The corridor outside the Titan Chamber carried the academy's pulse with it; the murmur of distant voices, the low thunder of distant training rooms, the footfalls of those who belonged here and knew it.
Kairo moved through it all like a shadow with a heartbeat.
He turned a corner and stopped.
An archway opened onto a hall lined with panes of living glass. Inside, light cascaded from floating orbs onto tiered desks and chalk-slates.
A dozen students in neat uniforms clustered around a lectern where an instructor flicked diagrams into the air with a rune-etched stylus.
Kairo stepped into General Knowledge Hall C before he could talk himself out of it.
He hovered near the back, close to the exit, breath shallow.
Lines of script crawled across the air above the lectern, elegant and disdainful.
He realized… he couldn't read a single word.
His jaw tightened.
On the dais, the instructor, a spare woman with ink-stained fingers didn't look up.
"New intake. Sit or stand, just don't breathe on me when I'm thinking". She underlined a sigil midair. "Mana taxonomy is not art. It is grammar. You will learn it, or it will learn you".
Kairo stared at the script like a fighter staring down a blade he had no idea how to parry.
The student next to him, a boy with tired eyes and a healer's badge pinned crookedly to his collar, glancing over.
"You look like you walked through a forge".
Kairo said nothing.
The boy followed his gaze to the floating script. His expression softened with a private understanding he didn't put into words.
He slid a thin slate across the bench between them. The surface shimmered, then displayed block letters, big and clear: "MANA".
He tapped it. The slate shifted: "Core".
Another tap: "Rank".
Another: "F. E. D. C. B. A. S. SS. SSS".
He turned the slate toward Kairo and kept his voice low. "I'm Lorn. If you don't know, nod once for yes, twice for no. It'll save you from the sharks".
Kairo didn't nod.
He met the boy's eyes and said, quiet and plain, "I don't know".
Lorn's mouth twitched at the corner.
"Alright," he whispered, tapping the slate once more.
A simple diagram appeared, showing a circle marked CORE, a line marked PATH, a dot marked CREST, with arrows showing how they touched without explaining too much.
"First lesson," Lorn murmured, "is names. They think a thing isn't real until it has one". He tapped CREST. "Yours will get you into places. But knowing what those places are will keep you alive inside them".
The instructor's voice cut the hall like a scalpel. "If you are whispering, make it a useful whisper". Her eyes slid over the room, paused on Kairo's torn knuckles, then moved on. "Continue".
Kairo's throat felt tight in a way that had nothing to do with exertion.
"Thank you," he said.
Lorn shrugged, embarrassment and pride colliding. "Don't thank me yet. I fail in spectacular fashion".
The lesson flowed around them; terms and structures Kairo couldn't catch, tides of meaning he couldn't enter. But with the slate and Lorn's quiet nudges, a shape began to form in the fog. Not detail. Not depth.
A doorframe.
A promise that there was a room beyond it.
When the session ended, the instructor flicked her stylus. The panes cleared. "Those of you with remedial needs will report to the Scribe Annex this evening. We burn ignorance like rust". Her eyes didn't find Kairo; they didn't have to.
Students filed out in murmurs.
Lorn hesitated. "Scribe Annex is mean," he said helpfully. "Mean works".
Kairo grunted a smile that was mostly pain.
"I like mean".
…
After the class, Kairo didn't make it to the Annex first.
He made it to the kitchens.
He didn't steal. He worked.
He hauled crates like siege stones until the quartermaster grimaced and tossed him a bowl of stew and a heel of bread so dense it could stop a knife.
~----~
[Nutritional Intake Detected: 1,184 kcal]
[Protein: Moderate/ Fats: High/ Carbs: High]
[Recovery Modifier Updated]
[Muscle Index: 3.2% ~ 3.3%]
~----~
He ate with the empty gratitude of a battlefield survivor. He washed the bowl, staked crates, and left with his breath coming easier.
By the time the sky over the courtyard had thinned to violet, Kairo stood beneath the lintel of the Scribe Annex; a long room that smelled of ink and old effort. The benches were scarred; the lamps were honest.
An elderly man with a face like folded parchment looked up as Kairo entered.
"You're late".
"Yes," Kairo said.
The elderly man gave him a second glance. "You can't read?"
"No".
"Good," the man said, and pointed. "We start where the world starts".
He dragged a slate across, wrote A, and rapped it with his knuckle. "Sound".
Kairo stared at the letter as if he could punch it into compliance.
The old man rapped the slate again. "Sound," he repeated.
Kairo's jaw worked.
"…Ah".
"Again".
"Ah".
Again and again until the sound became a breath that belonged to him.
They did not speak of ranks or realms, of crests or cores. They spoke of shapes and sounds, of marks that were doors if you bothered to find the handle. His shoulders burned from the chamber; his mind burned from this.
When his voice finally rasped to a stop, the old man capped the ink.
"That's enough. Come back tomorrow. Don't die before then, it's inefficient".
Kairo stood in the doorway with the taste of stew and vowels in his mouth and felt something he hadn't since the gate opened.
Hope.
Not the hot, reckless kind that chased thunder.
Rather, the stubborn, quiet kind that built houses.
He returned to the Titan Chamber with the lamps along the corridor guttering to blue.
The door recognized his crest and admitted him like a grudging friend.
[Training Window Remaining: 90 minutes]
Suggested: Impact Conditioning or Progressive Density Circuit.
[Note: Literacy schedule logged: Scribe Annex, Evenings.]
Kairo snorted. "You spying now?"
The crystal did not deign to answer.
He choose Impact Conditioning.
Targets rose from the floor; domes of layered hide and stone, each stamped with concentric rings.
[Impact Conditioning: Tier 2]
Deliver controlled force at marked tolerance bands.
Penalty for overshoot: Rebound (injury risk)
["Strength that cannot listen will never be obeyed."]
He hissed a laugh. "Fine".
He set his stance, set his breath, set his hands.
Then, he struck.
Not to devastate, but to obey.
BAM!
The first blow came too hot. Pain snapped up his wrist; he adjusted.
The second landed true. The third landed truer. He felt the line between effort and waste get thinner under his knuckles, like a wire he could walk if he learned its song.
Minutes folded into the kind of time that doesn't appear on clocks.
When he finally stepped back, the crystal dimmed.
~----~
[Session Complete]
Accuracy Gain: +11% (target bands)
Microfracture Risk: Low
…
[Skill Progression Noted]
Muscle Control: Adaptive Efficiency (Passive) ~ Rank-Up Threshold: 40% Repetition Consistency.
Current Consistency: 27%
~----~
He wiped sweat from his eyes with the back of his wrist and smiled, small and private.
"See you tomorrow," he told the room.
He stepped into the corridor, and found a figure waiting in the gloom.
Silver hair, serpent-clasped robe, and a smile like a blade wrapped in silk.
Varrin.
"We keep meeting in inconvenient places," the guild man said lightly. "Congratulations on not dying".
Kairo's shoulders rolled back without his permission.
"I told you," he said. "Muscle doesn't kneel".
Varrin's eyes glinted. "And I told you… permission matters here". He tipped his chin toward the darkness over Kairo's shoulder.
"They will let you break yourself gloriously. It makes for excellent theatre. But that crest of yours? It opens doors you don't know exist".
His voice turned low. "Doors that can be closed".
Kairo said nothing.
Varrin's smile didn't reach his eyes. "There's a symposium in three days. Foundations of Power. Attendance… is encouraged. Many houses will be there". He stepped aside, making a path and pretending it was a courtesy.
"Learn quickly, Kairo Vale. Or the Academy will decide what you are for you".
He walked away, sandals whispering.
Kairo watched him go until the corridor swallowed the sound.
He touched the fresh welt on his knuckles. He touched his chest, where the crest pulsed like a steady drum.
"Learn quickly," he murmured.
"Okay".
He went to sleep on the floor of a room that wanted him dead and dreamed of letters shaped like anchors he could finally lift.
Officially, the Academy's provisional admits slept in crowded barracks until they proved themselves worthy of the Academy's investment.
But for someone like Kairo, where the wrong kind of attention could get you maimed in your sleep, the Titan Chamber's cold floor or an unused storage room was a safer bet.