The morning transport for Sector 7 was a repurposed fusion-bus, its armor plating dented and stained from 40 years of service. It groaned under the weight of dozens of weary workers and a handful of students from the local Academy, all commuting toward the industrial core.
Caine stood, gripping an overhead pole. He kept his right hand shoved deep inside the pocket of his faded utility jacket.
The ride was a blur. Caine kept checking his forearm. He had managed to suppress the partial manifestation, but the feeling remained—the deep, cold thrumming inside his bones. When he concentrated, he could still feel the energy wanting to explode, demanding release. He was effectively storing the raw potential inside his nervous system, a state that should have been impossible.
Normal CrystalHeart users felt empty between uses. Caine felt full. Uncomfortably, dangerously full.
He needed answers, but he couldn't go to the official Academy trainers. They would use a measuring device. They would see his '10' rating and laugh, or worse, they would see the instability of his core and lock him down for experimentation.
There was only one person he trusted who might know about 'irregular' awakenings.
The shop was barely a shop. Nestled deep within the Sector 7 black market, it was a cramped bunker smelling of ozone and hydraulic fluid.
"You're a week early, kid," a voice grunted from beneath the chassis of a disassembled Jahgred crawler. The man, Old Man Silas, slid out on a wheeled creeper. He was missing one eye and half his left leg, both taken during the early wars. He was one of the few surviving Level 3 Masters.
"I need you to look at something, Silas. Not a device. Me."
Silas paused, his one good eye narrowing. He wiped greasy hands on a rag and stood up. "I'm a mechanic, Caine. Not a bio-engineer. What did you do to yourself this time?"
Caine took a deep breath. Slowly, he pulled his right hand out of his pocket and placed it on the counter. He closed his eyes, focusing the core in his chest, allowing just a tiny fraction of that overwhelming flow to escape.
"Bzzzt."
A small, flawless azure crystal scale, no bigger than a fingernail, erupted on his knuckle. It emitted a soft, internal hum that vibrated the entire metal counter.
Silas froze. The single eye widened until the whites were visible. "By the Ancestors..."
He didn't grab Caine. Instead, he reached into a locked drawer and pulled out a primitive, handheld measuring rod—a relic from the first generation, much older than the current 'digital' models. He touched it to Caine's glowing knuckle.
The internal filament inside the glass rod turned a dark, stable sapphire, glowing intensely.
"The digital counter reads your base level, Caine. And it reads '10' because your power is internal," Silas whispered, his voice trembling. "It can't project outwards properly. But..."
Silas held the ancient rod up.
"This is an old resonance reader. It measures density, not projection. Caine... your base CHPower might be 10, but the density and purity of the energy you are suppressing..."
He looked from the rod to the small crystal scale on Caine's hand.
"That small piece? It holds the density of a High Master."
Caine's heart hammered against his ribs. The density of a Master. He wasn't weak. His power was just... compressed.
"Can anyone else measure this?" Caine asked, terrified.
"No. Not without equipment I haven't seen in 20 years. To the world, you're a glitch. A weak, partial materialization," Silas said, serious. "Caine, if the Academy, or worse, the Jahgreds, find out you have access to true density... they will dismantle you."
"I need to learn how to control it, Silas. How to release it properly."
Silas nodded grimly. "I can teach you. But it won't be training. It will be torture. If you can't learn to compress that energy completely on command, the first serious Jahgred fight you get into won't just kill you. It'll detonate you like a fusion bomb."