The attack came at midnight.
Aiden was pulled from sleep by the sound of his dormitory door splintering off its hinges. Six figures in black masks flooded into the room, moving with practiced coordination. Lightning crackled around their hands, barriers of energy formed in the doorway, and the temperature dropped as ice manipulation filled the air with deadly frost.
"Target acquired," one of them said in a muffled voice. "Eliminate the threat."
Jamie's bed was empty - the not-quite-human thing that had been pretending to be his roommate was nowhere to be seen.
Aiden rolled off his mattress as a bolt of lightning scorched the air where his head had been. His enhanced reflexes kicked in automatically, time seeming to slow as the divine fragment surged to full alertness.
*Six opponents,* the Eye analyzed instantly. *Lightning, barriers, ice, enhanced strength, shadow manipulation, and... interesting. One of them isn't entirely human either.*
The masked attackers spread out to surround him, coordinating their assault with military precision. These weren't random students - they moved like professionals.
"Sleep," Aiden commanded, his voice carrying hypnotic force as he targeted the closest attacker.
The shadow manipulator's knees buckled, but he shook his head violently and stayed conscious. "Mental protection activated! He can't drop us like the others!"
They'd come prepared. Some kind of mental shielding, probably technological like the device Marcus had used.
*Then we do this the hard way,* the Eye purred with anticipation.
The ice user launched a barrage of frozen spears at Aiden's position. Instead of dodging, Aiden looked directly at the projectiles and spoke a single word with divine authority:
"Melt."
The ice spears turned to harmless water mid-flight, splashing against the walls. The attacker's eyes widened behind his mask - that shouldn't have been possible. Hypnosis couldn't affect inanimate objects.
But the Eye of Truth could impose its will on reality itself.
"What the hell?" the barrier user gasped.
The lightning wielder recovered first, sending crackling energy arcing across the small room. Aiden couldn't dodge in the confined space, so he did something else entirely.
He looked at the electrical discharge and whispered, "Redirect."
The lightning curved impossibly in mid-air, striking the enhanced strength user instead of its intended target. The man convulsed and collapsed, his own teammate's attack leaving him twitching on the floor.
"Impossible," someone muttered. "He's manipulating energy directly."
*They're learning too slowly,* the Eye observed. *End this.*
Aiden stepped into the center of the room, silver light beginning to leak from behind his glasses. His voice carried harmonics that seemed to bypass hearing entirely, speaking directly to the primitive fear centers of his attackers' brains.
"You are all going to kill each other," he said, and the words hit them like physical blows.
The mental protection held for perhaps three seconds. Then it shattered like glass under the weight of divine will.
The remaining attackers turned on each other with mechanical precision. The ice user froze the barrier wielder solid, then snapped his neck with enhanced strength. The shadow manipulator strangled the lightning user with tendrils of darkness. The enhanced strength attacker crushed the ice user's skull with his bare hands.
Then they all turned to look at Aiden with expressions of absolute horror, fully aware of what they'd just done but unable to stop themselves.
"Now," Aiden said conversationally, "let's talk about who sent you."
But before any of them could answer, the dormitory room exploded outward.
Professor Vale burst through the wall in a shower of concrete and steel, his kinetic absorption talent having built up enough stored energy to demolish the building's structure. Behind him came a squad of academy security, along with several instructors Aiden didn't recognize.
"Stand down!" Vale shouted, taking in the scene of carnage. "All of you, stand down immediately!"
The surviving attackers collapsed as Aiden released his hold on their minds, but the psychological damage was already done. They'd murdered their own teammates under hypnotic compulsion, and the memory of that would haunt them forever.
"Aiden Cross," Vale said, his voice carrying grim authority, "you are under arrest for use of lethal force against fellow students."
"Fellow students?" Aiden laughed, the sound carrying an edge that made several security guards step backward. "These aren't students. They're assassins. Check their equipment, their training, their mental shields. No student has access to that level of gear."
Vale gestured to his team, who began examining the bodies and surviving attackers. Their expressions grew increasingly troubled as they found military-grade equipment, professional weapons, and neural interface devices designed specifically to counter hypnotic abilities.
"Who sent you?" Vale demanded of the surviving attackers.
One of them, the shadow manipulator, looked up with eyes that held the hollow stare of someone who'd seen his own soul corrupted. "Can't... can't tell you. Mental blocks... too strong..."
He convulsed suddenly, foam appearing at his mouth as some kind of failsafe activated. The other survivors followed suit, their neural interfaces overloading to prevent interrogation.
Within seconds, all the attackers were dead.
"Cleanup protocol," Vale ordered grimly. "This never happened officially. Medical team, prepare memory modification for any witnesses."
"Memory modification?" Aiden's voice carried dangerous undertones. "You're going to cover this up?"
"This was clearly a sanctioned hit by outside forces. Noble family, corporate interests, maybe even government. We can't investigate properly if word gets out." Vale studied Aiden with new wariness. "The question is what we do with you."
Aiden could see the thoughts moving behind the instructor's eyes. The display of power had been too dramatic to ignore. Reality manipulation, mass hypnotic control, the ability to turn trained killers against each other with a few words - it was beyond anything the academy was equipped to handle.
"I defended myself," Aiden said.
"You did more than that. You made them murder each other, then forced them to remember doing it. That goes beyond self-defense into something much darker."
The Eye stirred with amusement at the instructor's moral concerns.
*Tell him the truth,* it suggested. *Tell him what you really are. Watch him realize how completely outmatched his little academy is.*
"Professor Vale," Aiden said quietly, removing his tinted glasses to reveal eyes that now held more silver than brown, "I think it's time we had an honest conversation about what's been happening here."
Vale stared at the inhuman orbs looking back at him and took an involuntary step backward.
"Dear God," he whispered. "You're not just evolving. You're transforming into something else entirely."
"Something much older than your academy. Something that doesn't recognize your authority or your rules." Aiden's voice carried harmonics that made the air itself vibrate. "The only question is whether you're going to try to cage me like the others did, or if you're smart enough to stay out of my way."
The security team raised their weapons, but Vale held up a hand to stop them. He'd seen what Aiden could do to trained killers - academy guards wouldn't fare any better.
"What do you want?" Vale asked.
"Freedom to find out what I'm becoming. No more restrictions, no more supervision, no more attempts to treat me like a dangerous student who needs to be controlled." Aiden stepped over the bodies of his attackers without looking down. "In exchange, I won't turn this entire academy into my personal playground."
*Yet,* the Eye added silently.
Vale considered the offer, clearly recognizing he had very little choice in the matter. The boy standing in front of him could kill everyone in the building without breaking a sweat, and they both knew it.
"Agreed," he said finally. "But if you hurt innocent students..."
"Professor, after tonight, I think we both know who the real threat is here." Aiden walked toward the demolished doorway. "It's not the slum rat with strange powers. It's the system that sends assassins after children."
As he left the ruins of his dormitory behind, Aiden felt something shift inside him. The last pretense of being a normal student had died with his attackers. Whatever came next would be on his terms, with his rules.
The academy had wanted to see what an SSS-rank talent looked like when pushed to its limits.
Now they'd gotten their wish.