With that, the assassin hoisted Anya's limp form over his shoulder with surprising ease, and turned, walking away and melting back into the shadows from which he had emerged. The crowd slowly began to disperse, leaving John alone, the assassin's words echoing in his mind. No excessive force. She simply ceased. It was a cold, stark confirmation. Anya hadn't died from hunger. Someone had killed her, quietly, efficiently, and the League wouldn't lift a finger. The implication was clear: someone within the trainee ranks was not just ambitious, but very heavy handed.
The League assassin's words hung heavy in the air, a pronouncement that settled over the trainees. That this wasn't an accident and this wasn't a random death. Someone among them had acted, quietly, efficiently, and the League endorsed it. The murmurs died, replaced by a profound, uneasy silence. Each trainee took a subtle step back from their neighbor, eyes now cold and cautious, assessing every face with new suspicion. The unspoken message: anyone could be next, and anyone could be the one responsible.
The crowd dispersed, leaving John alone in Anya's still room. The assassin's rasping declaration, "It fits our way," echoed in his mind, triggering something deep within him. "Pattern... pattern..." he muttered, almost inaudibly, the word repeating like a broken mantra in his head.
Someone had utterly disrupted his designated pattern, a critical element he had painstakingly accounted for in his daily routine. Anya, to John, was not emotionally important. She was a variable, a data point, a pattern he was carefully cultivating and integrating into his meticulously planned existence. He had factored her existence, her training, her reaction, into his system.
Someone had deliberately, or perhaps unknowingly, shattered that pattern. His mind, usually so adept at finding new sequences, new routines, urged him to simply adjust, to move on.
But John found he couldn't. A cold dread, foreign and unsettling, began to creep in. Whatever had disrupted his pattern once, could do so again. And from the few chilling details he'd gathered, the missing food, the "no excessive force" it was clear this was no accident. It was planned. Whoever it was knew Anya would be weak, that she would be susceptible. This wasn't just a disruption; it was a deliberate, calculated strike against a predictable element of his environment. And that made John's carefully constructed world feel terrifyingly unstable.
"Anya got this far in the league training, which meant she was no weakling. It would have been hard for another trainee to take her out so easily without making a lot of noise that would draw attention." John's mind raced, connecting the dots. "This means whoever did it accounted for my part in their action. They knew Anya's interaction with me would leave her weak. The question now is, 'Why do that?' He and Anya had no open enmity with other students. Maybe Anya did, but he was sure he had none."
For some reason, his mind was drawn to Elias. But why would Elias go after Anya and not him? It served no purpose except for tarnishing his name.
John stood up, a chilling realization settling in. He had grasped something crucial, a piece of the puzzle that clicked into place with horrifying clarity. He needed to eat, and then head straight back to the Hall for Sensei's teaching. He had to learn as much as he could, as fast as he could. This new, dangerous variable in his pattern demanded it.
Dinner passed in a blur. John went through the motions of eating, but his mind was restless, far from its usual calm. The way the other trainees looked at him, their hushed whispers and wary glances, only cemented his growing suspicion about why Anya had died.
This was his mistake, his first true miscalculation in this new, brutal world. He had meticulously planned, accounted for variables, and built patterns, but he had forgotten to add the crucial, unpredictable "Human" equation.
He had treated Anya as a controllable experiment, a predictable data point in his self-optimization. He had not factored in the chaotic, self-serving ambitions of others. Thankfully, this was a pattern he hadn't yet divulged in deeply; otherwise, he realized with a cold shudder, he would have been a complete mess right now.
Walking back into the hall, John took his assigned spot beside Sensei, the familiar weight of the meditation mat a small anchor in his churning mind. Sensei immediately continued to push him on Chi direction and precision, tasks that felt like trying to sculpt water. John would focus on guiding the energy to a specific finger, then a toe, then a precise point on his skin. Each attempt brought varying degrees of success, often dissolving into that familiar, frustrating "smoke" sensation, followed by the insidious creep of mental fatigue.
It was an even harder task this time. His mind was a mess, fractured by the morning's grim discovery. John was, at his core, a being of patterns. He was like someone with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, needing things to be a certain way, placed a certain way, for his external world to function normally.
For him, this manifested as an innate drive to recognize patterns, find new ones, and integrate them into his life like a meticulously crafted schedule. Once a pattern was disrupted or went wrong, it threw John into a state of disarray. In the worst-case scenario, he would shut down completely. On a smaller scale, like with Anya, it could ruin his entire mood for days, even weeks.
John was forcing himself to concentrate on Sensei's lesson, pushing through the internal chaos. This was crucial for him. But Chi, as he was learning, demanded a calm, centered, and rounded state of mind to be truly understood and wielded. Sensei, ever perceptive, seemed to know John was anything but calm and wisely stopped pushing new concepts.
Instead, he simply informed John to focus on what they had learned yesterday: the principles of Chi healing.
John wanted to resist, to argue that his current turmoil needed a new, external focus, but Sensei merely settled into a deep state of meditation, effectively ignoring him. With a frustrated sigh, John took a deep breath, fighting against the internal dissonance, and fell into meditation too.
Something had to be done.
John knew that with a cold, absolute certainty. His patterns might be fractured, his mind a turbulent mess, but a singular, clear directive had emerged from the chaos: find the disruption. And since he now had a direction, a potential source for what had led to today's horrifying discovery, he was grimly looking forward to everything that would happen after today learning session with Sensei. The quiet contemplation of Chi would end, and the hunt for answers would begin.
If John, with his rigid mental discipline, was struggling to concentrate, it wasn't hard to imagine the turmoil gripping the other trainees. What had transpired this morning was still raw, a chilling reminder that the danger wasn't just external; it was within their own ranks. Before, any misfortune could be blamed on the League's harsh training methods or the unforgiving environment. Now, with Anya's quiet death and the assassin's thinly veiled message, there was no one to blame but themselves, and perhaps John.
Check out the patreon. patreon.com/Emmaony