The main campus of Zenith was defined by light. Sunlight glinting off polished marble, the arcanic glow of ward-lines, the ambient luminescence of a thousand active spells. It was loud, vibrant, and aggressive in its perfection.
Vane hated it.
He stood in Elara Vance’s Advanced Mana Control Lab, sweat dripping onto the pristine floor mats. The air in the climate-controlled room slled intensely of ozone and heated copper.
"Again," Elara ordered, walking between the rows of students. "Cycle to eighty percent maximum density. Hold for ten seconds. Vent cleanly. Do not rupture your own capillaries."
Vane gritted his teeth and pulled on his internal mana. It felt like trying to lasso a thunderstorm with twine.
Thanks to the [Usurper] Authority, his body—his "chassis," as Kael called it—had been forcibly upgraded to handle imnse power. He was an Elite, but his capacity pushed the very upper limits of that title. His channels were wide and tough, built for volu, not finesse.
But he had zero training in how to use them manually. For his whole life, he had relied on the crutch of stolen Skills—flipping a ntal switch and letting the stolen reflex do the work. Now, trying to manually regulate the flow without that assist felt impossible.
When he pushed, the mana didn’t flow; it flooded.
His skin flushed dark red. The veins in his neck distended. He felt the raw power thrumming in his limbs, begging to be released in an explosive step or a lethal thrust. Holding it in, compressing it without doing anything, felt like swallowing live coals.
Next to him, Valerica Sol was a statue carved from obsidian.
The Gravity Titan stood perfectly still. Her internal cycling was so intense that the air around her shimred with heat haze, distorting the light. The floor mat beneath her feet was slowly compressing, cracking silently under the sheer density of her existence.
She made it look effortless. Terrifyingly so.
"Vent," Elara commanded.
Valerica exhaled. The shimring haze vanished instantly. The pressure in the room dropped. It was perfect control over catastrophic power.
Vane tried to vent. He didn’t know how to feather the brake. He just dumped the power.
He gasped, stumbling sideways as a wave of uncontrolled reinforcent energy fired through his left leg, nearly driving his knee into the mat with crack of impact.
Elara stopped in front of him. She looked down, her expression clinical.
"You have the output of a high Elite, Vane," she said dryly, noting the tremors in his hands. "But you have the regulation of a novice. You are used to on-and-off switches. You need to learn dials."
She moved on to the next student without waiting for a response.
Vane straightened up, wiping sweat from his eyes. Across the room, Valerica glanced at him. It wasn’t disdain in her eyes; it was just a flat assessnt of a fellow powerhouse who hadn’t figured out how to drive his own engine yet.
By late afternoon, when Vane crossed the invisible boundary into the forgotten sector, the cold fog felt like a relief. The silence here was honest. It didn’t pretend to be perfect; it just rotted quietly.
Senna was back on the balcony. She looked worse today than yesterday. The confession about the Hydra seed to have sapped a reserve of energy she wouldn’t get back. Her skin was translucent, the shadows under her eyes deep enough to bruise.
She didn’t waste ti with greetings. She tossed him the real spear.
"Assu the guard," she rasped.
Vane stepped into position. The stance felt heavier now that he knew the story behind it. He wasn’t just copying a shape; he was stepping into a legacy of suicidal stubbornness. He grounded his feet, locked his spine, and leveled the tip at her throat.
"A wall does not flinch," Senna murmured, her hands gripping the wheels of her chair. "If you flinch, the line breaks. If the line breaks, everything behind you dies."
She suddenly slamd her hands forward on the rims.
The heavy tal wheelchair surged toward him.
It wasn’t fast, but the sudden movent of the tal mass straight at his center line triggered every instinct he had to dodge. His back foot twitched, ready to Flash Step out of the way.
Thwack.
Senna had a spare broom handle across her lap. She whipped it out, cracking him sharply across the shin.
"You flinched," she spat, stopping the chair inches from his spear tip. "A spear that flinches is just a decoration. Again."
She rolled back. Vane reset, ignoring the sting in his leg.
They did it again. And again.
"Hold it," she snarled, rolling toward him. "Don’t you dare move. Trust the point. If I impale myself on it, that’s my problem. Your problem is the line."
He held. The chair stopped an inch from his gut. He didn’t blink.
"Better," she breathed.
She started to roll back for another pass, but her hands slipped on the rims.
The sound was smaller today—a sharp, sudden intake of breath through gritted teeth, followed by a rigid freezing of her fra.
It wasn’t the full-blown seizure of yesterday, but the pain hit her hard. Her head snapped back against the chair rest, her neck cords straining. The black veins pulsed angrily at her collarbone, visible even in the dim light.
Vane didn’t panic this ti. He dropped the spear and stepped in close.
He didn’t try to feed her mana. He didn’t ask useless questions.
He moved behind the chair and placed his hands firmly on her shoulders. She was vibrating with tension, her body locked in a silent scream as the dead mana gnawed at her nerves.
"Easy," Vane said, his voice low and steady near her ear. "I’ve got you. You’re not going over."
He could feel the cold radiating off her, the unnatural chill of the corruption. He held her firmly, letting his own body heat seep into her thin gown.
"Breathe with ," he said. He took slow, deep, exaggerated breaths, pressing his chest slightly against the back of the chair so she could feel the rhythm. "In. Out. Just hold the line, Senna. Let the tide go out."
For two agonizing minutes, she fought the pain, her body rigid as iron under his hands. He just held on, breathing slowly, a living anchor in the fog.
Slowly, the tension began to leak out of her. Her head slumped forward. A shudder ran through her fra, and she drew a ragged, wet breath that matched his own.
Vane didn’t let go imdiately. They stayed like that for a long mont in the silence of the forgotten garden—the thief from the slums holding up the broken noble, surrounded by the mist.
Finally, Senna stirred.
"You know," she rasped, her voice wrecked, "most people have the good sense to leave the room when I start foaming at the mouth."
Vane stepped around to the front of the chair. He crouched down so he was eye-level with her. She looked absolutely drained, but her eyes were clear.
"I’m from Oakhaven," Vane said flatly. "I’ve seen worse than a little twitching. You’re not as scary as you think you are."
Senna stared at him. A corner of her pale mouth twitched upward. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it wasn’t a sneer either.
"Liar," she murmured.
She jerked her chin toward the spear on the flagstones.
"Pick it up, freshman. The line isn’t going to hold itself."
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