The light coming through the window slats was faint and gray, like the sky hadn't made up its mind yet. Jason Charon woke up before his alarm went off. His back ached like he'd been lying on rocks instead of a mattress. He stayed on his back, staring at the ceiling, breathing slow through his teeth while the System booted up in the back of his mind.
[Status: Awake – Brain Activity: High][Stress Hormones: Spiked – Motivation Signals: Low][Core Stability: 9% and dropping]
"Great," Jason muttered. His voice sounded dry, even to himself.
He reached for the glass vial and powder stack he'd set up the night before. The ingredients had separated—some clumped at the bottom, others floating like dust on water. He shook it. A new formula had appeared in his vision just before bed.
[Black Book Protocol: TIER II STABILIZER]Creatine (Buffered): 6gAshwagandha: 400mgCitrulline Malate: 2gNAC: 600mgMagnesium Glycinate: 300mgSea Salt: 1gGinger Extract: 100mgWarm Water – 212ml
He drank it all in two gulps. The ginger stung going down. It tasted like chemicals and dirt, with a kick at the end like biting into pepper.
Something in his left hand lit up.
The sigil.
Still there. Still changing. Thin black lines had crept further up his wrist, like ink spreading through paper. They shimmered a little when the light hit them right—too perfect to be veins, too clean to be scars.
The System didn't say anything.
But his body reacted.
Jason doubled over as the stabilizer hit. Cold, then hot, then something in-between—like his nerves were being scrubbed with sandpaper. He sat through it, holding still until the pain faded enough to breathe again.
Then, slowly, his body settled.
He leaned against the wall and watched the interface update.
[Vitals Steadying][Core Sync Stable – 9%][Sigil Response: Active – Next Stage Approaching]
He let out a shaky breath and closed his eyes.
And then, like last night, the voice returned.
It wasn't loud. Just steady—like someone talking in the next room. The words were in a language Jason didn't know, but somehow he got the meaning anyway. Not through thinking, but through a gut feeling. Like his body had heard it before.
"Attrahere ignem. Non fugere.""Draw the fire. Don't run from it."
Jason's eyes shot open.
The air felt heavier now, like the room was holding its breath.
But the voice was gone.
Just that taste of salt on his tongue, and the echo of words he couldn't explain.
He stood up.
His knees cracked, and a sharp pain pulsed under his ribs—a bruise from last night, probably from his body rejecting the overload. But he could move. That was enough.
He looked at himself in the mirror.
Mostly the same. Same hair. Same eyes. Same tired look.
But under the surface, something was different.
Something awake.
He didn't stare too long.
He pulled on his shirt, hid the sigil, and walked out the door like he was just another student starting another day.
But the System hummed in the back of his mind, silently...
After making entrance into the academy, Jason moved down the west corridor, letting the noise of the students and professors fall behind him. Here, the walls were quieter. Fewer students walked this path. It curved near the administrative wing—off-limits to anyone without a formal Profession badge.
But Jason walked it anyway.
He wasn't sure why.
Maybe the System nudged him. Maybe instinct.
Either way, he turned the corner—and stopped.
Instructor Veil stood at the end of the hall, her back half-turned toward him, speaking to a wall panel. The surface glowed faintly with moving sigils—old ones. Not part of the academy's usual operating system.
Jason froze.
She touched the wall once more, and the panel sealed. The light vanished. Only then did she turn.
Their eyes met.
Veil didn't look surprised. Just… focused.
"Charon," she said simply. "Walking the wrong halls?"
"Didn't know they were restricted," he lied.
She stepped forward. Her coat shifted slightly, and Jason caught a glimpse of something beneath—a thin silver chain around her wrist, woven with micro-runes. Not a student band. Not standard issue. Something older.
"Funny," Veil said. "This part of the building runs on legacy infrastructure. Before the council took full control."
Jason stayed still.
"You knew that?"
"No," he said.
A pause. Then:
"But I'm learning fast."
Veil studied him in silence.
"I used to believe the system chose people based on talent," she said. "Now I wonder if it's just trying to balance its own damage."
Jason kept his expression flat. But inside, something turned over.
"I'll keep that in mind," he said, not quite knowing how to respond, but wanting to end this conversation quickly.
But before he could turn and walk away, she stepped closer, lowering her voice.
"If your Core is shifting… if the interface speaks before—you need to listen."
Jason didn't flinch. But his heart hitched once.
"What makes you think it is?" he asked.
Veil tilted her head.
"Because the last person who walked this hallway with flickering hands and quiet eyes," she said, "burned a hole through the observation deck and vanished."
Jason didn't respond.
She let the silence stretch between them like a wire pulled tight.
Then she said one final thing:
"If it's already inside you, the only choice left is shaping it before it has a chance to shape you..."
She turned and walked away.
Jason stood alone in the hallway.
The lights above flickered once.
So did his vision.
And just for a second—he saw her reflection in the wall panel as she turned the next corner.
The runes behind her lit up again. Faint gold. Spiraling.
The same shape as the sigil on his palm.
The Awakening Yard hummed with pressure.
Even before Jason stepped out onto the open floor, he felt it. Not like wind or heat—but like standing near a power line humming just beneath human hearing. The air here had weight.
It was the kind of place where things shifted.
Where names changed.
Where Coreless became Cored… or got destroyed in the process.
Students stood in a scattered half-circle. Some already glowing faintly. Others breathing deep, eyes shut, fists clenched like they could will resonance into being. Above them, drones hovered in perfect loops—recording, scanning, waiting.
This was a regular thing the school would have every month, in order to catch early awakened, or others who fell behind the curve in awakening. It was a method to ensure humanity had as many awakeners as possible.
A technician with a thick wrist console tapped a code into a nearby post. The Awakening Field came alive.
The floor lit up in rings—thin, carved lines etched with stabilizer runes. The kind that glowed only when someone with a Core stepped into them.
Jason waited.
His hands were shaking again, but not with fear. Not entirely at least.
It was like his system had started running a background process he couldn't stop.
[Stabilization Threshold Nearing]
[Environmental Trigger Detected]
[Sigil Containment Recommended: Temporary Wrap]
Too late.
The pulse in his arm flared. The sigil under his sleeve burned hot for a second, like a fresh brand waking up.
Jason glanced down.
His veins shimmered faintly gold—just for a breath—and then dulled again.
"Jason?" Milo's voice cut across the space. Calm. Curious.
He turned. Milo stood a few feet away, casual as ever, but alert. Watching. Always watching.
"You volunteering?" Milo asked. He nodded toward the lit test circle ahead.
Jason swallowed once.
Then stepped forward.
One pace. Then another.
The circle registered him.
And then for the first time in academy history—a red-bar student triggered the test field.
A single rune flared beneath his boot. Dim. Flickering.
The drones paused mid-air.
A soft beep echoed through the Yard.
Students stopped talking.
Jason stood in the center of the ring. Hands loose. Face blank.
Inside, everything screamed.
His heart pounded like it was about to explode, his vision edged white. The system hissed warnings he couldn't fully hear.
[Alchemical Core Exceeding Mask Parameters]
[Resonance Field Detected – Suppression Incomplete]
And then—
Boom.
The circle pulsed once with a golden flare, like the breath of a phoenix.
Then it went dark.
Everything quieted.
Jason looked up.
No full activation.
No glowing profession badge.
No title.
Just… a spark.
And yet every drone in the yard had turned to face him.
Silence stretched.
Then the technician muttered, "That's not supposed to happen."
Jason stepped back. Said nothing.
Milo didn't either.
But behind them, the whispers started to ripple like dropped pebbles in still water.
"He triggered it?"
"But he's a red-bar."
"That wasn't just static—that was gold."
"Did you see how the drones moved? They focused on him."
"Flicker. He flickered the field."
"I've never seen that—"
The word circled like a swarm of bees looking for a nest.
Flicker.
Not a title.
But in this world, every legend started as a glitch.
Far above, nestled deep in the main tower of Blackridge Academy, a wide room floated between stillness and warping folds of time.
Director Rhel sat in silence.
Not on a chair, but within a ripple of space—his body half-seated, half-hovering in a shallow curve of altered gravity. The walls around him weren't solid. They shimmered with layered timelines, slow motion echoes of past and present flickering across his vision.
He had seen it.
That pulse.
That golden breach.
He blinked once, and the entire Awakening Yard played in reverse, collapsing back into the moment Jason stepped into the ring. He blinked again. The future bled forward.
"So it begins again," Rhel whispered.
He reached one hand into the warping light beside him. Pulled out a glowing thread. Studied it.
"Alchemical resonance," he muttered. "But fractured."
Then he snapped the thread in two. The walls of the room shifted back to normal.
He stood.
"Inform Veil. Quietly. We have an anomaly."
His voice carried, even though no one was visibly present.
Because Rhel didn't need messengers.
He was the message.
Jason sat under the synthetic tree near the edge of the Yard, knees pulled up, arms resting over them. His vision swam with bright patches even in the shade.
The system wasn't quiet anymore.
It was running.
[Sub-System: Flicker Sync Activated]
[Extracting Combat Schema Templates...]
[Eris Pressure Zones Mapped – Initiate Breathing Overlay]
[Sigil Expansion Unstable – Recommend Minor Burn Release]
[Warning: Neural Spike Approaching Overload]
Jason gritted his teeth.
Not from pain—just from the sheer volume of everything.
He closed his eyes, seeing the golden flare again.
He had triggered it. The system hadn't forced it. The spark came from him.
That meant his Core wasn't fake.
It was real.
Different, yes. But real.
He leaned his head back against the bark.
For the first time in a year…
He didn't feel like a mistake.
Jason stood, dusting off his palms.
His legs still felt unsteady, like they remembered the surge even if his brain hadn't caught up. He turned back toward the Academy's inner corridor—trying to blend in with the rest of the students filtering back into the academy.
The crowd moved like a tide.
Students streamed back through the reinforced gates of the Awakening Yard, buzzing with post-ceremony adrenaline. Some laughed. Some limped. Others looked shell-shocked—new scars glowing faint on their arms or necks from partial resonance flares. The scent of scorched metal and ionized air still clung to the walls.
Jason walked against the flow. Shoulders hunched, eyes half-focused. He didn't care where he was headed—just needed to move, to breathe.
Then someone collided with him.
Harder than a brush.
Jason stumbled back a step, the impact sending a jolt up his spine.
The person didn't fall. She just stopped.
Aven Rourke.
She turned her head slowly, like she'd known it was him before looking. No surprise in her expression. Just that quiet, unreadable calm.
Jason's breath caught in his throat.
Her aura pulsed—just once.
It wasn't spectacularly bright, nor loud.
But it seemed to almost pass through him.
Like pressure pressing inward instead of out. His system stuttered:
[Thread Disruption: Detected][Stabilization Delay Imminent][Signature Resonance: Class – Undefined (Risk Factor: Elevated)]
He winced, hand twitching toward his sleeve, where the sigil on his palm pulsed—out of sync, like it was reacting to her.
She noticed.
Their eyes locked.
Something passed between them—recognition without explanation. Like they were two frequencies brushing edges for the first time.
Aven didn't flinch. Didn't ask.
She just said, low and certain, "Whatever you are… you won't survive alone."
Then she stepped past him into the hall, vanishing into the stream of students like nothing had happened.
Jason stood frozen.
Until he noticed it: a slip of parchment folded clean, tucked into his palm where their hands had grazed.
He opened it.
Black ink on scorched paper. A pattern—spiral over triangle, lines layered like threads of thought. Nearly identical to the sigil burned into his hand.
But older.
Less perfect.
And partially burned, like it had been ripped from a forbidden scripture.
Jason stared at it, jaw clenched.
He didn't know how she got it. Didn't know what it meant.
But she knew something.
And now—so did he.
Jason didn't go to the commons.
Didn't stop by the meal hall or check the roster board.
He just walked.
Head down, steps steady, moving through the echoing halls like a ghost already fading. Lights flickered above him—too bright in some places, too dim in others. The Academy always buzzed at the edges. Like the building itself was trying to keep up with the students inside it.
He slipped into his room and locked the door behind him.
Tossed his jacket onto the chair, palms still shaking.
The folded note from Aven sat on the desk, staring at him like it wanted to be solved.
But he wasn't ready for that yet.
Instead, Jason reached under his bedframe and pulled out the encrypted holopad wrapped in faded thermal cloth. A gift from a dropout. The thing barely ran above 20% battery anymore, but it had one thing others didn't—
Access.
He thumbed through the hidden files until he found it.
[Black Book Entry: Protocol – Mirror Root]
A warning popped up before the file opened.
"Do not run if unsupervised. Neural layering required. Damage risk: irreparable."
Jason ignored it.
He tapped EXECUTE.
The room dimmed—not physically, but in his perception. Like the walls pulled slightly away. Like the air got heavier.
Lines of data fluttered across his vision—symbols he didn't fully understand, glowing gently in a soft silver hue.
His breathing slowed.
The system responded:
[Running Sequence: Mirror Root Initiated][Memory Substrate Opening…][Alchemical Link – Time Thread Loosened]
Then the world slid.
Jason fell forward, but didn't hit the ground.
He was standing… somewhere else.
Stone walls. Candles flickering without flame. A massive circle etched into the stone beneath him—ancient alchemical patterns that breathed with soft violet light.
A man stood in the center, hooded, and unable to catch even a glimpse of his face. His hands were bare, fingers callused and cracked. His movements were smooth—slow, but certain. The kind of certainty that comes from surviving a hundred wrong turns and still ending up right.
In his hand: a stone.
Lifeless.
Cold.
He whispered something—Jason couldn't catch the language, but he felt it.
Then… the stone pulsed.
Shifted.
Turned.
It glowed—not with energy, but with being. A heartbeat. A vein. A breath.
The stone became flesh.
Soft tissue.
Alive.
Jason staggered backward, chest tight.
He knew—without knowing—what he was seeing.
The Alchemist. The first of his bloodline. The one the System couldn't classify.
And then the figure looked up.
Not at Jason.
Through him.
Eyes like molten mercury. Voice soft, but heavy:
"You are not awakened. You are transmuted."
Jason fell.
This time, for real.
He hit the floor of his room hard, back arching as if he'd been shocked. Blood splattered from his mouth—bright red against pale knuckles.
His vision swam.
He clawed at the desk, pulled himself upright, gasping.
The pain was everywhere—like his cells were melting, rearranging.
He looked down at his left arm.
The sigil was moving.
Not growing—crawling. Ink-black lines coiling higher up his forearm like roots digging under skin.
He stumbled toward the mirror. Gripped the sides of the sink to steady himself.
His face looked pale. Gaunt. Sweat soaked his temples.
But then—
His reflection moved first.
It smiled.
A half-smile. Slow. Knowing.
Jason didn't.
Not right away.
It was a beat off. Just enough to make his chest clench.
Then his lips followed, but not by his will.
He stared.
The system stayed silent.
No warnings. No interface.
Just that smile.
His smile.
But not his.
Jason didn't sleep.
Not that he chose not too, he just couldn't seem to shake something.
He sat on the edge of his bed, back against the cool wall, head tilted up as he let his system breathe through him.
The mirror was still fogged from whatever had just happened, but the reflection no longer moved on its own.
Everything had quieted.
He opened his palm.
The sigil wasn't pulsing violently anymore—it just… glowed.
Steady.
He pulled the holopad back into view. It hummed as the internal system overlay synced up.
A new line had appeared in the corner of his vision.
[ALCHEMICAL CORE – 10% STABILIZED][NEURAL ALIGNMENT – SYNCED][BIOSTATE: RECOVERING][WARNING: External Flow Rejection Still Active]
A flick of his finger opened the Black Book submenu.
Jason scanned the list of available protocols:
Stabilizer_0X1 – Completed
Burn Buffer V2 – In Testing
Mirror Root – Completed (with Warning)
Neuro-Sync Draft Alpha – [Locked]
Sigil Reinscription Protocol – [Locked: Incomplete Linkage]
He exhaled slowly.
The list was still short.
Still glitching in places.
But it was his list.
Not borrowed. Not assigned. Not awarded by an external awakening chamber. Not granted by the System.
He'd built it.
From scratch.
His own way.
A tired smile tugged at his lips as he leaned his head back against the wall. For the first time in a long time, something in him felt aligned. Not whole—not even close—but not lost either.
He'd triggered the test field.
He'd survived the Mirror Root.
And even if no one believed him yet… the truth was waking up inside him.
He stared at the ceiling, eyes half-lidded.
Peace, in this world, was measured in heartbeats.
So of course—it didn't last.
BWOOM.
The first alarm didn't sound like an alarm.
It sounded like a heartbeat amplified a hundredfold, echoing through the infrastructure of the city.
The lights in his room dimmed to red.
Then the wall display flickered to life—every screen in Blackridge blinking to the same emergency glyph.
The words weren't shouted.
They were spoken.
As if the city itself had decided to break the silence:
"WARNING: ORGANISM OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN APPROACHING PERIMETER.""NON-CATALOGUED ENTITY. ERIS SIGNATURE – UNCLASSIFIED.""BARRIER ARRAY INITIATED. ALL RESIDENTS SHELTER IN PLACE."
Jason's system flared to life.
[Signature Detected: External Flow Distortion – Tier ???][Auto-Shielding Offline. Manual Override Available.][Recommendation: DO NOT ENGAGE.]
Outside his window, he saw it.
The sky over the perimeter wall shimmered—the defensive barrier rising like an invisible curtain suddenly caught in wind, light crackling against the air.
Then a sound ripped through the district.
Not from outside.
From above.
A scream—if it could even be called that. Part organic, part frequency, part something else.
Jason's chest went tight.
His sigil flared.
And just before the lights cut out completely, the system blinked one last message:
"ANOMALY APPROACHING…"
Then darkness.