The door to Bio-Lab 4 hissed shut behind them, leaving the brothers standing in a high-arched corridor that felt more like a cathedral than a classroom. The air was thick with the chatter of the other 98 students in their block, most of them arguing about their performance in the simulation.
"I'm telling you, if the feedback loop hadn't spiked, I would've had that wraith," a girl from a different squad muttered as she pushed past Oni.
Oni and Rain moved with the crowd, but they were aimless. The adrenaline was fading, replaced by a heavy, hollow ache. The "Mother/Derreta" weight was sitting in the back of Oni's throat like lead.
"We need to get out of here," Oni muttered, his eyes scanning the massive, multi-leveled hallway. "If I have to hear one more person talk about 'aether-ratios,' I'm going to lose it."
"Agreed," Rain said, checking his HUD. "But where? Every floor of this campus is just more labs and dorms. It's all steel and static."
They paused near a massive, holographic directory that was being ignored by a group of older students—third years, by the look of their silver-trimmed jackets. They were leaning against a railing, looking down into a lower atrium.
"...not staying on Northside for the break," one of the older boys said, tossing a small glowing coin into the air. "The frequency is too high today. I'm heading to the Gardens of Zen. The Southside campus is the only place where you can actually hear yourself think without the hum of the main reactors."
"The Southside?" his friend snorted. "That's a forty-minute trek if the Blue Line is lagging. But yeah, the topiary there is worth it. Beats looking at these grey walls."
The group moved off, laughing. Oni looked at Rain.
"Gardens of Zen," Oni repeated. "Southside."
"Sounds like exactly what we need," Rain said, his eyes brightening. "Now... we just have to figure out how the hell to get to a different campus. I think I saw a transit icon on the map three levels up?"
It took them fifteen minutes just to find the main terminal. They had to navigate through the "Rush Hour" of Campus 4, pushing through crowds of students wearing different colored insignia, dodging maintenance bots, and trying to decipher the massive, scrolling transit boards that looked like something out of a stock exchange.
The Academy wasn't just a building; it was a living, breathing metropolis. They passed through a massive outdoor plaza where the "sky" was partially obscured by the soaring sky-bridges that connected the residential towers. It was beautiful, but overwhelming—a city of 24,000 people built into the side of a mountain range.
Finally, they found the Southside Transit Terminal. It was a cavernous station of white marble and blue light.
"Okay," Rain said, squinting at a holographic map that showed ten different colored lines weaving between ten different hubs. "We're on the North Campus. We need the 'Emerald Line' or the 'Blue Line' to hit the Southside terminus. I think it's... that way? Behind the giant statue of the guy holding the lightning bolt?"
They started walking, two small figures in a sea of thousands, trying to find their way to a piece of peace they didn't even know existed twenty minutes ago
Oni didn't argue. He didn't have the energy to navigate the mapping system, and Rain had a weird, instinctual knack for finding the path of least resistance. He followed his brother's lead, weaving through the dense crowd of students.
"Trust me, I've got the 'rhythm' of the city," Rain said, stepping onto a massive, glass-walled elevator that dropped them four levels down into the heart of the Southside Transit Hub. "Emerald Line, Platform 9. If we miss the next one, we're stuck waiting for the freight shift."
They reached the platform just as the mag-lev shuttle hissed to a halt. It was a sleek, aerodynamic bullet of white chrome. Unlike the local campus shuttles, this one was designed for long-distance travel between the ten campuses. As the doors slid open, they stepped into a car that felt more like a luxury lounge than a train. The seats were upholstered in deep navy velvet, and the windows were massive, panoramic arcs of reinforced crystal.
As the shuttle accelerated, the North Campus fell away. From this height, Shinra Academy was breathtaking. They saw the jagged peaks of their home world draped in clouds, with the ten campuses clinging to the slopes like ancient fortresses updated with futuristic tech. Between the campuses lay vast stretches of untouched wilderness—deep canyons and roaring rivers that reminded Oni that they were still on a planet, not just a floating rock in space.
The car was relatively quiet, occupied by a few students spread out across the rows. But one figure at the far end of the car commanded the entire space without saying a word.
She was a 6th Year.
Oni felt the pressure before he even saw the girl's face. The air around the student seemed to warp, a subtle distortion of aether that made the oxygen feel "thicker." She was leaning back in a corner seat, her uniform a deep, midnight black with gold filigree that signified his status. She was older—maybe 16 or 17—with a physique that looked like it had been forged in a high-gravity chamber. Her hair was a shock of white, tied back, and her eyes weren't just a color; they held a faint, rotating glow like a dying star.
Instead of ignoring them, the 6th Year stood up. Her movement was fluid, like a predator that didn't need to hurry. She walked down the aisle toward them, and the closer she got, the more Oni felt his own celestial blood hum in a defensive reflex.
She stopped in front of their row, towering over them. She didn't look down at them with arrogance; she looked at them with a terrifyingly clinical curiosity.
"You two," she said. Her voice was soft but it carried a weight that made the floor of the shuttle vibrate. "I can see the power you hold. It's unrefined, leaking out of you like a cracked reactor, but the core... the core is substantial."
Rain, for the first time today, was speechless. He just blinked, looking up at the sheer presence of the women.
"I can't wait to see the final product," the senior continued, a faint, sharp smile touching her lips. "There is much to learn here at Shinra. Most students spend six years learning how to hide their light. I hope you two spend yours learning how to wield it."
She gestured out the window toward a distant, jagged peak crowned with a series of black, obsidian spires—Campus 1, the highest and most isolated of the ten.
"I am from the First Campus. My name is Razanda. S-E Rank. If you survive long enough to reach the upper tiers, look me up. I enjoy seeing if the 'prodigies' live up to their potential."
She didn't wait for a response. She turned and walked toward the exit as the shuttle began to slow for the Southside terminal. She moved with a terrifying grace, leaving Oni and Rain sitting in the wake of his overwhelming signature.
Oni gripped the armrest of his seat. "S-E student," he whispered. "Rain... did you feel that? She wasn't even trying, and it felt like I was standing next to a sun."
"Yeah," Rain said, finally finding his voice, though it was shakier than usual. "I think we just met the top of the food chain. Suddenly, that tiger-bush garden seems like a really good idea."
As the shuttle doors hissed open at the Southside Terminal, the air hit them—crisp, cool, and smelling of damp earth and blooming jasmine. The transition was jarring. The North Campus was all industry and aggression, but the Southside felt like it belonged to the planet again.
Oni stepped onto the platform, his legs feeling heavy. The encounter with Razanda had left a metallic taste in his mouth.
"The final product," Oni repeated, his voice low as they navigated the wide, marble-paved walkways that led toward the garden district. "The way she said it... she didn't sound like she was talking about us graduating. She sounded like she was talking about a weapon being finished."
Rain was unusually quiet, his eyes scanning the towering trees that began to line the path. "Yeah. And did you see her eyes? That wasn't just aetheric glow, Oni. That was... something else. If that's what six years at Shinra does to a Celestial, then what are we actually becoming here? Are we students, or are we just raw materials?"
They followed the signs for the GardensofZen, moving away from the main campus buildings. The scale of the Southside was immense; the "walk" to the gardens took them through a residential district where the dorms looked like villas carved into the hills.
"Think about it," Rain continued, gesturing vaguely back toward the transit line. "Razanda is S-E rank. He's from Campus 1—the peak. He's at the end of his clock. If he can see our 'power' while it's still leaking and messy, he knows exactly what the 'final product' looks like because he is one. He looked at us like... like a chef looks at ingredients."
Oni tightened his fist. "We aren't ingredients. And we don't have the luxury of a normal six-year cycle. We have to reach that level of pressure—whatever Razanda is—fast enough to deal with Derreta. But if the 'final product' means losing whatever is left of our humanity, then Mom is healing a monster just so two other monsters can kill it."
They rounded a massive bend in the path, and the stone gave way to soft, silver-blue grass.
The Gardens of Zen opened up before them. It was a valley of impossible scale. The "shrubs" the upperclassmen had mentioned were actually gargantuan, genetically-guided flora. To their left, a hedge the size of a three-story house had been woven and trimmed over decades into the shape of a Crouching Behemoth, its leafy muscles tensed as if to spring. To their right, a row of trees had been grown together to form the wings of a Phoenix, their leaves a fiery gradient of red and gold.
The silence here was absolute, broken only by the distant rush of a waterfall and the occasional chirp of a native bird.
"Over there," Rain pointed to a secluded ledge shaded by the "wing" of the Phoenix tree. "No one's around. We can actually hear ourselves think."
They headed toward the ledge, the grass crunching softly under their boots. For ten minutes, they didn't speak. They just let the silence of the garden wash over the ringing in their ears that Razanda's presence had left behind.
"I don't want to be a 'product,' Rain," Oni said finally, staring out at the distant spires of the other campuses.
"Me neither," Rain said, sitting down and dangling his legs over the ledge. "But look at this place. If we're going to fight for something, it's gotta be for the world that can build something this quiet. Even if we're monsters, we can be monsters that protect the garden."
It was then that a soft rustle came from the golden leaves above them.
"That's a very 'Mountain' way of looking at it," a voice said.
Oni looked up. Elara was perched on a thick branch about ten feet up, a weathered book resting on her knee. She looked down at them, not with the frantic energy of the classroom, but with a calm, steady gaze that suggested she'd been sitting there long before they arrived.
Oni's hand instinctively twitched toward the hilt of his practice blade, his body tensing into a combat crouch before his brain caught up with his eyes. Rain nearly tumbled off the ledge, his arms windmilling as he regained his balance.
"How the hell did you get here?" Rain gasped, his chest heaving. "We took the mag-lev, the express lines, navigated a terminal that looks like a fever dream—we didn't even know this place existed twenty minutes ago!"
Oni stood his ground, his eyes narrowed as he looked up at her. He felt a prickle of genuine unease. In a school of twenty thousand, with ten campuses spread across a mountain range, being "found" wasn't just a coincidence—it was a feat of tracking.
"I didn't see you on the shuttle," Oni said, his voice low and guarded. "And we didn't mention where we were going to anyone. How did you find us, Elara? Are you trailing us?"
Elara didn't look flustered by the interrogation. She closed her book with a soft thud and hopped down from the branch, landing with a light thud on the silver-blue grass. She smoothed out her uniform, looking remarkably composed compared to the two brothers.
"I didn't trail you," she said, a small, lopsided smile appearing on her face. "But you two aren't exactly subtle. When you leave a room, the air practically vibrates. I saw you looking at the Southside directory back at the North Terminal. There's only one reason a first-year heads to this campus during a break, and it isn't to visit the registrar."
She stepped closer, but stopped a few feet away, sensing Oni's high-alert state.
"As for beating you here... I'm a 'Wind' affinity, Oni. While you two were figuring out which colored line goes to which hub, I caught a direct staff-shuttle on the upper deck. I've been sitting in that tree for fifteen minutes watching the clouds."
She looked between them, her gaze lingering on the tight set of Oni's jaw. "You look like you just saw a ghost. Or worse. What happened on the transit? You both look like your aether is curdling."
Rain let out a long, shaky breath, finally relaxing his shoulders. "We met a 'final product.' A guy named Razanda. 6th Year. S-E student. He looked like he could delete this entire garden just by blinking too hard."
Elara's face went pale. The name clearly carried weight even among the general student body. "Razanda? You ran into a Campus 1 Elite on the Blue Line? That's... that's not a 'small conversation' kind of meeting. What did he want with two freshmen?"
Oni looked away, his gaze drifting back toward the sprawling city-school in the distance. "He said he wanted to see what we'd become. Like we're projects in a lab." He turned back to her, his voice heavy. "Is that what this is, Elara? Are we just here to be 'refined' until there's nothing left but the power?"
Elara sat down on a nearby mossy stone, her book still gripped in her hand. She looked at the two brothers, her expression shifting from surprise to a more grounded, serious look.
"S-E... that's insane," she whispered. "I've heard stories about Campus 1 students, but I didn't think they ever came down to the Southside. Most of them stay in their own spires. If he's S-E, he's practically a god in this school's eyes."
She shook her head, trying to clear the tension. "But let's not talk about the top of the food chain. We're in the Gardens of Zen. Look around."
She pointed toward a massive, shimmering lake in the distance where a group of students were cheering. "That's the Southside Robotics Bay over there. They've got a massive engineering tournament going on—bots built to tear each other apart. It's a huge deal for the students who aren't obsessed with just 'pure' aether combat. And the swimming Pavilion is just past those Phoenix trees."
Oni looked toward the Robotics Bay. The idea of something normal—like robotics or gaming—felt so distant from the 6-year clock, but it was exactly the "connection to the world" he was supposed to be finding.
"You should come with me," Elara said, looking at Oni. "Not to a lab. To the tournament. Or just to watch the swimming. You need to see that Shinra isn't just a place where people become 'final products.' It's a place where people actually live. If you're going to fight for the world, you should probably see what it looks like when it's just having fun."
Rain's eyes lit up. "Robot fights? Now that sounds like a better use of my time than thinking about Razanda's creepy eyes. What do you say, Oni? Can we postpone the brooding for an hour?"
Oni looked at the massive Garden, then at Elara. She wasn't just some girl from his block; she was offering him a window into a life that didn't involve a countdown.
Oni looked at Elara, then back at the looming spires of the North Campus in the distance. The weight of his celestial blood and the image of his mother's potential fate felt like a heavy cloak he couldn't take off—but for the first time, he felt the urge to at least unbutton it.
"Fine," Oni said, his voice actually losing some of its gravelly edge. "Let's see these machines."
"Yes!" Rain pumped a fist into the air. "Goodbye, existential dread; hello, metal-on-metal violence! Lead the way, Elara."
They left the quiet sanctuary of the Phoenix trees and began a fifteen-minute trek further into the Southside. As they walked, the serene silence of the gardens merged into a rhythmic, industrial thumping and the roar of a distant crowd. They crested a hill and saw the Southside Robotics Bay.
It was a massive, open-air amphitheater built into a natural stone basin. Unlike the sterile combat sims, this place was loud, colorful, and smelled of ozone and hot oil. Thousands of students—many wearing the gear of the Engineering and Tech blocks—were packed into the stands. In the center of the basin was a reinforced hex-arena shielded by a shimmering C-rank barrier.
Inside the arena, two machines were currently locked in a brutal embrace. One was a low-slung, spider-like bot with hydraulic pincers; the other was a humanoid bipedal unit equipped with high-frequency vibrating blades.
"This is one of the inter-campus qualifiers," Elara explained, leaning over the railing as they found a spot in the crowded stands. "The students building these are mostly B-tier or A-tier in intelligence and tech-ranking, even if their combat aether isn't high. It's a different kind of power."
Oni watched as the spider-bot lunged, its pincers snapping a metal limb off the humanoid. The crowd erupted. For a moment, he wasn't thinking about Razanda or the 6-year clock. He was watching the intensity on the faces of the student-engineers in the pit—the way they were screaming instructions, their eyes wide with the simple, raw desire to win a game.
"They're... happy," Oni murmured, almost to himself.
"They're obsessed," Elara corrected with a grin. "Look at the guy in the red jacket. That's Kael from the 4th Campus. He's been working on that bipedal bot for three semesters. If it loses, he'll probably cry. If it wins, he's a campus hero for a week."
Rain was already leaning halfway over the railing, shouting alongside a group of second-years. "Rip his legs off, Sparky! Go for the central processor!"
Oni stood beside Elara, the roar of the crowd vibrating in his chest. It was a strange sensation. For years, he'd only known the "truth" of the black site and the cold reality of being a Celestial. Here, surrounded by thousands of people his own age who were worried about robot parts and tournament brackets, the "universal threat" felt like a distant nightmare.
"It's a lot to take in, isn't it?" Elara asked, her voice barely audible over the cheering. "Knowing that most of these people have no idea what's coming, or how hard people like you have to work to keep this city standing?"
Oni looked at her. She was watching the fight, but her hand was resting on the railing near his. "I used to think their ignorance was an insult," Oni admitted. "But seeing them like this... I think I'd rather they never have to know."
The match ended not with an explosion, but with a calculated, surgical strike. The humanoid bot delivered a vibrating palm-thrust to the spider's chassis, seizing its gears. The referee—a specialized AI drone—dropped into the arena and signaled the end. The stadium shook with the roar of thousands of voices.
Oni stayed quiet, his eyes fixed on the pit. He watched Kael, the student-engineer in the red jacket, sprint into the arena. The guy wasn't looking for a trophy; he was kneeling in the dirt, checking on his machine with a look of genuine relief and affection.
"He cares about it," Oni said, his voice low. "It's just metal and wires, but he treats it like it has a soul."
Elara nodded, leaning her back against the railing and looking at Oni instead of the arena. "In a place like Shinra, where everyone is obsessed with their own internal power, building something outside of yourself is... it's a way to stay grounded. It's a connection to the physical world. If you only focus on the aether in your blood, you start to forget that you're part of something bigger."
She tilted her head, watching a strand of her hair drift in the breeze. "Rain seems to get it. Look at him."
Rain was three rows down, high-fiving a group of total strangers and arguing passionately about the torque of the spider-bot's pincers. He was blending in perfectly, his natural charisma acting as a bridge.
"He's always been better at that," Oni admitted. "Finding a reason to smile even when the clock is ticking."
"And you?" Elara asked softly. "What's your reason, Oni? Besides the mission. Besides the revenge. When you look at a crowd like this, do you see people worth protecting, or just a distraction?"
Oni looked out at the sea of students. He thought about the 100-fold gravity stunt that had the school terrified of him. He thought about Razanda's cold, "final product" gaze. Then he looked at Elara.
"I'm trying to see the people," he said honestly. "It's just... hard to focus on the garden when you know there's a storm coming."
The tournament wrapped up as the sun began to dip toward the horizon, casting long, amber shadows across the Southside. The crowd began to filter out, but the energy remained high. Elara led them down to the "Pit Area," a sprawling workshop zone behind the amphitheater where the smell of grease and soldering iron was thick enough to taste.
Rain was practically vibrating. As soon as they hit the floor, he bolted toward the winning team's table.
"That high-frequency blade mod!" Rain shouted, startling Kael as he was wiping oil off his bot's arm. "The oscillation rate was way above standard B-1 specs! How did you keep the power core from melting the housing?"
Kael looked up, blinking behind thick goggles, but seeing the genuine 'geek' energy in Rain's eyes, he broke into a massive grin. "Finally! Someone noticed! We used a dual-layer liquid nitrogen sleeve, but the real trick was the aether-conductive paste we stole from the Chemistry wing..."
Within seconds, Rain was buried in schematics and spare parts, surrounded by three other engineers who were more than happy to show off their handiwork. They didn't care that Rain was a first-year "Mountain" or that he'd survived the Mirror Room. To them, he was just a guy who appreciated a good build.
Elara and Oni stood a few paces back, watching the chaos.
"See?" Elara whispered, nudging Oni's arm with her elbow. "Building connections. It's not always about deep, soulful speeches. Sometimes it's just geeking out over liquid nitrogen sleeves."
Oni watched his brother laugh—a real, unburdened laugh—and felt a small weight lift from his own chest.