The humidity in Xinhai City was a physical weight, a thick, suffocating blanket that smelled of rain-slicked asphalt and the heavy fragrance of blooming jasmine. For the three thousand seniors crowded onto the Xinhai High School football field, the air was electric with the scent of transition. This was the threshold—the final hour of a decade of textbooks, standardized tests, and the suffocating social hierarchies of adolescence.
Under the blinding stadium lights, the sea of black graduation robes rippled like a dark ocean. Lin Feng sat in the back row of the "L" section, his gown unzipped just enough to reveal a loud, floral-print shirt beneath. He was currently occupied with trying to balance his mortarboard cap on his knee, a task made difficult by the restless tapping of his feet.
"If I have to hear the Principal talk about 'soaring on the wings of dreams' one more time, I am going to actually try to fly off these bleachers," Lin Feng whispered, his voice hushed but sharp with boredom.
"Quiet, Feng," Mu Han snapped without turning her head. She sat perfectly upright, her posture so rigid it seemed her spine was made of tempered steel. Her graduation gown was pressed to a surgical crispness, and her eyes remained fixed on the podium with an intensity that suggested she was grading the speaker's grammar in real-time. "Some of us actually worked for our diplomas. Try to show some respect for the ceremony. It's a milestone, not a comedy club."
"Respect is hard when I'm sitting directly behind Zhao Yan's ego," Lin Feng grumbled, leaning back.
Three rows ahead, Zhao Yan was doing exactly what he did best: occupying the center of the universe. The school's star athlete and future Astrophysics prodigy wasn't just sitting; he was leading. He was mid-laugh, leaning over to whisper something to a classmate that made her giggle, his teeth flashing white under the floodlights. He was the golden boy of Xinhai, the kind of person who seemed to have a permanent spotlight following him even during a power outage.
As if sensing the gaze on the back of his neck, Zhao Yan turned around. He caught Lin Feng's eye and offered a dismissive, winning smirk—a look that said 'I'm going to the stars, and you're staying in the dirt'—before turning back to his fans.
"He's annoying, but he's harmless," a quiet, resonant voice rumbled from Lin Feng's left. Chen Shi was leaning back in her chair, her hands tucked into her wide sleeves. She was the school's enigma—a girl who had broken the district record for shot put but spent her weekends drawing intricate architectural blueprints of bridges that shouldn't be able to stand. "By tomorrow, we'll all be in different cities. Just breathe, Lin Feng. The world gets bigger than this stadium in exactly forty minutes."
"Actually," a frantic, high-pitched voice chirped from the row behind them, "statistically speaking, there is a 74% chance we'll encounter each other at the regional university mixers next month, given that we all applied to the same top-tier technical schools."
Deng Wei poked his head through the gap between their seats. His glasses were pushed so far up his nose they were practically touching his eyebrows, and his eyes were glued to a handheld tablet that was illegally tethered to the school's mainframe. "Also, has anyone noticed the barometric pressure? It's dropping at a rate that suggests a localized vacuum event, which is... well, it's physically impossible for a standard summer storm."
"It's just Xinhai weather, Deng," Lin Feng said, waving him off. "It's always miserable during graduation."
"No, you don't understand," Deng Wei insisted, his fingers flying across the screen. "Every satellite feed over the Pacific just went dark. The GPS in my tablet is currently insisting that we are located in the middle of the Antarctic. Something is... messy."
The ceremony dragged on with the agonizing slowness of a tectonic shift. The principal's voice droned on, a rhythmic hum that blended with the buzzing of the stadium lights. One by one, the names were called.
Zhao Yan walked across the stage to a deafening roar of applause, his stride confident, his hand-shake firm. Mu Han followed shortly after, receiving a respectful, hushed silence as the school's academic elite acknowledged her dominance. Chen Shi walked across the stage so quickly the official photographer only managed to capture a blur of her shoulder. When Lin Feng's name was finally called, he nearly tripped over the hem of his robe, drawing a few scattered laughs that he covered with a theatrical, sweeping bow.
By the time the final "Class of 2026!" was shouted and three thousand caps were tossed into the air, the wind had truly picked up. It wasn't the cool, refreshing breeze of a summer evening. It was hot—scorching, dry, and tasting metallic, like the air near a high-voltage transformer.
The stadium lights flickered violently, a low groan of stressed metal echoing from the scoreboard.
"Alright, losers!" Zhao Yan shouted, cutting through the post-ceremony chaos. He shouldered his way toward Lin Feng's group, his gown already discarded to reveal a sleek leather jacket. "Last night as high schoolers. We're still on for the sunrise hike at North Peak tomorrow morning, right? One last look at the city before the 'Big Five' split up for university."
"I'm in," Chen Shi said, stretching her arms until her joints popped like firecrackers. "I need the fresh air to clear out the smell of this stadium."
"I'll go," Mu Han added, checking her watch with military precision. "But we start at the trailhead at 4:00 AM sharp. I have a 3:00 PM bus to catch for the early orientation. I won't wait for laggards."
"I'll be there," Lin Feng said, feeling a strange, restless energy prickling under his skin. "Deng? You coming, or are you going to spend your last night of freedom debugging a server?"
Deng Wei didn't look up from his tablet. His face was pale, the blue light of the screen reflecting off his lenses. "My weather app didn't just crash. It's... deleted. The entire meteorological database for East Asia is returning a 404 error. I'm definitely coming. I need to see what the horizon looks like from three thousand feet."
The five of them stood on the edge of the field as the other students blurred past them, heading for parties and celebrations. They looked up. The stars were gone. In their place was a swirling, neon-violet fog that seemed to be descending toward the earth, silent and predatory.
"See you at the trailhead," Zhao Yan called out, his voice full of the typical bravado that had carried him through four years of high school.
None of them knew that this was the last time they would ever be "normal." As they walked away to pack their hiking gear, the violet clouds shifted, and deep in the silent vacuum of space, a massive, crystalline structure—ancient, cold, and pulsing with a light that had no name—broke apart into five distinct shards, hurtling toward a small, unsuspecting trail on North Peak.
The graduation was over. The era of the Aether was twelve hours away.