By the time Noah made it to his first class the next morning, the story had already outgrown him.He heard three different versions of the match before he'd even reached the lecture hall doors … in one, he'd broken Marcus Ferris's arm; in another, he'd knocked him unconscious with a single strike; in a third, considerably less flattering to Ferris, he'd apparently done it while barely trying. None of them were true. All of them had already hardened into something people repeated like fact, the way rumors do once enough mouths have carried them."You're famous," Dax said, falling into step beside him in the corridor, tray balanced in one hand from a breakfast he clearly hadn't finished. "Infamous. I don't actually know which word applies here.""Neither do I.""Ferris hasn't shown his face in the dining hall since. First time in two years nobody's seen him at breakfast." Dax shot him a sideways look, equal parts impressed and unsettled. "You broke something in him that wasn't physical,

The silver window bloomed behind his eyes the moment Noah locked his dorm room door for the night, patient as ever, as though it had simply been waiting for privacy to resume whatever conversation it considered unfinished.**[Synchronization: 12%, stable. New objective available.]**Noah dropped onto the edge of his bed, exhaustion sitting heavy in every muscle despite the rest he'd finally started getting since the Ferris match. Two days of ordinary classes, ordinary meals, ordinary suspicion from people who hadn't quite decided what to make of him yet. Two days of Adrian's warning sitting unresolved in his chest … *someone outside the academy already knows your name* … with no further explanation offered since.Dax had spent most of dinner that evening trying, badly, to pretend he wasn't watching Noah for signs of whatever had changed about him, sliding questions in sideways between mouthfuls of food … *you sleeping okay? you seem tense, man, more than usual* … until Noah had finall

The stone didn't so much open as exhale, a section of the plinth's cracked base sliding inward with a low grinding groan that sent a fine mist of centuries-old dust drifting into the lantern light.Noah froze, hand still hovering where he'd traced the carving a moment earlier, watching the dark opening widen into a narrow cavity no larger than a shoebox, tucked into the stone like it had been waiting this entire time for exactly the right hand to find it."Don't move yet," Selene said quietly, raising the lantern higher, studying the cavity with the wary caution of someone who'd learned the hard way that ancient things rarely gave up their secrets without conditions attached. "Let me look first."She crouched beside him, angling the light into the narrow space, and went very still."What is it?" Adrian asked, close behind them both."Exactly what the System said it would be." Selene's voice had gone strange, tight with something Noah couldn't quite name. "I just didn't expect to actua

Selene had insisted on driving back the moment the crystal's light finally went out entirely, no argument from Adrian, none from Noah either, though he barely registered the return journey at all. He remembered fragments of it later … the hum of the engine, Adrian's hand resting briefly on his shoulder somewhere on the dark highway, Selene's knuckles white on the steering wheel the entire drive, as though gripping it hard enough might keep her own composure from slipping the way his already had. Neither of them pushed him to talk further. They seemed to understand, without needing to say so, that he'd given them everything he currently had words for, and that pressing for more tonight would only break something that hadn't finished healing yet.By the time he made it back to his dorm room, the gray hour before dawn already creeping through the thin curtains, exhaustion had settled so deep into his bones that sleep felt less like a choice than an inevitability, something his body simpl

**[Objective 002 complete. Bloodline fragment recovery confirmed. Reward applied.]**The message hit him three days after Corvin's warning, unprompted, while Noah was halfway through lacing his boots for morning drills. He sat back on his heels, startled, waiting for some dramatic sensation to accompany it the way the reward had felt after the Ferris match. Instead, it arrived quiet, almost gentle, a slow warmth spreading through his chest like the first sip of something hot on a cold morning.**[Synchronization: 17%. Physical enhancement threshold reached. Expect noticeable improvement in reflex speed and sensory range.]**"Seventeen," he murmured, testing the word. Five percent higher than it had sat for over a week. He flexed his hands, half expecting to feel different immediately, and mostly just felt tired, the lingering weight of everything the ruins and Corvin had handed him still sitting heavy behind his ribs.The difference announced itself properly an hour later, in the trai