruptly cutting through Luke’s noise. He needed to reposition himself as the outsider to keep the information flowing.
"I lost my father while he was in service, saving a mber of a Paragon’s family. I ended up here as a gesture of their grace—a reward for his sacrifice. Because of that, my knowledge of the Paragon world, the Guardian families, and the ancient conflicts between them is pretty superficial."
"Ah, that makes sense," Luke said. He didn’t seem to find anything suspicious in John’s cover story. If anything, he seed cheered by the idea that he could be the one to educate his friend. "If you want to know how the world works, I’m your guy! I’m a walking library, John. I can tell you anything you need to know—well, within reason."
Luke’s expression suddenly turned solemn again. "Of course, I have to stay away from the deep secrets of my family, the other Guardian Families, and the Paragons themselves."
John stared at him, montarily speechless. ’If all of that is off-limits, what’s left to talk about? The weather?’
"We had to swear a blood oath," Luke explained, noticing John’s blank stare. He spoke the words with a weight that suggested the oath was more than just a promise. "It’s a binding ritual. One that can literally end our lives if we expose too much about those specific topics. So... my hands are tied on the heavy stuff."
"Well," John said, leaning back and fixing his gaze on the stained tiles of the cafeteria ceiling. He needed to be careful. If he pushed too hard, he might trigger the very blood oath Luke had just warned him about.
"For soone like , who grew up in the dark about these things, even the most basic information is considered a great help. I’m just trying to understand the world I’ve been thrown into."
"Ah, that I can definitely do!" Luke’s deanour shifted instantly. He looked like a fish that had finally found a fresh, clear stream after being stuck in a stagnant pond. He leaned in, his eyes bright with the thrill of being a ntor. "Let’s start with the pillars themselves. Let’s start with the Paragons."
For the next hour, the cafeteria noise faded into a dull roar as Luke spoke almost non-stop. Earlier, John had been fighting off waves of dizziness and the heavy pull of sleep, but the mont Luke began to dissect the social and political regis of this world, John’s mind snapped awake. It was as if he’d been injected with a concentrated dose of caffeine.
Luke spoke about the Paragons not rely as political leaders or elite rulers, but as the most ancient, foundational beings in existence. As Luke talked, John couldn’t help but draw parallels to what Mark had told him—about the original human leaders, the designers of this "ga" who had eventually succumbed to infighting and greed.
The more Luke described the necessity of the Guardian Families—the powerful houses that lived and died under the Paragons’ banners—the more it mirrored Mark’s grim history. It was a perfect, if tragic, reflection: leaders who had abandoned the prosperity and infinite opportunities of the system to focus entirely on petty, internecine warfare.
"But why do they even need these families in the first place?" John interrupted, cutting through a long-winded tangent about the wealth and fa of the high houses. "And how is it even possible for soone to live for over five hundred years?"
"Five hundred years?" Luke let out a short, hollow laugh, dropping a bombshell that made John’s blood run cold. "No, John. The Era of the Paragons didn’t start five centuries ago. It began five thousand years ago."
John felt the world tilt. "Five thousand?"
"And the lineage is still running to this very day," Luke continued, oblivious to the shock on John’s face. "Of course, you have direct and indirect descendants, and there’s a complex hierarchy of power and heritage within the bloodlines, but the line itself? It has never been broken. Not once in five millennia."
Luke descended back into his lecture, detailing the roles of the Guardian Families in maintaining that lineage and shielding the Paragons from both internal and external threats. He talked until his voice went hoarse, eventually leaving John to return to his dorm to rest.
But rest was the last thing on John’s mind.
"There is sothing fundantally wrong about the history of this ga," John muttered as he collapsed onto his bed. He had asked Luke to clarify the tiline multiple tis, and every single ti, Luke had repeated that sa staggering number: five thousand years.
"I’m certain Mark and the initial program ntioned the ga had been running for five hundred years," John whispered to the ceiling. He lay there, trying to organise the fragnts of information he’d harvested.
Aside from the discrepancy in ti, every other detail matched Mark’s words perfectly. The greed, the fighting,.. He stared into the darkness of his room, his mind leaping to a radical conclusion.
’Does this an there is a Paragon—soone from the highest tier of this world—who is actively working with the machines? Is that the hidden hand that guided into this academy?’
The realisation hit him like a physical blow. In his rush to investigate Ricky, he had completely ignored the most obvious target: his own file.
He had been so focused on the world around him that he’d missed the chance to hack into the records of his own admission. That file wouldn’t just tell him about himself; it would hold the fingerprint of the mysterious figure that paves his path to the academy.
"I’ll have to wait for another chance to do it," he groaned. His awareness was finally fading, replaced by a weight that felt like lead in his head. He couldn’t resist the siren call of sleep any longer. He closed his eyes, his thoughts of five-thousand-year-old kings dissolving into a deep, dreamless void.
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