I don't sleep.
Space for dreams in a town that finally woke up.
The halls of Lunaris High are drab and resonant with new kinds of movement—students whispering where drones once barked, lights flashing with more than simple harm. Static coming through the vents. Not threatening. Not yet. Just alive.
As if the school is breathing differently now.
As if it's looking at me.
I walk the upper balconies with bare feet and a hood pulled low.
It isn't strategy anymore.
It's comfort.
The security panels still blink red, but none of them ping me. They haven't since the breach. Jin said my signature had been rewritten. Scrubbed from the live registry and replaced with a looping null shell.
To the system, I'm a shadow.
To everyone else, I'm something else entirely.
The first to verbalize it is a face I don't know.
He's standing by the east mess hallway, arms crossed, face bruised. Green uniform, but the badge on his chest is missing—half ripped away, half singed.
He looks at me without apprehension.
"You're the one they couldn't grade," he says.
I hesitate.
Then nod.
He doesn't move.
Doesn't inquire.
He just taps the badge on his chest.
"I peeled mine off after I saw the columns glitch. Felt good."
His voice is low, but in it something hums. A low voltage of hope.
I nod again.
We don't shake hands.
But as I go away, I know I'm not alone.
In the northern wing, someone has covered up the Hall of Codes.
The graffiti is tidy. Intentional.
It says:
"WE RANK OURSELVES."
I linger too long, tracing the curve of each letter.
Then I hear footfalls behind me.
Lio comes from the shadows, dragging a stolen drone by its wing.
"I shut down the cameras," he reports. "But it was still broadcasting to Sector Base."
"They're still watching?"
"They're always watching."
I bend, take the drone, and snap it open along the spine. Inside, the glyphs glow soft blue—traces of the same pulse that resides within me.
"How many are online?" I ask.
Dozens, he says. Maybe more. But we're ahead of the curve.
He hands me a data drive.
Today's recordings. The student broadcast. The markers of resistance. Everything. The outside world hasn't seen what is happening.
"Not yet," I say.
"Not yet."
We return to the command ring at midday.
It's half-lit, half-burnt. Miko has wires snaking across the ceiling like metal vines. Jin sleeps in the corner, a soldering kit still clutched in one hand.
Nessa hunkers over a console, sorting through incoming comm bursts. Her face tighter than usual.
"We've had four sweep incursions in twelve hours," she says to me.
"Strata?"
"Proxies, for the most part. Civilian conscripts. They're testing student reaction."
"They're looking for panic," Lio says.
"They won't," I say to him.
But even as I say it, I feel the tension building.
People are waiting for me.
Not just orders—but verification.
Verification that this isn't a glitch in history.
That I'm real.
That I can keep the center long enough for something new to take root.
Miko leads me to the lower spire—a thin, columnar tower that was once an elemental calibration spire. It is deserted now, but the core chamber still resonates with unaligned power. She wants to push me.
"See how much your body can hold before it breaks," she says to me.
I nod.
Go inside.
The air shifts in a flash.
Not unpleasantly.
But deeply.
The glyphs on my arms ignite. The coil in my back tenses, then unfurls. I am as light as I am solid. As if my skin is more than just a shield—but a net.
Something is speaking.
Not aloud.
Not as words.
Just a voice.
And then the ground breaks.
Glyphs erupt up the walls.
Not written.
Projected.
As if they've been waiting for a signal that only I can provide.
Miko bangs the emergency seal.
"Sera!" she cries. "You're overloading!"
But I am not afraid.
Because the power doesn't wish to kill me.
It wishes to comprehend me.
I close my eyes.
Release.
Routine settles into filaments—light and remembrance and pulse. I envision the school as a blueprint, a lung, a loop. I feel all the students still alert. All the Conduit echoes through it. All the nodes of suppression quivering like dying synapses.
When I open them, the room is still again.
Miko's pale. She has tears on her face.
"Your vitals flatlined," she informs me.
"You were watching?"
"I was praying."
All the way back at the command ring. Nessa calling for a vote.
Not on power.
On action.
"How long do we hold the ground?" she asks. "How long before we push?"
Everyone looks at me.
Take the data drive Lio gave me.
Plug it into the uplink.
Broadcast it out to the city.
Unedited.
Unpolished.
Truth.
Screamed and whispered and recorded in real time.
The halls.
The breach.
The lies.
The flame.
At twilight, the Lunaris towers flash again.
But this time, not defeat.
It's a response.
Anonymous symbols light up across the lower wards.
Wall handprints.
Symbols etched in discarded rank badges.
A girl from a lower quadrant sends a photo of her bracelet—smashed in half, headed with nothing except:
"Seva lives."
The next one is from Voss.
A public notice.
Brief. Cutting.
"Any student who does not comply with the reintegration process will be re-designated rogue and forcibly taken off campus."
Jin swears when she sees it.
Lio just stares at me.
"What now?"
And I answer without blinking.
"We don't react."
He raises an eyebrow. "We don't?"
"We lead."
In the darkness, I climb the east tower alone.
When I reach the top, I raise one hand up towards the lights of the city.
The glyphs respond. Not all of them.
Not yet. But enough.
And that is how things begin to change.
Not with a bang.
But with a signal.
A flame we lit and left burning before people knew it was fire.