The Imperial Academy consumed its students whole.
Within a week of acceptance, Kami and Thorwald had been separated into different dormitories, different training schedules, different lives. The Academy's philosophy was simple and brutal: break down the individual, rebuild them as an instrument of the Empire. Family bonds, childhood friendships, old loyalties—all were obstacles to be overcome, weaknesses to be purged.
Thorwald was assigned to the Warrior Dormitory in the Academy's eastern wing, a vast barracks-like structure housing two hundred students arranged by year and capability. He shared a room with three other first-years: a stolid farmboy named Lucius who could enhance his strength to ox-like levels, a wiry girl named Cassia who specialized in speed enhancement, and a nobleman's son called Gaius whose Pneuma manifested as defensive barriers.
They trained from dawn until dusk. Combat drills in the Arena. Endurance runs through the city carrying stone weights. Weapons practice with wooden swords until their hands bled. Lectures on tactics, military history, the Theory of Pneumatic Warfare. Then, exhausted, they would collapse into their bunks for six hours of sleep before the cycle began again.
It was harsh, demanding, relentless. Thorwald thrived.
His natural strength and discipline made him a favorite of the combat instructors. His steady temperament made him a natural leader among his fellow students. Within a month, he had been appointed squad leader for his dormitory section, responsible for ensuring his peers met the Academy's exacting standards.
But at night, when the barracks finally fell silent, Thorwald would lie awake and worry about his brother.
Kami's situation was entirely different.
He had been housed not in the dormitories but in the Tower of Observation—the Academy's central spire where the Masters monitored Pneuma flows across the province. His room was on the seventh floor, a circular chamber with windows on all sides, offering a panoramic view of Aurelius. It was spacious, comfortable, and utterly isolated.
There were no other students on his floor. No roommates, no squad-mates, no casual friendships forming over shared hardships. Just Kami, alone in his tower, with a guard posted at the stairwell entrance at all times.
Not to keep intruders out, he quickly realized. To keep him in.
His training was individual, conducted by Grand Master Maximus himself three times per week. The old man would climb the seven flights of stairs with a vigor that belied his age, enter Kami's chamber, and spend hours probing the nature of Devourer Pneuma with questions and exercises that had no precedent in Academy doctrine.
"Show me how you perceive Pneuma," Maximus instructed during their first session. "Not how you manipulate it—how you sense it. What does it look like to you?"
Kami closed his eyes and opened his deeper senses. "It looks like... rivers of light. Flowing through all living things. People are like lanterns, burning with different colors and intensities. You, Grand Master, are like the sun—so bright I can barely look directly at you."
"And how does the Pneuma of a dying thing appear?"
"Dimming. The light flickers and fades, the river slowing to a trickle. When death comes, the light goes out and the Pneuma dissipates into the air, seeking other vessels."
"But you can prevent that dissipation. You can catch the Pneuma before it disperses."
"Yes," Kami admitted quietly. "I can drink it."
"Have you? Since the merchant when you were five?"
"No, Grand Master. I have fed only on ambient Pneuma—the energy that seeps from all living things naturally, that would dissipate anyway. I have never deliberately drained a living being."
Maximus studied him with those ancient, knowing eyes. "Never? Not even animals? Not even insects?"
Kami hesitated, then: "I have... experimented. With insects, yes. To understand the mechanics of my gift. A beetle holds so little Pneuma that draining it is like taking a single drop from an ocean. I needed to know how it worked, how to control it."
"And what did you learn?"
"That draining is easy. Horrifyingly easy. The Pneuma wants to flow into me, like water running downhill. The difficult part is stopping, is saying 'enough.' Every time I feed, the hunger grows stronger. It remembers. It wants more."
The Grand Master nodded slowly. "That is why your kind have always been destroyed. Not because you are inherently evil, but because the hunger eventually becomes impossible to resist. History records seventeen confirmed Devourers in the last five hundred years. Sixteen of them became monsters. The seventeenth—Marius the Black—served the Empire faithfully for twenty years before he lost control and massacred a Senate meeting."
"And you believe I will be the eighteenth to fall."
"I believe you will face temptation beyond anything normal humans can imagine. But I also believe—or at least hope—that you possess something the others lacked." Maximus leaned forward. "Do you know what that is?"
"My brother," Kami said simply. "Thorwald grounds me. When the hunger screams, I think of him, and it quiets."
"Your brother will not always be available. He will deploy with the Legions someday, might die in some distant war. What then?"
Kami had no answer to that.
The training sessions grew more intense as weeks became months. Maximus pushed Kami to explore the full range of Devourer abilities, to master techniques no Academy text described because they had been forbidden for generations.
He learned to drain Pneuma at range, pulling life-force from targets ten, twenty, even thirty feet away. He learned to be selective, taking only specific types of Pneuma—emotional energy, physical vitality, mental clarity—while leaving the rest intact. He learned to store consumed Pneuma within himself, holding it in reserve rather than immediately absorbing it, creating an internal reservoir he could draw upon.
Most dangerously, he learned to project the Pneuma he had consumed, to use it as a weapon.
"The other students enhance themselves with their own Pneuma," Maximus explained during one session. "They make themselves stronger, faster, more durable. But their power is limited by their personal capacity. You, however, can drain ten men and then channel all their combined Pneuma into a single strike. You become exponentially more powerful with each enemy you defeat."
"That makes me a threat to my own allies," Kami observed. "On a battlefield, in the chaos of combat, I might accidentally drain friends as easily as foes."
"Which is why you will likely never serve in a Legion. You are a singular weapon, boy. A tool for assassination, for duels, for surgical strikes. Not for mass warfare."
But Maximus also taught him the other applications, the gentler uses of his gift. How to drain disease from the sick by consuming the foreign Pneuma of infection. How to purge toxins and poisons. How to ease pain by drawing away the Pneuma of suffering. In the Tower's medical wing, Kami spent hours practicing on patients with minor ailments, removing their hurts with a precision that amazed the Academy's healers.
"You could be the greatest physician in the Empire," Master Hadrian observed, watching Kami cure a merchant's fever by extracting the illness's Pneuma like drawing poison from a wound. "That level of surgical precision, that ability to remove only what is harmful... it is a gift."
"A gift built on hunger," Kami replied. "I cure them because it lets me feed on their disease. Is that really altruism, or just predation with better optics?"
Hadrian had no answer to that either.
The isolation wore on Kami more than he admitted. He was allowed to attend general lectures—the Academy's theoretical classes on Pneuma physics, Imperial history, mathematics, and philosophy. But even there, he sat apart, with empty seats surrounding him like a moat. The other students avoided his eyes, flinched when he passed too close, whispered when they thought he couldn't hear.
Monster. Abomination. Devourer.
Only a few students ever spoke to him directly. Julia and Marcus, his partners from the Resonance test, would occasionally nod in greeting or ask brief questions about lecture material. They seemed more curious than afraid, though they never let conversation extend beyond the academic.
And then there was Cassius Tiberion.
The senator's son had become exactly what everyone expected: the Academy's golden boy, first in his class in nearly every metric, beloved by instructors and students alike. He excelled at combat, demonstrated natural leadership, and possessed Pneuma capacity that put him in the top percentile of his year. If anyone was destined to become a general, a consul, perhaps even a Sovereign someday, it was Cassius Tiberion.
He was also Kami's most dedicated enemy.
The harassment was subtle at first. Cassius would arrange his training schedule to coincide with Kami's rare appearances in public spaces, ensuring his superior performance was always on display. He would volunteer to demonstrate techniques in shared lectures, his powerful Pneuma blazing brilliantly while Kami's pulling, void-like energy made everyone uncomfortable. He never directly insulted Kami, never violated Academy rules, but his contempt was palpable.
Then, three months into their first year, the hostility escalated.
Kami was crossing the Academy's main courtyard late one evening, returning to his tower after a medical practice session, when he found his path blocked by five students. Cassius stood at their center, flanked by his closest followers—all children of powerful families, all talented Pneuma-wielders in their own right.
"Devourer," Cassius said, his voice carrying that aristocratic drawl that turned everything into an insult. "Walking our halls. Breathing our air. Pretending to be one of us."
"I have as much right to be here as you," Kami replied calmly, though his heart rate increased. Five against one. He could drain them all, he knew. But that would prove every fear the Academy held about him.
"Right?" Cassius laughed. "Monsters have no rights. They have privileges, granted by their betters, and revoked when convenient." He stepped closer. "My great-grandfather was a war hero. Served three Sovereigns. Led legions to victory. Then a thing like you drained him until his body turned to ash. My family has hunted your kind ever since."
"I am not responsible for what another Devourer did before I was born."
"But you are the same as him. The same hunger. The same absence where a soul should be. You are a predator wearing a human face, and eventually, you will slip. You will feed on someone here, will drain a student or a servant, and when you do, I will be there to end you."
Kami felt the hunger rising, triggered by proximity to so much concentrated Pneuma, by the threat implicit in Cassius's words. It would be so easy. He could drain all five of them before they managed to channel a defense, could leave them gasping on the courtyard stones while he grew strong on their life-force.
Instead, he thought of Thorwald. Of his promise. Of the choice to be more than his nature.
"I will not fight you, Cassius Tiberion. Not because I fear you, but because I refuse to become the monster you need me to be." He moved to walk past.
Cassius's hand shot out, grabbing Kami's arm. And the moment skin touched skin, Kami felt Cassius's Pneuma—vast, powerful, blazing like a bonfire—and the hunger screamed at him to TAKE IT, to drain this arrogant fool until he understood what real power felt like.
But Kami also felt something else through that contact: Cassius's genuine terror.
Beneath the aristocratic contempt, beneath the hatred and aggression, Cassius Tiberion was afraid. He looked at Kami and saw the thing that had killed his ancestor, saw a walking nightmare that could drain him as easily as drawing breath. His hostility wasn't just hatred—it was the desperate aggression of something cornered and terrified.
Kami pulled his arm free without draining even a whisper of Pneuma. "You are afraid of me. I understand. But your fear does not give you the right to assault me. If you have grievances, file them with the Masters. If you wish to test yourself against me, request a formal duel. But do not grab me again, Tiberion. Because the next time, I might not have the strength to stop what my nature wants me to do."
He walked away, leaving Cassius and his followers standing in shocked silence.
But the confrontation had consequences.
The next day, Kami was summoned to the Grand Master's office—not his usual training chamber but Maximus's formal administrative space at the Tower's peak. The old man sat behind a desk of ancient oak, and his expression was grave.
"Cassius Tiberion has filed a formal complaint," Maximus said without preamble. "He claims you threatened him, that you touched him and began draining his Pneuma before stopping."
"I did touch him," Kami admitted. "I felt his Pneuma, yes. But I took nothing. I threatened only that I might not be able to stop myself if he assaulted me again."
"And that, boy, is precisely the problem." Maximus stood, walked to his window overlooking the city. "You cannot threaten loss of control. You cannot admit that your discipline might fail. Because the moment you do, the Academy is legally required to neutralize you as a threat. Do you understand? The Empire's laws regarding Devourers are absolute: the instant one demonstrates inability to control their hunger, they are executed."
Kami felt something cold settle in his stomach. "So I should have lied? Said I have perfect control, absolute certainty I would never slip?"
"Yes," Maximus said bluntly. "Because the truth—that you struggle daily against your nature, that the hunger is always there, that you are one moment of weakness away from becoming a monster—that truth will get you killed."
"Then what am I supposed to do? Cassius will not stop. His hatred is generational, woven into his bloodline. He will push and push until I either break or until he finds an excuse to destroy me."
"Then you must be perfect," Maximus said, turning to face him. "You must control yourself so completely that no one—not Cassius, not the Masters, not the Emperor himself—can ever claim you are dangerous. You must be the first Devourer in history to prove that your kind can be trusted."
"That is impossible."
"Probably," Maximus agreed. "But it is also your only path to survival. Unless..." He hesitated.
"Unless what?"
"Unless you choose a different path. There are places in the Empire where Devourers would be valued rather than feared. The Silent Legion, for instance—the Emperor's secret assassins. They would welcome someone with your abilities and would not care about your nature so long as you killed the right targets. Or the Frontier Provinces, where law is fluid and power is respected more than propriety."
"You are suggesting I run away."
"I am suggesting you consider whether trying to be accepted here, in the heart of Imperial civilization, is worth the constant struggle. You are eleven years old, Kami. You have decades of this ahead of you. Can you maintain perfect control for that long? Can you endure the hatred, the fear, the isolation?"
Kami thought of Thorwald, training somewhere in the Academy's east wing. Thought of his brother's steadfast faith, his unwavering loyalty.
"I can endure," he said quietly. "For my brother. For my family name. For the promise I made. I will endure."
Maximus studied him for a long moment, then nodded. "Very well. Then I will teach you the most important lesson a Devourer can learn: how to hide what you are. The hunger will always be there, but you can become so skilled at suppressing it, at masking your nature, that even Pneuma-Masters cannot detect it. You can become invisible in plain sight."
"That sounds like deception."
"It is survival," Maximus corrected. "The world is not ready for an honest Devourer. Perhaps it never will be. So you will learn to lie with your very essence, to present yourself as something safe and controllable while hiding the truth of your hunger. It is the only way you will live long enough to prove what you might become."
And so Kami's training took a darker turn. He learned to suppress his Pneuma signature, to make his pulling, void-like nature seem like nothing more than unusually quiet energy. He learned to smile when the hunger screamed, to maintain pleasant conversation while calculating how much life-force each person in the room contained. He learned to be human when humanity was the furthest thing from what he felt.
He became a perfect mask.
But masks, Kami would learn, have a cost. When you pretend to be something long enough, when you suppress your true nature day after day, year after year, eventually you forget where the mask ends and the truth begins.
And when that mask finally cracks—when the hunger breaks through despite all control—the result is often catastrophic.
Six months into their first year, the Academy held its seasonal evaluations. Students would demonstrate their progress through a series of challenges, earning rankings that determined their advancement and privileges.
Thorwald placed third in the combat division, losing only to a fourth-year veteran and to Cassius Tiberion himself. He accepted the bronze medallion with grace and promised to train harder for the next evaluation.
Kami was not allowed to compete in standard divisions. Instead, he was evaluated privately by Grand Master Maximus, his progress measured against metrics that had no precedent because no Devourer had been trained this thoroughly in living memory.
But even in isolation, word of his capabilities had spread. The healers spoke of his surgical precision in removing illness. The theorists whispered about the novel applications of void-based Pneuma manipulation. Even the combat instructors admitted grudgingly that his techniques, while unconventional, demonstrated a level of control that most students never achieved.
He was becoming something unprecedented: a Devourer who might actually survive to adulthood.
But on the night after evaluations, Kami stood in his tower room looking out over Aurelius, and he felt the mask slipping.
The hunger was worse than ever. Six months of constant suppression, of perfect control, of denying his nature at every turn—it had built pressure inside him like water behind a dam. He could feel it threatening to burst, could feel his carefully constructed humanity cracking at the edges.
He needed to feed. Really feed. Not the tiny sips of ambient Pneuma or the Pneuma of disease. He needed to drain something vital and alive, needed to feel that rush of power flowing into him, needed to satisfy the hunger that had been growing since birth.
His hands trembled as he gripped the window sill. Below, the city blazed with ten thousand lives, ten thousand lanterns of Pneuma waiting to be extinguished.
It would be so easy.
Then, a knock at his door.
"Kami? It is me."
Thorwald.
His brother had somehow convinced the guards to let him visit, had climbed seven flights of stairs to check on Kami after the evaluations. And the moment Kami turned and saw his brother's golden Pneuma—so bright, so pure, so trusting—the hunger quieted.
Not gone. Never gone. But manageable again.
"I brought wine," Thorwald said, holding up a bottle stolen from the Academy kitchens. "I thought we could celebrate. Third in combat, brother! Can you believe it?"
Kami managed a smile—his mask sliding back into place. "I am proud of you, Thorwald. Tell me everything."
And as his brother talked of his victories and defeats, of friendships forming in the barracks and lessons learned in the Arena, Kami felt himself becoming human again. Or at least, becoming the thing that pretended to be human.
But in the deepest part of his consciousness, the hunger waited. Patient. Eternal. Growing.
One day, the mask would fail. One day, the hunger would win.
Kami could only hope that when that day came, there would be no one nearby for him to drain.