The Bureau fleet arrived without a declaration, without ceremony — only precision. Their ships cut through the clouds like scalpels, black hulls gleaming with the calm intent of executioners.
Kael counted twelve dreadnoughts before he stopped looking. Each one could erase a continent.
Sera watched from the academy's balcony, her arms folded, expression unreadable. The wind tangled her hair. From a distance, she looked calm. Up close, her aura felt like a pressure front — the kind that precedes a planetary storm.
Tava paced behind her, claws clicking against the metal deck. "We can't fight that. We're not gods."
Sera didn't turn. "You think I am?"
"No," Tava said, too fast. "But they do. And that's worse."
Inside, the others prepared in silence.
Morthen disassembled and reassembled his weapon again and again, more ritual than readiness.
Ryn sat by the window, light from their crystalline body spilling like liquid glass across the floor.
Iri murmured quietly to the shadows, eyes half-lidded, voice soft as prayer.
Kael checked the comms, every channel filled with Bureau commands:
"Containment priority one. Do not engage Helios Break directly. Subdue or terminate students if necessary."
He clenched his fists. "They're calling us collateral."
Ryn's reflection flickered in the glass. "They're not wrong."
Outside, the first bombardment fell.
The sound was not thunder — it was reality breaking its teeth. The air burned white, then red. Shockwaves rolled over the ruins like the ocean reclaiming land.
Sera stepped forward and raised one hand. The sky stopped.
The explosions froze midair — spheres of fire hanging motionless, shivering against unseen restraint. Every molecule in the blast hung trembling, light distorted around her palm like glass under stress.
The students stared.
Kael whispered, "Professor…"
Sera's eyes glowed brighter. "Observe."
She twisted her wrist, and the air obeyed. The frozen explosions reversed, collapsing into perfect points of light — compressed energy smaller than stars, silent and beautiful. She released them with a flick, and twelve streaks of white carved through the clouds, cutting the Bureau's formation in half.
The dreadnoughts ignited one by one.
The fleet's response was immediate. Thousands of drones broke formation, descending in coordinated swarms. The sky became a blur of motion, wings of metal and plasma cutting through the atmosphere.
Morthen aimed his weapon upward. "Permission to engage?"
Sera didn't answer — she was already gone.
A flash of movement, a distortion of light — she appeared among the drones like a ghost in the circuitry. The drones fired, but their targeting systems failed to register her in real time. She moved faster than cause could chase effect.
Each gesture rewrote the air: walls of molten geometry, spheres of annihilation, fractures of sound. The drones dropped like dying stars, burning before they hit the ground.
Kael's breath caught in his throat. "She's rewriting physics."
Ryn said nothing. They were staring at her silhouette through the fire, luminous, graceful, terrible.
"She's teaching it to obey," Ryn whispered.
By the time the smoke cleared, half the fleet was gone. The rest retreated to high orbit, weapons cold.
Sera landed lightly on the balcony, steam rising from her hands. She didn't look tired. She looked… detached, like something had unlatched behind her eyes.
Kael approached carefully. "Professor, if you keep going like this—"
"I won't stop," she said.
"You'll lose yourself."
She smiled faintly. "Then I'll become something worth losing."
That night, the survivors sat in silence around a dead fire. No one slept. The stars above seemed too bright, too close.
Tava broke first. "You know what's worse than being hunted?"
Ryn tilted their head. "What?"
"Realizing they were right to be afraid."
Morthen grunted. "I'm not afraid."
Kael stared into the dark. "You will be."
Sera stood alone at the edge of the ruins, looking toward the sky that was still burning at its edges. She could feel the Bureau watching — not just with ships, but with instruments, minds, gods of data.
You wanted control, she thought. You'll learn consequence instead.
A faint pulse flickered beneath her skin — growth accelerating, evolution spiraling. She could sense new layers unfolding within her. Time felt slow, fragile.
If I let it keep expanding, she thought, I could reach everything. Every mind. Every atom.
She smiled. Maybe that's the lesson.
Behind her, the white Ruinborn lifted its head and spoke for the first time.
"Teacher."
Her eyes softened. "Yes?"
"It is time for your next class."