The first thing Quinn noticed about Aureon Military Academy was how clean the air tasted.
Not fresh—nothing about the capital sector was truly fresh—but *clean*. Filtered, processed, stripped of the metallic tang and oil-smoke he'd grown used to in the lower rings. The parade grounds stretched out before him in immaculate gray, perfectly measured squares of ferrocrete polished by generations of cadet boots. The academy buildings rose around it in severe white tiers, like teeth biting into the sky. Every line was straight. Every corner sharp. No clutter. No wasted space.
Nothing here had room for a mistake.
"Move it, new blood!" a voice barked behind him.
Quinn shifted his duffel higher on his shoulder and forced himself into the river of uniforms pouring toward the induction gates. Black and steel-gray everywhere he looked—cadets already in their issued fatigues, shoulders squared, boots sync-locked in that same clipped, efficient stride. Their rank patches glinted in the pale light. Their Ability Book sigils flashed against their belts and harnesses, polished, worn, familiar.
Every single one of them carried a book.
He adjusted the strap cutting into his shoulder and glanced down at his own belt.
Empty.
The induction plaza flared wide ahead, bracketed by two towering statues of Aureon's founders—General Cassian Aureon, hand resting on a stylized rifle, and Archivist-Marshal Lyra Hale, cradling an open Ability Book. The bronze pages in her arms were etched with unreadable glyphs. The academy standard fluttered between them, dark blue and silver, emblem stitched in blood red: a stylized book overlaying a rifle and a laurel of data-circuits.
It felt like the twin statues watched him specifically. Judging. Measuring.
Finding him lacking.
He could feel the weight of the gap at his hip as if it were a physical thing, dragging his spine into a curve. Others noticed it too. Their eyes went straight for his empty belt—not the fraying hem of his civilian jacket, not the callused hands that had labored through half a childhood, not the stubborn set of his jaw.
Just that soft, bare space where a Book should be.
"—he doesn't have one."
"Must be a late attunement."
"Or a reject. They still *let* rejects in?"
Their voices were low, but not low enough. Quinn looked straight ahead and kept walking. The trick was simple: don't flinch, don't respond, don't give them anything.
The trick was harder when your heartbeat was pounding loud enough to make your teeth ache.
He stopped when the crowd bottlenecked under the induction arch. A steel frame bristling with scanners and emitters loomed overhead, humming with coiled power. The arch pulsed a faint blue, reading biosigns, spectral patterns, book signatures. Old propaganda vids flashed through his memory—bright-eyed kids stepping through the arch, their Books blazing, announcers boasting:
*"At Aureon, your Ability defines your future."*
Quinn swallowed.
Someone bumped into him from behind. "Move, blank."
The word hit harder than the shove. The boy who passed him had silver hair cut too neatly to be natural, an orange-and-black Book clipped elegantly to his hip, and a flaming phoenix sigil on his induction sleeve. Fire-type. His eyes slid over Quinn like he was trash on the curb.
Quinn let him pass. He was used to the word. Blank. He'd heard it in alleys and markets, in the cramped hallways of the lower-ring habs, from kids his age who could fold light in their palms or make coins dance in the air. He'd heard it from officers at the testing center when the scanners failed to glow, failed to register anything beyond baseline human.
He'd heard it in the silence after his parents died—no Book awakened, no miraculous hidden power surfacing to save him from the pit he'd dropped into. Nothing but a name and a file and a sealed report he wasn't allowed to see.
Blank.
"Next!" a tech called from the arch.
The silver-haired fire cadet stepped through. The arch flared gold, sigils flickering in midair—Affinity: Pyrotic. Rank: C-Prime. Book: *Ember's Vow*. The data slotted neatly into the hovering display. The crowd hummed, some nodding appreciatively.
"Next!"
Quinn's feet carried him forward before his brain could order them to stop.
He glanced left. A line of induction officers stood behind a reinforced glass partition, eyes flicking from screens to cadets. He glanced right. A medical team watched vitals scroll past on tablets, palmed injectors ready. The entire academy was watching, in one way or another.
He stepped under the arch.
The world narrowed to a thin, vibrating line of sound. The hum of the scanners rose as they locked onto him. A cold tingle washed over his skin, starting at his scalp and dripping down his spine like ice water. His breath fogged faintly in front of him, though the air wasn't cold.
The arch remained a steady, indifferent blue.
No gold. No glyphs. No Book signature.
On the glassed-in side, one of the officers frowned and tapped his screen. The tech by the gate looked down, then up at Quinn.
"Hold," the tech said. "You're not reading."
Quinn's hands curled on the strap of his duffel till his knuckles blanched. "I know."
"You *know*," the tech repeated, skepticism thickening his vowels. He was older than Quinn by maybe five years, sleeves rolled up to show a faint green sigil pulsing beneath his skin. "Step back, we'll recalibrate. Thumb on the pad."
Quinn stepped aside, exhaled slowly, and pressed his thumb to the scanner plate set into the arch's base. The glass felt warm, then almost hot. Tiny needles of light pricked his skin, searching, probing, seeking that flicker of resonance that would mean a Book could bond.
The plate stayed dull.
The tech's lips thinned. "No attunement. You got a waiver for entry, kid?"
"Yes, sir." Quinn kept his voice level. "From Commander Vale. The—"
A door to the side of the arch hissed open.
"Veyra." The voice cut through the induction noise like a clean blade.
Quinn turned. Commander Vale stood framed in the doorway, dress blacks immaculate, white hair cropped short against a dark, weathered face. Pale gray eyes took Quinn in from boots to collar in a single, clinical sweep.
At her hip, an Ability Book rested in a custom sling. Unlike the others he'd seen, it wasn't ornate—no gilded corners, no bright sigils. Matte black cover. A single silver band along the spine. It felt heavier than it looked, like a locked door.
"Ma'am," Quinn managed.
Vale didn't answer him. She addressed the tech instead. "Cadet Quinn Kael Veyra is an authorized admit. Provisional status. Note it."
The tech straightened abruptly. "Yes, Commander. Flagging now."
Quinn tried not to visibly react to the *cadet* attached to his name. It didn't feel real. The academy walls seemed to press in closer, as if waiting to snap shut and correct the mistake.
Vale's gaze shifted back to him. Those pale eyes didn't warm. They never had—not at the lower-ring testing center last year, when she'd watched him stand there while the readings flatlined, nor at the bureaucratic hearings afterward where she'd argued, dry-voiced and relentless, that "statistical anomalies" had value.
"Fall in with Blue Cohort after processing," she said. "You'll receive your provisional schedule and quarter assignment." She paused, head tilting almost imperceptibly. "You will be evaluated continuously. Understand."
It wasn't really a question.
"Yes, Commander."
Her eyes flicked once to his empty belt. For a second, there was something like interest in them. Then it was gone.
"You are not to attempt unsanctioned bonding with any Ability Book," she added, voice low enough that the hovering tech had to lean in to hear. "Nor accept offers to 'try' someone else's, no matter what incentive is used. Cite Regulation Twelve, Subsection Three if pressured. If that fails, report it. Immediately."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Proceed."
She turned and was gone, the door hissing shut behind her. For a heartbeat, the world felt thinner where she'd been, as if some stabilizing force had stepped out of the room.
The tech cleared his throat. "All right, then. Provisional blank." The way he said it was only mildly contemptuous. Improvement. "You're flagged, so just walk through. Arch'll log baseline vitals and…" He glanced at his screen. "Neuro-cardiac readings. No Affinity profile. Yet."
Quinn didn't miss the *yet*. He also didn't believe it. But if that *yet* had gotten him through the gate, he'd take it.
He stepped back under the arch.
The hum rose again. This time, he felt it deeper, a bass vibration settling into his bones. It thrummed along his ribs, wrapped around his spine, tickled the back of his teeth. The lights stuttered once overhead, a flicker so fast he almost thought he'd imagined it.
The arch light remained blue.
"Done," the tech said. "You're in the system. Move along, Cadet."
Cadet.
The word sat uneasily in his chest as he hoisted his duffel and followed the arrowed pathway into the academy proper. The induction plaza opened into a labyrinth of corridors, each one labeled with coded sigils and numbers. The walls were white, but not sterile—the kind of white designed to show every stain, every mark, every failure.
He picked out the sign for Blue Cohort: a stylized inverted triangle with a diagonal slash.
"Hey. You."
Quinn turned halfway, wary. A boy about his height stood leaning against the corridor junction, arms folded, dark curls escaping regulation length by just enough to make a statement. His uniform jacket was unzipped, regulation already a suggestion. An Ability Book with a cobalt cover hung from his hip-mail hook—small, worn, and cluttered with tiny hand-scratched notches on the spine.
The boy's eyes were sharp, dark, but not hostile. Just curious. That, somehow, was worse.
"You're the one," the boy said. "The blank admit."
Quinn's shoulders tightened. "You got a problem with that?"
The boy snorted. "Relax, bloodless. I just like to know when the odds are about to shift in my favor."
"I'm not—" Quinn stopped himself before he finished the denial. *Not bloodless.* The word hooked something low in his gut. Instead he said, "What odds?"
"The betting pools." The boy pushed off the wall and fell into step beside him, as if they'd known each other for years. "Milo Oran. Blue Cohort, as of twelve minutes ago. Technical Affinity. B-minus rank. Don't be intimidated."
"You're doing a bad job," Quinn said before he could stop the words. They came out dry, not hostile. Milo grinned.
"There it is. A spine." He glanced pointedly at Quinn's belt. "Shame about the missing accessory, though."
"Commander Vale said—"
"Yeah, yeah, you're a special case. I heard." Milo flashed his hand; tiny threads of pale light shimmered between his fingers, knitting themselves into a little rotating cube. "Word travels fast when someone gets in here without a Book. People get nervous. Worried about precedent. Or jealous."
"Jealous of what?" Quinn asked.
Milo shrugged, letting the light construct unravel. The threads seeped into the cobalt cover at his side with a faint whisper, as if the Book were drinking them in. "Attention. Mystery. Exceptions. We're military; we're supposed to be the exception. When someone gets tagged *special* in a new way, it screws with the hierarchy. Anyway." He nudged Quinn's shoulder lightly. "Which bunk section did they stick you with?"
"Don't know yet." Quinn hesitated. "Blue Cohort assignment terminal first."
"Then I'll walk you." Milo said it as if the matter was settled. "What's your name, bloodless?"
"Quinn. Quinn Kael Veyra."
Milo's brow rose. "Veyra. Huh. That's—"
Familiar, Quinn thought he was going to say. Or loaded. Or infamous. He braced for it.
"—nice," Milo finished instead, incongruously bland. If he recognized the name from any classified report or whispered rumor, he didn't show it. "All right, Quinn Kael Veyra, let's see how badly they screw us on room assignments."
The Blue Cohort assignment terminal was a waist-high column beside a double-door entrance. Cadets clustered around it, swearing and groaning as their names pinged. Quinn watched the blue-tinted display scroll with neat, impersonal precision.
"Present your wrist," the system intoned cleanly, voice neutral and genderless.
Milo slapped his wrist against the reader. A faint holographic sigil flashed over his skin, mirroring the one on his Book.
"Cadet Milo Oran. Blue Cohort. Section B, Bunk 12." The door beside them unlocked with a soft click. Milo winced. "Bunk twelve. Middle tier. I hate ladders."
"Present your wrist," the system repeated.
Quinn hesitated. He didn't have a sigil. His wrist was just skin and old, faint scars, nothing glowing beneath. Still, he set his forearm against the reader, feeling faintly stupid.
A sharp, cold sensation knifed into his skin.
He flinched. "What—"
The reader pulsed once. His vision tunneled for a moment, everything narrowing to the contact point. He felt his pulse hammering against the scanner's surface, as if the machine were pressing *into* him rather than the other way around. The metal smelled faintly of ozone and…
Iron. For a second, the air in his nose went thick and metallic, the remembered scent of raw rust and something darker. He swallowed hard.
The display flickered.
"Cadet Quinn Kael Veyra," the system said after a pause that felt half an hour long. "Blue Cohort. Section B, Bunk 11."
Milo peered at the readout and let out a low whistle. "You're above me. Literally. I'm twelve, you're eleven. Bunk stack. Guess we're stuck with each other, bloodless."
Quinn forced his heartbeat to steady. "Stop calling me that."
"We'll workshop something better," Milo said, already moving toward the door. "Come on, before someone decides they want to trade up and sticks you in the ventilation shaft."
Blue Cohort Section B was a long, rectangular barracks lined with triple-tier bunks, lockers, and a communal table running down the center. The air smelled of cleaning solvent, new fabric, and the faint, nervous sweat of fifty teenagers trying not to show they were afraid. Voices overlapped—some excited, some derisive, some already grouping into clusters of tentative alliances.
Heads turned as Quinn stepped in.
There it was again: eyes flicking to his belt, to the absence of a Book. Murmurs flared instantly, then dimmed when Milo strode in like he owned the hall.
"Gentlemen, gentlewomen, and assorted anomalies," Milo announced, sweeping an ironic half-bow. "Your entertainment has arrived."
"Shut it, Oran," someone called, though it lacked real heat.
Quinn ignored the stares and found the bunk numbers stamped into the frame rails. Nine, ten… Eleven. He dropped his duffel onto the narrow mattress of the middle tier. Milo tossed his own bag onto the tier just below, metal springs creaking.
"Cozy," Milo said. "You claustrophobic?"
"I've slept under stairwells," Quinn said. "This is an upgrade."
Milo grinned. "Oh, you're gonna be fun."
Before Quinn could respond, a shadow fell across the bunk. He looked up.
Three cadets stood there, close enough that Quinn could smell the harsh citrus of their issued soap. The one in front was the silver-haired fire-type from the gate. His phoenix sigil glowed faintly on his sleeve, colors shifting lazily like embers. Flanking him were a tall, broad-shouldered boy with a slate-gray Book and a slim, sharp-faced girl with a white-and-blue one. Their posture, the way they spaced themselves, the way their eyes roved over Quinn with undisguised assessment—everything about them screamed *pack*.
"This your bunk?" the silver-haired one asked. His voice made it clear he already knew the answer.
"Yeah," Quinn said.
"You got assigned over me," the boy said. "Aric Thale. Affinity: Pyrotic. C-Prime. Ranked top three from my sector." He said it like reciting a set of commendations, the weight of each word meant to impress. "I'm thirteen. You're eleven." He gestured at the bunk numbers, amusement curling his mouth. "That's funny, right? A blank, slotted above me."
Quinn's hand twitched toward his duffel, fingers finding the worn strap. "That's what the system gave me."
"The system makes errors," Aric said pleasantly. "People correct them."
Milo slid out from under the bunk and straightened. "You wanna start union negotiations over sleeping arrangements day one, Thale? Driven, but maybe not *smart*."
Aric's gaze flicked to Milo and dismissed him. "Technical rat," he muttered. "Stay out of this."
"Hear that, Quinn?" Milo said lightly. "He thinks I'm going to listen. Adorable."
The girl beside Aric spoke for the first time. "We're just asking for fairness," she said, her tone all smooth reason. Her Ability Book's white-and-blue cover pulsed faintly; faint motes of frost clung to the edges. "Those with combat Affinities need quick access. You're… not using any Book slot at all." She smiled, polite but feral. "You'd fit better elsewhere."
"Like the waste chute," the big boy rumbled.
The barracks had gone quiet. Fifty sets of eyes watched, weighing. No instructors, no officers. This was the real induction—the one the academy didn't put on recruitment vids.
Quinn could feel his heartbeat in his fingertips.
"I'm staying," he said.
Aric's eyes cooled. "See, that sounds like you think you have a choice."
He reached out, slow and deliberate, and nudged Quinn's duffel off the bunk. It thudded onto the floor, spilling half open. A spare shirt, a folded set of old civilian pants, a small, dented metal case with his parents' initials stamped on the lid—they all toppled out.
The metal case clanged against the ferrocrete.
Something in Quinn tightened. "Pick that up."
Aric tilted his head. "What are you going to do if I don't? Think really hard at me?"
A couple of the nearer cadets snickered. Quinn ignored them. He dropped down from the bunk, landing light despite the drop, and stepped between Aric and the scattered belongings. His left knee twinged faintly at the impact, that old, half-healed ache flaring and then settling—a familiar, unwelcome reminder.
He'd gotten that injury three years ago, a jagged cut from scrap metal when he'd slipped down a maintenance shaft. It had bled more than it should have, warmth running down his shin, pooling in his boot. The clinic had patched it, but the scar remained—a raised, pale slash across his kneecap, his body's own little fault line.
Aric's gaze dipped briefly, noting the slight hitch in Quinn's stance. Predatory instinct flickered in his eyes. "Already damaged goods," he said. "You really don't belong here."
He nudged the metal case farther away with the toe of his boot.
Quinn's vision tunneled again, but differently this time. The edges darkened. The sounds of the barracks blurred into a low, throbbing hum. All of it centered on the scuffed toe of Aric's boot touching that case.
His father's initials gleamed faintly through the scratches.
QKV.
"Last warning," Quinn heard himself say. His voice sounded oddly distant in his own ears.
Aric laughed softly. "Or what? You'll report me? Regulations say—"
He never finished the sentence.
Quinn moved.
Later, he would not be able to clearly remember choosing to. There was no neat, conscious decision. One second he was standing there, the next his hand was on Aric's wrist, fingers clamping down hard enough that bones ground under his grip.
Aric's eyes widened. "What the—"
Quinn squeezed.
Pain lanced up his own left leg at the same moment, sharp and searing, straight through the old scar on his knee. He gasped, instinctively loosening his grip. Something inside his leg felt like it *tore*—not flesh, not quite, but deeper. The sensation was disgusting, like wet paper ripping.
Heat followed the pain.
It rushed up from the scar, flooding his veins. The world sharpened in an instant. Colors deepened, edges etched themselves with brutal clarity. He could see the individual threads of Aric's uniform, the tiny freckles across the bridge of the girl's nose, the faint shimmer of ambient energy humming around everyone's Books.
His own heartbeat battered at his ribs, each thud painfully loud.
Aric yanked his arm back, hissing. An angry red mark in the shape of Quinn's fingers bloomed on his skin. "The hell is wrong with you?" A flicker of flame danced involuntarily across the phoenix sigil on his sleeve, reacting to his anger.
Behind him, someone muttered, "Did you see that?"
Quinn barely heard them. His left knee burned. Not the dull ache he knew. A focused, almost pulsing heat. He looked down, breath catching.
The scar was bleeding.
It shouldn't have been. The skin there had been sealed for years. But now, thin rivulets of dark red seeped from the pale line, trailing down his shin. The sight made something primal inside him coil.
A drop of blood slipped from his leg and hit the floor.
Or it should have.
Instead, it hung.
For a fraction of a second, a bead of crimson hovered in the air between his skin and the ferrocrete. It stretched, thinned, then snapped, spattering onto the ground with a soft sound that seemed too loud in the silence.
Nobody moved.
Quinn stared. *I imagined that. I had to.*
Another drop slid down. His skin felt… wrong. As if there was pressure underneath, like a hose kinked too tight. The blood beaded at the edge of the scar, fat and dark. He watched it, unable to look away.
It clung stubbornly to his skin, gravity tugging, tension holding. Then, as if some invisible line reached out, the droplet elongated toward the metal case on the floor.
The case with his father's initials.
The blood made a thin, trembling bridge between his knee and the dented metal. For the briefest breath, Quinn saw it—saw his own blood suspended, reaching, a thread of living red humming with a faint inner light that nobody else seemed to see.
Then he blinked, and it was gone. The droplet fell, hit the top of the case, and smeared into an ordinary stain.
The pressure in his leg vanished. His heart stuttered.
He staggered back a half-step, hitting the bunk frame. Cold sweat prickled down his spine.
*No one saw that.* The thought was desperate, irrational. *They couldn't have.*
"What did you just do?" the girl with the frost-touched Book demanded. She was staring—not at the case, not at his face, but at his knee. "That's—"
"Pathetic," Aric cut in quickly, though his voice lacked some of its earlier ease. He flexed his wrist once, eyes narrowing at the red imprints fading on his skin. "You want to play grabby, blank? Fine. But next time you touch me, I'll burn that hand down to bone."
He looked like he wanted to say more. Then his gaze snagged briefly on the smeared blood atop the metal case. A flicker—not quite fear, but recognition of something he didn't want to name—passed through his eyes. He jerked his chin at his pack. "Let's go. This trash isn't worth a disciplinary mark day one."
The big boy grunted. The girl gave Quinn one last lingering, calculating look, then turned away. Their Books glimmered as they moved, sigils pulsing in time with their owners' agitation.
The moment they were gone, the noise in the barracks rushed back in—hushed whispers, rustling fabric, the soft clink of metal. But no one approached. The space around Quinn and Milo stayed conspicuously clear, like the air after a lightning strike.
Milo let out a breath. "Well," he said lightly, "you definitely made an entrance."
Quinn sank down onto the lower rail of the bunk, suddenly aware of how hard his hands were shaking. "Did you… see that?"
"See you nearly crush a C-rank's wrist without a Book? Yeah, kind of hard to miss." Milo crouched to retrieve the metal case, wiped the smear of blood off with the edge of his sleeve, and handed it up. "Here."
Quinn took it. The case felt warmer than it should have under his fingers, as if it had been sitting in the sun. He swallowed. "Not that. The… the blood. It…" He trailed off, hearing how insane it would sound.
Milo tilted his head. "It what?"
"Nothing." Quinn snapped the case's latch open just enough to reassure himself the contents were intact: two old datachips, scuffed nearly smooth, and a thin strip of faded cloth. He shut it again quickly, as if afraid someone might see too much.
"You're bleeding, by the way," Milo said. "Like, a lot."
Quinn looked down. The scar on his knee had indeed split, but the flow had already slowed to an ooze. The blood was dark against his skin, thicker than he remembered his blood ever looking. The smell hit him a half-second later—stronger than it should have been. Stronger than normal. Rich. Heavy. Iron.
His stomach lurched in a way he didn't understand. Not from nausea. From something else.
"Clinic?" Milo suggested.
"It'll stop," Quinn said quickly, too quickly. He didn't want an academy medic poking at him. Not yet. Not until he understood what had just happened. "Just need to clean it."
He dug in his duffel for a cloth, pressed it against the cut. The fabric soaked red almost immediately, the dark blot spreading like ink. He stared as the color deepened, the center of the stain almost black. For a second, the weave of the cloth seemed to pulse under his fingers, threads swelling and shrinking with his heartbeat.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Opened them again.
Just cloth. Just blood.
"You sure?" Milo asked. His voice had lost some of its careless humor, replaced by something sharper. "Because if you pass out in the first hour, I'm never letting you forget it."
"I'm fine." The lie came easily. "Just old injury."
Milo watched him for another moment, then nodded, apparently deciding not to push. "All right. Suit yourself. Orientation's in twenty. We should change." He jerked his chin toward the far end of the barracks, where a door marked with the hygiene sigil stood half-open. "You wanna wash that off before the brass sees you looking like you lost a fight with a shredder."
"Yeah." Quinn got to his feet, slower this time, testing his weight. The pain had already faded to a faint throb. That was… fast. Too fast. He should have felt it longer. The clinic had warned him about that scar—it was supposed to be a weak point.
He shuffled toward the washroom, each step sending a muted echo up his leg.
Inside, the walls were lined with metal sinks and mirrors. Harsh white light reflected off every surface. It was the kind of illumination that showed every flaw without mercy. Quinn turned on the tap, cold water stinging as it hit the cut. The blood swirled down the drain in dark ribbons.
He watched it go, hypnotized.
Swimming in the vortex of water, the red looked like ink in reverse, trying to force its way *up* the stream instead of down. He leaned closer, breath fogging the steel. For a moment, the whirlpool slowed, the drops hanging in the current like beads on a wire.
A whisper brushed against the inside of his skull.
It wasn't sound—not in the way footsteps or voices were. It was… pressure. A soft, insistent push from somewhere deep inside, like a word half-remembered but never learned. His skin prickled. His throat went dry.
His left hand moved without his permission.
He yanked it back a second later, heart slamming. The fingers had been dipping into the sink, reaching for the swirling red as if compelled. A single droplet clung to his index finger, refusing to wash away. It sat there, perfectly round, glistening.
Quinn lifted his hand.
The droplet didn't fall.
It clung, then stretched, then split into two smaller beads that rolled sluggishly across his skin, leaving no smear. It looked almost alive.
He squeezed his fist on instinct.
The beads burst. Liquid warmth smeared across his palm, finally behaving like normal blood. His breath left him in a rush he hadn't realized he was holding.
The whisper, whatever it was, retreated, leaving a ringing emptiness in its wake.
The cut on his knee had already stopped bleeding.
He pulled the cloth away. The skin had sealed into a thin, pink line as if the wound were days old, not minutes. Only the faint, sticky traces of drying red along his shin proved it had been open at all.
"That's not possible," he whispered to the empty room.
His reflection in the mirror stared back—dark hair falling over one eye, jaw too sharp from too many skipped meals, academy-issue undershirt hanging a little loose. Ordinary. Forgettable.
Except for his eyes.
They looked… different. The brown had always been dark, but now there was a depth to it, a thin ring of almost-black around the iris that he didn't remember. He leaned closer. The ring pulsed once, in time with his heartbeat, then settled.
He flexed his hand under the faucet until all visible trace of blood was gone. The water turned faintly pink and then clear.
Behind him, the door slid open with a soft hiss.
"Orientation in ten, cadet," a clipped voice said.
Quinn straightened. An upper-year stood at the entrance, older by maybe three years, rank patches bright on her sleeve. Her Ability Book, a heavy thing marked with interlocking gear sigils, sat on her hip.
She looked him over, eyes snagging briefly on his clean knee, then on his empty belt. Her mouth tightened almost imperceptibly.
"Try not to drip on the parade floor," she said. "They don't like stains."
He nodded, throat dry. "Yes, ma'am."
She left. The door sighed shut.
Quinn turned back to the mirror. He lifted his hand, flexed his fingers. They looked the same. Felt the same. But he could still feel the ghost of that warmth, that hum inside his veins. Like something had woken and then rolled over, not fully back to sleep.
"You're imagining it," he told his reflection quietly. "Stress. First day. That's all."
His reflection didn't argue. But the dark ring around his irises seemed just a shade thicker now. Or maybe that, too, was his imagination.
He dried his hands and leg, pulled on the academy-issue trousers, boots, and jacket with mechanical efficiency. Each piece fit too neatly, too perfectly, as if the academy had already measured and cut for the person they thought he was supposed to be.
He clipped nothing to his belt.
As he stepped back into the barracks, the noise hit him again—cadets laughing too loudly, boasting, whispering, jostling. Milo was waiting by the door, collar half-turned up, grinning.
"You look like someone who's already regretting life choices," Milo said. "Good. That means you're paying attention."
Quinn managed a faint snort. "You always talk this much?"
"Constantly. It's how I survive." Milo jerked his head toward the corridor. "Come on. Let's go learn how they want us to die for the Union."
They fell into step together, swept along by the flow of Blue Cohort toward the parade grounds. As they emerged into the open, the academy mugged for the sun—flags snapping in a rising wind, training towers looming, rifle ranges glinting in the distance. A formation of drones whirred overhead in perfect formation, a cloud of mechanical precision.
Quinn's eyes drifted to the induction arch where he'd stood not long before. The metal frame hummed faintly in the background, still cycling cadets through, still painting neat labels over human lives.
He flexed his left leg as they marched. No pain. No stiffness. As if the scar had never been there.
At the center of the parade ground, a raised platform waited. Commander Vale stood upon it now, flanked by other officers, all crisp lines and unreadable faces. She looked smaller at this distance, but no less sharp. Her gaze tracked the forming ranks like a targeting system.
"Cadets," her voice rang out over the field, carrying with the quiet authority of a woman used to being obeyed. "Welcome to Aureon Military Academy. From this moment, you are no longer citizens. You are assets. Your value will be measured in skill, discipline, and the quality of the abilities you wield."
A subtle stir ran through the assembled ranks as dozens of Ability Books seemed to thrum in unison, energy rippling invisible in the air.
Quinn felt… separate from it. Like he was standing just outside a circle of warmth. The air around him felt marginally cooler, thinner.
"Some of you," Vale continued, "believe your Ability makes you special. That your Book guarantees your worth. You are wrong. An Ability Book is a tool. Nothing more. It will not save you if your will is weak, your mind undisciplined, your body untrained."
Her eyes swept the ranks. Quinn could have sworn they paused, for a fraction of a second, on him.
"Some of you," she went on, "have less obvious advantages. Genetic anomalies. Statistical outlier profiles." Her tone didn't change, but the words sent a prickle down Quinn's arms. "You will be studied. Tested. Pushed. You will earn your place here—or you will be removed. Permanently."
The whisper of that word brushed uncomfortably close to the strange pressure he'd felt earlier, deep under his skin. *Removed.* Like a tumor.
"Look around you," Vale said. "These are your peers. Your rivals. In some cases, your future squadmates. Most of you will not stand together at graduation. Some of you will be sent home. Some to other facilities. Some home in boxes. That is the nature of what we do."
Silence lay heavy over the parade ground.
"You are here because the Union believes there is something in you worth investing in," Vale finished. "Prove it right."
She stepped back. Another officer took her place and launched into procedural details—schedules, regulations, curfews, demerit systems. Quinn's mind drifted, the words blurring at the edges. His focus kept sliding inward, to the place in his leg where an old scar had split and sealed in minutes.
To the weird, impossible way his blood had hung in the air and reached for the only piece of his parents he had left.
"I'm telling you," Milo whispered out of the corner of his mouth, too low for the nearest upper-year to catch, "they rehearse those speeches. There's no way they improvise that level of doom."
Quinn didn't answer. He was staring at his own hands, fingers curling and uncurling.
A breeze picked up, tugging at the academy flags. Somewhere above, the drones altered formation, shifting into a new, precise geometry. On his tongue, the air tasted faintly metallic again, like the memory of his own blood.
He pressed his fingertips together, half expecting to feel that hum again. Nothing came. Just the steady thump of his heart and the distant echo of Vale's words.
*Some of you have less obvious advantages.*
He had no Ability Book. No glowing sigil. No neat category stamped on a file. In the academy's eyes, he was a statistical anomaly at best, a liability at worst.
But under his skin, something had stirred.
Something old. Something his body seemed to remember even if his mind didn't.
Quinn Kael Veyra stood on the parade grounds of Aureon Military Academy, a bloodless cadet in a world powered by Ability Books.
Deep in his veins, a dark power shifted in its sleep—and for the first time, its dreams brushed against his own.