The first time Raj saw Lucas Grant, he thought the guy was doomed.
Shaky hands. Distant eyes. A silence so heavy it made entire rooms uncomfortable. Lucas didn't speak much during their first week at Olympus High. He barely looked people in the eye. Raj had assumed Lucas was just another transfer who wouldn't last a month.
And maybe, back then, that would've been true.
But then Lucas changed.
It didn't happen all at once. It was subtle. Like the way storms start—quiet shifts in wind before thunder breaks the sky.
Raj had been roommates with Lucas from day one. They shared a small dorm space in Tier 0 housing before Lucas got his Provisional Tier 1 badge. Back then, nights were the hardest. Lucas would wake up drenched in sweat, gripping his blanket like it was the only thing keeping him alive. He never screamed, but the pain was written all over his face.
Raj didn't ask.
He didn't have to.
He recognized trauma when he saw it.
Raj's own story wasn't pretty. Before Olympus, he'd lived in the margins—poor district, overcrowded schools, drunk father, sick mother. He'd scraped his way in through an outreach test and barely made it to Olympus with a Tier 0 tag.
So when he saw Lucas—clearly brilliant but drowning in something invisible—Raj felt something like empathy.
Then came the War Game. Lucas pulled off a miracle with his startup pitch. Turned $5,000 into $17,500. Got flagged by the Olympus Council. Entered Pitch Week. And somehow—against all logic—made it to the Top 3.
Raj saw the change in real time.
Lucas started sleeping less, but not in that self-destructive way. It was focus. Discipline. Obsession. He read non-stop, practiced pitches under his breath, and made flowcharts and diagrams even when nobody asked him to. He'd mutter things like "leverage" and "distribution moat" in his sleep.
He wasn't just trying to win.
He was trying to become someone else.
And it worked.
By the time Lucas walked onto that pitch stage, he wasn't the same person who had woken up shivering weeks earlier. He was sharper. Calmer. Like he'd found some inner gear and locked into it.
And Raj?
He felt left behind.
He didn't say it out loud, of course. But the gap was growing. Lucas was getting invitations to Tier 1 mixers and attending high-level classes on entrepreneurship, PR, and even elite storytelling. People still didn't respect him completely—he was Provisional, not permanent—but they watched him now. Whispered his name in passing. Some with awe, some with envy.
Meanwhile, Raj was… stuck.
He had 10 Tier Boost Points total, most of which came from helping Lucas behind the scenes. His credit balance hovered around 1,000. Barely enough for a Tier 1 meal plan. No networking, no alliances. Just… background.
Then came the night Raj nearly broke down.
Lucas found him sitting outside the dorm balcony, hunched over a half-finished pitch deck for a small-time side competition. His hands were shaking. His screen had three typos in a single sentence.
"You okay?" Lucas asked quietly.
Raj didn't answer.
Lucas sat next to him, silent for a moment. Then he said, "I used to be like this too."
Raj looked at him. "No, you didn't. You were a genius from day one."
Lucas shook his head. "No. I just had a head start because of… him."
"Him?"
"The original Lucas," he said. "This body? His. The skills? Half his. I've just been trying to make sense of what I inherited."
Raj stared. "You're saying… you're not really—?"
"It doesn't matter," Lucas interrupted. "What matters is this: I had to rebuild myself from scratch. Learn how to breathe again. How to think. How to fight without breaking."
He looked straight into Raj's eyes.
"You think I was born calm? I was shattered. But I made a choice. Every single day. To push. Just a little more. Until I wasn't scared anymore."
Raj didn't know what to say.
Lucas stood and offered his hand. "So what's your excuse?"
Raj laughed, bitter. "I'm not you. I don't have your brain. Or your edge."
"No," Lucas said. "But you have something I didn't."
"What?"
"Me."
It hit Raj like a gut punch.
Not pity. Not arrogance. Just truth.
Lucas had already begun sketching the early framework for Microvest, networking with backend devs, and preparing his MVP for private alpha testing. And still, he made time to sit on a freezing balcony at 2AM just to tell his friend he believed in him.
That was the real change in Lucas—not just the strategy or the wins.
It was the purpose.
And somehow, that belief lit something in Raj too.
The next morning, Raj entered that small-time Tier 1 side competition. It wasn't fancy—just a narrative+product contest hosted by a faculty startup club. But it was real.
He pitched a simple platform for mental health journaling using ambient AI prompts and gamification.
He spoke from the heart.
He talked about trauma. About healing. About finding reasons to stay.
He won second place.
It came with 15 Tier Boost Points and 10,000 credits.
When he returned to the dorm, Lucas was already waiting with two cans of soda and that half-smirk of his.
"I told you," Lucas said. "You don't need to be me. You just need to start."
And Raj, holding his prize envelope, finally believed him.
For the first time since arriving at Olympus, Raj felt like he could be more than a shadow.
He felt like a spark.