The handle was cool under his fingers.
Raizen turned it and pushed.
The door opened without a sound.
Light spilled out first. Softer than below, not the harsh white of training spotlights. A pale, diffused glow, as if it had filtered through leaves and clouds before reaching this place.
He stepped into the Sky Domain.
The air felt different.
Thinner. Colder, like the breeze before a storm. He could also sll so faint mix of ink, wood and old paper. It reminded him of the air on high walkways in Neoshima, with the wind pushing in.
The hallway stretched ahead. The wall on his right was bare wood, faint grooves running with the grain. The wall on his left...
Wasn’t bare at all.
Fras covered it.
Not the simple, practical ones from the lower floors. These fras were wider, the wood a darker tone, very polished. Tiny engraved lines traced patterns along their edges - wings, feathers, clouds...
Inside them, monts had been caught.
Sky.
Raizen saw the first one and actually stopped.
A young man rode a leopard in that picture. Except the leopard had four wings.
All four wings were flared mid beat, driving the beast and rider upward through a blur of cloud. The rider was leaned low over the neck, teeth bared in a grin, one hand gripping a harness of Eon threads, the other holding a spear that caught the light.
The plaque below read, in neat letters:
Ilren Vael - Sky Lancer, Fourth Rank.
Raizen let out a slow breath. So this is what they really do up here.
His boots made almost no sound as he started walking.
Further along, another fra. A girl hanging from the claw of a hummingbird.
Except hummingbirds were not supposed to be this big.
This one took up most of the picture. Its wings were caught in a blur, the air around them warped, like heat above a fire. The body was sleek, the beak long and needle sharp. One claw reached down, and from it, the girl hung over open sky, hair blown back, mouth open in a wild yell.
In her other hand, she held a greatsword almost as long as her body..
Raizen’s mind reminded him of Keahi’s Phoenix. Then he pushed the thought aside.
Far ahead, at the end of the corridor, he saw it.
The edge of a black cloak.
The figure was standing at the far end, near the last door, half closed. The cloak’s hood was still up. From this distance, Raizen couldn’t see a face.
One hand rested on the door, fingers light.
It’s like... They were watching. Or just waiting.
Raizen’s chest tightened a little.
"You run up here and then just stand there?" he muttered.
He started moving faster.
As he walked, more portraits slid past on his left.
A man standing atop sothing that looked like a snake and a bird combined, long body coiled through clouds, feathered frills running along its spine, wings stretched.
Another showing a rider standing not on a beast, but on a spinning ring of Eon blades, while a flock of smaller constructs wheeled around them.
There were beasts that had been ant to fly. Massive birds, gliders, winged reptiles. There were also beasts that clearly had never been designed by nature to leave the ground.
Fantastic. Terrifying. Beautiful.
Every plaque had a na. A title. A rank.
Rank four. Ilren Vael.
Unrecognizable things like this.
The power here did not feel like the neat drills below. It felt wilder. Freer. Everything about these beasts said: This is Eon Mastery with no limit.
Raizen understood suddenly why Atman had never even ntioned this floor when he walked him through the stairwell.
Letting an outsider see Ukai’s full sky patterns wasn’t sothing they did.
He kept going.
The cloaked figure stayed where they were, the half closed door beside them. It was turned slightly away now, shoulder toward him, head inclined as if listening.
"Hey" Raizen called, voice carrying down the hall. "Co on... What are you even doing!?"
No answer.
His steps quickened.
Portraits flashed past him faster now, but one of them still grabbed him by the throat.
Not because of what it showed.
Because of what it didn’t.
There was a gap.
Up until this point, the wall had held fra after fra with barely a hand’s width of wood between them. Now there was an empty space, big enough to hold a picture larger than any of the ones he had seen yet.
Only the fra was still there.
Or what was left of it.
The wood had been torn. Not broken in a single neat line. Five deep grooves ran straight across it, as if sothing with enormous claws had dragged its hand through the wall and wanted to erase the picture.
The cuts went deep enough that Raizen could see raw wood under the polished surface, torn and splintered.
But they did not stop at the fra. They continued onto the wall itself, scoring long scars into the tree’s flesh.
The glass was gone.
The picture was gone.
Not even a scrap of image clung to the splinters. Soone had removed every trace.
Only the plaque remained.
Even that one looked like it had survived a fight. The tal was bent in one corner, and scratches ran across the words. Enough letters had been destroyed that the text was almost unreadable.
Raizen stepped closer without thinking.
El__ N. Sky Sover____
Rank: High____ Cl___
Do n__ atte__pt to recons__ruct the patt__n.
He bent a little, squinting.
Even with the damage, his brain filled in the missing pieces.
Elin. Sky Sovereign.
Rank: Highest Class.
Do not attempt to reconstruct the pattern.
His skin prickled.
Elin. Atman had said that na in the office.
He could hear the professor’s voice in his head, calm and almost fond.
Elin. Another founder. Another mad mind behind the Rust Room. Soone who liked pushing people until they either broke and walked away, or stopped breaking.
Either way, the warning was clear.
Do not attempt to reconstruct the pattern.
Who writes that on a plaque unless they are afraid that soone will try?
He straightened a little and looked at the claw marks again.
These were not the slices of Raku’s wolf fangs. Not the gouges of a normal beast in wood. The distance between the grooves was wrong. Too wide. Like whatever had made them had a hand big enough to close around a small house.
It had not just torn the image.
It had tried to erase it.
Sothing twisted under Raizen’s ribs for a mont.
Whatever Elin had summoned here... They tried to warn everyone. And even then, soone – or sothing – else tried to erase it completely from history.
The damage was still there.
The warning too.
He took a slow breath, then forced his attention away.
Later.
He had enough questions as it was.
The cloak had not moved.
When he looked back up, the figure at the end of the hall was still near the half-closed door, like they had all the ti in the world.
Elin... Raizen thought. What did she build?
The question went unanswered.
He shook his head once, like that would clear it, then started moving again.
His steps were quicker, but not frantic. The portraits on the last stretch of wall were more of the sa impossible stories - riders standing on beasts woven out from light into fur, flesh, scales, you na it.
This ti, Raizen didn’t slow down.
His focus narrowed to the end of the hall. To the black cloak and the door beside it.
"Hey" he called again. Louder this ti. "Whoever you are. Wait a second!"
His voice echoed gently along the corridor.
The cloaked figure lifted their head, just a little, like it heard him.
For a heartbeat, Raizen thought it might answer. But still no luck.
They stepped sideways with quiet ease instead, disappearing fully behind the door, and the gap narrowed another few centiters as it swung.
Not closed.
Not open.
Half of both. Waiting.
Raizen’s fingers tightened on his sword hilts.
He hurried up his pace.
The carved wings along the wall blurred at the edges of his vision. The last few fras beca streaks of color and sky. His boots thudded a little harder against the floor.
No panic.
Just that sa determined pull he had felt when he chased the cloak off the training ground.
Soone had watched him fight. Soone had read his weakness mid strike and filled in the missing weight without asking.
That kind of power did not co from a bored student.
He wanted to know whose hand had been on his blade, even if it had been from a distance.
The cloak was now gone.
No trace. No shadow at the edges. No flicker of black.
Just the small gap where the door hadn’t closed all the way.
Raizen didn’t hesitate.
He set his palm against the wood and pushed. The door swung inward in one clean motion.
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