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Chapter 4 - Where Walls Breathe: The real test begins

An hour had passed since the tunnel trial, and now we stood—lined up like quiet shadows—inside the main training hall.

There were no windows here. No hint of the outside world. Just metal on every surface, cold and silent. The walls were steel-gray, the ceiling high and ribbed with exposed beams. Rows of worn mats covered the floor like faded memories, and strange machines with snaking tubes dangled overhead, their purpose unclear, their silence menacing.

We were arranged before the instructor—the same man with the scar and unreadable face—who had yet to give us a name to call him by. His presence filled the room, not through words, but through stillness, as if his breath alone commanded obedience.

He finally spoke, voice echoing from the walls as though spoken by the facility itself.

"The first step in this program is simple," he said, with no emotion. "We need to determine whether your bodies are attempting to synchronize with mana… even if your cores haven't awakened yet."

He gestured behind him.

A glass box stood on a pedestal—inside it, a single orb hovered, faintly glowing blue. The light wasn't steady. It pulsed like a heartbeat that had nearly forgotten how to beat.

"You will approach the orb one at a time. Place your hand on the surface. If the orb pulses in response to your touch, there is potential. If not… you'll repeat the test every week. After one month, if there is still no response… your participation will be reconsidered."

His words weren't cruel, but they weren't indifferent either. They were final.

We waited.

They didn't call my name first. Or second. Or even tenth. I remained at the back, silent, listening to the soft murmur of breath, of shifting weight, of names being called and footsteps approaching the orb.

Some children touched the glass and it flickered, barely. A weak promise. Others placed their hands, waited, and walked away with blank faces when nothing happened. The orb didn't lie. It pulsed, or it didn't. Hope lived, or it died.

Then it came.

"Reis."

My name wasn't spoken like a name. It sounded more like a file tag. A number someone had to get through before lunch. The voice was mechanical, devoid of tone—like even the speaker didn't believe the name mattered.

I walked forward.

The others didn't watch me. Or if they did, they did so with the same detached pity used for something broken that refuses to admit it.

I placed my hand on the glass.

It was colder than I expected. Like ice locked in time. As if it were testing me in return, measuring the heat—or lack of it—beneath my skin.

I waited.

No pulse. No flicker. No response.

Just silence.

A voice behind the device, the observer, whispered to the log: "No response."

I turned and walked back without a word. My steps didn't echo. My expression didn't shift. But I could feel some eyes drifting toward me—some curious, some dismissive, others filled with that awful thing people call sympathy.

But I didn't look back at them.

Because I already knew the truth.

This device wasn't built for me. It couldn't measure what I held.

My core wasn't dead. It was buried.

Suffocating beneath a layer of something I hadn't yet touched—fear, maybe. Or memory. Or something older than either.

But it was there.

And I alone would unearth it.

---

That night, I couldn't sleep.

I sat on the edge of the narrow metal bed, knees drawn up, my eyes tracing the seams in the steel ceiling above me. I counted my breaths—not to sleep, but to stay grounded. One breath. Then another. Then another.

At some point, I placed my hand over my chest, over the place where the core was supposed to form.

I didn't expect anything. But I felt it anyway.

A throb.

So faint it could have been imagined.

Like someone knocking… from the inside.

A whisper without words, but one I could still understand.

It said: I'm not dead yet.

And then, quieter still: But I'm not alive either.

---

The days that followed blurred into one another—repeating like a tape on rewind.

Every morning, I woke before the others. I folded my threadbare blanket with mechanical precision. I waited in silence until the doors opened and the next round of evaluations began.

Each time, I stood before the orb. Each time, I placed my hand. Each time, it rejected me with silence.

No flicker. No warmth.

By the end of the first week, the whispers began.

"That boy… nothing's happening with him."

"Why's he always so quiet?"

"Is he mute? Or just... dull?"

I didn't answer. I didn't lift my eyes.

Not because I was afraid of them.

But because I didn't see them.

I refused to.

I wasn't like them.

They were waiting for something to happen to them.

I was fighting to bring it out.

---

Training was primitive. Brutal.

Running. Lifting. Crawling. Holding balance poses until the muscles screamed.

There was no finesse to it. Just pain. Repetition. Grit.

And my body wasn't built for it. This fragile frame had been shaped by malnutrition, not preparation. By abandonment, not survival.

My knees popped. My heels cracked. My spine throbbed. My breath came in short bursts that scraped against my ribs like broken glass.

And still, at night, I remained awake while the others slept.

Staring at the ceiling.

Imagining—no, remembering.

The cold that soaked into my infant bones. The sterile light above. And her.

The Queen.

Her face.

Not angry. Not cruel.

Just deciding.

Like I was an item on a list. A number in a calculation.

And every day since, I trained not for her... but against her.

Against the choice she made when she looked at me and decided I was nothing.

---

By the third week, something began to change.

Not outside. Not enough to notice. But I could feel it.

In the shadows of the training yard… in the way my breath lingered longer… in the ache that came slower and left faster.

Adaptation.

I heard one of the instructors say it to himself, watching me from a distance.

He didn't ask about my core. I didn't volunteer.

Because I already knew.

It was still there.

---

On the twenty-eighth night, I sat again, hand over my chest, like a ritual I couldn't stop.

But this time… the cold was gone.

In its place… a warmth.

Soft. Gentle. Not fire. Not power.

Just the beginning of a breath.

As if something within had finally responded.

I'm here.

I didn't speak. Didn't move.

I just let the warmth sit in my chest like a small light, flickering deep inside a cavern.

And for the first time in years…

I slept.

---

But sleep didn't offer peace.

It gave me a vision.

A dove.

White as ash. Alone in a rusted metal cage. Wings wide, slamming again and again against the bars, like it had never been taught to do anything but fly.

It made no sound.

But each time it struck the cage, my chest convulsed. My heart shuddered. The air in the dream thickened, became water, became weight.

Then I woke.

But I wasn't alone.

She was there.

The dove.

Not in my mind. Not a dream.

She floated—real and silent—across the room.

Her wings glowed with a soft inner light, pale and alive.

She turned toward the door… and vanished.

I sat up, breath stolen from my lungs.

My heart thundered.

My skin was drenched.

Was it fever? Delusion? Am I falling apart?

But the warmth remained in my chest. Not imagined. Real.

"It's just an illusion," I told myself. "Just exhaustion."

But part of me didn't believe it.

And still, I smiled.

---

Next morning, they began assigning tasks.

Names barked out. Teams formed. Kids whispered, evaluated each other, chose their allies, their shadows.

Then my name came.

The instructor read it slowly.

"Reis… solo. Southern sector. Container Three."

He didn't explain. He didn't need to.

No one offered to join me. No one asked why I was alone.

I didn't expect them to.

I took my assigned pack.

It was heavier than expected.

Inside: a spectrum scanner. A backup cell. A data reader. A knife.

I packed them carefully and walked toward the southern edge of the simulation field.

That part of the grounds was… different.

Forgotten.

Walls cracked open like wounded skin. Pipes exposed like bones. The air stale. The ground dusted with greenish ash, soft underfoot like decay.

I passed a twisted corridor and stepped into an old cargo container.

Its doors barely hung from their hinges. Rust coated every surface. The air inside was thick with the smell of burnt oil and time. The kind of scent that meant nothing here wants to remember.

I sat on the floor and activated the scanner.

It pulsed once, faint.

Then flatlined.

"No mana here," I muttered.

But I wasn't searching for mana.

I was observing myself.

My fingers shook less. My breath held deeper. My back sat straighter.

Something had changed.

I unsheathed the knife and turned it in my palm.

"If they gave me this," I thought, "do they expect me to use it?"

But against what?

The ruins?

Or whatever future waits, teeth bared, just ahead?

Then a voice broke through the comm pinned to my collar.

"Unit Three, update: spectral anomalies detected. Unstable pulse registered."

A pulse?

Here?

I checked the scanner again.

Yes. A spike. Brief. Gone now. But it was there.

I stood.

The container felt different.

Thicker.

The dust heavier.

As if the air itself had begun… to breathe.

And then—

Knocking.

Once.

Then again.

Behind the wall.

Like something wanted out.

Or something wanted me in.

I tightened my grip on the knife.

Whatever this was…

It wasn't part of the training.

I took a step forward, slow, deliberate.

"If something's behind that wall… maybe it's been waiting for me."

Maybe it's mine.

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