Root didn't go back to the dorms.
He didn't speak to Lyra. Didn't report to the Hall of Sync. Didn't even glance at the three Crown pulses pinging his Thread like alarm bells.
Instead, he stood before the edge of the Hollow Wing's deepest level, facing a massive obsidian pane that looked into something that shouldn't be visible from within the Academy at all: the Rift.
It didn't shimmer.
It breathed.
Warped buildings floated sideways in a skyless expanse, their foundations crumbling as gravity failed and reversed and snapped back again. Dead sectors convulsed. System stabilizers—those eerie glowing anchors at the horizon—flickered like stars caught in a windless storm.
[ Subject: Root – Null-Type Anomaly ]
Observer Status: Active
Crown Authority: Monitoring Engagements
It was watching him.
Again.
Not just tracking behavior, but dissecting it. Every second spent still, every slight shift in posture, every breath—the Crown was trying to reverse-engineer the variable it hadn't expected to survive.
But Root wasn't trying to be mysterious.
He was just… waiting.
"Are you stalling for dramatic effect," Veyr asked, drifting beside him, "or have you finally gone numb to the sound of your own thoughts?"
Root said nothing.
Behind him, Veyr floated lazily in the air, arms crossed, his eerie black mask expressionless except for the glimmer of a single sigil on the chest of his suit. The glow pulsed faintly, drawing in surrounding light without giving any back.
"I mean, we could just pretend we didn't trigger a system anomaly two hours ago. Go steal croissants. Maybe vibe near a student duel and commentate like retired gods."
Still nothing.
"Ah," Veyr mused. "So it's that kind of brooding. Got it."
Root raised his head just as the soft hum of footsteps echoed behind them—steady, measured, unhurried.
He turned.
And saw the one figure he hadn't expected to come personally.
The Headmaster.
Clad in woven white robes trimmed with silver linework, the man seemed to glow from within. His face was obscured—intentionally blurred by Crown protocol—but his presence was unmistakable: gravity shifted around him.
He didn't ask.
He commanded.
"Walk with me."
They walked in silence down a passage Root had never seen on any map.
It wasn't hidden behind illusion or protected by complex glyphwork—it simply wasn't supposed to exist. A hallway made of glass-fused stone, walls marked by dozens of historical summon glyphs. Some were fractured. Some had been violently crossed out.
They passed one that pulsed faintly.
The sigil of Sarin Vallos.
The prodigy who'd vanished mid-term three years ago. Rumors said he'd been recruited into the elite Crown Guard. Others whispered he'd died in a failed Rift sync.
Root now knew better.
"This wing isn't registered," Veyr muttered. "Nothing here is part of the public curriculum."
The hallway ended at a shimmering veil of gold-threaded light.
Not a door. Not a seal.
A system gate.
[ Entry Locked: Requires Null Signature ]
Subject Verified: Root
Status: Anomaly (Unranked)
Access: Temporarily Granted
Caution: Thread Integrity Not Guaranteed
They stepped through.
And the world changed.
The chamber beyond was circular, vast, lined with thrones—twelve of them. Half were scorched. The others cracked or suspended mid-erasure. Beneath each seat, a nameplate. Most had been scratched out. Not replaced. Just… erased.
Only one throne remained untouched.
It hovered slightly above a fractured dais glowing with unstable data-light.
The Headmaster stepped forward, his voice distant.
"This is the Room of Second Trials. A space for those the system cannot categorize. There are no grades here. No instructors. Only alignment. Or rejection."
Root's eyes narrowed. "Rejection?"
The Headmaster didn't turn.
"When a student becomes something that cannot be indexed, we bring them here. Not to test them—but to decide what the system should do with them."
Root stepped forward, staring at the untouched throne. Its back wasn't carved—it was grown from spiraling script, threads of possibility knotted into something that could be called destiny.
[ Trial Pending: Crown Throne Compatibility ]
Initiating Sync Evaluation…
Subject: Root
Status: Null-Type Anomaly
System Verdict: Manual Review Required
"You want me to sit in that," Root asked. "Why? So the system can try to rewrite me?"
The Headmaster offered no answer.
But the throne pulsed.
It wanted Root.
Not to crown him.
But to cage him.
And Root knew it.
So he didn't step forward.
He knelt beside it.
And refused.
"I'm not here to fit your system," Root said, his voice low but unwavering. "I'm not here to be ranked. Or tamed. Or measured."
He looked up.
"I'm here to rewrite what comes next."
The air fractured.
The throne glitched—pulsing a sickly red as its compatibility algorithms failed to sync. Threadlight snapped across the chamber. Sigils began to spark on the thrones around them, as if awakening.
[ Subject Rejected System Alignment ]
Thread Status: Unstable
Response Triggered: Override Entity Deployment Approved
Veyr drifted forward slowly, eyes dimmed behind the mask.
"Oh, good," he muttered. "We're doing that now."
From the darkness at the chamber's edge, a figure stepped through the code.
Not summoned.
Not human.
It glitched into view.
It was tall, but barely structured—like a statue made of broken reflections. Its limbs were digitized arms—sword-code, siphons, claws. Its body flickered with partial transparency, like it didn't fully exist in this layer of reality.
Its voice wasn't sound.
It was rendered command.
"SUBJECT: ROOT"
"STATUS: UNFIXABLE"
"ACTION: DELETION"
The Headmaster was gone.
Vanished the moment Root had refused the throne.
It had all been a setup.
"They brought you here to fail," Veyr said softly. "To break. To be quietly erased."
Root stood up slowly.
And faced the deletion entity without flinching.
"I didn't survive the Rift because I was lucky," he said.
"I survived because I wasn't supposed to."
He raised a hand.
The floor beneath him collapsed into null.
Veyr unfurled his arms—his form splitting into echoing shadows of anti-light, pulling every particle of code into a silence too deep for the system to measure.
"Null mantle deployed," Veyr whispered. "Let's remind them what happens when a thread won't break."
The deletion entity lunged.
Root didn't dodge.
He walked forward.
The null field cracked the chamber floor.
The system's trial had failed.
Root wasn't a student.
He was a response.
And he'd just been born.