Aya stumbled through the trees, her lungs burning, each breath a ragged tear in her chest. The forest was quiet again—the screams of dying orcs already swallowed by the night. Her bare feet sank into soft moss, and the smell of acid clung thick to the air. She wanted to collapse, to let the exhaustion swallow her, but instinct told her to keep moving. If they found her like this, drenched in gore and steaming ichor, they would never see her as Tessa. They would see the truth. And the truth was something she could never show them.
The battle replayed in fragments. Acid streaming from her palms in long, cutting arcs. Her body twisting with judo throws enhanced by unnatural precision, smashing hulking orcs into tree trunks. A wild spinning kick taken straight from old taekwondo drills she had once hated, the strike landing with a bone-splintering crack. Her omnidirectional vision had lit the night like a battlefield map, each branch and fang highlighted in merciless clarity. She had fought like the ant she used to be, with a human body that screamed at every impact. She had fought and won, but the cost was obvious. The moment anyone looked at her, they would know she was no helpless villager.
She pressed her hand against the rough bark of a tree, forcing her breathing slower. Calm down. Think. Cover your tracks. That was the only option.
Aya dragged her nails down her arm until shallow lines of red welled up. It stung—not the pain of real damage, but the indignity of doing this deliberately. She smeared the blood across bark, onto leaves, staggering her steps to leave the pattern of prey fleeing through the dark. She forced herself into a thorn bush, letting it scrape her legs, then pressed her ribs against a jagged stone until a bruise bloomed purple. Her healing factor itched, ready to erase the damage, but she gritted her teeth and shoved it down. Not this time. She had to look weak. She had to look like Tessa.
By the time she collapsed in a shallow clearing, her head was spinning for real. She curled into herself, clutching at the fake wound on her side, and let her breaths turn shallow. It was only moments later that she heard the crashing of branches, the desperate voices echoing through the night.
"Tessa!"
Her chest tightened. That was Tessa's father, his deep voice cracked raw with fear. Footsteps thundered closer. Then arms—warm, calloused, strong—scooped her up. Aya cracked her eyes open just enough to see his face streaked with dirt and tears. His voice broke as he whispered, "Tessa, hold on. Daddy's got you."
The word stabbed deeper than any blade. Daddy. It wasn't hers. It never had been. But she couldn't deny him, not when his eyes shone with such desperate love. Her throat burned as she whispered hoarsely, "A… animal… attacked… I… don't remember…" The lies slid out like splinters, but they clutched them with relief, holding her as though she were the most precious thing in the world. Aya let her eyelids flutter shut, pretending to lose consciousness again. It was easier than looking at their faces. Easier than admitting the truth.
Ropes. Aya hated ropes.
Every night, her wrists and ankles were tied to the bedposts. Her parents whispered apologies, reminding her it was for her own good—sleepwalking prevention, nothing more. But Aya seethed beneath the bindings. Not because they hurt, but because of what they represented. She wasn't Aya the hive-breaker anymore. She wasn't a predator of the deep or a master of threads. She was a child tied to a bed, pretending to be someone she wasn't.
Yet every night, when their snores deepened, she freed herself. Her fingers worked carefully, patient, loosening knots that had been tied by farmers accustomed to binding livestock. They were good knots, but Aya was better. She had precision. She had persistence.
And when the ropes finally slipped free, she would creep into the moonlit forest and into the small clearing she had claimed. That place became her sanctuary, her arena, her secret temple. She did not pray. She trained.
The first year was humiliating. She remembered the martial arts her mother had forced her to practice back on Earth—karate drills, taekwondo spins, muay thai knees, judo throws. She had hated them back then, stomping home after school bruised and resentful. But now, with her human body so weak, they were all she had. She slammed fists into makeshift dummies until her knuckles swelled. She stumbled and tripped over her own hips trying to flip branches. She mixed elbow strikes with bad footwork and ended up on the ground more often than not.
"It looks like four drunks in a bar fight," she muttered to herself after one particularly clumsy attempt. But she got up again. And again. Until dawn broke and she had to crawl back into bed, tying the ropes around her wrists once more.
Weeks turned to months. Her body adapted, bruises hardening into calluses, lungs toughening against exertion. And then, one humid night, the air shimmered and words bloomed before her eyes.
System Notice: Unique Combat Style Detected.Quadra Emperor Style Created.
Status: Beginner (0%).
Effect: Fusion of four martial philosophies. Strength depends on user creativity and adaptability.
Aya froze. Then she laughed, shoulders shaking in the dark. She had forged something new out of failure and stubbornness. For the first time in years, she smiled without restraint.
The second year brought rhythm. She rigged logs to swing from ropes, forcing herself to dodge between them while striking. She failed constantly, battered and bruised, but slowly, she began to feel transitions. Karate's rooted stances melted into taekwondo's arcs, into muay thai's elbows, into judo's balance. The system rewarded her persistence.
Quadra Emperor Style – Novice (25%).
Flow Transition unlocked: Switching between techniques becomes instinctive.
The first time it activated, she gasped. Her body moved smoother, attacks chaining with a fluidity she'd never felt. Clumsy still, but alive.
The third year was balance. She experimented with mana, weaving sparks of flame or threads of water into her strikes. It drained her quickly, but each flicker added impact. She built crueler traps in her clearing—stones that swung from ropes, targets that rolled unpredictably. She trained until her arms quivered, until bruises painted her skin.
Again, the system responded.
Quadra Emperor Style – Adept (1%).Passive Unlocked: Iron Muscles. A slight increase in physical endurance when muscles are tensed.
She flexed her wiry arms, smirking. "Iron muscles, huh? Guess even the system respects stubbornness."
The fourth year, the villagers began to notice. Tessa had always been frail. Now she carried water buckets with strange ease, dodged falling tools with uncanny reflexes. They whispered. Aya lied, claiming clumsy accidents or sudden growth spurts. By night, she pushed herself harder, desperate to make the facade believable.
The system acknowledged her obsession.
Quadra Emperor Style – Adept (60%).Flow Transition II unlocked: Chains of movement now flow reflexively.
She felt it instantly. Strikes no longer required conscious thought; they linked seamlessly, like a dance of four masters. Aya moved like a storm, endless and unstoppable. But the guilt pressed heavier. Was she Aya? Tessa? Both? Or nothing at all?
By the fifth year, she had hardened. Her thin body became wiry, tempered like steel wire. She sparred with six swinging logs at once, moving with ease. She trained until exhaustion blurred her vision, until she laughed in delirium at her own resilience. And then, the system crowned her efforts.
Quadra Emperor Style – Veteran Initiate.
New Trait: Adaptive Counterflow. User instinctively adjusts to enemy attack patterns.
The first time it triggered, her body shifted before she even realized, countering a swing like she had seen the future. She collapsed in the dirt, staring up at the stars.
"I'm Aya. I'm Tessa. I'm… both," she whispered. "And this style? This is mine."
Her voice cracked with quiet laughter. For the first time since the hive, she felt steady. Not whole, not yet. But steady.
The fifth year dawned quietly, yet for Aya it marked a shift she couldn't ignore. The ropes at night were long gone—her parents had stopped tying her down once she convinced them her "sleepwalking" had faded—but in truth her nightly disappearances had only become more rigorous. Her clearing in the woods had grown into a second home: training grounds carved by fists and feet, weighted stones smoothed by her hands, crude dummies scarred from endless repetition.
During the day she played the role of dutiful daughter, fetching water, weaving baskets, helping in the kitchen. She wore Tessa's smile like a well-practiced mask. At night, though, Aya pushed her fragile-seeming body further, bending it into the weapon she demanded it to be. Her Quadra Emperor Style—once an awkward jumble of forms—had sharpened into something real. The system pulsed new notifications in her vision with quiet pride, recognizing milestones she barely celebrated aloud.
But with progress came new eyes. Villagers began commenting in subtle ways.
"Tessa, you've grown so much stronger these past years," an older woman remarked at the well, watching Aya carry two full buckets without strain. "Your father must be proud. Such a change from the frail girl you used to be."
Aya laughed nervously, adjusting her grip. "Maybe… maybe I just eat too much bread now." The excuse was met with chuckles, but inside she winced. It was becoming harder to hide who she was becoming. Tessa had been fragile, yes, but Aya—Aya was iron slowly wrapped in silk.
That year she refined her training with deliberate intent. She began sparring with moving weights strung from trees, forcing her to react at instinctive speed. Her nights ended with bruises across her arms, sweat dripping into her eyes, but with every dawn her body adapted.
By the end of that year, she realized something unsettling: she had stopped thinking of this training as temporary. She was no longer practicing merely to survive. She was building something to call her own.
The forest tested her resolve in ways she hadn't expected. She had gone farther than usual one night, following the faint rustle of prey, when a pair of wolves padded into her path. Their eyes glowed pale under moonlight, hackles raised. Aya froze—not out of fear, but out of calculation. She had never fought something so coordinated before. Wolves fought as one, instinct weaving them tighter than any martial technique.
When they lunged, her body reacted before thought. Her Quadra Emperor Style carried her in a low slide, redirecting one wolf's momentum while driving a sharp kick into the ribs of the other. She dodged teeth, rolled beneath a swipe, countered with elbows and knees. The fight was clumsy, and her body was scraped raw by the end, but when both wolves limped back into the shadows, Aya realized she was standing tall. Alive. Victorious.
The system chimed faintly: Quadra Emperor Style—Adept (80%). New Trait: Instinctive Guard.
Aya sat down hard on the dirt, chest heaving. "Instinctive Guard, huh?" she murmured. "Guess I've earned that."
The thrill of combat lingered long after the wolves had gone. For the first time she felt her style tested against something real, something that could've killed her. And she had held her ground.
But the memory of the wolves also left her shaken. She remembered her Hive days—back when survival was everything, when she had no name beyond predator and prey. She had become strong here, yes, but she was still hiding behind Tessa's face. What was she training for now? For herself? Or for the family that would never know who she truly was?
She didn't answer then. She only trained harder.
By the third month of the fifth year, her training clearing no longer looked like a child's makeshift arena. Weighted logs swung in patterns she had engineered. Stone dummies lined the circle like silent sentinels. Her fists bled on them often, but the bruises faded faster each time.
What surprised Aya most, though, wasn't her own progress but the attention of others. The children of the village had discovered her clearing one afternoon when she was absent. By the time she returned, three boys and a girl were swinging wooden sticks, laughing as they mimicked "The moves of a warrior."
She nearly shouted in panic, but their joy disarmed her. Instead, she corrected their stances quietly, showing them how to keep their balance. They squealed with delight, demanding more. Aya had never thought of herself as a teacher, but over the weeks the children returned again and again, calling it "play fighting."
At night she continued her brutal regimen, perfecting Flow Transitions and chaining strikes together in longer, sharper sequences. By day she humored the children, showing them softened versions of her style. For the first time, Aya realized her martial arts could inspire rather than frighten.
That revelation shook her more than any fight had. Teaching reminded her of Earth, of school days where she had envied the ease with which others connected. Now, here, she wore Tessa's face and yet it was her own knowledge shaping others.
She went home one evening to find Tessa's mother smiling knowingly. "You've been good with the little ones, Tessa. They adore you. You'll make a fine teacher one day."
Aya froze at the doorway, something fragile breaking inside. A fine teacher… was that who she was becoming?
Fifth month brought a storm of growth.
Her Quadra Emperor Style had reached near mastery, her body reacting with speed that bordered on premonition. Adaptive Counterflow let her sense patterns in her enemies' attacks, shifting seamlessly into the perfect response. Logs swung at her head; her body ducked before thought. Stones dropped toward her legs; her foot shifted into a sweep that struck them aside.
But strength was not the only thing she pursued. Aya began writing—scribbles in charcoal on scraps of parchment she hid under her mattress. She outlined the philosophies behind her style: stability from Karate, unpredictability from Taekwondo, raw ferocity from Muay Thai, redirection from Judo. Together they were not just moves, but a philosophy of survival and adaptation. She called it the way of the Quadra Emperor.
It was the first thing she had truly created. Not borrowed, not stolen, not inherited. Hers.
And yet… the guilt never left. Each day her parents greeted her as Tessa. Each day her friends laughed and shared stories. Aya replied with half-smiles, always careful to mimic the girl who was gone. She played her role, but at night she poured herself into the Quadra Emperor Style, clinging to it as proof she still existed beyond the mask.
By the eight month of the fifth year, the mask no longer felt so heavy.
Aya had lived more than half a decade in this body. She had grown into Tessa's height, carried Tessa's voice, bore Tessa's smile. And yet, when she moved, when she fought, it was Aya who emerged—Aya, the aberrant ant reborn, the martial artist forged in two worlds.
Her clearing was no longer a secret to the children, but adults too had started to notice. Villagers whispered of Tessa's uncanny strength, of her grace, of her ability to dodge falling branches before they landed. Aya brushed off their comments, but privately she knew the truth: she had transcended what either Aya or Tessa could've been alone.
The system confirmed it.
Quadra Emperor Style—Veteran (Initiate+).
New Passive: Resonant Core. Endurance increased, strikes carry inner force.
When she tested it, her blows sank deeper, carried weight beyond her frail frame. Her fists cracked wood where before they only dented. She laughed in disbelief, collapsing against the ground, staring at the canopy of stars.
Five years. She had lived five years in another's skin.
And as she lay there, sweat cooling on her brow, Aya whispered to herself:
"I'm both Aya and Tessa. And this is mine. Not stolen, not borrowed. Mine."
The words carried no bitterness this time. Only acceptance. The night air embraced her in silence, as if the forest itself acknowledged her claim