Three days after the Shaping, Ares was on his feet. He would have loved to stay a little longer, but he felt he was overstepping his limit. The thought of what those Superiors would do didn't give him a second thought.
Immediately getting up, he walked to a wall and pressed on a specific side.
Click.
A sound echoed as a door creaked open, revealing his locker. "I can't believe I never found this," he muttered. Bored, he remembered Jones tapping on a wall that led him to the fridge. After some searching, he found the fridge but also discovered something else.
A locker. Unlike his previous one, this one felt more personal than being clumped with another. He knew this because he had also discovered Sylvie's and Nia's lockers as well. It seemed that even though the government was cruel in their experiments, they still valued decency and similar principles.
He changed into a fresh set of clothes, identical but clean. Then, he stretched his arms.
Although he was not entirely comfortable, the deep ache within him had faded to a manageable level, resembling more of a background hum than a prominent concern. He was upright, functional, and able to move through the facility without appearing to be hiding a serious injury.
He also realised that he was becoming faster. It wasn't enough to stop a room in its tracks. Still, the half-second delays he had always experienced in his reactions — the small hesitation between deciding to move and actually moving — had decreased, nearly disappearing altogether. He had previously attributed this gap to being less gifted than the people around him, but now it seemed to have closed significantly.
The pathways' improvement isn't only about energy capacity, the Echo had explained on the second morning, in the particular way it communicated, hovering between lecture and statement of fact. Your own mana now circulates more efficiently as well. The restructuring benefits both systems.
He had set that aside without responding. The Echo still felt unfamiliar to him; he needed to decide how much to acknowledge it or note its remarks. There was something about responding too readily that felt like a concession he wasn't prepared to make.
Ares arrived two minutes early for his private session with Valerius, which was scheduled for the fourth day. He knew that being late to anything in this facility felt like an act of self-sabotage and likely death depending on the superior's mood. When he entered the training space, he found the instructor already present, sitting on a low bench at the edge of the room with a small notebook open in his lap.
The room, labeled simply as Hall 7 because there was giant text on the side of the wall saying Room 7. it was small compared to other halls but it was still enough to fit more than a hundred. It had four walls, a smooth floor with no windows, and various conduits and equipment. Overall, there was relatively no obvious threat, which relieved Ares, but he was still tense on how Valerius would respond. Walking, he felt the sense of authority Valerius carried, like a ruler and his knight.
Valerius looked at him, his eyes giving no reaction along with his mask, which made it hard to understand him. He closed the notebook and said, with no expression, "Sit." Ares complied and sat down.
"I see you enjoyed your little break," Ares nodded but remained silent. He felt the need to exercise caution rather than attract a superior's interest.
"Hands open. On your knees," Valerius said. Ares did as he was told with no hesitation.
He rested his open hands on his knees. The position felt familiar—it was the same one he had used during the Shaping. Some instincts, it seemed, carried over.
"I want you to transfer Mana Force from the core to your right hand," Valerius instructed. "Do it slowly, with no output. Focus solely on the movement itself—nothing external."
Ares nodded in understanding. He turned his attention inward, locating the fragment, feeling its pulse. Once he grasped the feeling, he identified the thread. Then, he directed it through the restructured channels toward his right hand.
He suddenly felt something—an odd yet familiar sensation moving within him. It moved like water flowing through a cleared channel, and he felt it arrive at his hand within seconds, pooling there in a warm, contained pressure.
Valerius watched him with an expression that didn't move. Then, "The pathways are wider."
Ares maintained a neutral expression. "I did not authorize an internal restructuring, nor did General Brown." He remained neutral. "That procedure, performed without guidance, has a documented failure rate of—"
"It didn't fail," Ares said quietly. A pause ensued as Valerius peered over the edge of his notebook. He frowned, appearing angry, though in truth he wasn't. This expression lasted only a brief moment.
"No," he said finally. "It didn't." He made a note. "Withdraw the energy."
Ares complied.
"Again. Use your left hand."
He followed the instruction, this time with greater speed.
"Now try both hands at the same time."
He split the thread, directing it to both palms simultaneously. The sensation was unusual—a kind of branching, similar to dividing attention between two conversations, except that the conversation was happening within his own nervous system. It required what felt like a parallel level of thinking.
'Your left side is slightly uneven,' the Echo observed...from wherever it observed things.
Your right channel is slightly wider due to the shaping. Compensate by drawing the initial thread from the lower-left face of the fragment.' He didn't waste time and did so.
The distribution became balanced. Valerius's pen scratched slowly across the page.
They continued like this for nearly an hour. Valerius provided instructions, and Ares followed them with an accuracy that, as evidenced by subtle changes in the instructor's posture, exceeded expectations. However, it wasn't always perfect. When asked to perform rapid switching between pathways, the results were sloppy, and Valerius did not hide his disappointment.
"He's testing the ceiling," the Echo said. "Not the floor. He wants to know where your control breaks, not where it holds."
"Oh."
That made sense. Ares filed the information away and continued working.
At the end of the session, Valerius closed the notebook and looked at him directly.
"How much of what you demonstrate in these sessions is your own decision-making, and how much is the fragment advising you?"
....
...
.....
The question hung heavily in the air, creating a tense atmosphere that mirrored the feeling when he first entered the room.
"Remember, Vhala's fragment resides within each of us. We've all experienced the same stage you went through."
Ares looked at him steadily.
"Does it matter?"
"It matters immensely." Valerius's tone remained steady, but there was a weight to his words—an emphasis that conveyed importance without urgency. "A soldier who simply follows orders is just a tool. A soldier who comprehends the orders is a leader. The distinction between the two is whether you are in this room or if something else is masquerading as you, claiming to represent progress."
Ares reflected on this, remembering the fifth channel and what the Echo had shared about the previous vessel that had acted without fear.
"Both," he said honestly. "It observes, and I decide. There's a difference between someone offering advice and someone taking control."
"And when the advice becomes compelling enough to feel indistinguishable from your own thought?"
"Then I will make the wrong call and learn from it," he paused. "Just like everyone else."
Valerius regarded him for a long moment before standing up and tucking the notebook under his arm.
"We'll see," he said, moving toward the door. He paused without turning around. "As of this morning, your integration stands at thirty-three per cent. That's two points higher since the restructuring, indicating that the new channels are actively improving absorption." He took another moment before adding, "That rate will accelerate."
"I know," came the reply.
"The Echo will become louder."
"I know."
"When it does happen," he finally looked back briefly. "The anchor Aethera mentioned—whatever keeps you, you. Don't let it become abstract. Names, faces, something real. Something the Echo cannot replicate."
Ares thought of a seven-year-old who held on too tight when she hugged you. "It's not abstract," he said.
Valerius left without another word. The message was under the dormitory door when he returned.
Plain white paper, folded once. No envelope or identifying marks. He picked it up and unfolded it. Three words, written in a clean, unfamiliar hand: Watch your back.
He stood in the doorway reading it for a long moment, then looked up and down the corridor. Empty. Spotless, as always. The facility had a way of being perfectly sterile immediately after anything that mattered.
He stepped inside, let the door close, and set the paper on the table.
Jones was there, cleaning something off his cloth with the focused irritation of someone who had just emerged from a minor physical altercation—once they had won but not without sustaining some damage. He glanced at the paper, read it, and then looked over at Ares.
"Did you know," Jones said. "Kind of, Sylvie's been giving me the rundown during my absence." Jones was shocked; that Sylvie, who would brush him off, actually conversed with Ares.
"Henry's been building a faction for three days. He's been framing us as unstable — using the conduit reading, using Nia's column. "Right," Ares said as he sat down. Jones nodded in agreement. "He's using us to gain followers, Cunning bastard."
"He's not going to confront us directly yet. It's too early and too risky, and he knows that. However, he's managing perceptions, getting other participants to distrust us before we've done anything deserving of that distrust."
"Was someone in his group sending this? Warning or trapping us?" Jones asked. "Could be both. But I know one thing. It's not a warning for you guys but-" he paused.
"It's a warning me specifically." Ares looked at the clean, precise handwriting. "It's not hostile. Whoever wrote it took a risk doing it."
"Why would anyone in Henry's orbit warn you?"
Ares thought about it for a moment. "Why?" he wondered. The person won't gain anything from this, and only twenty can be selected out of those remaining. He thought for a moment and then chuckled, seemingly having found his answer.
"Because not everyone who accepts protection agrees with how it's being used," he said.
Jones considered that, "What do we do then?"
Ares glanced at the paper once more, folded it as he'd found it, and placed it back in his locker.
"We pay attention," he said. "And we wait to see if they reach out again."
Jones nodded slowly, "And in the meantime?"
Ares lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. His pathways ached gently, adjusting. His integration ticked forward in the background.
"In the meantime," he said, "we keep getting stronger."