2025-07-09 18:13:23Word traveled fast.
Too fast.
By morning, Kai Arclight’s name wasn’t just whispered,it was spat, scoffed, and cursed in nearly every hallway of Blacksteel Academy.
The “null boy” hadn’t been expelled.
Worse?
He’d been assigned to Class E.
The bottom tier. A graveyard for mistakes. The lost, the dangerous, the almost-talented.
He walked into the class like a ghost in borrowed skin.
Eight students were already seated, slouched or twitching. One girl had glowing veins. Another boy stared at his desk like it was about to attack him.
No one smiled when Kai entered.
He didn’t expect them to.
Not after yesterday.
The air was thick. Judging. Measured.
He took a seat near the back and kept his eyes low. A snort sounded from the front of the room.
“Look what the capital dog dragged in,” someone muttered.
Kai didn’t look up.
But he didn’t miss the voice. Jin Oroku.
He was everywhere. Laughing with other elites. Glaring when no one else was watching.
“Heard they put him here just to watch him bleed slower.”
“Bet he won’t last a week.”
“Not without a miracle.”
Kai’s fists stayed clenched in his lap. His chest burned,not from shame, but something else. Like a thread being pulled tighter inside him.
Still, he said nothing.
⸻
Elemental Theory.
A joke, for someone like him.
The instructor,Master Crell, a scar-faced veteran who looked like he ate raw steel for breakfast,walked in and scanned the class.
His gaze stopped at Kai.
“Null rating, Arclight?” he said without emotion. “Pair with Mako.”
A few chuckles rippled through the room.
Mako stood up.
Broad. Muscled. Aura practically steaming.
He cracked his knuckles as he stepped across the circle. “Oh, I like this.”
“Try not to kill him,” Crell said dryly. “Not on the first drill.”
They took positions.
Basic energy channeling,just manifesting controlled bursts of magic into the air.
Easy. For everyone else.
“Begin.”
Mako lifted his hand. Fire erupted in his palm like he’d been born holding it. Smooth. Hot. Aggressive.
Kai raised his hand.
Nothing.
Then Mako smirked.
And launched the flame straight at Kai’s head.
Kai ducked just in time. The fire singed his hair. Heat scalded his cheek.
“What the hell!” he snapped.
“Oops,” Mako said, flexing his fingers.
Crell didn’t blink. “Disqualified. Both of you.”
Kai stared. “He attacked me!”
“If you can’t defend, you don’t belong.”
Mako blew a kiss.
Kai’s knuckles cracked in his lap.
He moved on.
But the burn in his throat stayed.
⸻
Combat Class.
The stone arena was brutal. Jagged edges. Ash-stained walls. Seats above filled with curious eyes and cruel smiles.
Each duel was called loud and clear.
“Arclight versus Mako. Pit Three.”
Of course.
Mako was already in the ring, flame dagger spinning between his fingers.
“Hope you said goodbye to your teeth, Null-boy.”
Kai didn’t speak. He stepped in.
No armor. No blade. No spell to his name.
Just skin. And scars. And silence.
“Begin!” the instructor barked.
Flames exploded instantly.
Mako didn’t hold back. Blades of fire slashed the air. He spun, twisted, kicked,a whirlwind of heat and rage.
Kai dodged.
Slid back.
Blocked once with his forearm,burned for it.
He kept moving.
Mako snarled. “Stand still, coward!”
He surged forward, eyes blazing. Then, mid-strike, he muttered something,foreign, sharp, like a curse. The flames twisted, reshaped into a burning whip that lashed across Kai’s chest.
Pain tore through him.
Kai hit the ground, coughing smoke.
Cheers roared from above.
“Stay down, rat!”
“Just end him already!”
Mako raised the whip again.
Then,he froze.
His body stilled.
The flame dimmed.
His face… changed.
Confused. Not like he saw Kai. Like he saw something else behind him.
Then Kai stood.
Blood trickled down his ribs. His shirt hung in pieces. But his face was calm.
He didn’t even blink.
Mako stumbled back a step.
Then another.
He dropped the whip.
Let it vanish in sparks.
The arena went quiet.
“…What the hell?”
“He didn’t even touch him.”
“Did Mako just,give up?”
Kai walked out of the pit without a word.
He didn’t smile. Didn’t glance at the crowd.
But inside?
A question burned:
What did he see?
⸻
Locker Hall.
Damp. Quiet. Echoing with metal doors and distant clanging.
Kai pulled his shirt off slowly, examining the angry red welt across his ribs.
Then he sensed it.
“Cheap trick,” came a voice behind him.
Jin Oroku.
Of course.
“You’re not strong,” Jin murmured. “You’re unstable. You scared him,once. Confusion fades. Fear fades. When you finally snap? I’ll be there.”
He leaned in, breath hot against Kai’s neck.
“I’ll be the one to put you down.”
Then he dragged two fingers across the locker beside Kai. Fire hissed behind them,leaving a burning trail in the shape of a slash.
Kai didn’t flinch.
But inside?
Something shifted.
⸻
That night, Kai stood in front of his mirror.
The room was quiet. Too quiet.
He opened his palm. The coin… was gone.
No trace. No warmth.
But when he pulled off his tunic, something else caught his eye.
A mark.
Slowly etching itself onto his chest. Glowing faintly. Not ink. Not blood.
It pulsed like it had a rhythm. A language.
He stepped closer.
And behind his reflection,just for a second,
A shadow smiled.
The seal was breaking. And something… had seen him.
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010
Kai opened his eyes to darkness.Not the kind that came with night or shadows. This was weight. This was a silence that pressed against the skull, dense, suffocating. The kind of dark that breathed.He sat up slowly, his muscles aching. His mouth tasted like ash and metal. No sign of the candlelit chamber. No sign of Seria. Just cold stone beneath him and a strange pulse in the air, steady like a heartbeat.He wasn’t alone.“Kai,” came the voice. Smooth. Too smooth. Familiar. Wrong.He stood. “Who’s there?”A faint light glowed behind him. He turned and the voice was suddenly behind him again.“You saved her. Now who will save you?”He lunged toward the sound but a hand shot out of the black and grabbed his wrist. It wasn’t solid. It felt like fog and ice and bone all at once.Then “Enough,” barked a voice. Rough. Grounded. Real.The darkness peeled away like smoke blown from a flame. Kai blinked as shapes formed. Bookshelves. Braziers. Carved runes.Riven.The old man stood before h
009
Kai burst into Seria’s room, chest heaving, fingers curled tight around the warning note.Empty.No sign of a struggle. No blood. No overturned furniture.Just stillness.And a glowing glyph on the floor , soft, silver, pulsing like a held breath.“Seria?” he whispered.No answer.He crouched slowly, fingers hovering over the strange rune. It thrummed, a faint buzz rising into his bones. The second his skin touched it,FLASH.The room disappeared.He blinked.Now standing inside a circular chamber lit by floating candles, he spun around. Shelves lined with old books and glass vials stretched toward the domed ceiling. Shadows curled along the edges, curling like smoke.And then,Footsteps.She stepped out from behind a bookshelf.Seria.Alive.But her face was wrong. Pale. Ashen. Her lips trembled, and her eyes,red, wet, hollow.“Kai…” Her voice cracked. “You came.”His breath caught. “You’re safe…”Relief hit him,sharp, fast,but it didn’t last.She wasn’t looking at him.Not directly.
008
The tunnel collapsed behind them in a roar of stone and fire.Kai and Seria were flung into the forest clearing, landing hard as a shockwave rippled through the trees. Leaves scattered into the air like birds taking flight, and dirt rained from the sky.Kai choked, coughing violently as the air turned to ash in his lungs. “Seria… you okay?”Seria nodded, shaky and pale. “That… that wasn’t just magic. That thing… it wore your face, Kai.”He didn’t answer.His eyes stayed fixed on his trembling hands,fingers curled, knuckles white, veins faintly pulsing.Not from fear.From something deeper. Rage. Shame. Power.He’d felt the pull again. Deep in the ruins,when the shadow whispered, when the air turned black. It had called to him. Tempted him.And he’d run.Just like his mother had all those years ago.“I could’ve stopped it,” he muttered.“No,” Seria said gently. “You chose not to lose yourself.”He turned away.But the worst part wasn’t the shadow.It was what it meant: Jin knew. Faen k
007
Another student was missing.Kai sat on the academy rooftop, legs dangling over the edge as dusk swallowed the horizon. His eyes weren’t on the sky though they were fixed on the darkened window of Dorm 5C. Malric’s window. The curtains hadn’t moved in two days.“Transferred,” the headmaster said this morning.Same word. Same lie.“Transferred to Obsidian Campus for advanced elemental studies,” they said with those fake smiles, like they’d rehearsed it. Like anyone ever came back from Obsidian.Kai chewed the inside of his cheek.That made four students now.Four gone without goodbyes, without luggage, without even a pulse in the rumor mill.And no one was talking about it.Except Seria.“Did you find anything?” she asked softly behind him. She was always soft-spoken, but lately, her voice sounded thinner stretched, like a thread pulled too tight.Kai shook his head. “No bags. No packed uniforms. Just a bloodstain near Malric’s sparring locker. It was half-scrubbed, like someone tried
006
The silence in the Council chamber was so sharp it could’ve carved through bone.Kai stood at the center of the obsidian circle, the weight of every stare pinning him down like iron chains. Twelve crimson-robed mystics loomed above him, each seated on thrones sculpted from jagged black stone. Some wore literal masks,iron, bone, glass. Others wore expressions far worse.No warmth.No welcome.Just scrutiny.The air felt thin. Too thin. His lungs fought for breath.“Explain,” Councilor Dareth growled. His voice scraped like gravel in a blade sharpener. “You shattered a Class-Five training chamber. No enchantments. No runes. No focus seals. What, precisely, did you invoke?”Kai’s throat worked, but the words tangled.“I didn’t…” he started, then stopped.What was the point of lying?He forced himself to meet their eyes. “I don’t know.”Councilor Mireya leaned forward, emerald irises glowing like cold flame. “You don’t know? Are we to believe you stumbled into a destabilization wave capab
005
Kai hadn’t slept.Not after the shadow. Not after the voice.He lay awake for hours, hand pressed to his chest where the mark still pulsed like a second heartbeat,steady, quiet, ominous. By the time the first rays of dawn kissed the eastern spires of Blacksteel, he was already out of bed, boots crunching against gravel as he stormed across the Academy grounds.This time, he didn’t knock.He shoved open the wooden doors of the sealed wing.“Riven!” His voice echoed through the stone corridor like a crack of thunder. “You said the lock is cracking? Then tell me what’s inside it!”The blind man didn’t flinch. He was already sitting cross-legged, as if he’d been waiting all night.“It has begun,” Riven said calmly.Kai’s hands curled into fists. “Don’t give me riddles. A shadow came into my room last night. It spoke. It knew my name. You said I’m a vessel,for what, exactly?!”Riven turned his head slowly. Though his eyes were milk-white, they locked onto Kai like they could see straight t
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