Later that day, Ren returned to the classroom.
The corridors were quieter now—the academy in the gap between lessons. Voices had faded to distant pockets. Footsteps were scattered and soft, echoing in long stone hallways that suddenly felt too big without a crowd to fill them.
When he stepped inside, the room felt nothing like it had during class.
Empty. Still.
Desks sat in curved rows, untouched. Chalk dust rested in the shallow grooves of the slate. Half-erased diagrams lingered like ghosts that hadn't been dismissed yet.
Professor Veyne was already there.
He stood near the front desk, sorting through a small stack of bound volumes with methodical precision, as if Ren's return had been placed on his schedule the same way everything else was.
Ren stopped at the edge of the room, hands clasped behind his back, posture straight despite the faint ache still living beneath his ribs.
Veyne looked up once.
He handed Ren the books without ceremony.
"These are foundational," he said. "Not introductory."
He met Ren's eyes.
"There's a difference."
Ren accepted them carefully. The weight surprised him—not physically, but in implication.
"You're behind," Veyne continued, voice even. No judgment in it. "You already know that."
"Yes, sir."
"But you're not careless," Veyne said. "And you're not passive."
A pause, small but deliberate.
"That matters more than talent in the long run."
Ren didn't respond. He didn't trust himself to.
Veyne studied him for a moment longer, then added—almost casually, like he didn't want it to sound like approval—
"If you need more material after future classes, come see me. I don't reward effort…"
His mouth twitched, the closest thing to a smile.
"…but I don't ignore it either."
That was all.
Ren bowed. "Thank you."
Veyne waved him off without looking, already turning back to his notes as if the conversation had been a simple transaction.
Ren left, books tight against his chest.
The terrace beyond the east wing was the same place Ren had been training.
Ren sat with his back against the outer wall and opened the first book.
Meridian Flow: Stability Before Strength
He read slowly.
Not skimming. Not rushing.
He'd studied meridian texts before—old volumes with softened corners, ink faded in places where too many fingers had traced the same diagrams. This book was different.
Cleaner. Sharper.
Written like the author expected the reader to live or die by the details.
The diagrams were familiar—twenty major meridians branching through the body, converging toward the Core Loop that tied heart, breath, mind, and weapon together.
But the phrasing hit differently.
Not move mana.
Prepare the path. Then let it move.
A section on meditation stripped the process down to essentials: settle the breath, follow the faint pull beneath the sternum, and stop the moment resistance sharpened.
Forcing it didn't build strength.
It taught the body the wrong lesson.
Ren's jaw tightened.
He understood the theory.
That wasn't the problem.
He closed the book and sat back, spine straight, hands resting loosely against his thighs.
Breathe.
He followed the method the book described—then matched it to Professor Veyne's instruction. Normal breath. No forcing. Awareness first.
At first, there was only stillness.
Then—shift.
The world seemed to pull inward.
Ren's attention slipped beneath the surface of himself, down into a dull, fog-choked space that felt untouched. Like someone had cracked open a basement in an abandoned house—air stale, corners soft, everything coated in old quiet.
Nothing was crisp here.
Even his thoughts sounded distant.
He waited.
Then he sank again.
A faint current stirred—subtle, searching—like a breeze moving through a sealed room. Ren didn't chase it. He simply held still and let it reveal where it wanted to go.
For a brief moment, it felt right.
Aligned.
Then it stopped.
Not gradually.
Abruptly.
The current met something solid.
Ren's attention pressed into an airtight barrier—smooth, absolute, stretching upward and outward beyond sight.
No seams. No gaps. No soft points.
It didn't feel like stone.
It felt like a lock.
Faint markings moved across it in slow rotation—thin, circular symbols that slid along the surface like they were counting, measuring, watching. When Ren shifted his focus along the wall, the pattern drifted with him, staying just ahead of where he looked.
His flow tested it instinctively.
There was nowhere to go.
The pressure didn't bounce so much as refuse him—contained, firm. A boundary.
Pain flared behind his ribs, sharp enough to steal air, and Ren jolted back into his body with a controlled gasp.
He broke the meditation, one hand braced against his chest as the ache faded from sensation into memory.
"So that's what's been stopping me," he murmured.
He reopened the book and found the passage again—blockages, seals, resistant pathways.
It didn't claim resistance made you stronger.
It warned that forcing mana against a blockage didn't break it—it drove the strain outward, cracking the channels meant to carry it. Pressure didn't stop at the wall. It traveled.
And whatever couldn't endure it shattered first.
Ren read it twice.
Slower the second time.
Then he closed his eyes again.
The fogged inner space returned at once—dull, muted, like the air itself didn't want to move.
Then the wall.
Vast. Smooth. Airtight.
But this time—
Something was different.
Near where the current had struck before, there was a flaw.
Not an opening.
A hairline fracture running through the seal like a pale vein—so thin it could've been imagined, except it held its shape no matter how long he stared.
Ren's breath caught.
A memory surfaced—purple light tearing free in the arena. His body screaming. Something inside him giving just enough for disaster to pour through.
So it's not invincible, he realized.
His flow brushed the crack instinctively.
The pressure didn't pass through—
—but it didn't rebound as violently either.
Ren pulled back at once, pulse quickening.
He opened his eyes and stared at the page without really seeing it.
I don't know why this is here.
But there is a reason.
And if knowledge was the only way forward—
Then he would walk that path one page at a time.
Ren let his breathing settle.
Then he picked up the second book and opened it.
This volume was thinner than the first, but denser—less instruction, more classification. Fewer diagrams. More margin notes, corrections layered over older scholarship.
On Nature Expression and Variant Behavior
Archivist Halwen Marr
The opening passage made one thing immediately clear.
A nature is not something created. It is something revealed.
Ren's eyes slowed.
Mana flows first. Nature follows.
If flow is obstructed, expression becomes unstable—or impossible.
That settled something quietly inside him.
He turned the page.
Lightning Nature — "Pulse of the Heavens"
Lightning was listed with more warnings than any other element.
Not superstition.
Clinical concern.
Lightning, according to the text, was the fastest-flowing nature of all six—mana moving so quickly through the meridians that the body itself became the limiting factor. Reflexes sharpened. Sensory perception heightened. Decisions shortened to instinct.
Natural duelists.
Natural assassins.
Overuse risked heart strain.
In gifted users, sparks could even appear beneath the skin.
Ren paused.
He remembered the arena—the way the world had sharpened into fragments, sound and motion tearing past thought.
That part fit.
He kept reading.
Mortal Variants
Yellow Lightning — "Stormspark"
Bright, chaotic arcs.
Fastest movement and reflex enhancement among all variants.
Thane's demonstration returned to him instantly—the violent flashes, the way each spark collapsed back into itself before it could drift.
Speed without patience.
Ren moved on.
Purple Lightning — "Thundermaw"
Deep violet streaks.
Most destructive of the mortal variants.
Power over precision.
Then—
Blue Lightning — "Heaven's Thread"
Thin, precise sky-blue currents.
Surgical control. Perfect accuracy.
Ren's fingers tightened slightly around the page.
That description lingered.
Not the power.
The control.
The idea of lightning that didn't rage—but cut.
He read the paragraph twice.
Then came the final entry.
Apex Variant
Astra Lightning — "Starborn Current"
White-gold lightning threaded with faint violet sparks.
The text was cautious here. Sparse.
This variant does not travel through space so much as between points of it.
Meridian resonance is extreme.
Ren stopped reading.
Not because it frightened him.
Because it felt like a description of someone else.
Rare. Extreme. Precise in a way the page couldn't fully explain.
If it wasn't yours, it would never become yours—no amount of wishing would rewrite what your meridians were born to express.
Ren closed the book partway and leaned back, eyes lifting to the sky.
He had felt lightning.
He was certain of that.
But what he'd released during the trial hadn't behaved like any of these entries.
It hadn't flowed.
It hadn't expressed itself cleanly.
It had torn its way out.
Ren opened the book again.
He didn't stop at lightning.
He read the other natures too.
Fire, broken into volatility and endurance.
Wind, into precision and expansion.
Water, into binding and adaptation.
Earth, into density and resilience.
Metal, into reinforcement and shaping.
He read slowly. Carefully.
Comparing traits.
Looking for overlap.
Looking for what didn't fit.
Time passed without him noticing.
The light shifted. His legs stiffened from sitting too long. Only when the wind cooled did Ren realize how long he'd been there.
He closed the book at last.
Knowledge didn't unlock his meridians.
It didn't move the wall.
But it did something else.
It gave the problem a name.
When he tried again—just once—to feel his flow, the result was the same. A pull. A rise.
Then the wall.
Smooth. Immovable.
The faint ache bloomed behind his ribs, familiar now.
Ren opened his eyes immediately and let it fade.
This isn't ignorance, he thought.
And that mattered.
He stood, tucking the books under his arm, and started back toward the dorms.
Frustration followed him.
But it didn't slow him.
If he couldn't act yet—
Then he would understand.
And when the wall finally gave way—
He would know exactly what he was holding.
Ren was halfway back when he felt it.
Not sound.
Heat—faint, out of place at this hour—paired with a pressure in the air, subtle and rhythmic, like the academy itself was breathing somewhere ahead.
He slowed.
To his left, beyond a low stone wall and a line of dormant training pylons, one of the outer practice rings glowed faintly. Runes traced the circle's edge, active despite the late hour, their light steady and restrained.
Someone was inside.
Ren hesitated, then drifted closer—not entering, not interrupting. Just close enough to see.
A lone figure stood at the center of the ring.
About Ren's age. Broad-shouldered, stance loose but grounded.
No instructor.
No audience.
No wasted motion.
Fire bloomed into existence in the boy's palm.
Red flame.
Common Ember.
Ren recognized it immediately from the texts—clean color, straightforward heat. The most basic of fire variants. Reliable. Predictable.
The boy flicked his wrist.
The fireball shot forward and detonated against empty air, dispersing in a controlled burst.
Before the embers finished fading, another fireball formed.
Then another.
Two at once.
Ren's breath caught.
That kind of split-control wasn't loud, but it was brutal—mana held steady in two places without one collapsing the other.
The boy moved as if something stood in front of him—ducking, shifting his footing, turning his shoulders to angles that made no sense unless you were avoiding strikes that weren't there. He launched one fireball high, another low, pivoted sharply as if responding to pressure from behind.
This wasn't practice.
This was memory.
Ren felt it instantly—the same way he'd felt it in himself while swinging at shadows, while imagining claws in the dark.
He's fought something.
The fire changed.
Not in color.
In behavior.
Ren felt it before he understood it—the flame starting to do something the book hadn't described. Too clean. Too sharp at the edges. Like it was being guided into a shape it shouldn't naturally hold.
He narrowed his focus and shifted his angle.
The air rippled—subtle, almost invisible—wrong in a way heat distortion wasn't.
Wind.
Not cutting. Not blasting.
Feeding.
The wind wrapped around the fire, compressing it, accelerating it, giving the flame more reach without increasing its size. The fireball struck harder, cleaner, the detonation sharper than before.
Ren's mind raced.
Wind nature.
Used not as offense, but as reinforcement.
He couldn't tell the variant—too integrated, too deliberate—but he knew enough now to understand what he was seeing.
Two natures.
Simultaneously.
Controlled.
Ren looked down at his own hands.
Earlier that day, he hadn't been able to make anything appear. No spark. No flicker. Just pressure and resistance—his mana pressing against that unseen wall until his chest ached.
I can't even release one.
The thought wasn't bitter.
Just honest.
Another pair of fireballs launched. The boy spun through the motion, breath steady, footwork precise. Even when fatigue started to show in the tightness of his shoulders, the technique didn't slip.
This is what it looks like, Ren realized.
Not talent.
Not spectacle.
Practice layered on survival.
Control built on repetition.
Knowledge turned into instinct.
The fire sputtered and died as the runes dimmed. The boy stood still for a moment, head bowed slightly, breathing controlled—then turned away, already lost in his own thoughts.
Ren stepped back before he could be noticed.
As he walked on, he pulled the books tighter against his chest, fingers curling around the worn spines.
Strength wasn't what he wanted.
Not yet.
Understanding was.
And for the first time, Ren knew exactly what he was up against—
Not the academy.
Not the other students.
The wall inside himself.