The silence in the tiny dorm room was absolute, broken only by the frantic hammering of Kael's heart. The cloaked woman stood just inside his doorway, an immovable object in the flow of his suddenly upended life. Her words hung in the air, more dangerous than any Flame Burst.
Inquisitors of the Grand Athenaeum.
Even Kael, a bottom-feeder at the most run-down academy, knew that name. They were the system police, the zealous guardians of the Skillforge's "natural order." They hunted down what they called "Aberrations"—systems that broke their rigid rules, Wielders who dared to evolve in ways they hadn't sanctioned. And they made examples of them. Disappearances were common whispers in the slums where he'd grown up, always attributed to the Inquisitors' quiet, merciless work.
His mind, still buzzing from the system evolution, scrambled for a defense. He could try Glimmer Veil, but she'd already seen him use it. A Fireball in this confined space would be suicide. His hand twitched, the instinct to summon a sock utterly absurd in the face of this threat.
"Who are you?" he finally managed, his voice tighter than he wanted it to be.
"You can call me Lyra," she said, her eyes doing a slow, deliberate sweep of his room. They lingered on the single, threadbare blanket on his cot, the empty food wrappers, the faint scorch marks on the floor from his earlier, furtive practice. There was no pity in her gaze, only assessment. "And you are Kael Varn, the Sock Summoner who now holds a Mythic-class system that is rewriting its own core protocols. An event of… significant interest."
"So you're with them? The Inquisitors?" He took a half-step back, his shoulder blades pressing against the cold wall. There was nowhere to run.
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched her lips. It wasn't a friendly expression. "Quite the opposite. The Inquisitors would see you as a glitch to be purged. A dangerous anomaly. My associates and I… we see you as a potential resource. A living testament to a truth they wish to bury."
She took another step, and the door hissed shut behind her. The lock engaged with a definitive click. "The surge in the arena. Describe it. From your perspective."
The command was absolute. Fighting it felt pointless. He swallowed, the memory of the psychic onslaught still vivid. "It was… an upgrade. My ME cap increased. My skill slots expanded. And the skills I'd copied… they became permanent."
Lyra's glowing eyes flared slightly, the only sign of her interest. "Permanent. Not just an extended duration? You're certain?"
"I can feel it," Kael said, tapping his temple. "They're not fading. They're just… there. Part of the library now."
"Fascinating," she breathed, the word laden with a scholar's hunger. "The initial crystal surge in the Experimental Wing didn't just grant you the Mimic system. It implanted a latent potential for rapid, stress-induced evolution. Your system is not static, Kael. It is a living, learning entity, and it perceives direct threats to its host as a catalyst for growth. Dren's assault, combined with the ambient energy I inadvertently released while observing you, triggered a second-stage awakening."
"You were responsible!" Kael accused, a spark of anger cutting through his fear.
"Indirectly. I was monitoring your system's unique energy signature. My presence, and the diagnostic pulse I was using, provided the necessary environmental stimulus. The evolution itself, however, was all yours." She folded her arms. "This is what the Inquisitors fear. They believe the Skillforge is a finished, perfect creation. A divine gift with set ranks and unbreakable rules. They are wrong. It is a malleable tool, and its origins are not what the academies preach."
Kael's head was spinning. This was too much. Bullies he understood. Hazing he could endure. But cosmic secrets and shadowy factions? "What origins? What are you talking about?"
"Not yet," Lyra said, her tone final. "First, you must survive the week. Beating Dren has painted a target on your back far brighter than any mockery ever did. He is a small, petty boy, but he is connected. His uncle is on the Bronze Haven board of governors. They will be looking for any excuse to expel you, or worse, to have you declared an Aberration and handed over to the authorities. Your sudden… competence… will raise questions Veyra cannot ignore."
Kael's blood ran cold. She was right. Winning the fight felt triumphant in the moment, but in the cold, hard light of reality—or in this case, the dim glow of a stranger's eyes—it was a catastrophic strategic error. He'd traded daily bullying for existential peril.
"So what do I do?" The question came out as a plea, and he hated the sound of it.
"You continue to be the Sock Summoner," Lyra stated, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "You continue to take your hazing. You lose your next few Sparring Trials, deliberately and convincingly. You must recede back into the background, become the invisible, useless boy everyone expects you to be."
"But my skills… they're permanent. I can't just not use them." The thought of voluntarily returning to that powerlessness was a special kind of torture.
"You will use them," she countered. "But not here. Not in the open." She reached into a fold of her cloak and produced a small, smooth, black stone. It was unadorned, but it seemed to drink the light from the room. "This is a Nullstone. It creates a localized dampening field, imperceptible to all but the most powerful scanners. It will mask the energy signatures of your copied skills during training. And it will be your key to the proving grounds."
She tossed it to him. It was cool and heavy in his palm. As his fingers closed around it, he felt a subtle quieting in his mind, a muffling of the constant, low-level hum of his system.
"Proving grounds?"
"The true Experimental Wing," Lyra said. "Not the sanitized version for wayward students to stumble into. The one deep beneath the academy, built around the original, intact Skillforge Shard that this entire school was constructed to conceal."
Kael stared at her, the pieces beginning to click into a terrifying mosaic. Bronze Haven wasn't just a dumping ground for useless Wielders. It was a front. A camouflage for something immense hidden beneath its crumbling foundations.
"Meet me there tomorrow night, two hours after curfew," Lyra instructed. "The Nullstone will grant you passage through the wards. There, you can train your copied skills without fear of discovery. There, you will learn what your system is truly capable of."
This was it. The crossroads. He could refuse. He could throw the Nullstone back at her, report her to Veyra (though he had a feeling that would end very poorly for him), and try to navigate this mess on his own. He'd be expunged or "disappeared" within a week.
Or he could trust this mysterious, dangerous woman and step into a world of secrets that promised power at the cost of his already precarious safety.
He looked down at the black stone in his hand. It felt like a fragment of his own newfound, hidden potential. A key to a door he hadn't even known existed.
"Fine," he said, his voice low but steady. "I'll be there."
"Good." She turned and placed a hand on the door. The lock disengaged with another soft click. "One more thing. Your friend. The Plant Growth girl."
Kael's head snapped up. "Mira? Leave her out of this."
"That is not your decision to make," Lyra said, her back still to him. "Her loyalty to you is a variable. Variables must be accounted for. Either you bring her into your confidence and ensure her silence, or she becomes a liability that my faction will be forced to… neutralize."
The threat was delivered with a chilling lack of emotion. Before Kael could protest, to scream that she was off-limits, the door slid open and Lyra was gone, melting into the shadows of the hallway as if she were never there.
The silence rushed back in, but it was different now. It was no longer empty; it was thick with conspiracy and danger. Kael slumped onto his cot, the Nullstone clutched tightly in his fist. He had wanted power, a way to escape his fate. Now, he had it, and it felt less like a key and more like a shackle.
He thought of Mira's worried face in the infirmary. "This is dangerous." She had no idea. Bringing her in felt like damning her. Leaving her in the dark felt like signing her death warrant.
His new status screen, a testament to his power, now seemed like a prisoner's manifest.
Kael Varn
Level: 6
System: Skill Mimic System (Mythic - Novice Tier)
Power: 4, Control: 8, Resilience: 9, Insight: 14
Mimic Energy (ME): 80/80
Copied Skills (Permanent):
- Fireball (Rare - Novice)
- Flame Burst (Rare - Novice)
- Glimmer Veil (Rare - Novice)
Empty Slots: 2
Two empty slots. Room for more power, more tools to survive. But at what cost? He had a mission now: play the fool by day, and by night, descend into the depths to train with a shadowy operative. And he had to figure out what to do about the one person in the world who gave a damn about him.
He lay back, staring at the cracked ceiling, the weight of the Nullstone a constant, heavy reminder. The underdog was gone. In his place was a player in a game he didn't understand, on a board he couldn't see, and the first move was his to make. He had to become a better actor than he was a Wielder. His life, and now possibly Mira's, depended on it. The echoes of the Skillforge were no longer just in his mind; they were shaping his entire world, and he was just beginning to hear their true, terrifying volume.