The wind shifted as the sun dipped low across Sector Five, casting long, amber streaks through the torn fabric of a half-collapsed shade rig. The heat of the day hadn't fully faded yet. It clung to the metal struts, to the broken irrigation lines, to the scent of warm soil rising faintly from the garden beds.
Elya sat on the edge of the old support beam, elbows on knees, watching the horizon burn slowly gold.
It wasn't the first sunset she'd watched from here.
It was the first time in years the view reminded her of home.
Not this place though. Not the stubborn green patches clawing their way through ruined earth.
Sector One.
There, the sunsets had been cleaner—light passing through high-tower glass, tempered and refracted until the sky resembled a curated painting rather than weather.
The air carried no scent at all, scrubbed and filtered to precision, and the entire district mirrored that sterility: every variable measured, every life reduced to metrics of potential, contribution, and probability.
Especially people.
She was eleven when the Cognitive Score came back. Her parents had gone quiet.
Her mother first—face drawn, lips pressed thin, scanning the numbers again and again like they'd change if she just stared long enough. The report glowed in sterile white across the embedded wall panel, its edges too sharp, too clean.
The room itself was quiet, polished, painfully correct.
Everything was matte and curved—smartglass desk seamless with the floor, modular shelves backlit with soft, directional tones. No clutter. No color.
Just approved functionality.
The walls were a shade too pale to be white. In the evening light, they picked up a faint yellow warmth—artificial, as if painted on by the system's ambient lighting scheme.
There was no dust, no stray sound. Even the air was calibrated, engineered to a precise balance that left no room for error.
Her father didn't argue. He just stood by the window, spine too straight, watching the transit lines arc past in pale, automated rhythm—silver trails across a city that never moved too fast or too slow.
Elya remembered the way he held his hands behind his back.
Like a man waiting for someone to salute him.
"She's not flagged for advanced track," the system had said.
"Deviation exceeds predictive thresholds. Suggested: Sector reassignment."
At the time, Elya hadn't understood what the numbers meant.
Only later did she learn the breakdown—
neurological flexibility, organ adaptation potential, cognitive problem-solving, behavioral compliance, projected genetic stability.
Her final score was 42.6—well short of the advanced-track threshold of 60. It wasn't a formal failure, yet it still fell beneath the line that mattered. In Sector One such a result didn't mark you as wrong; it branded you as wasteful, unfit for further optimization—and Sector One did not keep waste.
The day they left, her mother packed in silence. No words, no explanation—just careful hands folding what little they could carry. Her father never said goodbye. Not to her. There'd been a short, hushed argument at the doorway—clipped voices, a long pause—and then the sound of footsteps fading down the corridor.
They took a transport south. No escort, no official farewell. Just a line in the system: reassigned. And then they were gone.
Sector Five hadn't looked like much back then. Most days, it still didn't. But the sunsets here were different—raw, imperfect, unfiltered. Real.
Elya let the breath ease slowly from her lungs, her jaw tight against the memory. The wind shifted, brushing her face—grittier now, carrying dust and heat.
From the yard below came the soft rhythm of boots on polymer grids. Training drills. Someone adjusting weights. Drones returning from recon.
She didn't look.
She already knew who it was.
The wind shifted again.
Elya didn't move from the scaffold ledge, arms resting loosely on her knees, the last slant of sun washing the yard in rust and copper. Down below, the training field had gone quiet—weights re-racked, drones docked, foam mats half-lit by the flicker of motion sensors still cycling down.
A soft clink.
Rei dropped into a seat beside her, boot heels dangling off the edge, a water bottle rolling once between them before settling.
He nudged it toward her without looking.
"Sorry it's not sparkling," he said. "Ran out of Sector One glassware last week."
Elya snorted, but didn't take the bait.
"I forget you come from generations of wheat barons," she muttered.
"Wheat, grapes—whatever got us fed," Rei said. "You lot just got points for breathing clean air."
She shook her head, just once, but the corner of her mouth twitched—almost.
Rei leaned back on his hands, scanning the sky as if it owed him something. The horizon was burning down slowly, the last light dragging across the edges of the reinforced glass like it couldn't quite let go.
"Didn't peg you for a sunset type," he said.
Elya didn't look over. "I'm not."
But she didn't stand up either.
The wind rustled overhead wires. Somewhere distant, a turbine clicked into idle.
"You know," Rei said, stretching his shoulders, "for a second there, I thought Arlen was gonna lecture Lina."
"She wouldn't have stayed long enough to hear it."
Rei snorted. "Fair. She's got that look—like if you push her, she'll run just to prove you wrong."
Elya let out half a breath—almost agreement, almost warning.
Another pause. Longer this time. The silence between them wasn't heavy—just worn-in. The kind that knew when to stretch and when to leave space.
"You think she's dangerous?" Rei asked, not entirely serious.
"I think she's scared," Elya said, voice even.
He leaned back slightly, palms pressed to the edge of the beam. "Well, good. I'd be worried if she wasn't."
They sat there for a while. The sun dipped lower, the greenhouse glass below them catching the last light like a cracked mirror trying to reflect something whole.
"She doesn't move like a survivor," Rei said eventually.
Elya turned her head. One brow lifted.
He shrugged. "She moves like someone who thought they were already dead."
For once, he didn't follow it with a joke.
And Elya—
just exhaled, low and clipped.
"That kind usually fights the hardest."
Rei's gaze swept the compound—quiet corners, a few late drills, the easy rhythm of a yard between orders.
"You know," he said, almost idly, "I heard a whisper the parser didn't take."
Elya didn't move, but her shoulders shifted—too subtly to be tension.
"Where?"
"Old node. Backroom run. Didn't return a profile."
He let the words settle.
"Could be nothing. Could be Senn locking down access again. Or maybe she's just not on any of the lists anymore."
He tilted his head, watching her from the corner of his eye. "Funny thing is... even blank entries usually throw an error."
Elya's fingers curled once against the beam.
"Parser's noisy half the time," she said. Then added, a beat later, "Or maybe it wasn't built to read people like her."
Rei didn't push. Just let the wind take the rest.
"Doesn't matter," he said, softer now. "Whatever she is—she's already in."
He lingered there, as if that was the end of it.
Then: "They wouldn't have pulled her just to save a soldier."
His eyes returned to the pit—empty now, but not still.
"You've seen the sword," he murmured. "So have I."
A breath of quiet.
"No pureblood ever made it sync before."
He glanced sideways, almost thoughtful.
"Scoring that high? You'd need full-tier augmentation. Neuro-loop, skeletal overlays, at minimum. Some of them rewired everything just to try. And still—nothing."
He tapped a knuckle lightly against the beam.
"But she walked in, touched it, and it lit up like it was waiting for her."
He gave a short breath of a laugh—humorless.
"She didn't even have a score."
Elya's jaw moved slightly, reflex or restraint—it was hard to tell.
"You're not going to find answers in a missing score," she said. Then:
"And if you do, they're probably not the kind you want."
Rei looked like he might press again—but a sudden cheer cut through the air.
Not a warning. Not alarm.
Excitement.
The kind that only meant one thing in Ash Light's main yard.
"Oh, hell," Rei muttered, turning toward the sound. A group of recruits sprinted past them, laughing, elbowing each other, shouting over shoulders as they made for the southern end of the facility.
"Pit Three?" Elya asked, already moving.
"Pit Three," Rei confirmed. "And judging by the noise? Someone called out Arlen."
More cheers echoed up through the scaffolding. Someone banged a metal bar like a bell. From every corner of the yard, operators, techs, even a few off-duty medics were dropping what they were doing and rushing toward the ring—half of them grinning, the other half betting.
"Senn's not on-site today," Rei added, breath catching up. "So no leash."
Elya didn't reply. She was already cutting across the upper platform, eyes locked on the growing crowd below.
Arlen didn't look like much from a distance—tall but unassuming, visor pushed up, expression unreadable beneath the sharp lines of his jaw.
He held one of the pit's wooden training blades loosely at his side, like it didn't matter.
Lina mirrored him across the ring, stance tight, both hands clenched around her own practice sword. No armor, no feedback rig. Just grit and balance.
The crowd buzzed behind the railings—operators, recruits, even a few techs off-shift, grinning and jeering and shouting odds.
Then the klaxon sounded.
Arlen moved like water—smooth, practiced, without urgency.
A short feint, an angled pivot, a low hook too fast to be decorative—and Lina blocked it, just barely. Their blades cracked once, twice, then she stumbled on the third exchange.
Arlen didn't stop.
He stepped in clean, twisted, and sent her flying.
She hit the mat flat on her back. The breath punched out of her in a short, sharp gasp.
Seventeen seconds.
No one cheered.
Arlen stood over her, blade lowered. His tone was cool, but his jaw was tight.
"You've got speed," he said. "But speed doesn't carry weight if you don't know where to place it."
Lina pushed herself up to one knee. Her blade had landed meters away.
"Again," she said, voice clipped.
Arlen stared at her—longer this time. Not amused. Not impressed.
"Again?" he repeated. Then gave a sharp, humorless laugh.
"After everything we lost pulling your sorry ass out of Nine?"
His voice rose just enough for the crowd to hear.
"You think swinging sticks in the pit makes it square?"
Lina didn't flinch. Just met his stare, breathing hard.
Arlen stepped back a pace, raising his chin slightly.
"Fine," he said. "Go get your sword."
Then, almost biting:
"If you even remember how to use it."
For half a heartbeat, the pit held silence.
Then the first whistle cut through the tension—sharp, mocking.
Laughter followed. Not the warm kind. It rippled up through the crowd like a spark catching dry brush.
Someone called out, "She gonna cry first or bleed first?"
Another: "Hope the sword comes with instructions!"
The noise swelled—half jeering, half entertained, boots stomping the grated platforms in rhythm.
Not everyone joined in. But no one stopped it.
Lina didn't look at them.
Blood still marked her cheek, sweat along her collar, the imprint of Arlen's last strike blooming dark across her ribs.
She walked without a word—through the pit, past the line, past the crowd that parted just wide enough to let her through.
No one reached for her. No one followed either.
Above the ring, Elya moved fast—cutting down the catwalk stairs, Rei close behind.
"She's not ready," Elya muttered, sharp under her breath.
But by the time they reached the perimeter, it was too late.
The crowd had closed in—tight, shoulder to shoulder, riders and recruits pressing forward for a better view. Operators leaning in from the rails, shouting over one another, no room to breathe, let alone push through.
"Move," Rei snapped. No one listened.
They weren't trying to stop it. They just wanted to see how far it would go.
Elya's jaw tightened. She stopped just short of shoving someone aside.
Lina was already walking away, a single path opening for her through the mass.
The vault door was already open. Someone—no one said who—had keyed the lock ahead of her.
Inside, the lights hummed low, cool against concrete and steel.
It waited on a solitary magnetic rack near the center—massive, inelegant, made for cleaving, not grace. Too heavy for anyone without augments.
Lina stepped closer.
And something changed.
The dull, alloyed finish along the blade's surface began to shift—light blooming beneath it like heat through metal.
Faint at first, then richer, deeper.
Gold.
Not painted. Not plated. Alive—like fire folded beneath steel.
Lines of embedded circuitry lit up from guard to tip, threading patterns that hadn't glowed since the enemy wielded it.
But this time, it wasn't pulsing with rage.
It was waiting.
She stopped in front of it.
No hesitation.
Her fingers closed around the hilt—
and the light surged.
Not flickering. Not flaring.
Claiming.
From the far side of the ring, just outside the vault's access rail, Elya didn't move.
She didn't need to. The change in air pressure alone was enough.
She saw the color shift. She saw the blade respond.
A soft chime broke the silence.
Elya glanced down, instinct more than thought—
her diagnostic tablet, slung under one arm, had lit up without prompt.
The signal trace was already redlining.
She tapped in.
Class-IV combat signature.
Aurelion registry.
Not spoofed. Not buried. Live.
Her gaze tightened. Not impossible, she thought, but wholly unacceptable.
Her fingers flew over the interface.
The coordinates matched central storage.
Matched the sword.
Across the floor, Lina's grip never wavered. The blade burned gold beneath her fingers—silent, steady, as if it had never belonged to anyone else.
A hard chill ran down Elya's spine.
The sword wasn't just responding.
It was calling.
And somewhere—
someone might already be listening.