The Elder surveyed the room, weighing his next words carefully.
"There are several approaches we might take. Permanent mentors assigned to specific teams. Rotating guidance on weekly or monthly cycles. Or specialized instruction—each of us training different areas based on our expertise."
He paused, letting the options settle.
"The training itself must intensify. Strict mission protocols must be embedded into their instincts. When stakes are high—when panic threatens, when death approaches—they must still prioritize objectives."
His voice carried no warmth. No apology.
"We cannot afford failures that stem from emotional weakness. These children will face situations where hesitation means death—not just their own, but the deaths of those depending on them. They must learn to act correctly regardless of fear. Regardless of attachment. Regardless of every instinct that tells them to run."
The Group One mentors nodded. Familiar doctrine—the philosophy that had shaped their own training centuries ago. Pain was a teacher. Fear was a weakness to be purged. Sentiment was a liability that got people killed.
"I propose we combine our efforts," one of them said. Mentor Graves, who had overseen Group One's physical conditioning. "Collective training. Each of us contributes what we can, when we can. The children benefit from multiple perspectives."
Practical. Unremarkable. The kind of compromise that allowed everyone to share responsibility—and blame, if things went wrong.
"The abstract concepts will require different handling," the other Group One mentor added. "Their applications aren't straightforward. We'll need to develop assessment criteria, determine which abilities translate to battlefield utility, which are better suited for support roles..."
The discussion continued, practical details accumulating like sediment. Training schedules. Facility allocations. Methods for categorizing abilities that didn't fit existing frameworks.
Through it all, Yao Xian remained against her wall. Silent. Watching.
Until she wasn't.
"You can't be serious."
The words cut through the planning like a blade through silk.
All eyes turned toward her. She hadn't moved, but something in her posture had sharpened—attention focusing where before there had been only boredom.
"This is a bother. I could have just rested. I'm not wasting my time tutoring some useless children."
Mentor Graves's expression tightened. "These children represent significant investment—"
"They represent headaches." Yao pushed off from the wall, her movements carrying that deceptive laziness that concealed how quickly she could strike. "Headaches I didn't ask for and don't intend to suffer."
The Elder stepped forward, his voice carrying carefully measured authority. "Your participation would be valuable. The natural awakener in particular requires—"
"Is mine."
The two words landed with weight that had nothing to do with volume.
"I'll handle her training. My way. Without interference from the rest of you."
Something flickered across the Elder's face—surprise, perhaps, or calculation. Yao Xian had shown no interest in the natural awakener before. Had treated her assignment as an inconvenience to be endured.
This was different.
What changed? the Elder wondered. What does she know that we don't?
He didn't ask. Some questions were dangerous to voice.
"The natural awakener's development is a priority for His Eminence," he said instead. "If you're claiming responsibility for her guidance—"
"I am."
"—then you'll need to provide reports. Progress assessments. Evidence that she's advancing appropriately."
Yao's smile was thin and cold. "I'll provide whatever His Eminence requires. When he asks for it."
Not when you ask, the smile said. You're not worth the effort of pretending otherwise.
The Elder let the insult pass. Confrontation would accomplish nothing.
"Very well. The natural awakener is your responsibility. But the others—"
"Are yours." Yao was already moving toward the door. "Handle them however you like. I have better things to do."
She paused at the threshold, looking back over her shoulder.
"Don't bother summoning me for these meetings again. I won't come."
The door closed behind her.
Silence filled the space she'd vacated.
Gu Minghui remained where he stood, his expression carrying the careful neutrality of someone who had long ago learned not to apologize for his partner's behavior. He met the Elder's eyes briefly, offering nothing—no explanation, no excuse, no indication of whether he agreed or merely tolerated.
Then he followed her out, leaving the others to their planning.
The Elder exhaled slowly.
Typical. But perhaps for the best.
Yao Xian's presence in training sessions would have complicated things. Her power was difficult to categorize—officially Attuned stage, but the rumors whispered of something more. Something the Transcendents themselves treated with caution.
And now she'd claimed the natural awakener.
Why? What does she see in that girl that made her volunteer for responsibility?
He filed the concern away. Right now, he had over a thousand other children to worry about—the survivors from Group One combined with the evolved abstract wielders from Group Two—and a training program to design that would transform them from frightened youths into functional weapons.
"We proceed without her," he announced, turning back to the remaining mentors. "Collective training, as Mentor Graves suggested. Each of you will contribute according to your strengths."
The planning resumed.
Behind closed doors, decisions were made that would shape the next three years of over a thousand lives.
None of those lives had been consulted.
None of them would have been listened to if they had.
---
✦
Two days passed.
The children were given time to settle into their new residence—time to explore the sterile corridors, to test the boundaries of their confinement, to wonder what came next. Some spent those days in anxious speculation. Others tried to rest, storing energy for trials they couldn't yet imagine.
All of them learned, soon enough, that rest was a luxury they wouldn't be permitted to keep.
---
The open field stretched before them like a wound in the crystalline landscape.
It was vast—far larger than any training space they'd used before—and utterly empty. No equipment. No obstacles. Just flat ground extending toward a horizon that seemed to curve slightly wrong, as if the space itself was subtly warped.
Over a thousand children stood in loose formation, facing three figures who had positioned themselves opposite.
The sight was staggering—a sea of young faces stretching back in rows that seemed to go on forever. Group One survivors, hardened by months of brutal training. Group Two's evolved abstract wielders, still adjusting to powers they barely understood. All of them merged now, unified by circumstance if nothing else.
The mentors.
Two Bai recognized from glimpses in the corridors—Mentor Graves, sharp-featured and cold-eyed, and a man whose name he didn't know but whose bearing spoke of decades spent breaking things that resisted being broken.
The third was new. A woman whose face carried the particular beauty that came with evolution—features refined beyond mortal standards, skin clear and luminous, an appearance suggesting youth while her eyes held depths that contradicted it.
Mentor Shen, someone whispered. From Group One's advanced conditioning program.
The whispers died as Mentor Graves stepped forward.
"We gave you two days to adapt to this place. Two days to settle into your new quarters. To rest. To prepare yourselves."
She paused, her gaze sweeping across the assembled children.
"As of today, your real training begins. This space—" she gestured at the open field, at the crystalline structures visible in the distance, at the horizon that curved in ways it shouldn't "—is where you will spend the rest of your childhood."
The words landed like physical blows.
The rest of your childhood.
Not weeks. Not months. Years. However many years remained before they were deemed ready—or were used up and discarded.
Bai Zixian kept his expression neutral, but he saw the reactions rippling through the formation around him.
Confusion, first. The slow processing of implications that hadn't quite landed yet.
Then understanding.
Then anger.
Faces twisted. Jaws clenched. Eyes that had been carefully blank filled with emotions their owners couldn't quite suppress—fury at the injustice, grief for futures stolen, betrayal by a system that had promised them purpose and delivered only captivity.
Some of them glared at the mentors.
It was a mistake.
---
Mentor Shen's face transformed.
The gentle beauty that had softened her features moments ago vanished, replaced by something twisted and ugly. Her lips curled back from her teeth. Her eyes narrowed into slits of pure, contemptuous rage. Her face scrunched and contorted as if the very sight of their defiance was physically painful to her.
"You dare look at me like that?"
Her voice cracked across the field like a whip.
And then came the pressure.
It crashed down on them without warning—crushing, absolute, inescapable. Bai felt his knees buckle, felt his body try to collapse under a force that had nothing to do with gravity and everything to do with the simple, terrible truth of power differential.
He was Resonance stage.
She was Attuned.
One stage. A single step on the ladder of evolution.
The gap might as well have been infinite.
Around him, children fell. Some managed to catch themselves on hands and knees. Others crumpled entirely, their bodies refusing to support them against pressure their minds couldn't comprehend. A few—the weakest, the most unprepared—began to convulse, their systems overwhelmed by exposure to power they weren't equipped to endure.
Bai gritted his teeth and forced himself to remain upright.
His legs trembled. His vision swam. Something warm trickled from his ears—blood, he realized distantly. Golden-tinged blood, the runic fluid that marked them as divine existences. The pressure was damaging them. Physically damaging them, rupturing delicate vessels, overwhelming bodies that had only recently evolved beyond mortal limitations.
More blood streamed from eyes. From noses. Children screamed—or tried to, their voices strangled by the weight pressing down on their chests. The sound of over a thousand youths suffering filled the air—whimpers, gasps, the wet sounds of bodies failing under strain they weren't built to endure.
She's going to kill us, he thought. She's actually going to—
Another pressure slammed into the field.
This one wasn't directed at the children. It crashed into Mentor Shen like a wave breaking against stone, forcing her attention to split, demanding she acknowledge a threat she couldn't ignore.
The crushing weight vanished.
Air rushed back into Bai's lungs. The world steadied around him. He blinked blood from his eyes and saw the other children recovering—gasping, trembling, some still prone on the ground. A thousand bodies slowly remembering how to breathe.
And then he saw what had happened to them.
The injuries were gone.
The blood that had streamed from his ears, from his eyes, from the ruptured vessels of children whose bodies had failed under the pressure—all of it had vanished. The pain remained as memory, but the damage had been undone. Healed in an instant, as if it had never occurred.
Mentor Shen straightened, her expression smoothing back into pleasant neutrality as if the rage had never existed. She clasped her hands before her and smiled—warm, gentle, almost maternal.
"Don't do that again," she said sweetly.
The contrast was nauseating.
Terror still painted every face around Bai. Children who had been bleeding moments ago now stared at the mentor with expressions caught between horror and desperate hope that the worst was over.
"Lighten up, my little cute birdies," Mentor Shen continued, her voice carrying that sickening warmth. "Let me give you some good news to improve the mood."
She began to pace before them, her movements carrying the easy grace of someone completely at home in her power.
"You've all reached the Resonance stage. Congratulations—that's the hardest part. Understanding your representation, grasping the truth your concept was trying to show you... many fail at that hurdle. Many die without ever crossing it."
Her smile widened.
"But here's the good news. The next stage—Attuned—is practically guaranteed."
Confused murmurs rippled through the formation. Children exchanged uncertain glances, unsure whether this was another trap.
"Think about it. To reach Resonance, you had to understand your representation. Your representation—the image your concept showed you, the truth it was trying to communicate. That representation wasn't random. It was specifically shaped for you. Compatible with you. Derived from who you are at the deepest level."
She stopped pacing, facing them directly.
"Attuned stage requires harmonization. Becoming one with your concept, attuning yourself to the truth you've already understood." She spread her hands. "But since your representation was already compatible with you—since it was literally designed to resonate with your nature—harmonization is simply a matter of time and practice."
Her expression softened into something almost kind.
"You will all reach Attuned eventually. Some faster than others, depending on dedication and natural affinity. But the destination is assured. Consider it a bonus—a reward for surviving the hardest part."
Relief washed across many faces. Shoulders relaxed. The terror of moments ago began to fade, replaced by something that might have been hope.
Bai watched it happen with clinical detachment.
She's good. Terror, then comfort, then hope. They'll be eating from her hand within weeks.
But his attention wasn't on the manipulation.
It was on six faces scattered through the crowd.
Vera Lin stood near the front, her sharp features composed, her eyes carrying something that wasn't quite relief. Ash Wei's bulk was visible toward the left flank, his scarred hands clenched at his sides in a way that suggested tension rather than relaxation. Maya Chen's distant gaze had sharpened into something more present, more focused. Sera Zhao's lips were pressed together, moving slightly as if she were working through a problem. Quinn Liu had gone very still. Leah Tang's calming presence had withdrawn, pulling inward rather than radiating outward.
Six people.
Six people whose concepts had been defined by Chen Yè.
Your representation was specifically shaped for you, Mentor Shen had said. Compatible with you. Derived from who you are.
But their concepts hadn't come from representations.
Their concepts had come from Chen.
He'd told them what they were. Defined their abilities. Given them understanding that hadn't emerged from their own comprehension but had been handed to them by someone else.
Harmonization requires becoming one with your concept, Bai thought. But what happens when the concept wasn't truly yours to begin with?
He didn't know the answer.
But looking at those six faces—at the unease that had replaced relief, at the calculations happening behind carefully neutral expressions—he suspected they were asking themselves the same question.
Chen Yè.
The orphan boy's name surfaced in his mind with new significance.
Whether you intended it or not... you've bound them to you.
They would need him to evolve. Need his insight, his understanding, his ability to see what others couldn't. The definition he'd provided had saved them from failure—but it had also created a dependency that none of them had recognized until this moment.
Clever, Bai thought. Dangerous. And possibly deliberate.
He remembered Chen's calculating eyes. His careful observations. His habit of providing exactly what was needed, nothing more, in ways that left others owing him debts they didn't fully understand.
Was this intentional? Did you plan this from the beginning? A leash that only becomes visible when we try to walk away?
He didn't know.
But he intended to find out.
The training continued around him—Mentor Shen explaining schedules, outlining expectations, painting pictures of futures that might await those who performed well. Over a thousand children listened with desperate attention, clinging to hope where they could find it.
Bai listened too.
But his thoughts were elsewhere.
Calculating.
Planning.
Preparing for whatever came next.
---