Morning unfolded over the Academy like a held breath.
The twin suns rose behind translucent clouds, painting the training fields in pale gold. Every surface seemed sharper than usual—metal, stone, even the air—as if the world had been rewritten overnight and no one had yet dared to move.
A few students whispered about the thunder that had come from a clear sky. Most pretended nothing had happened, but the silence beneath their laughter was hollow.
Garet Caelren stood alone on the Southern range. His spear's tip caught the first light; vapor lifted from the blade where dew met heat. He inhaled, drawing the scent of steel and dust. The rhythm of his pulse matched the faint vibration in the earth, a resonance he could neither name nor ignore.
He moved.
Each thrust split the air with clean intent—no flourish, no wasted energy. The ground hummed beneath every pivot; echoes rolled outward like low waves. When he stopped, the stillness pushed back harder, demanding another strike. He obeyed.
The weapon blurred, humming louder, until the air around him warped. Light itself seemed to bend toward the motion, drawn by purpose. He felt it—something vast and distant beating in time with his heart.
"Raizen," he muttered without knowing why.
Far above, in the Observatory's glass chamber, Luna Blossomveil watched the field through the viewing array. Her violet eyes tracked Garet's movements with analytical calm, but her mind wandered elsewhere—to the thunder, to the faint flash along the Southern Wall where Sebastian had last stood.
"He's not on the grid," Jovhan said behind her. "Enra's scans returned static."
Luna closed her eyes. "Static isn't absence. It's interference."
Jovhan sighed. "You talk like him now."
"Someone has to."
Outside, a wind passed over the Academy, carrying the smell of ozone. The sensors flickered once before stabilizing. Luna turned toward the horizon. "He's awake."
Professor Enra didn't believe in intuition, but the data before him forced reconsideration.
On the main holoscreen, a feed of corrupted text scrolled in violent bursts—lines of code breaking and rebuilding faster than any system should allow.
> [Auth: SV-01]
[Access Level: — ]
[Rewrite Process Initiated]
He ran filters, isolation scripts, firewall quarantines. Nothing held. Every attempt produced more symmetry, more beauty—like the system enjoyed being corrected by an unseen hand.
An aide approached timidly. "Professor… the Board wants to know if this is another Raizen experiment."
Enra's lips tightened. "No. This is Raizen's shadow learning how to think."
In the depths of Zone Zero, light re-formed into shape. The suspended chamber rebuilt itself around Sebastian Raizen. He stood motionless, eyes half-closed, listening to the hum of his own thoughts.
They no longer sounded singular. Each idea came in layers—raw instinct first, then refinement, then precision, the body's cognition perfecting what the mind had begun. The cheat key within his skull worked relentlessly, polishing every fragment of awareness.
My brain is editing me.
He almost laughed at the absurdity.
Then the system spoke, a whisper through the chamber:
> [Simulation Ready. Opponent: User's previous configuration.]
A mirror took form across from him—his earlier self, calm, composed, fractionally less alive. The version of Sebastian who still believed in control.
He exhaled. "So that's what I looked like before I started thinking properly."
The reflection raised its blade.
Steel met silence.
The first exchange was almost gentle—an experiment in rhythm. Step, cut, deflect, breath. Both moved with identical precision; the room filled with overlapping shadows. Sparks traced arcs of white fire that hovered too long before fading, as if reluctant to vanish.
Sebastian parried a downward slash, pivoted, and countered with a palm strike that sent his reflection sliding backward. The echo steadied, eyes bright with the same resolve.
They blurred.
Movements became equations—each attack a variable solved in real time. When the mirrored Raizen shifted stance, the world bent fractionally to accommodate, adjusting gravity to maintain symmetry. Their duel rewrote physics one heartbeat at a time.
Sebastian felt awareness spiral outward; he saw paths of energy as translucent script, each line of code humming between his fingers. He realized he could change it—edit the fight mid-flow.
He did.
A thrust became a feint became a disassembly of motion. The reflection faltered, its pattern lagging half a breath behind.
> [Efficiency 25 %. Rewrite Acknowledged.]
The air froze. Time stretched thin.
Sebastian's blade hovered at his counterpart's throat. "You were perfection once," he whispered. "Now you're just history."
The mirror smiled—his own smile—and dissolved into light.
Above, alarms rippled through the Integration Hall. Screens cascaded into white static; the network screamed warnings that no one understood.
Luna and Jovhan ran toward the signal's origin. They reached the southern training chamber just as the lights stabilized. The floor bore a single inscription, burned into the alloy by heatless energy:
> Efficiency 25 %. Commence Rewrite.
Jovhan crouched to touch the mark. The metal was cool. "He was here."
Luna scanned the residual mana, feeling its pulse fade through her fingertips. "Not just here," she said softly. "Everywhere."
Professor Enra watched the data feeds die, one by one, until only a single sensor remained functional. It displayed an impossible graph: five frequencies—Qi, Mana, Technic, Divine, and Abyssal—syncing for the first time in recorded history. At their intersection pulsed a sixth rhythm, unclassified.
He whispered the only conclusion that fit. "He's syncing across universes."
The aides stared. None understood.
Outside, clouds gathered though neither sun had set. Thunder rolled again—slow, deliberate, as if the sky were testing its own voice.
Garet paused mid-drill, spear vibrating in his grip. The hum resonated with his heartbeat. For an instant he glimpsed white light flicker along the edge of his weapon, faint but real. He tightened his stance, uncertain whether to fear or chase it.
Somewhere above the stormline, Sebastian Raizen opened his eyes.
He stood on the Southern Wall once more, the wind twisting his hair into pale streaks against the darkening horizon. The world beneath him felt smaller now, not because he towered above it, but because he could see its pattern—every motion tied to unseen script, every heartbeat a line of code.
He flexed his fingers; fragments of the duel replayed in the air around them, dissolving into translucent letters. He could almost hear the hum of the Author's pulse—the rhythm that kept this world alive.
He whispered into the wind, half a question, half a promise:
"Let's see how far this rewrite goes."
Lightning answered, silent and white.
Below, the Academy lights flickered once more, syncing to his heartbeat before returning to normal. No one noticed, except Luna, who turned toward the Wall as if she'd heard a voice call her name.
The echo lingered long after the thunder faded—
steel meeting silence, destiny meeting author, creation meeting itself.
And the world, for the briefest instant, dreamed with him.