The fog came back the moment I closed my eyes.
Same ethereal grey shit that showed up every night since the awakening ceremony crashed and burned two years ago. Light enough that I could see my hands when I held them up. Thick enough that everything past ten feet just stopped existing.
I started walking. Didn't matter which direction. The fog moved around me like it was alive, swirling past my legs and reforming behind me. No sound except my footsteps on something solid that I couldn't see.
Then the table appeared.
Same as always. Massive thing, had to be twenty feet long at least. Dark wood that looked older than the city. Ornate carvings running down the edges that I'd never bothered to examine closely because examining your recurring weird-ass dream furniture felt like admitting something I wasn't ready to admit.
Twenty-one chairs around it. High-backed. Empty.
One throne at the head.
I walked the perimeter. My hand brushed the top of one chair and it didn't budge. Tried another. Same thing. These weren't moving for anyone.
In front of each chair, right where a plate would sit, there was an indentation. Playing card sized. Perfectly cut into the table's surface like someone had burned the outline there with something that cared about symmetry.
Numbers sat next to each indentation. 1 through 21. No explanation. Just numbers that felt important in a way I couldn't articulate and didn't want to.
I kept walking until I reached the head of the table.
The throne waited. Bigger than the other chairs.
The indentation in front of it had a 0 carved next to it.
Of course it did.
I looked at my hand. The card was there. Hadn't been a second ago. Just appeared between my fingers like it had been waiting for me to notice.
Number zero.
The Fool.
Glowing faint. Not bright, just enough light that I could see the figure on it mid-stride at the cliff's edge. Face turned up. Flower in one hand. Bag over the shoulder.
The idiot about to walk off the ledge and somehow make it work.
The indentation pulled at me. Not physically. Just this sense that the card wanted to be there and I was the one holding up the process.
I put it down.
The light hit like a flashbang going off inside my skull.
White. Everywhere. The table disappeared. The fog burned away. I couldn't see my hands. Couldn't see anything except this massive silhouette rising in front of me. Too big to process. Too far away and too close at the same time.
I tried to say something. Opened my mouth.
Then something shoved me. Hard. Invisible force straight to the chest and I was falling backward through the fog that wasn't there anymore, through the white, through something that felt like the bottom dropping out of the world.
Water.
Fuck, not again.
The ocean swallowed me whole. Cold. Dark. I couldn't tell which way was up. My lungs burned. I kicked. The surface had to be somewhere. Had to be.
My eyes opened.
Car seat. Leather. The hum of an engine that cost more than most people's houses.
I blinked. Right. Flying car. Reika's flying car. The one she insisted on using even though the academy had a perfectly functional public transit connection that I'd researched specifically so I could avoid this exact situation.
"Good morning, brat."
I turned my head. Reika sat in the driver's seat looking like she'd stepped out of a magazine spread on women who had their shit together and didn't mind reminding you about it.
Platinum blonde hair loose, pale blue eyes tracking the air traffic through the windshield. Her coat was open enough that I could see the top she wore underneath and I immediately looked back out my window because looking at your pseudo-guardian's chest in an enclosed vehicle felt like a line I wasn't crossing today.
"Morning, Granny."
Her hand moved. I saw it coming. Still couldn't block it.
She smacked the back of my head with the precise force of someone who'd done this enough times to calibrate it perfectly.
"Call me that again and you're walking the rest of the way."
I rubbed my head. Didn't actually hurt. Principle of the thing.
"You'd make a national headline walk into Valen two weeks late? That's cold."
"I'd make you a local headline. National costs extra."
The city spread out below us. Kasumira in full morning chaos. Skyways packed with commuter traffic. The Aldenmoor Spine visible as this jagged line of elevated districts cutting through the city's center. Gates had broken there so many times over the past fifty years that the whole area sat twenty feet higher than it used to. Built on top of its own rubble.
Valen Academy rose in the northern district. Couldn't miss it. Massive campus that looked like someone had given a historical preservation society unlimited funding and architectural authority. Old stone buildings that predated the gate era. New construction that tried to match the aesthetic and mostly succeeded. The Central Spire in the middle of it all, glass and steel and the kind of engineering that said we have money and we'd like you to know about it.
"You know I can't actually do anything there, right?" I said, watching the academy grow larger. The Central Spire gleamed, a monument to a system that had no place for me.
Reika didn't look over. Her hands stayed relaxed on the controls as the car banked left around a slower transport. "You'll figure it out."
"Figure what out? They tested me against everything from an F-rank Sparkfin to a restricted A-rank Gryphon. Six times. Remember that trip to the Zurich facility? All you got for your trouble was a bill and another report with the same number on it."
Zero.
Not low compatibility. Not a partial resonance. The Anima might as well have been sleeping. They just don't see me.
"It's the one answer you're getting," she said, her voice final.
I looked back out the window, my hand going to my jacket pocket. The black lacquered box was there. A catalyst that produced no contract. An awakening that got my file flagged and classified before I'd even left the building.
Somewhere down there was Class 1-Z. The remedial track. Where they stick the kids whose awakenings misfired, hoping they'll either get better or get lost.
That's where they'd put me. Not because my Anima was weak. Because I didn't have one.
The son of the Mad Hero. The kid who generated a catalyst at his awakening ceremony. The Zero who spent two years training his body because the system wouldn't give him anything else.
Going to the best summoner academy in Aldenmoor to study a power system that didn't work for him.
The car started its descent. Reika guided us toward the visitor landing zone on the academy's east side. Other vehicles crowded the airspace. Parents dropping off their successful children. Guild representatives delivering their sponsored students. The usual start-of-semester traffic.
We touched down smooth. Reika killed the engine. The sudden silence felt heavier than it should.
I reached for the door.
"Max."
I stopped. Looked back.
Reika's expression hadn't changed. Still calm. Still composed. Still the woman who ran one of the most elite guilds in the country and made it look easy.
"You're not your father."
My hand tightened on the door handle.
"No shit."
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A/N: Thanks for reading this chapter! Support by adding to your library and giving a power stone or two. Comment for a cookie!