Eryon woke to the smell of iron and disinfectant.
For a moment, he didn't know where he was. The ceiling above him was white stone etched with healing runes, each symbol pulsing faintly as if breathing. The air felt heavy—thick with medicine and mana.
Then the pain arrived.
Not the sharp backlash he was used to. This was deeper, crawling beneath his skin, as if his blood had been replaced with heated sand.
Eryon forced himself upright.
A healer in gray robes looked up from a tray of vials. "You shouldn't move."
Eryon ignored him. "How long?"
"Two days," the healer said flatly. "You were brought back with rift contamination in your channels."
Contamination.
Eryon's jaw tightened.
The healer set a vial down, his expression sharpening. "Most first-years don't come back from the Southern Rupture Zone. Especially not after resonating with it."
Eryon's mind flashed to the creature unraveling, reality bending around his spell.
He remembered the system's warning: Human compatibility decreasing.
He swung his legs off the bed. His feet touched the floor—and for an instant, the runes beneath the tiles shimmered, responding to him as if to a foreign signal.
The healer noticed. His hands stilled.
Eryon looked down.
The glow vanished.
But the feeling remained: the world was listening differently now.
A message drifted into his vision.
[Post-Mission Status Review] Trait: Rift-Resonant Mana — ACTIVE Side Effects: — Mana temperature instability — Sensory distortion in high-magic zones — Increased spell persistence Risk Level: HIGH
Eryon inhaled slowly.
So it wasn't gone.
It had become part of him.
"Your discharge papers," the healer said, voice lower now. "And a warning. If you enter another rupture zone in this condition, your channels may… change permanently."
"They already did," Eryon said.
The healer didn't answer.
The moment Eryon stepped back into the academy corridors, he felt the shift.
Students stared.
Not the casual ridicule from before—this was tighter, quieter, edged with caution. Whispers followed him like invisible threads.
"That's him."
"The one from F-013."
"They said the mission almost failed."
"Almost? I heard a D-class entity dissolved."
Eryon kept walking.
His rank had changed before. It hadn't mattered.
But now, his name carried a story.
At the central hall, the ranking board hovered in its usual place. Students gathered beneath it, pointing and arguing.
Eryon pushed through the crowd and looked up.
His name was no longer buried at the bottom.
Eryon Vale — Rank 198.
A sharp breath escaped someone nearby.
"He jumped fifty ranks again."
"That's impossible without instructor sponsorship."
"No—missions can add points."
"Optional missions," a girl whispered, as if that word itself was a curse.
Eryon stared at the number.
It wasn't high.
But it wasn't invisible either.
A movement to his left drew his attention.
Lucien Frostmark stood near the front, surrounded by classmates like orbiting moons. His name remained near the top, untouched.
Lucien's gaze met Eryon's for the first time without indifference.
It wasn't anger.
It was curiosity—the kind reserved for a specimen that had begun behaving unexpectedly.
Eryon looked away.
Curiosity was dangerous. It led to attention. Attention led to control.
A chime echoed through the hall.
A new notice materialized on the board.
SECOND PHASE EXAM: COMBAT EVALUATIONFormat: Ranked Duels + Rift SimulationCommences in 72 hours
A murmur rolled through the crowd.
Ranked duels meant public humiliation for the weak and public glory for the strong.
Rift simulation meant something else.
Real danger, wrapped in a barrier thin enough to count.
Eryon felt a cold prickle along his spine.
The system responded as if it had been waiting.
[Upcoming High-Failure Event Detected] [Opportunity Index: EXTREME] Recommendation: Enter simulation. Increase failure frequency.
Increase failure frequency.
Eryon's fingers curled.
The system no longer sounded like a tool.
It sounded like hunger.
That evening, he returned to the lower archive.
He didn't need comfort. He needed information.
Eryon pulled the same book he had seen before—censored field reports, pages patched with ink where names should have been.
He flipped until he found the heading:
ANOMALOUS SUBJECTS — STRUCTURAL DEVIANCE
A list followed.
Most entries were incomplete. The ending of every report was the same: Removed.Classified.Archived.
One word repeated in the margins.
Resonance.
Eryon traced it with his finger, then paused.
The ink was faded, but the last line was readable.
"Subjects that resonate with rifts do not merely use magic. They become an extension of it."
Eryon closed the book.
Outside the archive window, the academy spires cut the sky like knives.
He was still at the bottom half. Still surrounded by predators. Still one failure away from collapse.
But now, his failures were changing the world around him.
And the academy had noticed.
As he walked back to his room, footsteps echoed behind him.
Not students.
Not casual.
Measured. Professional.
Eryon did not turn.
His door sealed with a soft click behind him.
A voice spoke from the corridor, calm and polite.
"Eryon Vale," it said. "The headmaster would like to see you."
Eryon stared at the darkness beyond the door.
A second message appeared before his eyes, quieter than the rest.
[Warning] High-Control Entity approaching. Proceed carefully.
Eryon exhaled slowly.
Rankings had lifted him out of invisibility.
Now they were pulling him into the academy's center.
And whatever waited there… would not be optional.