I've never had so many eyes on me.
Not in pity.
Not in repulsion.
But in recognition.
It isn't a validation. It's a weight. Like I strolled onto a stage during somebody else's performance, and I have no idea what my lines are.
Lio does not speak. He only gazes at me, calm and unreadable as ever.
The room hums. Not with noise—with perception. People start to change again, uncertainly, but their eyes keep floating back to me like gravity's been rewritten. Most of them are grown-ups—people dressed in the same simple city-issued clothes they wear, frayed and patched. But distributed around, I notice teens, a year or so older than me, all marked with the same unexpressed passion. Survivors. Believers.
A woman comes out of the crowd.
Her fur is richly long, as grey as a storm. Her boots are polished. Her glyph is silver and an inverted flame that twists over her collarbone. She stands three feet in front of me, crosses her arms, and scrutinizes me as if I were a relic found for the first time with fresh tooth marks.
"You're shorter than you look," she says.
"Good," I snarl.
"Keeps expectations down."
That earns the faintest smile.
She extends a hand. "Nessa Vale."
So she's not just a rogue field agent. She's the one running all of this.
I shake her hand, even though every cell in my body is yelling at me to back away.
"You have questions," she says.
"Yeah. Starting with why everyone in here seems to think I'm their chosen savior."
Her smile fades.
You're not a savior, Sera. You're a vessel. The last legitimate Sovereign." She stops. "That makes you dangerous. To us. To them. To yourself."
My muscles knot. "I didn't ask for any of this."
"No," she replies quietly. "But it asked for you."
She steps, and the lights on the floor shift. In the middle of the room, a hologram unfurls—a spinning emblem composed of hundreds of gleaming lines and branching glyphs. A web. A tree. A network.
"This is what the Empire repressed," Nessa explains. "The original power structure. Before the Rank System. Before suppression algorithms. Conduits didn't comply. They equilibrated power."
Lio walks beside me. "They could absorb, augment, or neutralize other abilities. They were not just powerful—they were anchors."
"Too powerful," Nessa goes on. "So the government killed them. Nearly all of them. The last Sovereign disappeared twenty-three years ago. We thought the line was severed."
She eyes me. "Then you blazed a drone feed like a solar flare and took out a mech-class wraith with raw aura."
I step back. "It wasn't like that."
"Proof lies to the contrary," says Nessa.
"I didn't have a say in it."
"Nobody does," says Nessa. "But it picked you out."
The room is quiet.
Then somebody yells from the back. A white-haired boy with copper armlets. "Show us."
I open my eyes. "What?"
"Show us your aura," he says. "So we know it's you."
Lio leaps forward, standing between us. "She doesn't need to prove anything."
But I see it now—each face turning my direction with silent, gasping hope. Not desperation. Not adoration.
But something worse.
Expectation.
"No," I tell them, my voice low but unshakeable. "I'm not your proof. I'm not your messiah. I'm just trying to survive."
A silence.
Then Nessa nods. "That's a good start."
They finally release me.
Lio walks me to the elevator in silence.
We reenter the steel veins of the school basement, where walls do not resonate and even the wind appears to be artificial.
When we're alone, I supply the silence.
"Do you believe them?"
Lio shrugs. "I trust you."
"That isn't an answer."
"No," he says. "But it is true."
We move on to the lowest reaches of maintenance, unstaffed at this hour.
He takes my arm before I can depart.
"Sera. Voss won't give up. You embarrassed her. You outsmarted her net."
I nod. "I know."
"She'll try again."
"I know that, too."
His hand tightens around my arm. "And if she finds out what you are…"
"She already does."
He swears under his breath and releases me.
"Then it's started."
That night, I slept in white noise.
In my mind, the city burns—towers are destroyed, the sky bleeds light, and the streets are silent except for one thing: glyphs, carved into every wall. Marking everything. Mine.
I wake up with a gasp.
There's someone at the window.
For a moment, I imagine it's a shadow.
But it moves.
Then vanishes.
I don't sleep again.
The next morning, Jin's gone before I wake.
A message scrawled across the bathroom mirror in her handwriting:
"Remain small. Don't answer any unfamiliar calls. I'll be late."
I wipe the words away as if they'll no longer hold true.
At school, there's a difference.
All Rank Zeta uniforms—formerly unmarked—are being stopped in the hallways. Searched. Scanned. Stared down.
Someone is hunting.
They don't find me. I've learned how to become invisible. But I don't miss students' gazes, who once sneered and are now looking up to me from the periphery. Some with curiosity. Some suspecting. A few… respectful.
I don't know which is worse.
I'm halfway to my seat in Powers & Theory when the intercom clicks.
"Sera Vane. Report to the Headmistress's office. Immediately."
Silence.
Then whispers.
Even the professor goes still.
I rise slowly, every movement calculated.
In the hallway, two black-suited enforcers flank the lift doors.
No drones this time.
Just muscle.
They don't speak as they escort me.
We go up over the school. To a wing I don't know—at all, obsidian glass and floors so hushed-quiet. The door to Voss's office slides open like it's taking a breath.
She's waiting.
Alone.
She doesn't motion for me to sit.
"You've been busy," she says.
I look at her.
"No denial?"
"I thought you preferred honesty."
She smiles with no heat to it.
"You're not what you pretend to be, Sera. That makes you unstable. And that makes you useful."
I don't blink. "Useful how?"
"You may be a weapon. A banner. A symbol. And in the right hands, that is power greater than numbers."
"And in the wrong hands?"
Her smile vanishes. "That is what I am here to stop."
She shoves something across the desk. A contract.
"Sign this. Accept complete integration. You'll be reclassified, trained, and monitored for elite status."
I look down at the paper.
Then I look at her.
And tear it in half.
She doesn't scream.
She just nods.
And says, "Then you've made your choice."
The doors open behind me.
The guards are gone.
Only the wind waits now.
Back outside, the clouds have turned violet.
A storm's coming.
And this time?
It knows my name.