The duel had ended twenty-four hours ago.
And still, Kael couldn't walk five steps without someone staring like he'd walked into class shirtless and carrying a cursed baby.
"Did you hear what he said after the fight?"
"He tapped the guy. Tapped him."
"He didn't even use a weapon."
"House Vire's heir is terrifying. In a 'maybe I want him to ruin my life' kind of way."
Kael glided down one of the upper academy walkways with his hands in his pockets, wearing the expression of someone who'd already solved the test and was just waiting for everyone else to realize they were failing.
"So much for staying under the radar."
[SYSTEM: You threw a man with your index finger and bowed like it was opening night. Attention was inevitable.]
As he rounded the corner of a levitating bridge into the main courtyard, he spotted two upper-year students pretending not to whisper while watching him pass.
Kael offered them a little wink.
One of them dropped her pen.
The other pretended to look fascinated by a leaf.
It was getting out of hand.
He stepped into the mess hall, grabbed a coffee-like potion from the dispenser, and was just about to sit when a second-year courier in silver-trimmed robes appeared beside him, panting.
"Message for Kael Vire. Summons from Instructor Starstriker."
Kael raised an eyebrow, sipped from the mug, and said, "Fantastic. I love early evaluations."
The courier blinked. "It's… nearly dusk."
Kael gave him a polite pat on the shoulder. "Then she's late."
❖
Instructor Niaomi Starstriker's office was exactly what Kael expected: spartan, intimidating, and lit like a room where secrets went to die.
The walls were lined with enchanted weaponry and combat trophies, each with its own aura of implied violence. A small sculpture of a fallen angel hovered above her desk—sword snapped in two, wings torn.
Niaomi sat behind the desk, her hair tied back in a braid that looked like it had passed inspection. She didn't motion for Kael to sit.
So he didn't.
She stared at him for a long moment.
Then: "You were supposed to lose."
Kael blinked. "Pardon?"
"Drevan was an instructor-backed evaluation. We were watching your restraint."
Kael smiled faintly. "And I demonstrated plenty of it."
"You humiliated a noble combatant in front of the student body using under-tuned sigils and a modified Drift-tap technique."
"Yes," Kael said cheerfully. "With excellent posture."
Niaomi's gaze didn't waver.
"You've been... inconsistent. Cold, reckless, and then suddenly—clever. Controlled."
"I've started journaling," Kael said solemnly.
"You're mocking me."
"Only a little."
She tapped a crystal on her desk.
A diagram of his Core flared to life in the air—shifting lights, rotating matrices of energy around a central orb.
"Public scan ranks you at Grade B-, Crystal Core. But you demonstrated output more in line with high A-tier compression. Care to explain the discrepancy?"
Kael didn't blink.
"Must've been the lighting."
"Vire—"
"My Core is drifting, Instructor Starstriker. You said it yourself. Sometimes it spikes. Sometimes it fizzles. It's unstable, unpredictable, and moderately offensive to aesthetically-minded spellweavers."
He leaned forward just slightly, letting the flicker of Core-light reflect in his eyes.
"I'm not hiding anything. I'm surviving a condition that killed five out of the last six known carriers."
Niaomi studied him for a moment. Long enough to suggest she didn't fully buy it—but not long enough to argue.
Then she gestured toward the diagram again.
"Fine. Drift or not, your Core is rare. Powerful. You're walking a very thin line, Vire."
Kael nodded. "I dance well."
She frowned. "This isn't a game."
"I know. But the prize is terrible, so I figure I might as well enjoy the music."
A pause. Then, surprising him, Niaomi leaned back slightly in her chair.
"You've bought yourself breathing room," she said. "Use it wisely."
Kael tilted his head. "Is that a warning?"
"It's an opportunity."
She dismissed him with a wave. He bowed mockingly deep and left the office whistling.
The moment the door closed behind him, his smile dropped.
He walked in silence for three minutes, then whispered:
"System. Pulse-check. Core drift threshold?"
[Current Status: Drift Stable – 41% Synth, 32% Sigil, 20% Netwalker, 7% Unknown.][Output Potential: Suppressed. Public Grade: B-. Real Output: A-/S- (Fluctuating).]
"Good. Let's keep it that way."
[Query: Proceeding to Phase 1: Relic Recovery?]
"You know it."
❖
The Astralis Academy Library was three towers tall and five levels deep.
Most students visited for class readings, spell theory, or forbidden romance novels smuggled in from non-sanctioned territories.
Kael was here for something else.
Specifically: the restricted archives on the bottom floor, sealed behind layered enchantments and a floating stone terminal that required biometric verification and at least one doctorate.
Which was funny, because Kael knew exactly how to bypass it.
He descended into the archive level late in the evening, past whispering stacks of grimoires and memory-locked scroll shelves.
Two guardian constructs hovered near the door to the sealed section, their lenses pulsing blue.
Kael stopped ten feet away and reached into his coat.
From the inner pocket, he pulled a card.
Instructor Access Override – Expired.Swiped from an old field instructor in the novel, forgotten by the story but not by Kael.
In the book, the character died two chapters after this point. The card was never mentioned again.
Here?
It still worked.
He slid it into the interface.
The door whispered open.
[SYSTEM: That was moderately illegal.]
"So is breathing if you do it too loudly near noble exams."
[Caution: Archive Floor 3 contains reactive spell traps. Proceed with subtlety.]
"I was born with subtlety."
[Incorrect. You were born with sarcasm and mild arrogance. Subtlety was unlocked at age 16.]
Kael smirked and descended into the dark.
The restricted archives smelled like burnt dust and old aether.
He passed ancient scroll racks, necromancy-banished texts, and floating cubes with no known language, all sealed in stasis fields.
Row 9. Shelf 14. Exactly as he remembered from Chapter 121 in the original novel.
A decaying black ledger sat between two thick tomes of military doctrine. Faint runes shimmered on its spine, nearly worn away.
Kael reached out.
The book opened with a pulse of blue light.
Inside was a map.
A hand-drawn trail leading deep beneath Astralis, toward a place the book never named—only marked with three words:
"Prototype Relic Vault."
Kael's Core pulsed once.
His smile returned.
"And so it begins."