The morning of the exam was a cold, gray affair. A nervous energy, thick as fog, blanketed the thousands of applicants gathered outside the colossal testing dome. It was a sea of tense faces, flexing muscles, and the low, crackling hum of barely suppressed power. Everyone was a coiled spring, ready to launch themselves at their dream.
Kael moved through the crowd, a small, anonymous boat in a fleet of warships. He kept his head down, his gaze fixed on the cracked pavement, his mind a mantra. "One step at a time. The written test. Just get to the written test. That's all that matters right now."
He clutched the strap of his worn backpack, a familiar habit that grounded him amidst the chaos. He could feel the sheer ambition in the air, a suffocating pressure. These people weren't just here to try; they were here to win, to dominate.
He felt a presence before he saw it. A ripple in the sea of people. The nervous chatter around him died down, replaced by awed whispers. The crowd parted as if by an invisible force.
Ren stood before him, blocking his path. He wasn't smirking this time. His expression was one of genuine, cold disdain, as if he'd just found something disgusting stuck to his shoe.
"No. Not now. Just ignore him. Keep walking," Kael pleaded with himself, his feet feeling like lead.
"I told you not to come," Ren said. His voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the nervous chatter like a shard of glass. It carried an authority that made everyone nearby fall silent.
Heads turned. The whispers started immediately, sharp and curious. "It's Ren! The S-Rank from Westbridge!" "Who's he talking to?" "Some nobody, look at him. He doesn't even have a training suit."
Kael felt a hot flush of shame creep up his neck, the scrutiny of hundreds of eyes a physical weight. He tried to step around him, to escape the spotlight. "I'm not here for you, Ren."
Ren moved with a liquid grace, blocking him again. His shadow fell over Kael. "But you are. Your very presence here is an insult. It's an insult to me, and it's an insult to every single person here who has bled and sacrificed for a spot."
He gestured vaguely at the crowd, his voice laced with a strange, personal venom that felt far too raw for a simple school rivalry. "You, with your pathetic little glow and your bleeding-heart ideals. You stand here among people who have worked their entire lives, who have real, tangible power, and you think you have the right to share the same air?"
The accusation was so intense, so full of personal hatred, that Kael was taken aback. This wasn't just arrogance. This was something deeper, something rotten.
"What gives you the right to be here?" Ren pressed, his voice rising slightly, drawing more attention. His question was a spear aimed at Kael's deepest insecurity. "What makes you think, even for a second, that you can be a hero?"
Kael's mind went blank. The crowd, the whispers, Ren's burning gaze—it was all too much. He felt stripped bare, his very soul put on trial.
He wanted to run. He wanted to agree. The voice of doubt screamed that Ren was right.
But the fire forged on that rooftop, the resolve hardened by his solitary training, refused to be extinguished. It was a small, stubborn ember, but it was his.
He found his voice, a quiet thread in the charged atmosphere. "The right to try," Kael said, meeting his eyes. "Everyone has that."
Ren let out a laugh, a sharp, ugly sound devoid of any humor. "You? A hero? Don't make me laugh." He took a step closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "You're not a hero. You're a ghost, chasing a dream you should have let die a long time ago."
The word 'ghost' struck a chord deep inside Kael, unexpected and painful. It was a key he didn't know Ren possessed, and it unlocked a memory he had long kept buried in the darkest part of his heart.
—--
The world dissolved into the hazy, golden sunlight of a decade ago.
A small, overgrown backyard, hemmed in by a rickety wooden fence. Two boys, no older than seven, sat perched on the highest rail, their bare feet dangling high above the ground. One was Kael, all missing teeth and scraped knees. The other was a younger, scrawnier Ren, his hair an untamable black mop and his eyes bright with unfiltered dreams.
"When my Evolve comes in," the young Ren declared to the sky, his voice full of absolute certainty, "I'm gonna be just like Aegis Prime! I'll be the strongest in the whole world, and I'll be able to punch through buildings!"
Kael grinned, his own imagination catching fire. "I wanna be a hero too! We can be a team! You can do the punching, and I'll… I'll be the one who finds people who are hurt in the dark! My light will show you the way!"
Ren looked at him, his eyes wide with sincere, childish admiration. There was no arrogance there, only shared excitement. "Yeah! That's perfect! We'll be the best hero team ever! You and me, Kael! We'll call ourselves… the Dawnbreakers! Because we'll bring the light!"
They hooked their pinkies together, a solemn vow under the summer sun. An unbreakable promise of a shared destiny.
Then came the Evolve Manifestations, and the world showed them how easily promises could be broken.
Ren's power arrived like a thunderclap. A kinetic charge that crackled around his fists, a visible aura of potential. He could stop a speeding ball with his mind before he was eight. He was a prodigy. His family, seeing his S-Rank potential, moved away to a wealthier district, to a better school, to a life of specialized training and private tutors.
Kael's power arrived like a whisper in the dark. A faint glow in his palm. It was weak. Unimpressive. A disappointment to everyone, but mostly to himself.
The scene shifted. A year later, a different world. Kael had seen Ren at a pristine city park, surrounded by a new group of friends. They wore expensive training gear and carried themselves with an air of entitlement that Kael didn't understand. Ren was laughing, showing them how he could make a fountain's water hover in the air.
Kael had run up to him, his heart pounding with excitement. He hadn't seen his best friend in months. "Ren! It's me! It's Kael!"
Ren had turned. He looked at Kael, at his worn clothes and his hopeful, dirty face. And Kael saw something in his old friend's eyes he had never seen before: shame. A cold, calculating assessment.
"Do I know you?" Ren had asked, his voice flat and unfamiliar.
His new friends had snickered. One of them nudged Ren. "Is this one of the strays from your old neighborhood, Ren? You should tell him to run along."
Kael had stood there, frozen, his smile collapsing. His world, built on a foundation of a shared promise, crumbled into dust. He watched as Ren, the boy who was supposed to be his other half, turned his back on him, on their vow, on everything they had shared.
The memory was a sharp, aching pain in Kael's chest. Ren wasn't just a rival. He was a friend who had abandoned him. He was the ghost of a promise they had made together.
And Kael, by still clinging to that dream, was a living, breathing reminder of a past Ren desperately wanted to bury.
—--
The past crashed back into the present with the force of a physical blow. Kael was no longer seeing the S-Rank prodigy, the golden boy of the Academy. He was seeing the little boy on the fence, the friend who had traded their shared dream for a shinier one.
The realization gave him a new, unexpected strength. This wasn't about his weak Evolve. This was about Ren's broken promise. The shame he felt moments ago was burned away by a clean, hot anger.
"You're the one who let it die, Ren," Kael said, his voice now sharp and clear. The fear was gone, replaced by a cold, righteous fury. "You're the one who ran away from it the second you got a taste of real power."
Ren's face contorted, the jab hitting its mark. His cool, arrogant facade cracked, revealing a flash of the insecure boy from the park. For a split second, he looked genuinely hurt.
"I grew up," he spat, his voice low and venomous, recovering his composure. "I faced reality. Something you're clearly incapable of doing. Power is what makes a hero. It's the only thing that matters in this world. A lesson you're too stupid and sentimental to learn."
He took a step closer, his presence a crushing weight, his energy crackling faintly in the air. "So here's a new promise, since you're so fond of them. I will find you in this exam. Whether it's in the power vetting or the survival test, I will find you. There are no rules against applicant-on-applicant combat in the Gauntlet, did you know that? It's encouraged, even. Builds character."
He was no longer just boasting. It was a vow, dark and menacing.
"I will personally and completely crush you in front of everyone," Ren continued, his eyes burning with an unsettling fire. "I won't just beat you. I will dismantle you. I will make you understand, in no uncertain terms, that you have no place here. I will make you give up on this pathetic, childish dream."
He leaned in, his voice dropping again. "It's a mercy, really. I'm saving you from a lifetime of failure and disappointment. You should thank me."
The whispers around them grew louder, a chorus of shock and morbid curiosity. "What's his problem? It's just an exam." "Damn, that's cold. What did that kid do to him?"
Kael didn't back down. The threat was terrifying. Ren was more than capable of carrying it out. The thought of being publicly humiliated by him, of having his dream shattered by his former friend, sent a tremor of fear through him.
But that fear was now mixed with something else. Defiance. A stubborn refusal to be broken.
"You don't get to decide my dream for me," Kael thought, his own anger solidifying into a hard, protective shell. "You don't get to erase our past just because you're ashamed of it. You don't get to tell me when to give up."
He held Ren's gaze, the thousands of other applicants fading into a blur. The exam was no longer just a test of strength or intellect.
It was a battlefield for his very soul. And his first opponent was standing right in front of him.
"I'll see you there, Ren," Kael said, the words a quiet declaration of war.
—--
Kael walked away, leaving Ren standing there amidst the whispers. He didn't look back. He could feel Ren's hateful gaze on him, a physical weight, but he kept moving, one foot in front of the other, until he found a quiet spot near the dome's massive outer wall.
He leaned against the cool metal, the distant roar of the crowd a dull hum. His hands were shaking. Not from fear, but from a flood of adrenaline and anger that left a bitter taste in his mouth.
The confrontation had ripped open a wound he hadn't even realized was still there, festering for a decade.
"A ghost, chasing a dream you should have let die."
The words echoed in his mind, dripping with years of resentment. It all made a sickening kind of sense now. Ren's cruelty wasn't just about his own superiority. It was about his own past. Every time he saw Kael, he saw the boy he used to be, the promise he'd broken, the friendship he'd discarded for power and status.
"He hates me because I didn't forget," Kael realized with a startling clarity. "He hates me because I'm a mirror. And he doesn't like what he sees."
The revelation didn't make the hurt go away, but it changed its shape. It wasn't Kael's weakness that Ren despised. It was his perseverance. In a twisted way, Ren's hatred was the ultimate proof that Kael was doing something right. He was forcing the prodigy to look at something ugly within himself, and Ren was lashing out.
He took a deep, shuddering breath, calming the storm inside him. Ren's challenge was a terrifying prospect. The idea of facing him in a direct confrontation, especially in an environment with no rules, was insane.
But it had also given Kael something he didn't have before: a focus. A target.
His goal was no longer just to survive. It was to endure. To prove that his dream wasn't a ghost. It was real, and it was valid.
He recalled his small victories. The glowing marbles creating a net of light. The blinded purse-snatcher, disoriented by a simple flash. The quiet pride he'd felt after each small, creative success. His path wasn't Ren's path. He couldn't win by playing Ren's game of overwhelming force. He would lose before it even started.
"He wants to crush me with power," Kael thought, a grim determination settling over him. "He expects me to fight him head-on. He expects me to be stupid."
A new resolve settled in his heart. It wasn't about beating Ren. It was about out-thinking him. It was about surviving him. It was about proving that a hero's worth wasn't measured in kinetic output.
"Fine. Let him try," he whispered to the cold metal wall.
He looked up at the towering dome. The exam was about to begin. The fear was still there, a cold knot in his stomach. But it was now overshadowed by a burning, defiant resolve.
"They say I can't be a hero. He says I should let my dream die."
He pushed himself off the wall, his shoulders set, his expression firm.
"I'll prove them all wrong. I'll fight my way. With my head, not just my hands. And I will not break. No matter what it takes."
—--
End of Chapter 4