I didn't sleep as well as I thought I would.My body was exhausted — every muscle aching, every joint stiff from the fight and the long walk home — but my mind refused to go quiet. It kept circling back to the same things.The message.Master Voren.I had heard his name my whole life. Not always spoken clearly — sometimes it was just a reference, a comparison. My father used to mention him in a tone that mixed respect with something else. Something closer to irritation."There are men who are powerful," my father once said, "and then there are men who make powerful men feel small. Voren is the second kind."That was three years ago, before Voren disappeared entirely from the public eye. No announcement. No farewell. He simply stopped appearing at events, stopped training students, stopped everything. Rumors filled the silence — that he had awakened something unstable, that the city council had quietly exiled him, that he had gone somewhere beyond the reaches of the system entirely.N

School felt different when you were carrying a secret. Not louder. Not more dangerous. Just thinner. Like the walls and hallways and ranked boards on every corridor had lost a layer of solidity they used to have. I walked through all of it that morning and noticed, for the first time, how much of it was performance. Students flexing their rankings in casual conversation. “Tier five already? Damn.” “My synchronization jumped three percent after the last hunt.” “No way. That’s impossible without supplements.” Pets summoned unnecessarily just to be seen. A serpent the size of a motorcycle coiled lazily around a staircase while its owner leaned against the railings pretending not to enjoy the attention. A crystal-winged hawk perched on someone’s shoulder inside the cafeteria even though indoor summons were technically prohibited. Nobody enforced it for the strong. The way people positioned themselves near the top-tier students without ever quite acknowledging tha

Training with Voren was taking away most of my time. I was scared after I took down Dan's pet. I knew Jack was going to come for me any moment. I needed to be ready. I got up early to go for my training with Voren. The thought of asking him why he was helping me settled on my mind but I knew better. I need to get stronger before I ask him why he was trying so hard to train my pet. I hadn't said anything when I arrived at the east training hall the next morning. I had barely stepped through the door before he looked up from the low bench where he was sitting and said, simply, "Seven point one." I stopped walking. "The protocol has a resonance signature," he said, before I could ask. "When a bond advances under the ancient method, I feel it. Not precisely — but enough to know the direction." "You felt it from across the district?" "I felt it from wherever I was." He set something down on the bench beside him — a small flat stone carved with the same symbol that appeared

Ivy was at the gate before me again. This time she had two passes ready. She handed one over without comment, scanned the other, and pushed the gate open before I had finished clipping mine to my jacket. "You heard about the hearing," I said. "I heard about the hearing," she confirmed. "How?" "Same way I hear most things. I pay attention and people underestimate how much I'm listening." She moved through the gate and I followed. "Nine days means you need seven point five before the week is out. What's your plan?" "Same as last time. Tier sevens in the north section. Push higher if the opportunity is there." She glanced at me sideways. "Higher than tier seven?" "If the cores are there." There was a slight pause. "There's a tier eight territory two kilometers north of where we hunted last time. I've scouted it but never entered it alone. The pack dynamic is different up there — they move in coordinated groups, not solo or loose formations." "Coordinated how?" "The alpha dir

The bracket dropped on a Thursday. Nobody was in class when it happened. Not really. Every screen in every room had a corner of someone's attention before the official announcement even loaded — phones tilted at careful angles, the particular kind of stillness that isn't attention but anticipation. By the time the notification pulsed through the system, half the student body had already refreshed the tournament portal three times. I was in the library. Alone, which was how I preferred to receive things that mattered. [Tournament Bracket: Published] [Your Draw: Slot 14 — First Round] [Opponent: Tessa Wren — Tier 8.2 | Pet: Crimson Hawk | Active Traits: Dive Strike, Wind Current] [Match Date: 4 days] I read it twice. Then I scrolled. Jack was in slot three. His first-round opponent was a tier eight point four — strong enough to be a real match for anyone without a lion. For Jack it was a formality and everyone knew it. His path through the bracket had him mee