Chapter 5 — Thresholds
They walked beneath the guardians of the University: ironwoods that had learned to grow in ruin, their trunks braided around old street lamps, their crowns fused into a green vault that sifted daylight into a chapel's hush. The ranger column set an easy pace—easy for people who had learned to read danger before it lifted its head. Kara matched them, chin up, the small green thread of the charter bracelet still an hour from her wrist but already pulsing inside her like a promise.
KrysKo paced just behind her, silent, listening to the way the earth sounded when people expected safety soon. It was a different quiet than the road's: less teeth, more breath.
Up ahead, the path bowed toward a stone arch. A sigil of braided lines had been carved across its lintel and hammered deep with copper: two strands crossing, joining, holding—the same mark stamped in wax upon Kara's papers. Voices traveled along the stone, some bright with youth, some frayed with work. Somewhere a bell chimed twice, then once. A scholar's code for the hour, carried in bronze and memory.
The auburn-haired ranger with the river-delta scar fell in alongside Kara. "Last warning before the line," she said, not unkindly. "University code: no live steel drawn inside the walls; no loaded arms; and no autonomous constructs operating without sponsor supervision."
Her eyes slid to KrysKo for the last clause.
Kara lifted her palm, steady. "Understood. He's with me."
The ranger's mouth quirked. "Then he's with the rules, too."
KrysKo inclined his head. "I will comply."
They came to a waystation of stone and salvaged glass. Beneath the arch stood a Drakari scentwarden, cowl marked in the latticed pattern of his calling. His eyes were half-lidded, his long nostrils barely moving. Beside him, a frame of polished oak held three small cups of gray ash, a bowl of smokeleaf, a rack of narrow reeds that sang when the wind crossed them.
The scentwarden dipped two fingers into the ash, touched them to his tongue, and hummed low. "Step," he said, his Trade deep and clean. Kara moved first. The Drakari inhaled, slow as tide, as if her story were a scent to be read.
"Road-dust," he said. "Rosemary. Copper from a recent cut." His pupils tightened, then widened by a degree. "Myles line. Admitted."
Kara let out air she hadn't meant to keep.
The warden's gaze slid to KrysKo. The air cooled by something older than weather.
> [Advisory: Drakari olfactory net engaged.]
[Status: Nonhuman vectors detectable at 89%.]
[Recommendation: Deploy scent veil.]
Kara was already moving, quick-fingered. She drew a jar the color of old honey from her satchel and a wand of bundled herbs bound with copper thread.
"Hold still," she murmured.
He did.
She touched spark to bundle. Smoke unfurled: rosemary, backbay myrtle, a pepper-sweet of crushed smokeleaf. With two fingers she dotted salve to his pulse points—throat, wrists, the hollow beneath the scarf. The smoke curled and clung, then softened.
> [New compound detected.]
[Analyzing volatile profile…]
[Result: human-adjacent pheromone mask; botanicals: rosmarinus, myrtle, ash-tallow.]
[Action: Modulate micro-sweat excretion to match mask profile.]
[Result: olfactory signature shift → 93% human.]
"Breathe in," she said.
He let the system take the rhythm. The faint mineral whisper of alloy heart receded beneath a warm human musk of smoke, fat, herb, and road.
The scentwarden's lids lifted a fraction. He inhaled.
"Human," he said. A beat. "Fatigue, dust, iron." A pause as fine as a blade's edge. "And something else I will not name today." His eyes turned to Kara. "Sponsored?"
"Under Myles charter."
The warden touched the ash, then the arch. "Enter under vow," he said, voice like stone remembering its river. "No hidden steel drawn against scholar or soil."
KrysKo bowed his head. "Under vow."
They stepped beneath the sigil.
Beyond the arch, the University did not rise; it unfolded. Courtyards webbed by herb lines and clotheslines alike. Broken aqueduct learned into gardens. A semicircle of students stood around a Drakari healer as he taught the difference between bruised mint and blackleaf by scent alone. Farther on, a bone-and-bronze automaton creaked under two apprentices' careful hands, heart-stack ticking in an old, stubborn rhythm.
Kara's pace slowed as the place revealed itself: awe on a tight rein. "I've only seen it in drawings," she breathed.
"Stay with your sponsor," called the ranger. "Registration first. Rules talk second. If you're lucky, a meal."
They crossed a cloister where sunlight fell in clean squares and the acoustics made footsteps important. A placard of rules hung at the far wall:
NO LIVE STEEL DRAWN
NO UNAUTHORIZED CONSTRUCTS
NO BLOOD PRICE ON UNIVERSITY STONE
ASK BEFORE YOU TAKE. RETURN MORE THAN YOU BORROW.
Kara's gaze flicked to KrysKo's forearms as if rules might peer through skin.
"I will not deploy the blades here," he said, low. "No one will see them."
"How?" she whispered.
"By not needing them," he said. Then, for her alone: "And by not letting them see me."
He watched the flow of the square—the rangers, the scentwardens, the bronze-knuckled gate. Sightlines, blind corners, mirrored glass angles. He could be a shadow until he chose otherwise.
> [Stealth protocol: passive.]
[Forearm armatures: safety interlock engaged.]
[EM signature: damped to background.]
They registered in a hall of chalk and ledger. A clerk with ink-stained knuckles stamped Kara's paper and tied green thread around her wrist. "Welcome, Myles," she said, expression brightening a degree at the name. "Dorm E. Apprentices' commons at second bell. Herb lab orientation at third." Her eyes measured KrysKo without flinching. "Sponsor?"
"He's with me," Kara said.
"Then he's welcome so long as you keep the vow. Guests sign the book. We enforce what we ask you to keep." She slid a heavy ledger forward, pages foxed by years, the columns filled with names and promises. KrysKo signed. His name sat among thousands that believed paper could hold intention steady.
They were given a cell with a window that looked onto cracked tile and stubborn green. Kara set her satchel on the cot, smoothed the sheet as if it might remember being unwrinkled. KrysKo stood by the window and watched students cross a square in lines that were also stories: a boy with three scrolls and a loaf of bread; a Drakari child with a slate beneath one arm and a lizard under the other; an elder with a walking stick carved with names.
"Close the door?" Kara asked softly.
He did. The click sounded louder in a place that kept its silences clean.
She faced him, the green thread a soft mark of belonging. "You said you'd tell me," she said. "When we were alone." A breath. "Who you are."
He undid the scarf.
"Project KrysKo," he said. The room became a listening glass. "Echo Vault. A long time ago—longer than any clock here knows—your people built me to be a sentinel. Human thought stitched to alien scaffolds. Architect lattice for memory. Ophilim capacitors for speed. Something older at the core. They signed a vow to wake me and a vow to aim me."
Kara went still. Not afraid; learning.
"The EMP came," he said. "They thought it would blind the enemy. It blinded everything. The Vault went dark. The last thing I saw was three guards standing in red light. Then nothing for five centuries."
"Five hundred years," she whispered, like saying the number too loud might offend time.
"I woke to ruin," he said. "The system locks much of what I knew. It lets go by degrees, as if testing whether I'm still the thing they meant to make."
"And the blades?"
"Not all of me is for classrooms," he said. "But I won't use them here."
"Why tell me?"
He thought of the line under the arch. The ink in the vow book. The weight of her sponsor's hand when she pressed smoke into his skin.
"Because you asked," he said. "And because your line keeps old words."
"Thank you," she said, and meant it.
Outside, third bell rang. Students scattered in orderly untidiness.
Kara reached into her satchel and unrolled a narrow length of leather. "Bracers," she said. Simple, dark, with thin backing plates stitched between hides. "Training guards for knife practice. If you wear them, people will think you're cautious. They won't ask why your wrists are… different."
He slid them on. They fit too well.
> [Armature disguise: effective.]
[Magnetic signature: masked.]
"You'll smell human," she said, humor ghosting her mouth. "You'll look like you've got nothing up your sleeve. And you'll keep your vow."
"I will."
"Good." She tipped her head toward the window. "Welcome to the University, KrysKo."
He looked out again. A student fumbled her slate. Two others pretended they hadn't seen, then went back and helped anyway. Somewhere, someone tuned a stringed instrument until it found the note the room wanted.
For the first time since steam and red light woke his eyes, he felt something he could almost mistake for relief.
> [Campus entry: complete.]
[Subsystem unlocked: Scent Profile Editor (Human Baseline v1).]
[Blades: campus interlock engaged.]
[Quest chain updated: University Paths → Attend orientation; secure lab access; maintain cover.]
The leather creaked like a very small door closing politely.
"Let's learn the rules," he said.
"And then," Kara added, eyes bright, "let's break the ones that keep people dying."
He did not smile easily. He did now, quick and precise as a hinge.
The bell rang again. Somewhere inside him, a door moved on its pins.
The Trial of Blades Without Blades
The University was not a single building so much as a stitched quilt of endurance. Where walls had fallen, gardens grew in their bones. Where towers cracked, Drakari stone learned human angles. Wind ran its fingers along Architect glass and made soft music no one had designed.
Kara peeled away at third bell toward the south labs, a map of excitement and terror under her green thread. KrysKo watched her go until the crowd took the straight line of her out of sight. Then he turned at a warden's gesture and followed.
They passed beneath banners dyed in herb and soot. A stone plaque over a low door read: Office of Entry.
Inside, books and ledgers lined the walls. The desk was old oak, scarred by ink and years. Behind it sat a scribe with narrow spectacles and a white beard braided into a rope that rested like another line on his chest. His sash was green, but there was a fighter's posture in him—a man who had trained his back to stay a certain way even when seated.
The scribe set down his pen only after he finished the line he was writing. "Name," he said without looking up.
"KrysKo."
"No family?"
A fractional pause. "None."
The scribe dipped his quill. "Purpose of study?"
The word caught differently in KrysKo's processors than in his ears. Study. He let the slow part of his mind answer first.
> [Query: purpose of entry.]
[Operational suggestion: hone skills under legitimate framework; reduce suspicion via institutional alignment.]
He chose truth's edge. "Combat. Strategy. Tactics. The saving kind."
The scribe's quill paused. His eyes lifted. Measuring, not mocking. "You seek to be tested."
"Yes."
The scribe tore a slip from the ledger, sanded the ink, stamped a small bronze seal into the corner. "Master Halvek will see you. If he judges you worth the stone we stand on, you'll have access to the halls you mean to haunt." He gestured. Two wardens unfolded from the shadow with the economy of trained hands. "The yard."
They brought him to a square of stone open to the air. No theater seats. No pomp. Just beams darkened by sweat and years, racks of blunted weapons, chalk lines gone soft beneath countless feet. Students practiced at the edges in small clumps—laughter underlaid by the sound of wood on wood.
At the center stood a man.
Master Halvek was not large so much as arranged for force. Shoulders like a yoke; forearms knotted with old work. Iron-gray hair tied close. His bo staff rested against one shoulder, polished to a deep, unreflective glow. His eyes, when they found KrysKo, were not cruel. They were curious the way a blade is curious about a whetstone.
"Candidate," a warden said. "Combat study. Tested at your will."
Halvek's gaze traveled from boots to brow. "You carry no weapon."
"My body is my weapon," KrysKo said.
A breath moved one corner of the master's mouth. "Then we'll see if your body sings louder than mine." He stepped into the chalk square. "Bo staff. Root of Okinawa. Simple. Infinite when patient."
KrysKo slid into ginga. Feet soft. Hips a pendulum. The rhythm climbed into him like a remembered river.
Halvek's brows tipped by a degree. "Capoeira. Few here know its song."
"Then listen," KrysKo said.
A student rang a bell.
Halvek moved first—a fast, straight thrust to the chest, no telegraph.
KrysKo let the ginga carry him left, weight off the line, and the staff hissed by. His heel snapped toward Halvek's ribcage, precise as a metric.
Crack. Staff met shin. Pain stung. He let the sensation map the limb, folded with the energy, spun out, landed light.
"Good," Halvek murmured. He swept low, the staff a level line meant to take both ankles.
KrysKo inverted, palms to stone, legs with the memory of dance. His feet scissored to trap the staff; Halvek turned the pole within his hands and freed it with a half-beat jerk born of practice older than most books.
KrysKo landed already moving, rasteira cutting at the master's lead ankle.
Halvek planted the staff, pole-vaulted over the sweep, turned mid-air, and brought the end down toward KrysKo's shoulder like a judge's gavel.
KrysKo rolled; stone cracked where wood struck.
They reset without talk. Dust rose. Students edged closer, the circle of breath around the yard changing shape as attention condensed.
> [Scan active.]
[Style detected: Bo Staff Mastery.]
[Efficiency: 82%.]
[Weakness: micro-overextension during vault recovery; right knee favors old injury—lat drop a hair slower.]
[Strength: superior centerline control; ambidexterity.]
KrysKo feinted left, spun right, heel arcing toward Halvek's temple. The staff intercepted. The impact shivered from calf to hip. He turned the shiver into motion: meia lua de compasso—his leg tracing a crescent that sought jaw, then shoulder, then hand.
Halvek ducked, staff rising to meet the arc. Wood grazed KrysKo's ribs. If it had been steel, he would be bleeding at a rate the system did not like.
"Adaptable," Halvek said, breathing steady. "But rhythm is still rhythm."
KrysKo's feet changed time. The ginga stuttered, broke, reformed on an off-beat that did not announce itself.
Halvek's staff hesitated a fraction—enough. KrysKo stepped inside the line and hammered a kick into the staff with enough force to shunt the master a half-step back.
The students gasped as if pulled on a thread.
Halvek planted, weight finding gravel and control like a hawk returning to wrist. His smile sharpened. "Better."
They moved again. No flourishes now—utility and timing. Halvek's staff collapsed space in a straight line; KrysKo made that line curve. A lunge, a pivot, a heel. A block, a slide, a thrust. The yard became language.
> [Combat analysis: 44% replication of Bo sequences achieved.]
[Adaptation curve: rising.]
[Advisory: mimicry risks pattern lock; introduce irregularities.]
KrysKo began to echo Halvek—not perfectly, but enough to be recognized by any trained eye as learning in real time. When Halvek's strike cut diagonally, KrysKo's shoulder twitched in the same angle even as his leg did something else. When Halvek pivoted, KrysKo stole the pivot and fed it forward.
"You copy," Halvek said, staff a line of light and shadow. "Copy is not creation."
"Creation comes next," KrysKo answered, sliding under a thrust he could not have avoided if he had been a fraction later. He twisted out of human geometry, the unnatural length of his forearms changing leverage in ways the eye could not anticipate.
The staff caught his calf—barely. Halvek grunted, the first sound that admitted effort.
They circled, drawing a chalkless figure eight. KrysKo's breathing did not hitch. Halvek's did not either, but sweat mapped his temples in neat lines. The staff swept; KrysKo slid; heel bit wood; wood answered like old bone.
At the edge of the yard, a warden with a crown braid—Aria Senn—had drifted into shade. She watched without moving, eyes the color of a storm that had already chosen landfall. KrysKo clocked her presence and filed it under authority.
Halvek altered pattern: false high, true low, butt-end jab to thigh, pivot to throat, withdrawal before contact. KrysKo's chest felt the threat and turned. The yard kept silence grimly satisfied.
> [New pattern branch observed.]
[Counter suggestion: advance past centerline; remove weapon.]
He could. The math sang the path: slip inside, trap the staff, let a blade bloom—a clean, surgical disarm.
But the vow was a wall.
> [VOW CONFLICT] High. Deploying lethal tools violates Myles Charter and University Code.
[EFFICIENCY WARNING] Lethal path: 98%. Non-lethal path: 71%.
KrysKo heard the system's logic scream for precision, for victory. He ignored it.
He let the lethal impulse fade, forced motion into the slower, safer rhythm.
A human rhythm.
He spun out of the efficient strike, let gravity and flow do the talking.
The staff passed his ribs by the width of mercy.
"Hold," Halvek said—not because the fight had ended, but because he wanted to see what kind of man chose imperfection. He swapped ends on the staff so casually students who had never been hit hard didn't notice the test in it. "Again."
They collided, and for a handful of seconds the world narrowed to timing, wood, and choice. KrysKo's shin took a solid crack; he returned it with a heel to the staff that made Halvek's fingers sing. Halvek's vault came an inch too slow from the favoured knee; KrysKo's rasteira grazed the ankle and would have taken him if Halvek hadn't bent gravity into a different bargain.
The bell struck once—an apprentice with good ears sensing the moment a ring should end.
Halvek raised a hand. "Stop."
KrysKo froze mid-motion, leg half-raised, staff an inch from his ribs. He let the moment stretch, then lowered smoothly.
The yard breathed again.
Halvek stood straight and let the staff come to rest against his shoulder. "You could have taken my weapon five times," he said—not accusation, but fact.
"I chose not to," KrysKo replied.
Halvek's eyes sharpened, a new arithmetic behind them. He nodded once. "That choice is the only weapon that matters here, O'Ruadhraigh." He turned to the warden. "Admission granted. He learns more than we can teach."
At the edge, Aria Senn's chin tucked, a note made for later. Her eyes flicked once to KrysKo, then to the bracers at his wrists. Her mouth did something that could be mistaken for a smile by a man who didn't know how edges hide.
The scribe from the entry office appeared as if conjured by paper. "Admission granted," he called, waving the stamped slip. "Candidate, present for ledger."
Kara had slipped into the back of the crowd somewhere during the fight. She hadn't cheered, hadn't gasped—she had watched like a field medic who knows the cost of stupid bravery. When the wardens led KrysKo toward the desk, she moved with him as if they had always walked side by side here.
"Good?" she breathed.
"Admitted," he said.
Her smile came quick and unguarded, then hid. "I have orientation," she said. "Mestre Yal. If I faint, catch me."
"I will," he said, and surprised himself with the certainty in it.
> [Quest complete: University Combat Trial.]
[Reward: Entry Granted.]
[XP awarded.]
[Progression event queued.]
The warm voice that lived in him like an old book that had learned to speak cleared its throat softly.
> "You listened before you struck, KrysKo," it said, as if they were sitting on a porch somewhere with a river going about its business. "That is a lesson men forget when they paint their hands for war. You didn't break your promise to the stone. That is another lesson. Keep them both."
The cold system tucked the praise into a column called Behavioral Tags and color-coded it in a way the warm voice didn't trust.
Kara caught his sleeve as they passed beneath a fig bough that had taught itself to climb brick. "Don't disappear," she said.
"I will be where your shadow falls," he said—and only later realized it sounded like a vow.