Fractures and Faultlines
The academy was not the same.
It wasn't just the way the walls flickered when no one looked, or how Ki flowed slower in certain halls—it was the feeling of being watched by something beneath the stone. The air tasted of iron and old lightning.
In the main courtyard, students flinched at their own reflections. One boy ran screaming from a mirror when it showed him aged, hair gone white, face hollow. A girl dropped her practice wand when her shadow saluted her in full armor.
Raka stood at the fountain, watching the ripples. The water moved oddly today—not wrong, just out of rhythm. His own reflection wavered, shifted, and—just for a second—showed him in the coat of a field commander, ash streaked across one cheek.
Kael strolled up beside him. "Fourth glitch today. At this rate, they'll rename this place Haunt'Thara."
Sylva passed them, her blade slung across her back, freshly polished. "Master Lorr wants you. Again."
"Me, or the ghost that lives in my Ki?"
"I don't think he'd care which," she said, and kept walking.
Kael nudged Raka with an elbow. "He's not the only one watching you, you know."
"I noticed."
"You always notice."
Raka didn't answer.
---
Lorr's "conversation" turned out to be a set of instructions and a warning.
"You're not under arrest," he said, "but you're not off the leash either. You'll report your dreams. You'll submit for trace scans after every mission."
"And if I refuse?"
Lorr didn't smile. "Then I hope you enjoy eating dirt. The archives need new diggers."
Raka nodded. "Then I guess I'll dream responsibly."
---
Later that evening, the group gathered in an upper-level training hall, circular and open to the sky. The floor was marked with fresh lines of chalk and copper—a new formation grid.
Instructor Velar, a gray-robed staff fighter with one blind eye, addressed them from the center. "Today's exercise is a ten-count combat spiral. Timed. We want to see how your Ki flows after exposure to a soul anchor."
Kael raised his hand. "Should I be insulted or flattered that I'm included?"
"You were closest to the anomaly," Velar replied.
"Yeah, but I'm always closest to the anomaly."
Sylva smirked.
Coren leaned against a column nearby, arms crossed. "So we're test cases now."
"Better us than the first-years," Jace said. "They'd turn to ash trying to activate a focus rune."
The exercise began. One by one, students stepped into the circle, charged a basic spiral formation, and demonstrated control.
Kael's flame arcs danced easily through the shapes—quick, hot, precise.
Sylva's movements were pure force, grounded and clean.
Coren was fluid, almost lazy, but efficient.
Then came Raka.
He stepped into the circle—and something shifted.
The air got colder. The chalk lines blurred faintly, like the formation was bending around him.
He took his stance.
Moved.
Not like a student. Like a veteran. Every motion was tight, purposeful. His Ki curved around his limbs like a second skin. He didn't just execute the spiral—he commanded it.
Then—at the final motion—his footwork shifted. Unintentionally, maybe. But his final strike ended in a stance none of them recognized.
Velar blinked. "Where did you learn that form?"
Raka hesitated. "I didn't."
"That wasn't standard Ki form."
Kael's voice was low. "No... it was cleaner."
Coren turned and walked out without a word.
Raka found him later near the observatory gardens, beneath the skeletal branches of a thornvine tree. The moon bled red tonight—some alchemy accident in the upper domes, probably.
"You always run after drills?" Raka asked.
Coren didn't look at him. "Only when ghosts start dancing in class."
Raka waited.
Coren turned slowly. "My grandfather made a deal with a Spiral fragment. One of the old bargains—pre-Sundering. Gave up memory for talent. Every Vess heir since has felt it, one way or another."
"And you?"
"I hear things sometimes. When it's quiet." He tilted his head, voice quiet. "So when you move like someone who's trained three lifetimes, and smell like fractured Ki, forgive me for leaving before the room breaks open."
"I'm not what you think."
"I don't think anything," Coren said. "But I watch. Because bargains don't break clean."
A long silence passed.
Then Coren sighed, shook his head, and walked off.
That night, Raka dreamed of a tower filled with spiral-marked books. In each one, his name was written in a different hand.
In the last book, the pages were blank.
But something was still reading.