People moved normally around them — except sometimes their eyes lingered on Nate a fraction longer than necessary
Not openly hostile, but not welcoming either. Just… aware.
Afteralll green skin wasn't subtle.
Unlike Neos, who looked human until they used their powers, Hybrids carried their difference permanently.
Nate caught someone staring. He grinned and the man looked away quickly.
"See?" Nate said quietly to Alex. "Free intimidation."
"That wasn't intimidation. It was discomfort."
"Same result." Nate grinned at another boy who quickly hid behind his mother.
Stella glanced at them both. "Don't start."
"We didn't start," Nate protested. "We're just existing."
Hybrids were different from Neos.
Neos were born from humans and only awakened something beyond it. In simple words they were like a higher, updated version of humans. Human 2.0
Hybrids on the other hand were born mixed; born from a human and something that wasn't entirely human — creatures altered during the merge, bloodlines that mixed in ways society still didn't fully understand.
The result was mostly physical, and permanent. Some had horn buds, scaled patches, unusual eyes, extended limbs. Or in Nate's case — green skin. Mostly human, but slightly not.
Dawn Academy accepted Neos.
Only Neos. Not because Hybrids were weak but because the Academy specialized in evolutionary domains — abilities that activated and scaled.
Hybrids were classified differently.They were structural, not scalable. Society pretended that distinction wasn't social. It was.
They turned onto the broader avenue leading toward the transport hub and the atmosphere shifted without announcement. The streets widened. The buildings stood straighter — better materials, fewer patched surfaces. The people dressed differently. Not better, exactly. Just further from the walls. Like the distance between them and danger was something they'd paid for and expected to keep.
Nate leaned closer to Alex and spoke at a normal volume that he clearly believed was a whisper.
"See those two?"
Alex didn't look immediately. "Which ones."
"The ones radiating inherited confidence and privately funded training."
Alex glanced once. Two candidates walking ahead of them in matching athletic layers, bags that looked purpose-built rather than adapted. The kind of kids who had been inside Dawn before today on parent-arranged visits. Who knew which instructors were worth impressing before the exam even started.
"Don't," Alex said.
"I'm just observing."
"You're judging."
"Those are the same thing and you know it."
The transport hub came into view ahead — a wide covered platform with candidates gathered in clusters, families lingering at the barrier line where civilians stopped and candidates continued. Some parents were talking too much. Some were barely talking at all. Some stood the way Stella was standing now — slightly apart, arms folded, watching their kid with an expression they probably thought they were hiding.
Alex stopped walking, the barrier was only twenty meters ahead.
Nate grabbed his shoulder briefly and said something quiet — just the two of them, the kind of thing that didn't need an audience. Alex nodded. Nate grinned and stepped back, hands in his pockets, green skin bright in the morning light.
Stella moved in front of him.
She adjusted his collar — both of them knowing he didn't need it adjusted, both of them letting her do it anyway.
"Remember why you're going," she said.
"Control. Understanding. Growth."
"And?"
He smiled slightly. "So you stop pretending you don't worry."
"I don't worry that much."
"You do," both boys said at once.
Stella looked between them, shook her head, and pushed Alex lightly toward the barrier.
He went.
At the line he turned back once.
Nate had his hands in his pockets and his chin up, watching. He lifted two fingers in a lazy salute.
Alex turned forward and walked through.
****
The transport rose steadily.
Through the window, Vaspera opened up below Alex in a way it never did from street level.
The Middle District first — dense, layered, the streets he knew compressed into something that looked almost small from here. He could trace the avenue they'd walked this morning. The market block. The corner where the delivery Neo had lifted the crate. He tried to find his building and thought he could, though he wasn't certain.
Then the Inner District — cleaner lines, wider spacing between structures, the kind of architecture that assumed you had room to breathe. Council buildings. Private training facilities. The addresses that appeared on Dawn Academy achievement boards.
And the walls.
rom up here they were undeniable. Over forty meters of reinforced alloy rising around the entire settlement, thick enough to walk on top of, surveillance arrays glinting along the upper edge. Beyond them — the wilderness. Dark and dense and unmoving from this distance. Just a line where the world the settlement had built ended and the world the Yora Atunda had made began.
Alex looked at it for a moment longer than he meant to.
He'd grown up with those walls, knew their height, knew their sections, knew which gates the border units used and which ones the civilian convoys used. He'd measured threat levels by the number of carriers rolling past his window since he was twelve years old.
But from up here they looked different. Not smaller, not larger either, just more honest about what they were.
The transport slowed as it approached the Apex.
Dawn Academy came into view gradually — not all at once, not dramatically. First the upper towers, then the walls of the compound itself, then the full structure as the transport settled and the doors opened.
It sat at the highest point in Vaspera. Looking down over every district, every wall, every civilian who had never sat this exam and every Neo who had. Clean lines. Reinforced glass. Architecture that had been built to survive something rather than impress anyone.
No heroic statues. No golden towers.
Just a place that expected things to go wrong and had prepared accordingly.
Alex stepped off the transport with the other candidates.
The air up here was different, cleaner and less filtered by the grit of the lower districts. The kind of air that felt like it belonged to a place that had decided to be above certain things.
Around him, candidates moved toward the gate. Nervous energy. Forced calm. Ability sparks flickering from fingers that couldn't quite stay still.
Alex adjusted the strap of his bag and walked forward.
From up here he could see all of it. The city below. The walls. The wilderness beyond them. And somewhere down there in the Middle District, a green-skinned boy and a woman with golden-brown hair were probably already walking home.
He faced forward.
The gate of Dawn Academy waited ahead.
And Alexander Cruise walked toward it alone.