When the ceiling of the room collapsed, what rained down upon us wasn't just stone and dust; it was the fragments of a thousand-year-old belief. As the black explosion expanded with that deafening roar, everything was plunged into a momentary silence. When I opened my eyes, neither Ardent was there, nor was Riku's trembling voice to be heard. There was only the sharp scent of ozone burning my throat and that dark void throbbing like a heart in the palm of my hand.
"Get up," a voice said.
It was Kagetsu, but for the first time, his voice came from the outside. He stood right beside me in the shadow of the collapsed columns as a smoky figure. He was no longer just a parasite whispering in a corner of my mind; he was a stranger who had leaked into this world.
"Where are we?" I asked. My voice felt as if it were coming from miles away.
"We are beneath the Academy, but we are no longer a part of it," Kagetsu said, raising his hand toward a non-existent sky. "When the seal exploded, the system spat you out. Just like a body ejecting a splinter."
I straightened up. My Academy uniform was torn and scorched in places. The seal on my right hand was no longer a simple tattoo etched into my skin; it was alive. The silver lines had turned completely dark, transforming into thin, coal-black veins that extended to my fingertips. When I moved my hand, I could feel the mana in the air bending around these veins.
"Ardent... is he okay?"
Kagetsu didn't answer. He simply walked toward the darkness. He wasn't curious, or he didn't care. To me, Ardent was a mentor, but to this world, he was just the final piece of a decaying system.
As I stood up, I realized the cavern surrounding me was actually the foundation of the Academy. Massive roots had pierced through the marble, but these roots didn't belong to trees. They were the energy veins of the Grid. Now, they looked dim, gray, and dead. The explosion had sucked all the life out of this sector.
"We need to move," I said, trying to convince myself. "I have to get out of here before the Dean and his army come down."
"Their armies are the least of your problems now, Hyoga," Kagetsu said, stopping to look back. "That thing released in the explosion... the First Deviation... it didn't die. It just scattered. And a piece of it is still with you."
I placed my hand over my heart. There was a void. Not a feeling of pain, but rather a sense of missing something. It was as if a piece of my soul had remained inside that black sphere, and in its place, that deep hunger had filled the gap.
We slipped out through a narrow crack at the end of the cavern. The sight before me was unlike anything I had seen in my life. I was in the forbidden forest outside the Academy. But the forest was no longer the green, vibrant place I knew. The black light radiating from the Tower had changed everything. The leaves had turned a metallic gray, and the birdsong had been replaced by a deep, suffocating hum.
"Where do we go from here?" I muttered. Even the mud beneath my boots felt different—colder, more viscous.
"Outside the system," Kagetsu said. "To places that aren't on the Academy's maps. To the place people call 'nothingness,' but where everything actually begins."
We walked for several hours. The forest seemed to bend to clear my path. Or perhaps, that was just how I felt. Kagetsu glided among the trees like a shadow, sometimes vanishing completely only to emerge from the shadow of another tree. At one point, I stopped and looked back. The massive tower of the Academy rose on the horizon like a black monolith. It no longer emitted light. It was just there—like an abandoned fortress.
Just then, a sound came from the depths of the forest. Not a branch breaking. The sound of metal scraping against metal.
"Hide," Kagetsu whispered.
I pulled back behind a rock and held my breath. Soon, three figures entered my field of vision. These weren't the Silver Knights of the Academy. They didn't wear shining armor. They were people in rags, masked, and holding makeshift weapons covered in runes.
"The energy trail intensifies here," said one of them. His voice sounded muffled, as if there were some kind of filter beneath his mask.
"Is this the thing the Dean mentioned? That kid?" asked the other. The stone at the tip of the spear he held glowed with a faint purple light.
"That kid or a monster. It doesn't matter what he is. The Council put such a high bounty on his head that even his corpse could pull us out of this pit."
I swallowed hard. I was being hunted. And I hadn't even made it out of the Academy's shadow yet.
"I don't want to kill them," I said internally to Kagetsu.
"Wanting is a choice, Hyoga. Survival is a necessity. Look at the stone on that spear... it's designed to drain your energy. They sense you like a piece of prey."
The men were approaching. The distance dropped to ten meters. My heart was thumping in my ears. As the men got closer, the seal on my right hand grew hotter. As if it had a will of its own, my fingers naturally formed the shape of a claw.
"There!" shouted one of the masked men.
He hurled the spear. It hissed as it tore through the air. Normally, as a student, I should have dodged or created a barrier. But I didn't. My hand reached forward instinctively.
The spear didn't hit my hand. It stopped in mid-air. No, it didn't stop; it was absorbed. The moment that purple stone at the tip of the spear made contact with my seal, it shattered, and all the mana inside it emptied into my veins. I was jolted by a sudden burst of power. This wasn't like the clean energy of the Academy. It was dirty, sharp, and it hurt.
"What... what did you do?" said the man who threw the spear, stepping back in terror.
I didn't answer. That foreign power inside me wanted to burst out like a scream. When I swung my hand, a black gash formed in the air. Like an invisible claw strike, the tree in front of the man was suddenly split in two. The men fled into the forest, screaming.
My hands were shaking as I lowered them.
"What am I?" I asked, collapsing to the ground. "I only defended myself, but... this power... this isn't me."
Kagetsu came to my side. This time, he crouched down and looked into my eyes. "You are whatever you are, Hyoga. A tool, a weapon, or a savior. You will decide that. But know this: those men were 'Out-of-System.' Those who were expelled from the Academy, excluded, and who scavenge to survive. If even they are afraid of you, you must have realized by now that you have no home to return to."
I stood up and brushed the dust off myself. The Academy cloak was now a burden on my shoulders. I unfastened it and left it on the muddy ground. I was no longer a student. I wasn't even an anomaly anymore.
"Where are we going?"
"North," Kagetsu said. "To the place of the extinguished seals beyond the mountains. There is someone waiting for you there."
"Who?"
"An old friend of the one who gave you this seal. Or an enemy. That depends on what you offer them."
I continued walking in the dark forest under Kagetsu's guidance. With every step I left behind, I drifted further away from the Academy. But that black seepage inside me was merging with the forest and the night.
At midnight, we reached the top of a hill. Below, in the valley, small, flickering lights were visible. A town or a sanctuary. But I could see the silver-armored riders circling those lights. The Council army had already blocked the roads.
"They'll look for me everywhere, won't they?"
"Forever," Kagetsu said. "Because you are the only variable that disrupts their order. And order does not like variables."
I looked down at the seal on my hand. The veins had now climbed up to my wrist.
"In that case," I said, with a new-found determination in my voice. "I'd better start liking being a variable."
Just then, a sound was carried to my ear by the wind. Not the neighing of a horse. A whisper. It was saying my name. But it wasn't Ardent, nor was it Riku.
It was the voice of the First Deviation I had heard inside the seals at the very bottom floor of the Academy.
"Hyoga..."
I faltered. Kagetsu stopped, too.
"Is it following me?"
"No," Kagetsu said, his voice worried this time. "It is inside you. And it is slowly waking up."
I looked at the sky. The black tower was still there, but now it looked like a headstone. My own headstone.
I continued walking. But no longer as a hunted child; rather, like a cage carrying a monster.