The brothers barely had time to adjust to their shifting sanctuaries before the SHINRA-OS chimed, a crystalline tone that vibrated through their very marrow. The first lecture was not a private session for the S-0s, but a gathering of the top tier of the academy.
The Imperial Lecture Hall was a sprawling, tiered amphitheater carved from translucent obsidian, capable of seating one hundred students. The architecture was a marvel of celestial engineering; gravity plates hummed beneath the floor, and the air was thick with the scent of ozone and cooling servers. While the seven S-0s occupied the "Gravity Tier" at the very front—desks that hovered slightly higher than the rest—the remaining ninety-three seats were occupied by the S-1 and S-2 elites.
As Oni and Rain descended the stairs, the atmosphere turned glacial. One hundred pairs of eyes, belonging to the reincarnated geniuses and war-lords of Earth's past, followed their every move.
In the center of the S-1 block, Kaito sat flanked by a pair of twin sisters, Rin and Rei, whose suits pulsed with a synchronized, needle-sharp frequency. Their stares were calculated, measuring the "noise" Oni and Rain brought into the room.
"Look at them," a girl whispered from the middle rows. This was Elara, an S-1 student whose indigo suit held a deep, calming resonance. Unlike the others, her gaze wasn't filled with malice, but a quiet, ancient curiosity. "They don't look like they've walked the Cycle. They look like they crawled out of the origin point itself."
Oni felt the prickle of a hundred judgments. He took his seat, the charcoal mesh of his suit tightening as the faculty materialized on the front dais.
Professor Ryker stood at the center, his scarred skin a stark contrast to the glowing holographic displays behind him. Mistress Hana stood to his left, her eyes scanning the students like she was reading their raw code, while Master Sato adjusted his digital monocle, which projected a scrolling list of names into the air.
"Welcome to the First Year," Ryker's voice boomed, raw and unamplified. "You are the one hundred souls deemed most capable of leading Nefriet. But capability is not competence. Some of you were kings on Earth; here, you are barely refined ore."
Hana stepped forward, her voice like silk over glass. "I will teach you Aether-Sociology. You will learn that the billions of souls currently walking the Earth are the fuel for this world. If you cannot learn to lead them, you are useless to the Divine."
"And I," Sato added, his monocle flashing, "will give you the Data-Cubes. I will fill your minds with the history of the Sages until you either ascend or your consciousness collapses."
The lectures hadn't even begun when Ryker slammed a fist into a console. The floor of the amphitheater didn't just open; it dissolved into a localized pocket-dimension of swirling dust and jagged metal.
"First Lesson: The Crucible," Ryker growled. "Rank S-0, lead the way. If the Imperial Tier falls, the remaining ninety-three go down with you."
Suddenly, the gravity in the room tripled. Students in the back rows gasped as their desks slammed into the floor. Oni felt the pressure in his lungs, his orange suppressor flaring a violent, warning red.
"Oni! Don't fight it!" Elara shouted from the row behind him, her hand reaching out to steady herself against his desk. "If you fight the gravity, the suit will crush you! You have to anchor the resonance for the rest of us!"
Oni looked back, his eyes catching hers. For a split second, the feral rage in his chest met the indigo calm of her gaze. He looked at the ninety-nine other students—some mocking, some terrified, all tethered to his performance.
"Fine," Oni roared, the sound tearing through the hum of the machines. He didn't pull away from the suit; he pushed into it.
The Gold-Platinum light of the Imperial Rank ignited, a dome of sovereign energy erupting from his position and stabilizing the gravity for the entire hall. The shock on Kaito's face was palpable as the "caveman" became the only thing keeping the class from being crushed into the floor.
"Good," Ryker whispered, his eyes gleaming. "Now, let's see how you handle a real threat."
"Still standing?" Ryker's voice carried a dangerous edge. "Let's see where your limit actually sits. Most Celestials forget that their bodies are just vessels for their souls. If the vessel breaks, the soul spills."
He slammed his palm onto the console, overriding the safety limiters. The gravity spiked to 50x—a level that would liquefy a standard human and crush even an elite Celestial into a pulp.
The effect was instantaneous. Vance, the telepath, dropped to one knee, his face contorting as he tried to mentally "offload" the physical weight. Lyra's star-chart suit flickered and dimmed, her rhythmic breathing breaking into ragged gasps. Even Jax, the massive former miner, let out a guttural grunt as his gravitational plates sparked, failing to compensate for the sheer crush of the room.
Behind them, the other 93 students were pinned flat against the obsidian floor. The indigo light of Elara's suit flickered weakly as she looked up in terror, her breath hitching under the invisible hammer of the room's atmosphere.
But at the front, Oni and Rain didn't move.
To the brothers, this was nothing. They had survived the crushing depths of the lower pits; they had fought through the dense, suffocating aether of the front lines. Oni, who had traded blows with a scientifically engineered Demigod—a creature Takitsu had built to be a literal god-killer—felt the 50x gravity as little more than a heavy coat.
Oni took a step forward. The sound was like a sledgehammer hitting an anvil. Clang.
Then another. Clang.
He wasn't using the suit's stabilizers. He was using raw, Revenant muscle and a soul that had been forged in a hell these "elites" couldn't imagine. He looked back at the other S-0s, watching them struggle to even draw breath.
"This is it?" Oni's voice cut through the roar of the gravity generators, clear and mocking. "This is the 'Crucible' that's supposed to break us?"
Rain joined him, walking with a predatory grace that defied physics. He looked at Professor Ryker, his blue-veined suit glowing with a soft, steady hum. "You talk about the burden of the people, Professor. But if you can't even stand under the weight of your own world, how can you expect to protect theirs?"
Ryker's face turned a deep shade of crimson. He reached for the dial, his eyes wild with a mix of fury and fascination. "You want weight? I'll give you the weight of a dying star!"
He cranked the dial to the absolute maximum—100x gravity.
The air in the room turned into a solid block. The light from the neon-blue conduits began to bend and distort. The other five S-0s were completely flattened now, their suits entering "Emergency Stasis" to keep their spines from snapping. The 93 students behind them were unconscious, their systems shutting down.
Only the brothers remained upright.
Oni felt his charcoal suit begin to tear at the seams. The technology simply could not handle the resistance. The orange suppressor at his chest didn't just red-line; it began to scream, a high-pitched electronic wail that echoed the rage in Oni's heart. He felt his Golden Dragon rank flare, not as a shield, but as a challenge.
"You want to see what we are?" Oni roared. He planted both feet and flexed.
The power didn't come from the suit. It came from the core of his being. A shockwave of raw, uncalibrated energy exploded outward from his body. It hit the 100x gravity wall and pushed back.
The room began to shake. The translucent obsidian floor spider-webbed beneath his boots. The gravity generators hidden in the walls began to smoke, their cooling fans spinning at impossible speeds until they started to melt.
Crr-ack.
A massive spark jumped from the main console. Then another. The blue neon conduits turned a violent, flickering white.
"The resistance is too high!" Master Sato shouted, his digital monocle shattering from the feedback. "Ryker, shut it down! They're feeding back more energy than the dampeners can recycle! They're going to blow the entire wing!"
"Let it blow!" Ryker laughed, a manic sound.
But the machine couldn't hold. With a final, deafening boom, the gravity generators exploded in a shower of sparks and liquid coolant. The oppressive weight vanished instantly.
Silence fell over the hall, broken only by the sound of heavy breathing and the sizzling of fried electronics. Oni and Rain stood in the center of the wreckage, their suits tattered and smoking, looking down at a room full of Celestials who were currently face-down on the floor.
Oni looked at Ryker, then turned his gaze to the unconscious students behind him, his eyes lingering for a second on Elara, who was just starting to stir. He didn't feel triumph; he felt a strange, hollow coldness.
"Connections," Oni muttered, remembering Raphatta's words. He looked at his hands, still glowing with the fading gold light. "How are we supposed to connect with people who break this easily?"
The sirens of the medical drones filled the silence, a high-pitched chirping as silver spheres descended to revive the downed students. As the weight lifted, the social atmosphere of the room shifted from elitist mockery to a chilled, wide-eyed terror. One hundred of the finest Celestials in Nefriet began to crawl back into their seats, their suits sparking with micro-fractures.
"You really don't get it, do you?"
Oni turned to see Vance pushing himself up from the cracked floor. The telepath's camouflage suit was scorched, and blood trickled from his nose where his neural-link had overstrained trying to dump the weight. Beside him, Lyra was shaking, her star-chart suit flickering like a dying galaxy.
"Get what?" Oni asked, his voice still vibrating with the residue of his outburst.
"The hierarchy," Lyra spat, her voice trembling. "We've spent centuries—literally centuries—refining our souls to be perfect. We follow the laws of physics and Aether. Then you two walk in and treat a death-field like a mild breeze. You didn't just break the machine; you made our entire existence look like a hobby."
"Maybe you're too focused on the rules," Rain countered calmly, his eyes scanning the room.
A group of S-2 students from the House of the Silver Owl huddled nearby, led by a boy named Thatcher, a former architect from Earth known for his structural precision. "It's not just the rules," Thatcher said, his voice shaky as he adjusted his cracked interface glasses. "It's the safety. If your resonance is that uncalibrated, you're a walking disaster. You almost killed the S-1s in the back rows with that shockwave. Did you even think about the feedback loop you were creating?"
Oni stepped toward Thatcher, causing the boy to flinch. "I didn't create the loop. Your teacher did. If you're so worried about safety, maybe you're in the wrong academy."
The Aftermath: The Imperial Lounge
The faculty dismissed the class to the recovery lounge—a circular hall where the top one hundred were expected to stabilize. The air was filled with the murmur of a hundred conversations, all centered on the brothers.
As Oni leaned against a translucent pillar, a girl with vibrant green streaks in her hair approached him. She wasn't an S-0, but her S-1 suit bore the mark of the AzureSerpent.
"I'm Jade," she said, offering a small, glowing cube of nutrient-dense gel. "I was a combat medic in my third life. I've never seen a soul-signature like yours. It's... jagged. Like it was ripped out of the cycle before it was finished."
Oni ignored the gel. "Is everyone in this place obsessed with signatures and ranks?"
"In Nefriet, your signature is your soul's resume," Jade replied, undeterred. "But some of us are more interested in the person behind the light. Behind me are Soren and Milla." She gestured to a stoic boy with a military bearing and a girl who was busy recalibrating a floating drone. "We're the 'Tactical 3.' We were the top of the S-1 class until you two arrived. Soren thinks you're a threat to the school's stability. Milla just wants to see what happens when you actually lose your temper."
"I haven't even started to lose it," Oni muttered.
"We can tell," Soren said, stepping forward. "But listen to me, Revenant. There are one hundred of us here. We represent the future of the Celestial houses. If you keep treating us like obstacles, you'll find that even an S-0 can be overwhelmed by ninety-nine others working in perfect sync."
Before Oni could respond, a hand touched his arm. It was Elara. She had been watching from the periphery, her indigo suit casting a calming hue over the immediate area.
"They're not trying to threaten you, Oni," she said softly. "They're trying to figure out if you're an ally or the very thing we're being trained to fight. You have to understand—to them, anything they can't control is a tragedy waiting to happen."
She looked around the room at the various groups: the Scholars whispering in the corner, the Vanguard checking their gear, and the Technicians already running diagnostics on the brothers' shredded suits.
"There are one hundred stories in this room," Elara continued. "Taku over there was a nobody who got lucky. Kaito was a king who thinks he's owed the world. And I... I'm just someone who remembers what it was like to feel the wind on Earth without a suit measuring my oxygen levels."
She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Find one person to trust, Oni. Because when Mistress Hana starts 'The Link' tomorrow, you're going to have to share your mind with everyone in this room. And if they only see rage, they'll cast you out."
The sirens of the medical drones filled the silence, a high-pitched chirping as silver spheres descended to revive the downed students. As the weight lifted, the social atmosphere of the room shifted from elitist mockery to a chilled, wide-eyed terror. One hundred of the finest Celestials in Nefriet began to crawl back into their seats, their suits sparking with micro-fractures.
"You really don't get it, do you?"
Oni turned to see Vance pushing himself up from the cracked floor. The telepath's camouflage suit was scorched, and blood trickled from his nose where his neural-link had overstrained trying to dump the weight. Beside him, Lyra was shaking, her star-chart suit flickering like a dying galaxy.
"Get what?" Oni asked, his voice still vibrating with the residue of his outburst.
"The hierarchy," Lyra spat, her voice trembling. "We've spent centuries—literally centuries—refining our souls to be perfect. We follow the laws of physics and Aether. Then you two walk in and treat a death-field like a mild breeze. You didn't just break the machine; you made our entire existence look like a hobby."
"Maybe you're too focused on the rules," Rain countered calmly, his eyes scanning the room.
A group of S-2 students from the HouseoftheSilverOwl huddled nearby, led by a boy named Thatcher, a former architect from Earth known for his structural precision. "It's not just the rules," Thatcher said, his voice shaky as he adjusted his cracked interface glasses. "It's the safety. If your resonance is that uncalibrated, you're a walking disaster. You almost killed the S-1s in the back rows with that shockwave. Did you even think about the feedback loop you were creating?"
Oni stepped toward Thatcher, causing the boy to flinch. "I didn't create the loop. Your teacher did. If you're so worried about safety, maybe you're in the wrong .
The faculty dismissed the class to the recovery lounge—a circular hall where the top one hundred were expected to stabilize. The air was filled with the murmur of a hundred conversations, all centered on the brothers.
As Oni leaned against a translucent pillar, a girl with vibrant green streaks in her hair approached him. She wasn't an S-0, but her S-1 suit bore the mark of the AzureSerpent.
"I'm Jade," she said, offering a small, glowing cube of nutrient-dense gel. "I was a combat medic in my third life. I've never seen a soul-signature like yours. It's... jagged. Like it was ripped out of the cycle before it was finished."
Oni ignored the gel. "Is everyone in this place obsessed with signatures and ranks?"
"In Nefriet, your signature is your soul's resume," Jade replied, undeterred. "But some of us are more interested in the person behind the light. Behind me are Soren and Milla." She gestured to a stoic boy with a military bearing and a girl who was busy recalibrating a floating drone. "We're the 'Tactical 3.' We were the top of the S-1 class until you two arrived. Soren thinks you're a threat to the school's stability. Milla just wants to see what happens when you actually lose your temper."
"I haven't even started to lose it," Oni muttered.
"We can tell," Soren said, stepping forward. "But listen to me, Revenant. There are one hundred of us here. We represent the future of the Celestial houses. If you keep treating us like obstacles, you'll find that even an S-0 can be overwhelmed by ninety-nine others working in perfect sync."
Before Oni could respond, a hand touched his arm. It was Elara. She had been watching from the periphery, her indigo suit casting a calming hue over the immediate area.
"They're not trying to threaten you, Oni," she said softly. "They're trying to figure out if you're an ally or the very thing we're being trained to fight. You have to understand—to them, anything they can't control is a tragedy waiting to happen."
She looked around the room at the various groups: the Scholars whispering in the corner, the Vanguard checking their gear, and the Technicians already running diagnostics on the brothers' shredded suits.
"There are one hundred stories in this room," Elara continued. "Taku over there was a nobody who got lucky. Kaito was a king who thinks he's owed the world. And I... I'm just someone who remembers what it was like to feel the wind on Earth without a suit measuring my oxygen levels."
She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Find one person to trust, Oni. Because when Mistress Hana starts 'The Link' tomorrow, you're going to have to share your mind with everyone in this room. And if they only see rage, they'll cast you out."
The Aether-Refectory was less of a cafeteria and more of a cathedral dedicated to the preservation of the Celestial form. Situated in a panoramic glass curve of the Central Spire, it offered a view of the sprawling city of Nefriet below, glowing with the neon pulse of millions of "Lower" souls.
Unlike the common areas, the Refectory didn't serve physical food. Instead, one hundred individual Resonance Stations were arranged in a circle. Each student sat at a crystalline table where a localized "Pure Stream"—a concentrated flow of Aether derived from the collective hope and prayer of the humans on Earth—was dispensed into silver chalices.
Oni and Rain took their places at the far end of the circle. The moment Oni touched his chalice, the liquid didn't just nourish his body; it projected flashes of images into his mind: a mother on Earth praying for her child's health, a scientist celebrating a breakthrough, a soldier's relief at returning home.
"It's overwhelming the first time, isn't it?"
A student from the House of the Silver Owl sat across from them. He was lean, with nimble fingers that moved as if he were constantly playing a piano. "I'm Aris," he said. "S-2. In my past life, I was a neurosurgeon. I spent forty years trying to fix the human brain only to realize here that it's the soul that usually breaks first."
Oni set the chalice down, his jaw tight. "I don't like the taste of other people's memories."
"None of us do at first," a girl sitting next to Aris added. Her name was Kyra, and her silver suit was adorned with small, floating lenses. "But that stream is the only thing that keeps our suits from eroding our biological hearts. We are Celestials; we consume intent. If you don't drink, your own power will start to eat you from the inside out."
The conversation at the table was joined by Taku, the nervous boy they had met earlier, and a sharp-featured girl named Vesper who sat at the S-0 table but leaned over to listen.
"The brothers are 'Origin-Born,' Kyra," Vesper noted, her voice like clicking ice. "They don't have the same erosion problems we do. Their souls were forged in a vacuum, not the Cycle. That's why they could stand in 100x gravity while you were busy trying not to turn into a puddle."
"Is that why everyone is staring?" Rain asked, nodding toward a group of S-1s led by Kaito, who were huddled several tables away, speaking in low, frantic tones.
"They're staring because you're a threat to the budget," Milla, the girl from the 'Tactical 3', interjected as she sat down with her drone hovering over her shoulder. "That gravity stunt cost the academy three billion credits in hardware. Half the S-2s are terrified you'll get the wing shut down for repairs, and the other half are wondering if they can bribe you into being their 'Anchor' for the combat finals."
Soren, the stoic boy from the lounge, joined them, his expression grim. "It's more than that. Look at the staff table."
At the head of the room, Mistress Hana and Professor Ryker were in deep conversation with a man who wasn't there during the lecture. He wore a heavy, ceremonial robe that seemed to absorb the light around him.
"That's Archivist Thorne," Aris whispered, his voice dropping an octave. "He handles the 'Deletion' protocols. If the S-0 tier is deemed too unstable to be integrated, he's the one who signs the order to have your memories wiped and your souls sent back to the start of the Cycle. You didn't just impress Ryker today; you put yourself on Thorne's radar."
Oni's eyes drifted to Elara, who was sitting a few tables away. She wasn't drinking from her chalice. She was watching Thorne with a look of pure, unadulterated dread. When she caught Oni's eye, she subtly shook her head—a warning.
"Eat up, 'Sovereigns'," Vesper said with a cold grin. "Tomorrow, Hana takes us to the Mirror Room. She's going to make us look at the humans we're supposedly 'protecting' through the lens of their suffering. Most of the elites here can't handle it. They prefer the Pure Stream because it's filtered. Hana... she gives it to you raw."
Oni picked up the chalice again. This time, he didn't look at the memories. He looked at the reflection of his own glowing eyes in the silver liquid. "Let her bring the raw stream," he said. "We've lived in it our whole lives."
The heavy silence of the Refectory was broken only by the low, resonant hum of the Central Spire. As the hundred students finished their "intake," the silver chalices retracted into the tables, vanishing as if they had never existed. The "Pure Stream" had done its work, settling the jagged energy of the classroom explosion, but for Oni, the taste of filtered hope felt like a lie on his tongue.
The Aether-Refectory emptied as the one hundred students retreated to their respective sanctuaries. In the Imperial Wing, the silence was heavy, broken only by the low, rhythmic hum of the SHINRA-OS recalibrating the air pressure.
Oni stood in the center of his "Neural-Sanctuary." The jagged volcanic rocks and red aether-storm of his subconscious were still swirling, a reflection of his internal unrest. He was about to step into the silver Regeneration Bath to soothe the ache in his muscles when the walls of his room didn't just vibrate—they spoke.
"Intrusion Alert: S-0 ID-Sync detected at the perimeter."
The stone door of his room dissolved into mist. Standing there was Kage, the former assassin who had remained the most silent of the five S-0 peers. In the dim, blood-red light of Oni's room, Kage looked less like a Celestial and more like a tear in reality. His suit didn't glow; it seemed to drink the light.
"You don't sleep," Kage said, his voice a dry rasp that carried no hostile intent. "Neither do I. The 'Pure Stream' in the refectory... it doesn't sit well with souls that have spent too much time in the dark."
Oni didn't move, his hand instinctively twitching toward the space where a blade should be. "You've got five seconds to tell me why you're in my room before I see if your 'Shadow-Sync' can handle a direct hit."
Kage didn't flinch. Instead, he tossed a small, triangular data-chip onto Oni's stone desk. It was glowing with a prohibited violet hue—Black-Market Tech.
"The S-0 tier is a gilded cage, Oni," Kage continued, stepping further into the room. "The academy keeps us here because they're afraid of what we'd do if we were free-roaming in Nefriet. But being S-0 gives us one thing the others don't have: Neural-Priority. That chip contains a bypass for the SHINRA-OS. It'll let you access the 'Deep Archives' without Sato's monocle watching your every thought."
Rain appeared at the threshold, having felt the shift in the Aether. He looked at Kage, then at the chip. "Why give this to us? You barely know us."
"Because the others are comfortable," Kage said, turning his back to them, his form starting to blur back into the shadows. "They want the status. They want the 'Ascension' that Takitsu promises. But you two... you want to burn the house down. And if you're going to do that, you might as well have the floor plans."
He paused at the door, his eyes flashing with a cold, pale light. "Check the logs on Project Sephina. The Master Cube Sato gave you is a filtered version. The bypass chip will show you the truth."
Kage vanished. Oni slotted the violet chip. The room intensified, the walls of the sanctuary vibrating as the academy's encryption layers were peeled back.
"Bypass Confirmed. Accessing Restricted Feed: BLACK-SITE GRID 0-1."
The hologram that materialized in the center of the room was a silent, high-altitude surveillance feed. It wasn't a school archive; it was a window into a place that shouldn't exist. In the center of a null-space void, miles away from the academy, Sephina sat suspended in a crystalline throne.
She wasn't just sitting there. She was fading. The brothers watched as her hands glowed with a frantic, rhythmic pulse, stitching together the jagged, reality-warping shards of the God of Destruction, Deretta. Every time Sephina's heart beat, a ripple of white light surged from her chest into the God's broken form, stabilizing the energy that threatened to unravel the world.
She looked hollow. Her skin was translucent, her eyes closed in a state of permanent, exhausting focus. This was the work of an Ascended human's ambition—Takitsu had her locked in a cycle of self-erasure to restore a power that had no place in the living world.
"She's dying," Rain whispered, his voice barely audible over the hum of the terminal. "She's not just healing her. She's giving herself away to keep that thing from waking up and screaming."
Oni stood frozen, the red aether of his sanctuary reflecting in his eyes. There were no logs explaining why. There were no secret plans or "keys" discussed. There was only the sight of their mother being consumed by a task that would end her life in six years.
The hologram hissed and dissolved as the chip melted under the heat of the bypass. The room returned to its red-aether silence.
The door to the sanctuary didn't open, but Vance was still in the hall, his telepathy leaking out in jagged bursts of fear. "You saw her," Vance's voice echoed in their minds. "You saw the black site. We aren't being trained to lead, Revenants. We're being trained for a war that's already been decided."
Jax and Lyra appeared behind Vance in the corridor. "The elites think this is a game of ranks," Lyra whispered. "But we've felt the tremors. Every time your mother's heart skips a beat, the world flinches."
Oni looked at his hands, still glowing with the residue of his power. "Then let the school keep their ranks," he said, his voice flat and dangerous. "If this is what they call the 'Divine' order, I'll be the one to tear it down."