One week later.
That was how long it had been since I walked into that infirmary, looked Sylvara Elyss Duskbane in the eye, and dropped a truth bomb with the potential to destabilize her bloodline's future—and mine, frankly.
The whole thing still felt surreal, like I'd stepped outside the script and the universe was trying to decide whether to smite me or applaud the improvisation.
But so far? Nothing.
No midnight kidnappings.
No sudden disappearances.
No mysterious men in cloaks cornering me in a hallway.
Just... deafening silence.
Which was good.
And also extremely, extremely bad.
Because if Sylvara or her family hadn't reacted yet, it probably meant they either didn't believe me… or were biding their time.
And either scenario meant that cursed Phantom Sigil was likely fusing itself deeper into her very soul as we spoke.
"Still no masked assassins waiting by the elevator," I muttered, standing in the middle of my penthouse kitchen, watching the coffee brew like it owed me answers. "Weird."
{You sound almost disappointed.}
Echo's voice was soft in my head, playful as always, like a silk ribbon wrapped around a knife.
{Though let's be honest. If the Duskbanes had wanted to abduct you, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
You'd be halfway to an interrogation chamber carved from screaming obsidian.}
'Not helping.'
I reached for a mug and poured the coffee like I'd done every day this past week—black, bitter, too hot, and exactly what I needed to keep from spiraling.
I still wasn't used to the whole "student dome" thing. It was a penthouse.
A full damn penthouse, floating inside an artificial sky, with enchanted lighting that mimicked Earths's moon cycle, rune-lined furniture that cleaned itself, and windows that could become opaque with a single whispered command.
And it was all mine.
Still didn't feel like it. Felt more like I was squatting in someone else's save file.
I took a sip. It tasted expensive. I hated that I liked it.
{Mmh. Or maybe they just haven't decided whether you're dangerous or just stupid.}
I sighed and took another sip. "Could be both."
I leaned against the kitchen counter and stared out the wide crystal window overlooking the inner spires of Silver Mist. Floating bridges.
Hovering domes. A flock of elemental owls drifting past the sky like lazy runes come to life.
Normal days were rare here. But this week? Somehow, it had been normal.
No death threats. No new abductions. Just boring, Academy routine.
Which, in Silver Mist terms, meant fire drills that included real fire, sparring duels with first years who could already flatten city gates, and lecture halls that literally moved depending on your magical affinity.
And, of course…
{You also skipped almost every class this week.}Echo said, casually cruel.
I raised a brow. "I didn't skip. I rescheduled my priorities."
{You only attended the ones Glory was in.}
'That's just strategic alignment.'
{You wrote 'snack tier list' in your notes section. Twice.}
'It's called self-care, Echo.'
Still. It wasn't like I was wasting the week. Far from it.
I'd been learning—really learning—how this world worked.
And I was starting to realize just how wide the gap was between the game I once played… and the reality I now lived in.
The ranking system, for one, was completely different from the game.
In Eternal Realms: Genesis, a character's strength was determined by three things: level, class tier, and soul affinity. That was it. Clean. Simple. Grind and you win.
But here?
Here, the world didn't give a damn about levels.
It was far more... philosophical.
Power wasn't just numbers. It was presence.
People here spoke in Realms—a metaphysical tiering system based on one's understanding of existence itself.
First Realm.
Second Realm.
Third.
All the way up to Seventh, and then something called the Veiled Ascension, which no one really talked about without drinking first.
And ascending wasn't as easy as killing some mobs and collecting quest drops
To ascend into a new Realm, you didn't just level up.
You needed enlightenment. An event. A Catalyst.
A moment that pushed your spirit to the brink and forced it to evolve.
Some broke through in battle. Others through meditation.
Some people just went into a cave for forty days and came back glowing.
Point is: the system was cruel, unpredictable, and deeply biased against impatient people like me.
"I'm screwed," I muttered.
{Correct.}
Then there were Artifacts and Weapon Grades:
Common – Mass-produced, usually trash.
Uncommon – Slightly better trash.
Rare – Actually worth something. Maybe even has a name.
Unique – One of a kind. Sentient, maybe. Usually dangerous.
Mystic – Bound to elemental or divine forces. Capable of rewriting small laws of physics.
Sacred – Forged in myth. Often guarded by monsters, curses, or worse—paperwork.
Divine – Reality-bending. Reserved for gods, anchors, or absolute maniacs.
I was currently armed with none of the above.
Unless you counted the cursed ring on my finger — a Sacred-grade soulbound death-ring forged by a vengeance-crazed king.
So… yes. Technically armed. Spiritually? Screwed.
The politics of this world weren't any easier to swallow either.
You'd think having seven continents would spread out the drama. Nope.
Instead, it concentrated it.
There were five dominant empires, each with enough history, trauma, and magical nuclear deterrents to make every treaty a ticking timebomb.
Most of the nobles and royals at Silver Mist were unofficial ambassadors for their nations.
Every duel was a proxy war. Every group project could cause international incidents.
And don't even get me started on the religious factions, guild syndicates, or Void-leaning cults.
The worst part? All of them had agents within the school staff.
So yeah. Welcome to school.
Which brings us to today.
Over the last week, the Academy had finished their post-exam reorganizations.
First-years got reshuffled. Re-sorted. Slotted into new specialized divisions based on initial performance and perceived potential.
We'd all been divided into four Houses.
1. Vanguard Class – Tactical, close-ranged fighters. Sword saints. Berserkers. Brawlers. Glory ended up here, unsurprisingly. Her control of wind and martial instincts were terrifying even on a bad day.
2. Arcanum Class – Mages, seers, spellweavers. Theory-heavy but lethal. This was where Justin Bridge, Thalia Renwild, and Selene Vaelthorn landed.
3. Eclipse Class – Stealth-based fighters. Shadowdancers. Spirit assassins. Also, half the class wore too much eyeliner.
4. Nexus Class – The rest of us.
Let's just say it: Nexus was where they dumped the unpredictable ones.
The wild cards. People whose combat style couldn't be boxed neatly—or who broke the box entirely.
I was here. Obviously.
So was Cassia Virelle Duskmoor, who'd greeted me on the first day by throwing a chalkboard at someone for "breathing too loudly."
She'd taken to calling me "Baby Boy."
Valois Laurent was here too, which made every sparring session feel like a polite encounter with death.
Marco? Also here. Usually asleep or doing push-ups in the middle of class like a man possessed.
The rest were nobodies or rising nightmares I hadn't learned to be afraid of yet.
I finished my coffee and stared into the mug like it held answers.
The weekend was almost over. Classes would resume tomorrow. And with it, so would my problems.
If Sylvara hadn't made a move yet, I had no choice but to confront her again.
The longer we waited, the more dangerous that Sigil became.
And if things started spiraling—
Well, I didn't exactly have backup.
"Let's just survive," I whispered.
{A noble ambition. Very on-brand for you, Snowflakes.}
I smirked despite myself. "Yeah, well... I'm not trying to be a hero."
And with that, the morning began.
Like it had for the past seven days — a routine carved into stone, silence, and sweat.
The penthouse training chamber was hidden behind a sliding obsidian panel, lined with quiet runes and defensive wards. It wasn't just a rich boy's playroom — it was a battlefield in miniature.
A high-grade combat simulator embedded into the floor, arcane dummies enchanted to replicate everything from class-specific abilities to real-world pressure, automated defense turrets with adjustable aggression levels, mana pulse scanners, holographic terrain generators, weight-adjustable gravity fields... the works.
Even the ceiling shimmered with enchantments — feeding data into the walls, adjusting environmental resistance.
It was overkill.
And it was perfect.
I stepped into the space barefoot, shirtless, sweat already clinging to my skin.
The cold floor pulsed faintly beneath my soles — reading my biometrics, mana flow, everything.
Then came the first breath.
I closed my eyes. Inhaled through my nose. Slowly exhaled, letting the Arcane sink into me.
Not cast. Not conjured. Circulated.
I called it Veinflow Binding — a crude name for a method I'd pieced together by instinct, feel, and raw trial. Instead of using mana outward like a spellcaster, I pulled it inward.
Let it coil through nerves, latch to muscle fibers, soak into joints and ligaments.
The mana didn't just boost my body. It rewrote the response time.
Made every twitch cleaner. Every blink faster.
When I opened my eyes, the world had a new kind of clarity.
Then, I summoned them.
I dragged my thumb slowly across the cursed ring on my finger, breathing in as I did.
The metal pulsed — once — like it recognized the thought before I'd fully formed it.
Twin blades took form in my hands, mid-spin, as if they'd always been waiting.
One in each hand.
The left blade was black — forged from shadow and silence.
Serrated halfway along the curve, it hummed with something quiet and final. Not flashy.
Not elegant. A reaper's knife — meant to end, not intimidate.
The right blade gleamed white — not silver, not steel, but a pale light trapped in metal. Sleek, single-edged, unadorned.
Yet when I held it, the room felt lighter. Like it had stopped holding its breath.
Opposites. But not in conflict.
One devoured light. The other bent it.
Together, they moved like memory and nightmare.
{Those aren't just blades. They're expressions of something deeper.}
'You sound sentimental.'
{Just observant. The way your body adapts to them — the speed, the stance transitions — it's almost… eerie.
Like you're remembering something you've never lived.}
I didn't respond. Instead, I moved.
Started slow. Always slow.
I walked a circle along the etched boundary of the floor — a glowing sigil designed to sync with the user's aura.
I focused on foot placement. Posture. Grip.
Left foot slides.
Right pivots.
Blade arcs low, rising through an invisible gutline.
Then faster.
My body remembered what my mind didn't. Every slash flowed into a parry, every feint snapped into a counter.
The training dummies came to life — five of them, each embedded with arcane cores to mimic mid-tier combatants.
They advanced.
I welcomed them.
Black blade to the throat of the first, white blade slicing up into the underarm of the second before it even moved.
I ducked low — too low for someone without training — letting the third dummy's axe carve air over my head. I kicked its knee inward, twisted, and buried both blades into its chest in a crisscrossed motion.
They shattered. Reformed.
And came again.
I moved like water possessed.
Each motion was a flow — strike, evade, twist, flip, stab.
I was constantly in motion, spinning the blades into figure eights, stepping between fake strikes with just inches to spare. My breath was steady. Controlled. My eyes never blinked.
{This… this isn't normal.}
'Define normal.'
{You shouldn't be able to do this. Not this fast. You're adapting like someone who's trained for years. But your muscle memory — it's not all you.
This feels… layered. Like your body's carrying echoes from someone else.}
That made me pause. Just slightly.
Then I stabbed one blade into the floor, flipped over it like a pivot bar, and landed with the white blade against another dummy's neck joint. One precise cut.
Flick of the wrist. It crumbled in sparks.
{You've noticed it too, haven't you?}
'I'm not that stupid.'
I stood there for a moment, breath steady, watching the dummies reset.
'The old Eden… the original one… he knew how to fight. Not just in theory. This was his gift.'
{More than a gift. It was instinct. His body was a masterpiece of combat conditioning.
Reaction speed, spatial intuition, control under pressure.
You're not just lucky to have it — you're lucky it still remembers.}
I clenched both blades. Felt their weight, their balance.
'No. I'm not lucky.'
I surged forward again, this time triggering the gravity plates — increasing the pressure fivefold.
My steps slowed.
But only for a second.
I leapt into a spinning arc, blades out, slashing through the shoulder joints of two dummies at once.
Landed in a crouch, blades crossed in front of me, then launched forward with raw leg power — both weapons spinning like twin fangs.
Steel clanged.
Runes flashed.
And five dummies shattered in unison.
I stood there. Chest rising. Muscles humming. Mana flickering along my arms like silent lightning.
{…Okay. Now that was hot.}
'Keep your circuits to yourself.'
{Sorry. But seriously — if you weren't cursed, classless, and probably on the verge of psychological collapse — I'd say you were dangerously close to becoming cool.}
I exhaled.
Let the blades vanish into vapor.
The ring cooled against my skin.
But my body didn't.
It remembered. All of it.
And that scared me more than anything.
Because somewhere deep inside this frame — this shell left behind by a dead prodigy — I could feel something still watching me.
Waiting.