Vane returned to the fog sector the next afternoon. He walked slower than usual. His boots felt heavy on the cracked concrete path. Each step fought the urge to turn around and run back to the relative safety of the main campus, where the worst thing that could happen was public humiliation.
Out here, he was walking into the lair of a dying dragon he had just admitted to trying to skin.
He stepped onto the rusted balcony. The fog was thinner today, a sickly yellow-grey that let a little more light filter through. Senna was in her chair, wrapped in blankets, looking out at the void. She didn't turn when his boots scraped on the flagstones.
"You came back," she rasped. Her voice was flat. "Bold for a parasite whose cover just got blown."
Vane stopped a respectful distance away near the concrete pillar with the holes he had punched in it. He considered apologizing again but dismissed it. Apologies were cheap. She hated cheap.
"I did the math," Vane said, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets to hide a slight tremor. "Kael wants to break my ribs for being incompetent. Vyla wants to freeze my tongue for being a peasant. The rest of Class 1-A thinks I am a disease that learned to walk upright."
He shrugged, offering a crooked smile that felt only half-forced.
"At least you hate me for the right reasons now. It is refreshing."
Senna slowly turned her chair. Her eyes were sunken craters in her pale face, but the gaze emerging from them was still sharp enough to draw blood. She studied him for a long, uncomfortable silence. She dissected his posture. She dissected his stupid joke. She dissected his presence.
"Mutually assured exploitation," she murmured. "You need a teacher desperate enough to ignore your stench, and I need a student stupid enough to keep showing up to a graveyard."
A dry, hacking cough shook her frame. When she recovered, she jerked her chin toward the practice spear leaning against the railing.
"Well? Don't just stand there vibrating with anxiety. Pick it up."
Vane grabbed the spear. The weight of the wood was grounding. He immediately began the Spiral Circulation, feeling the mana vortex through his marrow. The familiar high-pitched whistle—the Hum—began to resonate from the shaft.
"Before we start," Senna said, holding up a skeletal hand. "Tell me something. And don't lie this time. You are small, Vane. You are not particularly strong without your stolen tricks. You aren't magically gifted. How did a rat like you survive Oakhaven long enough to get here?"
Vane leaned on the spear, considering. He could tell her about running. He could tell her about hiding. But that wasn't the whole truth.
"In the slums," Vane started, "nobody has anything. So if you want them to do something for you... you can't pay them. You have to sell them a story."
Senna raised an eyebrow. A flicker of genuine curiosity broke through her cynicism. "A story."
"Yeah. Like the Great Sewer Subsidence of '98."
Vane relaxed into the posture of the storyteller. It was a stance he had used far more often than a fighting guard in his life.
"There was this minor city official. Real pompous type. Had a newly paved road near the edge of our district he was very proud of. I convinced him the ground beneath it was honeycombed with ancient, unstable smuggler tunnels that were about to collapse and swallow his precious pavement."
Senna actually snorted. "Was it?"
"No. It was solid bedrock. But I drew up some very convincing, very fake maps with charcoal. Told him I knew the 'tunnel rats' who could shore it up before disaster struck. For a fee."
Vane grinned. The memory brought a genuine spark to his eyes.
"Then I had to convince fifty starving slum kids to spend three nights banging pots and pans together underground so it sounded like construction work whenever the official came by to inspect his investment."
"How did you pay them?" Senna asked.
"I told them we were 'taxing the stupid' and promised them a cut of the glorious future where we all ate roast chicken. We ate sludge that week same as always. But for three days, those kids felt like they were part of a grand heist instead of just being starving victims."
Vane's grin faded slightly.
"That is how I survived. I didn't just steal bread. I sold hope wrapped in bullshit to people who wanted to believe they weren't powerless."
Senna stared at him. The silence stretched, but it wasn't hostile anymore. It was thoughtful.
"A general," she whispered, almost to herself. "Organizing chaos toward a strategic goal using morale and deception."
Then a terrible wheezing sound erupted from her chest. It took Vane a second to realize she was laughing. It sounded painful. It sounded like gears grinding without oil.
"Gods," she gasped, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. "'Taxing the stupid.' You really are a survivor, Vane. You just enrolled in the wrong department. You should have been in Politics."
She leaned back in her chair. The burst of amusement left her drained.
"Alright, rat. I see you. You don't just scurry. You plan."
She fixed him with a hard look.
"Here are the terms of our continued association. First... you keep showing up. You keep taking the hits. You build the foundation until your bones know the shape of the Argent Horizon better than your own name. You maintain that Spiral Circulation until it becomes as natural as breathing."
"Agreed," Vane said immediately.
"Second," she continued, her voice dropping to a steel whisper. "No cheap tricks. I know about your 'intimacy loophole' now. If I ever feel my Authority resonating because you are trying to sneak in the back door while I am having a seizure... I will use whatever breath I have left to put this broom handle through your lung. Clear?"
"Crystal," Vane said without hesitation.
"If you are going to steal my life's work, Vane, you are going to do it with my eyes open. You do it after you have earned the right to carry the weight. You don't get to be a tourist in my soul."
She gestured dismissively at the space in front of him.
"Now, show me that Lunar Deflection you siphoned from me. And try to make it look like you didn't just accidentally download it from a dying cripple. If the rotation isn't perfect, the friction will snap your wrists."
Vane nodded. He centered his weight and initiated the spin.
Hiss. Hiss.
The Hum rose in pitch as he stripped the air away, the spear shaft becoming a blurred silver shield between them.