The corridor to the upper observatory was nothing like the rest of Aureus Helix.
Here, the neon lights dimmed to a colder hue—silver-white, sterile, almost sacred. The sound of Vadel's boots echoed against the polished obsidian floor, each step accompanied by the faint hum of surveillance drones gliding silently above.
> EON: Thermal scans active. Twelve hidden sentry nodes. Two armed guards behind the next door. One… anomaly—signal unclassified.
"I see them," Vadel murmured, his voice low.
He adjusted his gloves. He wasn't nervous—he couldn't afford to be. But even his mind recognized the gravity of where he was walking.
The Academy Council wasn't a faculty meeting; it was an audience with those who shaped the future of humanity's elite. And one of them—just one—carried a link to the Six Thrones themselves.
The last door opened with a resonant hiss.
Sound effect: [Atmospheric pulse. Energy veil disperses.]
The chamber beyond was circular, walls lined with translucent data columns rising like frozen lightning. Six figures stood on the upper dais, faces hidden behind holo-masks, their voices layered with distortion.
> "Vadel Xyne. Null. Age seventeen. Admitted through auxiliary scholarship," one voice said, tone flat and clipped. "You defeated twelve Advanced Division candidates without activating a registered Trait."
> "Impressive," another said. "Or suspicious."
Their eyes—if they had any behind the masks—seemed to burn with the same cold light as the room.
Vadel bowed slightly, every motion deliberate. "I acted according to instinct, not advantage."
A pause. Then laughter—brief, artificial. "Instinct does not mimic data prediction," said the second figure. "Our analysts recorded impossible reflex precision. Your neural response was… augmented."
Vadel kept his gaze steady. "If I were augmented, wouldn't you have detected it during registration?"
The first voice leaned forward. "We did. That's why you're here."
> EON: Caution. Data trace initiating from Council terminal three. Encryption pattern—identical to Imperial signature.
So they were probing him directly.
Vadel stayed perfectly still as a beam of pale light washed over him. His pulse didn't change. He imagined every heartbeat as a command to stay calm, to stay unreadable.
> EON: Countertrace blocked. They're searching for me.
"Don't engage," Vadel whispered under his breath. "They'll sense you."
> *Compliance.
The light faded. Silence followed.
Then one of the masked figures spoke again, voice colder than before. "You carry no Trait, no visible implant. And yet, you exceed Tier 3 combat efficiency. Tell me, Mr. Xyne—what exactly are you hiding?"
Vadel met the hollow mask directly. "Fear."
The figure stilled, caught off guard for a second. "Fear?"
"Yes," Vadel said quietly. "The fear of being weak again."
For a moment, no one spoke. Then, slowly, one of the Council members rose. Unlike the others, this one's mask glowed faintly gold. The air around them warped subtly, like light bending under immense gravity.
Celia Veridia stepped from the shadows beside the dais—her eyes widening as she recognized the figure.
Vadel didn't need EON to tell him who this was.
That gravitational distortion…
A Veridian signature.
The chamber's atmosphere tightened as the golden-masked figure stepped closer. The data streams along the walls dimmed, their glow drawn toward him as though pulled by an unseen force.
> EON: Mass shift detected. Gravity distortion localized around target. Estimating 2.4x baseline Earth G.
Vadel didn't flinch. But the pull against his body was real—like invisible hands trying to force him to kneel.
Celia, standing on the lower platform, immediately lowered her head.
"Councilor Veridia," she said, voice steady but subdued.
So it was him.
The same Veridia who once sat at the High Convergence—Celia's bloodline.
"Enough posturing," the Councilor's voice resonated, deeper and clearer than the others, filtered yet undeniably human. "This boy is not an ordinary Null."
The gravity wave pulsed again. Vadel's hair lifted slightly, his boots grinding against the obsidian floor.
"You resisted the Graviel compression field during your first evaluation," Veridia continued. "Untrained, unshielded, and—if our records are true—unaware of the energy being applied."
"I endured," Vadel replied, quietly.
"Endurance," Veridia mused. "That's not a skill. That's survival."
He gestured slightly, and the pressure vanished. In the silence that followed, Vadel felt his pulse return to its usual rhythm—though faintly, he could sense EON's systems humming harder than before.
> EON: Warning. External signal attempted to sync with internal core frequencies. I neutralized it.
He tried to read me, Vadel realized. Or read EON.
"Tell me, Vadel Xyne," Veridia said, descending the dais. "Do you know why the Academy allows Nulls to study among the Advanced?"
"I assumed it was for fairness," Vadel answered.
Veridia chuckled once—a low, metallic sound. "No. It's for observation. To see if evolution can occur without intervention. You are an experiment, not a symbol."
Celia's expression flickered at that—just barely.
Vadel looked directly at her grandfather. "Then I'll be an experiment that breaks its own limits."
That made the golden mask tilt slightly, as if amused.
"You remind me of someone," Veridia murmured. "But arrogance has a cost here. You've drawn attention—attention I may not shield you from."
He turned to Celia. "Miss Veridia. You will monitor this one. Report any anomaly directly to the Council."
Celia bowed. "…Understood."
Their eyes met briefly—hers full of something unsaid.
> EON: Emotional variance detected: conflict. Subject 'Celia Veridia' displays hesitation ratio at 41%.
"Vadel Xyne," Veridia said finally, stepping back toward the dais. "The next phase of your assessment begins tomorrow at dawn. If you survive, perhaps then we'll decide whether to call you Null… or something else."
The chamber lights flared, blinding for a second.
When Vadel's vision cleared, the Council was gone. Only Celia remained—standing still, her shoulders tense, her gaze unreadable.
She approached slowly, lowering her voice.
"You shouldn't have spoken to him that way."
"I wasn't going to kneel," Vadel replied.
"Then you'll be crushed," she said, almost whispering. "That's how this world works."
Vadel looked past her, toward the exit where the light turned cold again.
"Then I'll just have to change how it works."
> EON: Statement logged: "Change how it works." Marking as primary objective.
Celia exhaled—a mix of frustration and something else. "You don't understand what you're walking into."
Vadel paused at the door, his reflection caught in the glass.
"Then I'll learn," he said softly.
And with that, the chamber sealed behind him—
leaving Celia staring at the empty space where he'd stood, a faint tremor running through her fingers.