Seigi had barely finished wrapping his bruised knuckles when Kurogami's voice cut across the training hall.
"It's time we stop guessing."
The Guild master stood at the edge of the mat, his silhouette sharp under the sterile light. His hands were clasped behind his back, his presence colder than the steel around them.
"Skill can be trained. Reflexes sharpened. But what you carry in your blood—your origin vein—that cannot be faked."
Seigi frowned, chest still heaving from drills. "Origin vein?"
Hana stepped closer, folding her arms. Her tone was quieter than Kurogami's, but no less certain. "Every awakened fighter carries a thread through them. But for some, the thread runs deeper. It touches a root. A vein that remembers the ones who came before—heroes, monsters, survivors. Those veins decide how far you can stretch the thread before it snaps."
Riku tossed a towel at Seigi, smirking. "Think of it like horsepower for freaks. Some of us are mopeds. Some are rocket fuel. Guess which one I am."
Aya sighed and shook her head, petite frame dwarfed by the hall. "It isn't that crude. Origin veins don't just measure strength. They measure how much of you survives when the power starts pulling back. A shallow vein burns out quick. A deep one can hold—but it can break a person if they're not steady."
Kurogami's eyes never left Seigi. "And if yours runs shallow, detective, then this path ends tonight."
The words struck like a verdict. The others fell silent, watching him.
Seigi's jaw tightened. He hated being measured, weighed like a coin in someone else's hand. But the fire in his chest refused to flicker out.
"Fine," he said at last. His voice was rough, but steady. "Test it."
---
They brought him to the reinforced chamber at midnight, when the Guild's pulse was lowest.
The corridor there hummed with a frequency too low for the ear, felt instead in the ribs. Hana walked beside him, her expression unreadable but her pace steady, a quiet metronome to keep him from faltering.
The chamber itself was a contradiction—half laboratory, half shrine. Copper veins inlaid the floor in a geometry too perfect for coincidence, their shine dulled by centuries of use. The air smelled faintly of ozone and charred incense. Crystalline pylons stood in a ring, each humming on a different note so that the chord never settled, a harmony just out of reach.
Kurogami was waiting, presence like frost laid over stone. His eyes found Seigi and weighed him again like currency.
"We've confirmed what you carry," Kurogami said. His voice made the chamber seem smaller. "Now we test what it carries."
Ren adjusted the array in his hands, fingers a blur of nervous precision over dials and switches. The screen pulsed in uneven waves, like it, too, anticipated the moment. Beside him, Daichi planted the end of his staff against the copper lines. Its wood had grown around a core that shimmered with dawn-light, captured and never released.
Hana touched Seigi's shoulder. The contact was brief, more signal than comfort. I'm here.
Seigi nodded once and stepped into the ring.
The pylons woke. The chord converged. Pressure lanced his inner ear, and a familiar ache bloomed behind his eyes—the warning of tears he refused to give. His breath came shallow, as though the air had to pass through something unseen before it reached him.
Daichi spoke, his voice layered with echoes, as if the chamber carried words back from other mouths long gone. "We will not force the vein. We will invite."
The staff struck once. The copper lines flared.
Seigi closed his eyes. He remembered being a boy, lungs crushed by a bully's punch, choking on absence—and standing anyway. He remembered the dockyard fight, when he refused to fall no matter how heavy the fists. He let that refusal melt, not into defiance, but into welcome. He opened the door inwardly. He asked, softly, for permission.
The ring answered.
A brightness braided up through his calves, along his thighs, spine, and shoulders. Not pain—pressure. And under that, a crowd. Not voices exactly, but movements, intentions, like an orchestra tuning to the same key. A lineage that remembered storms and rivers and the way the world bent when told to.
Images flickered across his mind:
– A drum stretched taut, heartbeat and thunder at once.
– A woman standing before mounted soldiers, the wind curling around her arms as if she owned it.
– A boy on a cliff, whispering to the sea, and the sea reshaping the shore in reply.
The weight of it staggered him. For a heartbeat he thought he might collapse, but Hana's presence at the edge of the circle steadied him, her gaze an anchor.
The pylons dimmed. Daichi lowered the staff, sweat glistening at his temples.
Kurogami studied him as a general studies the first march of a new weapon. "Origin confirmed," he said, tone clipped but edged with satisfaction. "Depth significant. Elastic, not brittle." A rare praise buried in that last word.
Ren exhaled too quickly, like he'd been holding his breath for minutes. Daichi wiped his palms against his robe.
Hana crossed into the circle, her sleeve brushing his forehead as she wiped the dampness there. The gesture was practiced, almost casual, but carried an intimacy that made the air shift. "How do you feel?"
Seigi laughed once, rough and incredulous. "Crowded."
From the observation window above, Sato's silhouette shifted. His voice carried down, flat but heavy with restraint.
"Then make a line in there. Decide who leads."
His tone was equal parts warning and plea.
---
Later, when the others had left, Kurogami lingered in the darkened hall. Wraith's shadow pooled in the far corner, barely distinct from the gloom.
"He's deeper than I expected," Kurogami murmured, eyes still on the chamber doors. "Elastic, not brittle. That kind of vein bends history if we shape it right."
The shadow shifted, voice low and fractured. "And if he resists?"
Kurogami's smile was thin, sharp as glass. "Then we remind him that even the strongest vein can be severed."