Raizen gripped the branch harder. His fingers sank deeper into bark than expected. Not because the wood softened. Because he stopped weighing what he should.
Cloaks lifted slightly. The edges of fabric drifted like they were underwater. Chairs creaked and shifted. So mbers reacted instantly, hands snapping toward the table or their seats, trying to anchor. Others didn’t move at all.
The crowned woman stayed calm.
The device glowed brighter.
Raizen’s body lifted.
Not much. Only a few centiters.
Then more.
Hikari lifted too.
Raizen’s heart was beating quickly, panicked. His hand shot out and found a jagged corner, a rough edge that cut into his palm as he grabbed it.
He swung his other hand toward Hikari without thinking and caught her wrist.
He gripped a bit too hard.
Hikari’s eyes didn’t even leave the do.
She tried to stabilize midair by shifting her posture, by tightening her abdon, as if she could fight the broken gravity with sheer will. She couldn’t. Nothing responded. There was no down anymore. No weight to push against.
The pull intensified.
They rose higher.
Raizen’s arm stretched. His shoulder burned. His ribs scread as his body tried to follow the upward force while his hand stayed anchored to edge. He clenched his teeth and tightened his grip until his knuckles went white.
Hikari’s dress floated around her legs, fabric lifting like it wanted to betray her. She arranged it with one hand and grabbed Raizen’s forearm with the other, fingers locking around his to keep herself from drifting away.
Inside, chairs lifted off the floor.
Loose papers rose into the air, pages fluttering slowly like white doves caught in a quiet storm. Pens rolled, then lifted, suspended. Even small tools on the table drifted a fraction upward.
The whole room beca weightless.
Raizen’s palm slid slightly. He barely adjusted without letting go, fingers searching for a better grip. His shoulder was trembling.
Hikari stayed focused on the do, eyes narrowed, absorbing everything. Even now. Even floating, she refused to look away.
Then the crowned woman made a new motion.
She turned sothing inside the device.
A dial, maybe. A small ring.
Raizen didn’t see it clearly. He saw the shift in the chanism’s light.
The pull changed.
It wasn’t just levitation anymore.
It beca ascent.
Raizen and Hikari started drifting upward, slowly but unmistakably, like the entire world decided the sky was the new floor.
Hikari tightened her grip on him. Raizen’s arm stretched farther. The edge tore at his palm.
The force wasn’t gentle. It didn’t feel like floating in water. It felt like a powerful invisible hand steadily lifting them whether they agreed or not.
Raizen’s breath shook. His ribs flared with sharp pain.
He felt the mont coming where his fingers would slip and his body would just drift up and away like a leaf.
Then everything stopped.
Not with a snap, that was the good part.
With a gradual easing.
The upward pull softened, then settled, leaving them suspended only a little above the branch, enough that Raizen’s feet barely touched wood. Enough that he could exhale relieved.
Raizen held still for a beat, eyes closed, teeth clenched. Then he opened his eyes and took one controlled breath.
Hikari smiled beside him, faint and infuriatingly calm. "Hey, the view is nicer higher up" she whispered.
Raizen let out a short breath that was supposed to be a chuckle. He kept his voice low. "Don’t get used to it."
Hikari’s smile widened just a fraction. Then she refocused, face smoothing back into seriousness like she snapped a mask back on.
The way she obeyed Alteea’s orders was almost frigtening.
Raizen loosened his grip on her wrist, but didn’t completely let go. His palm stung, wet with rain and a little bit of blood.
They leaned forward again and watched.
Inside, the Echelon mbers stabilized themselves, putting papers back in the chaotic order, and sitting again,
The crowned woman spoke now, answering questions. Raizen couldn’t hear words through the glass and distance, but he read the room.
She explained things, and the others listened.
One mber with the full mask tilted their head slightly, the movent precise. Another with chanical arms adjusted them, tal shifting softly. Soone with the witch-like silhouette leaned back, as if amused.
The crowned woman turned toward the whiteboard.
Then she did sothing that made Raizen’s brain stall.
She pulled another board forward from behind it, sliding it out like a hidden door.
Two boards now, side by side.
She grabbed a marker and started writing.
Fast.
The lines were nothing like normal math. Graphs intersected and overlapped. Wavelength curves twisted into each other. Numbers ran down the board in columns that looked unreal. Symbols Raizen recognized from engineering showed up, but then they mutated into deeper notation he didn’t know. It was physics, but it felt like physics written by soone who didn’t believe in limits.
He narrowed his eyes and tracked one line, one curve, one set of values. He looked for sothing familiar, sothing he could grab to pull himself into understanding.
But the board was too complex.
The logic was too big.
It wasn’t that he was stupid. It was that this wasn’t ant for him. It wasn’t ant for any normal human.
Beside him, Hikari watched for a minute longer than he expected, then quietly gave up trying to decode it and just focused on reading the room. She scanned posture. Reactions. The subtle shifts of attention between mbers. The way they responded when the crowned woman pointed at certain graphs.
They were all paying attention. They all understood.
All of them.
Even the ones who looked like they belonged in nightmares.
The crowned woman filled the first board.
Then she filled half the second.
She wrote like she didn’t breathe.
Then, mid-line, the doors opened.
Everything changed instantly.
Every Echelon mber straightened. Cloaks settled. chanical arms folded tighter. The room’s chaos of papers and tools remained in its ss, but the people beca still.
The crowned woman stopped writing in the middle of an equation. She didn’t finish the line. She didn’t cap the marker.
She turned, walked back to her seat, and sat down like she never ant to stand at all.
A figure stood in the doorway.
A cloak.
Raizen’s pulse spiked. He knew that silhouette. He knew the height. The way the cloak hung. The way the person carried their weight like the world belonged to them.
He didn’t need to see her face.
He recognized her. The Sovereign.
Elin.
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