The days bled together. Training. Eating. Training again.
Sometimes Zander wondered if the sun still rose or if Axiom had simply programmed a loop of sweat, pain, and exhaustion. He lived inside it, pushing his body until thought became blur, and only the rhythm of fists, feet, and breath kept him tethered.
In the gravity room, his body strained against invisible shackles. Two times gravity crushed him into the mat. His calves screamed. His spine bowed. Each push-up felt like an anchor trying to pin him to the earth. Then, with a blink, the weight lightened. Axiom flicked the gravity down to normal, and Zander shot up as though his body belonged to someone else—faster, lighter, sharper.
"Again," he muttered, sweat dripping into his mouth.
Axiom complied. The pull returned. His knees buckled. His lungs compressed like bellows. He learned to breathe with the weight, to feel how the force threaded into his bones and joints. Slowly, he began to stand taller under pressure.
When the room wasn't crushing him, he was sparring. Callan, Joren, even Marek—all rotated in. He learned from every exchange. Marek's brute strength forced him to refine his footwork. Joren's speed burned into him the need for precision. And Callan—Callan's magnetic field bent trajectories in unpredictable arcs, forcing Zander to trust his instincts.
But what unsettled him most were the moments in between. The quiet hours in the library, the pages of resonance theory and vibration mechanics. He read until the words bled into each other: how sound carried information, how waves built upon waves, how force could propagate through matter in spirals and pulses.
It all connected somehow—his fists, the vibrations he felt in opponents' feet, the corkscrew power he had glimpsed in Veylan's strike. He was circling something big, something just beyond reach.
The foreshadowing moment came during a spar with Elira. She moved in sharply, twin blades of solidified energy crackling in her hands. Zander pivoted, ready to defend.
But before her foot hit the mat, he felt it—like a ripple in water, brushing against his ears before his eyes could confirm it. A shift, a displacement. He dodged left instinctively, and Elira's strike cleaved empty air where his ribs had been.
The others froze.
"What the hell was that?" Joren demanded, sweat dripping down his chin.
Elira looked equally stunned. "You moved… before I even swung."
Zander shrugged, forcing a chuckle even though his heart hammered. "Lucky guess."
But inside, he knew. That wasn't luck. That was something else. Something awakening.
That evening, the summons came.
All eight of them gathered, but only three were called forward. Zander, Lyra, Joren.
Instructor Veylan stood with his hands clasped behind his back, eyes sharp as blades. His presence carried weight—not just the strength of a tempered master, but the authority of a man who had seen death and conquered it.
"The Lygari have arrived," he said flatly. "Tomorrow, you three will face them."
The air thickened. Even Joren's usual smirk faltered.
Veylan's gaze swept across them like a storm. "Do not mistake this for glory. You are not here to win. You are here to test them—and to prove humanity is not so easily crushed. Their bodies are stronger. Their strikes multiply force threefold. Against raw strength, you are outmatched. But you have will, technique, and the training of Project 24 XY. That alone is more than the last generation had."
His eyes lingered on Zander, and for a heartbeat, the weight of that gaze pressed down harder than three gravities.
"You three represent every ounce of progress humanity has clawed back. Do not embarrass us."
Then, just as sharply, he dismissed them. "Go. Rest. Tomorrow decides everything."
The barracks fell quiet. The others returned to their quarters. Joren left first, shoulders squared in cocky defiance, though Zander noticed his fists clenching too tightly. Lyra lingered a moment, catching Zander's eye. Her telekinetic presence brushed faintly against the air, like an invisible hand smoothing wrinkles no one else could see.
"You'll do fine," she said softly, before vanishing into the corridor.
Zander was left alone with silence.
He sat on his bunk, staring at the small box resting on his desk. Inside, the crystalline vial gleamed faintly, catching the sterile light.
The Resonance Vial.
He had earned it. He should have felt proud. Instead, all he felt was the weight of his own inadequacies pressing in on him.
Slade's words returned, sharp as glass: You've already surpassed the threshold. But enlightenment is what you lack.
He closed his eyes, imagining Callan's grin, Joren's mocking smirk, Lyra's encouraging smile. He thought of his parents—their voices now just echoes in memory. What would they say if they saw him here, trembling like a boy staring at a storm?
He reached for the vial, then stopped. His hand shook.
What if I fail?
His mind whispered of disaster. That his body would reject it. That he'd convulse, burn out, and die nameless. That Lyra would never know how hard he tried.
But another voice—one that sounded a little like Slade, a little like himself—cut through: If you wait until tomorrow, you'll be outclassed. If you want to stand on equal ground, you have to risk it now.
Zander exhaled slowly. The fear didn't vanish, but it steadied into resolve.
He lifted the vial. The liquid shimmered like caged lightning, vibrating faintly in tune with his heartbeat.
"If I don't risk this now," he whispered, "then I'll always be chasing their shadows."
He popped the seal. The hiss of escaping pressure was soft, almost reverent.
Then he tilted his head back and drank.
The world cracked open.
His body convulsed, muscles seizing as if lightning had crawled into his veins. The liquid burned like fire and ice at once, racing through him. His vision blurred, doubling, tripling, then fracturing into waves of color.
A sound built inside his ears—not a ringing, not a roar, but something deeper. Like the earth itself resonating, pulsing through him, vibrating every bone and sinew.
He clutched his skull, teeth gritted against the pain, but it was too much. The walls seemed to ripple, the floor bending beneath him.
Then—blackness.
And silence.