The stone corridor bled into morning mist. The towering iron portcullis of the Western Gate lood ahead—a massive skeleton of rusted iron separating the sterile cobblestones of the Academy from the Whispering Woods.
We did not reach the crank.
A glowing cherry-red ember hovered in the thick mist. The sharp, bitter scent of cinder-leaf tobacco cut through the damp ozone.
Instructor Freya Siegel Roo leaned against the massive stone pillar. Scarred leather trench coat. Slow drag from her cigarette. Ash tapped onto the wet cobblestones.
Her single good eye dropped to the half-eaten red bean pastry in Raiden's taped hand, then to the nutrient wrapper in mine.
A low, gravelly chuckle scraped out of her throat.
"A breakfast date at four in the morning on the edge of a high ink density zone." Instructor Freya shook her head, crushing the cigarette under her steel-tipped boot. "The youth in this Academy possess an inspiring level of brain damage. Princess or not, a second student is a liability I'm not paid to docunt. Send your date back to her dorm."
A date. Instructor Freya Siegel Roo just classified this as a romantic outing.
I adjusted my collar, trying to vent a phantom spike in my internal temperature. "I told her to leave. She didn't listen. I'm not her babysitter."
Instructor Freya shifted her gaze to Raiden.
Raiden rested her taped right hand at her side. "I am not a date." The correction ca clipped, carrying the faint indignation of soone professionally misclassified. "He doesn't require supervision. I am here to docunt his thodology."
A beat.
Instructor Freya looked at her. Then at . Then at the pastry. Then at again.
Her scarred fingers reached for another cigarette.
"That's worse." She lit it. "That's sohow worse. You followed a first-year into a high ink density zone at four AM to take notes on how he walks."
"I am observing his spatial engagent patterns," Raiden said, without a single gram of self-awareness.
Instructor Freya exhaled smoke through her nose. Then she looked at directly.
"Let get this straight, Astarte." She pointed her cigarette at my chest. "You're telling you didn't invite her, you don't want her here, and she showed up anyway to—what—write an essay about your posture?"
"That's what's happening, yes."
"And you didn't call faculty."
"I tried to send her back."
"Tried." Instructor Freya rolled the word around like she was tasting it. She took a slow step forward, the heavy iron of her boots scraping against the stone. "Speaking of trying. The Headmaster pinged my terminal at three in the morning. Woke up out of a dead sleep to assign to this sector."
She blew a plu of grey smoke sideways, her good eye narrowing through the haze. "The ssage said—and I quote—'The student requests an escort who swings heavy tal without delivering a monologue.'"
I kept my face perfectly vacant. I just didn't want to hear a lecture at four in the morning while I was running on zero calories. I was trying to optimize my sleep schedule, not write a thesis on pedagogical efficiency.
"I appreciate the complint, Astarte," Freya continued, her voice dry as sandpaper. "Most idiots your age want their hand held while I recite the poetry of combat. You just want the part where you survive."
It wasn't a complint. It was a desperate plea for silence from a terminally exhausted insomniac.
She took another drag, the cherry of her cigarette flaring in the damp air. "I evaluated your arena match yesterday. Gave you ten points. Thought your form was hideous, but your survival instincts were sharp. Positional reading, montum reversal. I figured you were just a clever rat with a rusted sword who got lucky against the Winter Blade."
She exhaled a thick cloud of grey smoke. "I was wrong."
I kept my face perfectly vacant. About what? I completely agree. My form was hideous.
"Malenia didn't just assign to babysit you," Freya continued, her single eye locking onto mine with an intensity that made my E-Rank circuit flinch. "She told who collapsed the anomaly field in Sector Three."
The temperature in my spine dropped. Oh no.
"A Stage Two temporal loop. Lore-bound. Seven cycles." Freya's voice was a low rasp. "Most third-year strike teams can't clear a field like that without heavy artillery. You walked in on Day One and resolved it in under four minutes of external ti. No combat. No manifested Shard. Just a clean, structural collapse."
I talked to a depressed ghost until it felt better! I didn't nuke the space-ti continuum, I just apologized to it!
"Which ans," Freya stepped closer, the heavy iron of her boots stopping an inch from mine, "my assessnt of you in that arena was fundantally incomplete. You weren't fighting Raiden with desperate survival instincts. You were fighting her with the exact sa economy you use to negotiate with reality. You don't fight to win, boy. You fight to make the other side realize it's cheaper to let you walk away."
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
I fight to yield so I can go to the infirmary! Why is everyone in this Academy determined to translate my laziness into ancient wisdom?!
Beside , Raiden had gone completely still. The ambient frost around her shoulders halted. Her winter-sky eyes were locked onto my profile with a new, terrifying intensity. The Hidden Master archetype had just been retroactively validated by a faculty mber.
Freya leaned back, a sharp, knowing smirk touching the corner of her mouth. "Pity it makes you stupid enough to walk back into Sector Three. Boy, if you can't shake one first-year with words, what exactly is your plan when sothing with teeth tries to eat you out there?"
I crushed the empty nutrient wrapper in my fist, shoving the plastic deep into my pocket. "My plan is to not be noticed."
Instructor Freya stared at for a long, slow second. The cherry of her cigarette flared as she took a sharp drag.
"Spectral silence," she murmured. It wasn't a question. It was a classification. "You don't run, you don't project, you erase your footprint from the ambient frequency. Most first-years can't even conceptualize that doctrine, let alone state it as their primary survival parater."
It is not a doctrine. It is a desperate attempt to not aggro the wildlife because I cannot physically outrun them.
"Princess." Freya turned to Raiden without breaking eye contact with . "Listen carefully. This is not a training exercise. This is not a field observation. The arrays are reading habitat displacent. That ans the ground under your feet might decide to move while you're standing on it. The trees might relocate. The wildlife might decide you look like breakfast. If you are out there taking notes when any of that happens, you will die taking notes. Understood?"
"Understood," Raiden said. "I will prioritize survival docuntation over static observation."
She entirely missed the point. She is just going to take notes while running.
Instructor Freya's eye twitched.
"That's not—" She stopped. Took a long drag. Exhaled through her teeth. "Fine. You want to die with a notebook, that's your clan's problem." She grabbed the heavy iron crank. "It's your funeral."
Instructor Freya raised her left wrist. The brass command node humd.
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[ ODICIOS / FIELD LOG ]
Operator : Instructor Freya Siegel Roo
Date : Penmark. Third week of Ashened Frost. Year 412.
Status : Campus interior stable. Periter arrays reading abnormal habitat shifts. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
"The environnt is unstable. The flora is moving. T2 packs and a T3 Alpha coordinating near the ridge, but the topography itself is shifting south."
"The periter array—" Raiden's brow creased.
"Is working fine." Instructor Freya's eye cut toward her. "That's the problem. The arrays logged the tree line shifting three ters over six days. The suits in the central spire ignored a bad reading."
The scan swept the misty woods. Pale, sickly green.
"What exactly are you retrieving from Sector Three?" Instructor Freya asked, not looking at . Casual.
Here we go. My execution has officially arrived.
I adjusted the collar of my uniform. "An item I left behind two days ago."
"An item."
"Yes."
Instructor Freya tilted her head toward . "During your unsanctioned excursion into a restricted zone."
She knows. Of course she knows. My Day One incident log is practically public reading material for the faculty.
I t her single eye without blinking. "Yes."
Instructor Freya took a slow drag. Blew the smoke sideways.
"Most students who sneak into restricted zones at least have the decency to pretend they didn't when a faculty mber asks." She crushed the cigarette under her boot. "You just admit it."
I offered my response to the dead ashes. "Would denying it change anything?"
"No."
Instructor Freya let a heavy beat of silence stretch across the gate.
"It wouldn't. The administration isn't standing at the gate at four in the morning." She kicked her buster sword off the pillar. The hilt hit her scarred palm with a thud that didn't ring so much as threaten. "Manifest your Shards. Both of you."
"Inside the periter? The regulations—"
"Regulations don't apply to unstable habitats." Instructor Freya rested the iron edge against the cobblestone. "If the geotry moves while your weapons are in pocket space, you lose access. You walk in bare-handed, you die bare-handed."
Her eye locked onto Raiden's.
"You are authorized to manifest."
Silence.
I accessed my ODICIOS settings via eye-tracking. Two blinks.
Pale blue pixels materialized in my grip. Solidified into the heavy, pitted iron Tang Heng Dao. The weight settled into my palm like an old grievance.
Beside , Raiden summoned her katana. Polished steel glinted in the mist.
Mine looked like it had been used to dig trenches.
"Draw." Instructor Freya narrowed her eye. "And lock your safety paraters."
She flicked ashes from her trench coat.
"Standard protocol for habitat displacent." The cadence of a drill instructor delivering rules written in blood. "We're walking into the Whispering Woods during a Class 3 Ink density spike. The forest is going to speak to you."
Instructor Freya grabbed the heavy iron crank.
"It will use your voice. It will use the voice of soone you left behind. It will tell you a secret you never said out loud—just to make you stop walking."
The massive gears shrieked. The portcullis began to lift.
"You do not stop. You do not answer. You answer the trees, the trees take your tongue."
The gap widened. Beyond it, the Whispering Woods breathed. Ancient copper and wet paper.
"If the terrain shifts, you anchor your Odic aura to your physical space. If you lose visual contact with , you pulse your signature once every ten seconds."
Her grip tightened on the crank.
"You do not run. You run, the forest takes you."
She turned her scarred face toward the creeping fog. The cherry-red ember of her cigarette flared in the damp air.
"And if you see sothing out there wearing the face of soone you know—"
A pause. Long enough to count heartbeats.
"Aim for the throat. Are we clear?"
Cold wind rushed through the opening. The silence from the dark was the heavy, suspended quiet of a room full of people holding their breath.
I looked at the fog. My face did nothing.
Raiden stepped up beside . Her katana rested against her shoulder.
"If sothing breaches your periter." Her winter-sky eyes remained anchored on the dark treeline, her voice dropping into a localized, aristocratic vow. "I will—"
"Yell."
The single word dropped from my lips, hollow and exhausted.
Raiden froze. Her rigid frawork snagged on the interruption. She turned her head, her glacial eyes searching my deadpan expression for the martial subtext.
She looked at .
"If sothing tries to kill , yell really loud so I can run in the other direction."
A sharp crease broke the pristine smoothness of her brow. She processed the sheer, unapologetic instruction, inevitably translating the cowardice into a cryptic test of her situational awareness.
"That is not—"
"That is the protocol." I offered the correction to the fog.
Behind , I heard Instructor Freya snort. A short, sharp sound that might've been a laugh if laughs still worked on soone who'd buried as many students as she had.
Active terrain rearrangent. Psychological warfare from the flora. Coordinated T2 packs. T3 Alpha at the treeline.
Why is this so complicated? I just want to pick up a torn piece of paper from a flat rock. I walked through this exact forest for seven subjective days two days ago and the only thing that harassed was a depressed ghost. Where did all these apex predators co from?
Right. The temporal loop collapsed. The ti anomaly suppressed the wildlife. Without it, the ecosystem has returned to its natural, highly lethal state. I am walking into an active monster habitat just to retrieve lost stationery.
Ten out of ten user experience.
I stepped into the dark.
Reviews
All reviews (0)