No one in Casa de Imperium had expected it.
Not the engineers who monitored the load-bearing cores of every building. Not the architects who designed the hyper-spires and sub-level research sectors. Not even the Imperians themselves—those brilliant, prime-ranked students who believed they had already seen everything that could impress them.
Yet when the announcement flashed across the holo-boards suspended above the campus skybridge—
[ OLD ATHLETICS DOME: RECONSTRUCTION AUTHORIZED. ]
—everyone stopped.
For the first time in years, Casa de Imperium was bringing back a facility from retirement.
The Old Gymnasium—officially the Athletics Dome of Era 3—was a relic. Rectangular. Concrete. A remnant of the university's early days, when Imperium wasn't yet the technological titan it had evolved to be.
It didn't belong in a world of quantum elevators, AI combat chambers, or augmented-training platforms.
And yet… the Castillian had made it relevant again.
It all began when the Athletics Chancellor, flanked by the Head of Engineering and the Castillian's Coach, held a private meeting.
In Casa de Imperium, everything was advanced. Everything was optimized. Everything was future-forward.
But the Castillian's play style—the discipline, the instinct, the grit—had made people realize something uncomfortable. Some forms of excellence could not be manufactured. They needed history. They needed spirit. They needed a place like the Old Gymnasium.
And so, the board agreed.
Within hours, blueprints were pulled up from the archives—digital scans of an era long before Imperium became a fortified city of glass and steel.
Within days, reconstruction drones swarmed the forgotten structure, peeling back cracked paint and rusted beams.
Within a week, the entire campus buzzed with anticipation.
The renovation was not a simple repair—it was a resurrection.
The old wooden court? Reinforced with flexible shock-diffusion planks, preserving the feel of wood but with the durability of aerospace polymer.
The bleachers? Still metal, still familiar—but now integrated with biomech seating that adjusted automatically for comfort.
The overhead lights? Replaced with adaptive illumination strips that followed movement on the court, spotlighting fast plays and key moments.
The scoreboard? Updated to a holo-array but designed to mimic the classic layout.
And the walls—oh, the walls.
They kept the original concrete panels, chipped and stained with history… but behind them ran a grid of modern acoustic dampeners and smart temperature controls.
Old and new. Muscle memory and machine precision. The Imperian future and the Castillian heartbeat—merged.
Word had already spread across campus.
By the time the renovation was complete, a crowd had gathered outside the gymnasium—students from every faculty and year, even professors who rarely emerged from their labs.
Some of them had never even seen the building before. Others had only heard rumors about it from the earliest Imperians.
---
The moment they stepped onto the newly revived court, murmurs rippled across the stands. Students from other universities had already arrived, cameras in hand. Vloggers camped near the railing. A full row of reporters adjusted their lenses.
Even the drones—authorized by the media division—hovered overhead for aerial coverage.
This wasn't just a training. It was a spectacle.
Casa de Imperium had trained soldiers, engineers, scientists, strategists…
But now? They were training legends.
The Captain blew the whistle.
"Warm-up. Standard drills. Don't look at the audience!"
As if that were possible.
The entire campus was staring. But the Castillian did what they always did—they adapted. Ignored the noise. Focused on the rhythm.
And as the ball thumped against the resurrected court, the sound was unlike anything the Imperians had heard before.
Raw. Alive. Electric.
This was not the polished silence of AI courts. This was the sound of tradition returning.
By the end of the hour, the audience was still there—captivated.
And the administration knew. The Castillian had just revived a piece of Imperium history. They had turned a forgotten relic into the new beating heart of the university. The Old Gymnasium was no longer outdated.
It was iconic. It was sacred. It was… theirs.
And this was only the beginning.
---
FEW DAYS BEFORE
Mico didn't react at first.
He stood there, in the middle of the skybridge overlooking Sector C, staring at the announcement flashing across the holo-screen:
[ ATHLETICS DOME OF ERA 3 — FULL RENOVATION APPROVED.
PRIMARY USERS: CASTILLIAN. ]
He blinked once. Then twice.
As if the words might rearrange themselves into something more logical.
Behind him, Uno stopped mid-bite with his steamed bun. Felix dropped the lens calibrator he had been playing with. And Jairo muttered something so quiet it almost sounded like static.
None of them spoke.
Not because they didn't want to—but because… what exactly were they supposed to say?
Casa de Imperium didn't renovate old buildings. Casa de Imperium demolished, rebuilt, and upgraded. Casa de Imperium poured billions into AI labs, robotics halls, and quantum facilities. Casa de Imperium did not renovate a half-forgotten gymnasium for the sake of basketball.
Yet… here it was.
A decision made. A headline glowing across campus. An entire community reacting in real time.
"Tell me I'm dreaming."
Uno was the first to break the silence. He stepped closer to the railing and pointed down toward the Old Gymnasium, where reconstruction drones were already swarming the structure like silver insects.
"We must be dreaming," Uno said slowly. "Because Casa de Imperium does not do this. Ever."
Felix let out a breathy laugh—one of disbelief, not amusement. "Our university is literally working on quantum bio-syncing," he said. "Last week, they opened a new AI war-analysis chamber. And now…" He gestured helplessly. "Now they're renovating… that?"
"That," Jairo echoed, eyes narrowing at the rectangular, outdated building below them. "The most analog structure on campus."
Mico still hadn't spoken.
He felt something building in his chest—an emotion he couldn't name. Disbelief? Gratitude? Pressure? Maybe a mixture of everything.
It didn't make sense. None of this did.
Casa de Imperium's identity was built on one thing: progress.
Its pride came from being a city of invention, where every hallway hummed with machinery and every classroom felt like a command center.
The idea that this institution would stop everything— pause, redirect funds, activate reconstruction units, send out official announcements— just to revive an old sports building… for four boys who happened to play basketball…
It felt surreal. Impossible. Almost absurd.
"What did we even do?" Uno whispered.
Felix answered, "Apparently… changed basketball."
Jairo scoffed. "Enough for the university to resurrect an entire building."
Uno shook his head, running a hand through his hair. "No—this is insane. This is Casa de Imperium. They don't even fix buildings. They replace them. They erase them."
"And yet," Felix replied, pointing below, "they chose not to erase that one."
The other three turned to Mico, waiting. He had been silent the whole time, eyes fixed on the renovation site.
Finally, he exhaled. "Guys… does this mean we're… important?"
It was such a simple question. Yet it struck the others harder than any announcement could.
Because they had never considered themselves anything special—not in this school. Not in a place where geniuses built prosthetic limbs in their dorm rooms and students coded AI systems in between classes.
They were athletes in a university of engineers. They were players in a campus of inventors. They were the anomaly.
Felix walked up beside him, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Yeah," he said. "I think it does."
Uno grinned weakly. "We're still nobodies in robotics class, though."
Jairo snorted. "Speak for yourself. My professor likes me."
Uno rolled his eyes. "He only likes you because you fixed his coffee machine."
"And saved his life," Jairo added.
"From a coffee machine?"
"It sprayed boiling liquid—"
Felix cut them off. "Focus."
"Why us?" That was Mico's last question.
And it hung in the air like a physical weight.
Why them?
Why would Casa de Imperium—a titan of science—halt its forward momentum just to carve out space for basketball? Why honor them in a way the university had not done for anyone before?
None of them had answers. All they knew was this: Somewhere below, drones continued to reconstruct the gymnasium brick by brick, beam by beam.
For them. Because of them. Because the world had seen them dominate… and their university, the most technologically advanced campus in Asia, was choosing to believe in them too.
The four boys stood there for a long time, lost between disbelief and a strange, new kind of pride.
For the first time, they felt it. Casa de Imperium wasn't just letting them exist. It was making space for them.
And that changed everything.