Pain came first.
Not sharp, but deep—like cold water soaking through bone.
Marek's eyelids twitched open to blurred shapes. Ceiling tiles. Cracks in the stone. The smell of old ointment and mana-tinted salves. The Academy infirmary, judging by the glowing rune-wards above him.
His body didn't feel like his own. Limbs numb, head heavy.
But he was alive.
That surprised him.
He shifted slightly. The ache in his side confirmed that he hadn't dreamed the duel. Kaelen's lightning had been real. The explosion had happened.
And the glyph…
That was no dream.
The strange, floating sigil. The flicker in the air. The moment when Kaelen's lightning refused to obey.
The memory pulsed in his mind like a wound.
Footsteps. Light, careful.
Arden's voice broke the stillness. "He's awake."
She appeared beside the bed, her white-blonde hair tied back in a messy braid. A smear of ash across her cheek. Behind her, Junic stood quietly, arms folded, the ever-present blindfold over his eyes.
"You look like someone tried to roast you," Arden said with a lopsided grin. "And failed."
Marek winced. "It was close."
"You missed the post-fight gossip," she added, sliding into the chair beside him. "You're the talk of the academy now. 'The Null Who Broke Lightning.' Sounds like a bard's tavern ballad."
Marek tried to sit up. Pain lanced through his shoulder.
Junic stepped in before he could try again. "You shouldn't move. The ward-runes are still patching your neural lattice. Any sudden motion might trigger backlash."
Marek gave him a look. "English, please? "
Arden smirked. "He means your brain's still scrambled. Stay put, ghost boy."
Junic lowered himself into the second chair. "They're watching you now. Not just students. Faculty. Staff. The Council."
Marek met his blindfolded gaze. "Because of the glyph? "
Junic nodded slowly. "It wasn't a glyph the Grid could trace. That's why it's dangerous. You didn't cast something. You manifested it."
"I didn't mean to."
"That's worse," Arden muttered. "They don't care if it was on purpose. You made the system flinch, Marek. And the system doesn't like uncertainty."
He lay back, trying to absorb it.
Every step forward brought more questions. More danger.
He wasn't trying to be special. He wasn't trying to be anything.
But the system had tried to erase him.
And failed.
"Let them watch," Marek said after a long moment.
Junic tilted his head.
"I'm done hiding," Marek added.
(Academy Courtyard (Two Days Later)
Marek walked slowly beneath the floating crystal lanterns, the marks of his injuries barely faded. Students whispered as he passed. Some looked curious. Others hostile.
No one dared approach him.
Yet.
Arden leaned against the garden wall nearby, arms crossed. "Well, well. If it isn't the boy who upstaged half the top 50."
"You were watching? "
"Please. I had a front-row seat to the chaos."
She fell into step beside him as they turned toward the Training Annex. "People are scared. Kaelen hasn't come out of the infirmary yet, and word is the Council ordered the official duel logs redacted."
Marek glanced at her. "Redacted? "
"As in wiped. The records say you forfeited."
He stopped walking.
"They're rewriting it? "
"They're controlling the narrative," Junic said, stepping out from a side alcove. "They want you quiet, Marek. Predictable. Boxed."
Arden added, "But everyone saw it. Word travels fast. You're a ghost, sure—but ghosts linger."
Marek stared ahead. The wind brushed the courtyard, sending dust swirling like smoke.
"I didn't do it for attention," he said quietly.
"We know," Junic said. "But you're not the only one who saw what happened. And not everyone who noticed is on your side."
(The Hidden Archive – Lower Wing)
A door unlocked beneath the library's main level. Runes pulsed, flickered, and then died.
Inside the Hidden Archives, a figure in gray slipped between rows of old scrolls and forbidden tomes. Their gloved fingers traced spines labeled in dead languages.
They stopped at one.
"Glyphic Resonance: The Pre-System Anomalies."
The figure opened it. Inside, a sketch—faded but still legible, depicted a floating glyph, jagged and unfinished.
It matched what Marek had manifested.
(Professor Caldrith Thorne's Office)
Thorne sat alone at his obsidian desk, a mana crystal spinning in his palm.
He stared at the duel projection for the fiftieth time, frozen at the moment of glyph manifestation.
A soft knock interrupted him.
"You may enter," he said.
A girl stepped in. Aurellia Vex—rank #19, top of the Crystal-Light Division. Controlled. Analytical. Dangerous in her own quiet way.
"You asked for a report," she said.
Thorne gestured toward the projection. "Tell me what you saw."
Her eyes scanned the image. She didn't speak immediately.
Finally: "It wasn't a surge. It was… rejection. The Grid tried to connect to him. Failed. Then… bent."
"Bent?"
"It didn't recognize the signature. So it created space around it. That's not a failure. That's accommodation."
Thorne smiled faintly. "That's what I thought."
Aurellia hesitated. "Should I continue watching him? "
"Yes," Thorne said. "But don't get too close."
"Why?"
"Because the last Null we let live like this shattered half a continent."
(Marek's Dorm (Night)
Marek stood at the cracked window, the moonlight spilling across the floor. His breath fogged the glass.
He stared at his hand.
Nothing glowed now. No glyph. No trace of the surge.
But it had happened.
And he could still feel it—like a chord struck deep in his bones, waiting to be played again.
He wasn't part of the system.
He was something it couldn't account for.
And that made him dangerous.
But maybe…
Maybe that meant he could change things.