Every attempt. Every failure. Every condescending look from Lucien above them.And through it all, the Instructor hadn't moved once.
It wasn't a test anymore.It was theater.
And Rei knew exactly who was pulling the strings.
He was the last one left.
As he stepped into the arena, the Instructor's voice carried again.
"Final candidate. Rei Ashborne. Unawakened. Are you sure you wish to embarrass yourself further?"
Laughter rippled through some sections of the stands, quiet, cruel.Lucien smirked, whispering something to his father. Elise didn't smile; she just watched, eyes troubled.
Rei didn't respond. He reached into his jacket, thumb brushing the concealed hilt of the plasma prototype. The hum was faint, his secret heartbeat.
He took one step forward, and the crowd went silent.
The Instructor raised a hand, channeling mana. The barrier intensified, glowing brighter than before. "Then come," he said. "Show us what a powerless man can do."
Rei exhaled. Slowly. Deliberately.
His eyes tracked the barrier, the pulse at its base, the rotation of the energy pattern. The same flaw he'd seen before was still there. A microsecond of instability between cycles.
That's your opening.
His thumb clicked the hilt.
The blade came alive with a sharp hum, a filament of blue-white energy extending from the hilt. Gasps filled the hall.
"An ability manifestation!" someone shouted. "He's awakened!"
Lucien leaned forward sharply. "What the hell?"
Rei moved.
No sound. No hesitation.
One clean, perfect slash.
The blade connected with the barrier, and for the briefest instant, silence reigned.
Then came the sound, a deafening crack, sharp as thunder. The barrier split down the middle, light bursting outward in a radiant explosion of fractured mana. Blue shards disintegrated into the air like falling stars.
The entire arena froze.
The Instructor's eyes widened behind his mask.
"Impossible"
Rei didn't give him time to recover. The Instructor lunged, faster than most eyes could track, blade forming from solid mana, his expression twisting into something cruel.
Rei saw it coming, the shift in stance, the overcommitment of the left shoulder, the pattern of someone trained but not expecting resistance.
He sidestepped.
Caught the Instructor's wrist. Twisted.The mana blade flickered out as Rei drove his knee into the man's gut, then slammed the back of his plasma blade's hilt into the Instructor's mask.
Metal cracked.The man crumpled.
Rei stood over him, chest rising and falling, blade humming softly in the stunned silence that followed.
The display boards around the arena flickered, updating in real-time:
Candidate Rei Ashborne – Power Classification: Unknown
The silence broke. A wave of astonished cheers rolled through the hall.Mira leapt to her feet, grinning like an idiot.
"THAT'S MY BROTHER!"
Her shout echoed above the rest, cutting through the applause like sunlight through storm clouds.
Even Elise, still seated among the nobles, couldn't hide her shock, or the flicker of admiration that crossed her face.
Lucien, however, looked furious.
And far above them all, Agent Castor Vey of the Eternal Order watched from his observation booth, gray eyes unreadable as he logged the data into his tablet.
Subject: Rei Ashborne.Classification: Temporal Anomaly.Directive: Continuous Surveillance.
Rei deactivated the blade. The filament vanished with a hiss, leaving only silence and the faint smell of ozone.
He glanced toward Mira, smiling, laughing, crying with pride, and a rare warmth spread in his chest.
For the first time in either timeline…he wasn't invisible.He wasn't powerless.
He was seen.
And somewhere deep inside, the timeline shivered.