The sky over the Academy shifted before anyone realized it. Not violently, not with the thunderous roar of a world ending, but with the subtle tension of a breath held too long. A thin pressure spread through the atmosphere, the kind that made even birds hesitate mid-wingbeat. The morning light felt distorted—brighter at the edges, dimmer at the center—as if the world itself was struggling to find its balance again.
Students in the central courtyard paused, glancing upward as a faint tremor rolled across the clouds. Nothing visible. No rift, no storm. Just an instinctual tightening of the world's fabric. A feeling that something unseen had brushed too close.
The Academy reacted before most students even understood what they were feeling. Arcane detectors scattered across the walls hummed to life, their crystalline cores flashing in alternating pulses of blue and gold. One ignited near the East Tower, startling two apprentices into stumbling backward.
"What was that?" one whispered.
"Mana fluctuation?" the other guessed.
"No… that felt different."
It was not a fluctuation.
This was resonance.
And it was the second time the world had done this in a week.
Far above them, sitting at the edge of the Southern Wall, Sebastian Raizen opened his eyes to the trembling sky. His gaze remained calm as the distortion rippled through the air, bending the light around the clouds for a heartbeat before fading.
He didn't move. Didn't flinch. He simply watched as the world slowly settled, like a beast returning to slumber, still restless under its skin.
Luna Blossomveil found him moments later, her footsteps soft but her presence impossible to miss. Her silver hair glimmered oddly in the strained light, catching fractured reflections of the sky's unrest.
"You felt it too," she said, not wasting time on greetings.
Sebastian didn't answer immediately. His eyes stayed on the horizon where the clouds were still subtly reshaping themselves, as if stitching invisible wounds closed.
"Not felt," he finally replied. "Recognized."
Luna drew closer, frowning. "Recognized? This… phenomenon has no record. Even the Conclave has nothing."
"That's because it's not in the world's records," Sebastian said. "It doesn't belong to this world."
His voice wasn't loud, but the words carried weight—like iron dipped into water, sinking straight to the bottom.
Luna swallowed. She didn't understand the full meaning, but she understood enough: whatever was happening, it was not natural, not predictable, and certainly not safe.
A sharp pulse rippled behind them as a set of crystal pillars ignited near the Academy's center. Students gasped as the alarm shimmered through the air—silent, but heavy. A rare activation.
Then Professor Enra appeared on the far balcony, arcane robes fluttering. His expression, normally composed and unreadable, was rigid with a seriousness the younger students had never seen.
"We have a spatial anomaly," he announced, voice steady but strained. "All advanced students maintain position. Instructors—on me."
Murmurs exploded instantly.
Another anomaly?
Within a week?
Luna's eyes shifted back to Sebastian. He wasn't looking at the anomaly or the teachers racing across the courtyard. He wasn't even looking at the sky anymore.
He was listening.
A faint oscillation shimmered through the air, too subtle for most to hear, too layered for even strong mages to decipher. But Sebastian tracked it with ease, his gaze narrowing as the world vibrated at frequencies the human ear could never perceive. To him, the disturbance was not random. It carried pattern, intent, structure—like a heartbeat coming from the wrong side of reality.
The anomaly near the Academy grounds began to twist, the mana field bending inward. Students backed away as the air cracked faintly, like glass stressed under pressure. A ripple spread across the ground, and a geometric distortion formed—just a flicker, but unmistakable.
Luna stepped forward, readying her stance. "Is that… a Gate?"
"No," Sebastian answered softly. "Not yet."
The distortion pulsed once.
Then collapsed instantly, leaving only scattered motes of mana that fizzled into the wind.
Professor Enra exhaled in visible relief. The gathered instructors slowly lowered their hands.
"The anomaly dissipated," one murmured.
"Then why didn't the detectors shut down?" another asked.
Because the anomaly didn't leave.
It shifted.
Sebastian felt it. It traveled across the Academy's foundation stones and vanished into the ground, like something burrowing deeper to hide. His gaze followed the direction it slipped toward—the northern districts.
"It's not over," he murmured.
The sky above dimmed again—not in color, but in sensation. The same pressure struck, heavier this time. Like a second breath. The world inhaled sharply, and the wind stilled as if the very atmosphere flinched.
Luna felt it too. "Sebastian—"
He was already gone.
He moved not with speed, but with purpose: silent, controlled steps that made no noise against the stone walkway. His presence cut through the thickening air as if he were moving through a separate dimension. Luna followed instantly, keeping his pace without question.
They reached the northern training field just as a second ripple exploded outward.
This one they could see.
A circular distortion roughly five meters across flickered above the ground—shimmering with iridescent colors that twisted between blue, violet, and blood-red. It warbled, unstable, veering between collapse and expansion.
Students nearby staggered backward, clutching their heads as the pressure distorted their senses.
Sebastian stopped ten paces from the distortion and stared at it with an unreadable expression.
Luna whispered, "It's forming a Gate, isn't it?"
"No," Sebastian said quietly. "This is the world trying to decide if it should split open."
He raised a hand.
Only Luna saw the subtle change—his irises flickering like ink touched by fire. His hair ruffled slightly, not from wind, but from a faint internal pressure rising through him.
He wasn't powering up.
He was aligning.
The distortion flared violently, cracking the air around it. Reality strained—not enough to break, but enough to scream.
Sebastian stepped closer.
The moment he crossed the boundary of the anomaly's influence, the distortion reacted. It surged inward like a collapsing star, spiraling into itself. The colors condensed to a single white shimmer, pure and blinding.
Luna shielded her eyes.
The world shuddered.
Sebastian touched the distortion with two fingers.
And the anomaly snapped shut—like a door forcibly slammed by a hand unseen.
The backlash hit him instantly. His breath caught; a tremor ran through his arm. The air rippled violently from the forced closure, sending dust exploding in a wide circle.
Luna rushed to him. "Sebastian!"
He steadied himself with one sharp exhale.
"I'm fine."
He wasn't.
For a fraction of a second, his aura had flickered—something raw, something too white, too bright. A glimpse of power his body wasn't meant to use without warning. The world had pushed him, and he had pushed back.
His knuckles were faintly white.
Luna saw.
She said nothing.
Far across the courtyard, Professor Enra and three instructors arrived, wide-eyed at the residual mana scattering around the field.
"Someone closed it," an instructor whispered.
"No," another corrected. "Someone stabilized it."
Luna turned sharply toward them. "He prevented a rupture."
Professor Enra stared at the fading traces of the anomaly. His brow furrowed. His voice trembled. "That shouldn't be possible without a Conclave array. Who—"
He froze when he saw Sebastian.
The realization hit him so hard he actually stepped back.
Sebastian simply looked at him, unbothered.
A silence settled over the field.
That was when the second pulse hit.
A deep, resonant vibration rolled across the land—stronger than anything before. The sky dimmed again, not in light but in spirit, as if something colossal on the other side of existence exhaled directly into the world.
Students dropped to their knees.
Instructors clutched their heads.
Luna gritted her teeth, barely staying upright.
Sebastian stood unmoving.
But his eyes sharpened.
Because this time, the tremor carried a whisper—one that bypassed sound, bypassed mana, bypassed reality itself.
A low, heavy voice—not heard, but felt.
Raizen.
The world snapped back a second later, pressure vanishing as quickly as it came.
But the damage was done.
Sebastian looked up at the sky. His gaze was calm, but there was a depth there—a distant recognition no one else could possibly understand.
Luna approached slowly. "Sebastian… what was that?"
His answer was quieter than the wind.
"The other side waking up."
And before anyone could speak another word, a shadow stirred at the far edge of vision—far beyond the Academy's walls, far beyond the horizon line. An outline that didn't belong to this world. A shape observing, patient, waiting.
Sebastian blinked once.
The silhouette vanished.
The world finished trembling.
But every instinct he had told him—
This was only the beginning.
The tremor left an echo behind—not a sound, not a fluctuation, but a feeling. A residue of something vast pressing against the edges of perception before retreating. The Academy felt hollow in the wake of it, as if air had been scooped from its lungs. Students slowly rose to their feet, confused and shaken. Instructors exchanged uneasy glances. Even the sky seemed uncertain of its own stability.
Luna kept her eyes fixed on Sebastian. His posture remained composed, but there was a faint tension in the line of his shoulders—as if something inside him had tightened, not from fear, but from recognition.
Professor Enra approached them with hesitant steps, each one slower than the last. His gaze flicked between Sebastian and the place where the anomaly had been.
"That distortion… it reacted to you," he finally said.
Sebastian didn't deny it. "It recognized something familiar. Or something it feared."
Enra's face paled. "Spatial anomalies don't fear." But he didn't sound convinced. He sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
The instructors behind him stood rigid, trying to hide their unease. They had seen talented prodigies before. They had witnessed young geniuses perform miracles. But they had never seen a student stare down reality as if it were a mere equation to balance.
One instructor murmured, "The Conclave must be informed."
Enra shook his head sharply. "Not yet. If word spreads too quickly, the Board will overreact."
"They should overreact," another hissed. "Two anomalies in a week? That's not natural."
Luna stepped between Sebastian and the cluster of instructors, her tone cold. "Then start acting like instructors and stop whispering like frightened children."
Enra stiffened at her words, but he didn't argue. He knew the truth—whatever this was, it exceeded their comprehension, and the only one standing at the center of it was the student they understood least.
Sebastian turned away from them without offering further explanation. He didn't need to. Enra and the others weren't prepared for the truth, even if he could share it.
Luna followed beside him. "You heard something, didn't you?"
He didn't answer immediately. His steps slowed, eyes drifting toward the distant line of the horizon. The world felt stretched thin, like a canvas pulled too tightly over a frame.
"I heard… acknowledgment," he said finally.
"Acknowledgment from what?"
"A place that shouldn't remember me."
That was all he offered. And he knew Luna wouldn't press further—not out of fear, but out of understanding that some answers belonged to deeper moments.
They crossed the courtyard. Whispers chased their steps.
"That distortion moved."
"It didn't just vanish—it reacted."
"He was standing right in the middle of it."
"Is Raizen… doing something?"
No one dared approach him. The rumor trail he left behind had grown too heavy, too uncertain. Even the Big 8 had started paying attention—not the respectful curiosity from before, but a cautious, calculating interest.
Far above, on the rooftop of the West Library, a slender figure leaned against the railing. Dark blue hair drifting in the wind, eyes narrowed. Rhea Velstorne had watched the scene unfold from the moment the first distortion appeared. She didn't move. Didn't blink. Her fingers tapped the stone quietly, rhythmically.
"That wasn't a simple anomaly," she murmured.
A presence emerged beside her. Kenjie Velstorne stepped out of thin air, a faint ripple marking his appearance.
"You felt it too?" Rhea asked without looking.
Kenjie's eyes were distant, analyzing the fading fluctuations with unnerving precision. "Distortion patterns aren't supposed to sync with human signatures."
"But that one synced with his."
Kenjie nodded slowly. "The world responded to Sebastian Raizen… like a missing variable returned."
Rhea exhaled, a rare expression of unease crossing her face. "And you saw the way the anomaly collapsed. He didn't dispel it. He forced reality to pick a different outcome."
Kenjie's eyes narrowed slightly. "He's no longer just operating outside predictive models. He's rewriting them."
Both Velstornes fell silent.
Below, the world continued trembling.
Outside the Academy walls, the environment wasn't fairing much better. In the outer districts, animals fled in sudden bursts. Leaves twisted unnaturally on branches. Some rivers rippled in opposite directions. Compass artifacts rotated in confused circles. The atmosphere warped, returning to normal only to spiral again minutes later.
Even in distant nations—Murim's valley temples, Arcadia's spell towers, the Cathedral of Aetherion—brief disturbances were recorded. Minor shifts. Subtle pulses. None catastrophic, but all synchronized.
It wasn't local.
It was dimensional.
Back inside the Academy, Luna and Sebastian reached the courtyard fountain when the air flickered again—not violently, but faintly. Like someone momentarily messing with the world's frame rate. Sebastian stopped walking.
"Another?" Luna asked.
"No," he murmured. "This one isn't forming. It's watching."
A chill ran between them.
There was no distortion this time. No spatial rupture. No anomaly.
Just an impression—something hanging at the edge of perception, observing the aftermath like a predator studying prey.
Luna's heartbeat quickened. "Where?"
"Everywhere," he said.
A pressure thickened in the air, not hostile, not harmful… just aware. And then, without warning, the presence blinked out of existence. Gone. As if it had been satisfied.
Sebastian's jaw tightened slightly. "It's testing boundaries."
Luna looked at him. "Are you saying this thing is intelligent?"
"It's not a thing," he corrected calmly. "It's a place."
She didn't understand, but she didn't need to—not now.
Professor Enra approached again, this time alone. His expression was grim.
"Student Raizen," he said. "The Conclave has requested your presence."
"They requested," Sebastian said, "or they panicked?"
Enra stiffened. "…The latter."
Luna frowned. "What reason did they give?"
"That you were the closest person to the anomaly."
Sebastian smiled faintly. "A convenient excuse."
Enra hesitated. "Do you intend to go?"
"Yes."
The answer was immediate. Confident.
But Luna felt something else beneath it—anticipation. As if Sebastian expected the Conclave's summons. As if he'd been waiting for it.
The wind shifted, carrying scattered murmurs from students watching from afar. The entire Academy was tense now. The distortions, the pulses, the heavy sky—they had shaken the foundation of what students believed was stable.
Sebastian Raizen walking calmly into the Conclave chambers did nothing to ease their nerves.
Luna walked with him in silence. She didn't like it. Not the summons, not the timing, not the way the sky refused to return to normal.
At the entrance to the Conclave's subterranean hall, Enra paused.
"They are… unsettled," he warned quietly. "What they felt earlier—it challenged their understanding of reality."
Sebastian gave a soft, unreadable smile. "Good."
Enra blinked. "…Good?"
Sebastian glanced at the sealed Conclave doors.
"If the world is changing," he said calmly, "they should learn to fear the right things."
The doors opened.
Cold air spilled out.
The Conclave waited inside.
And the world trembled again—this time quieter, but deeper.
As if something massive had opened a single eye somewhere beyond the veil.
The sky outside dimmed once more.
The Conclave chamber was built deep beneath the Academy, where layers of reinforced stone and arcane barriers formed a sanctuary against external influence. At least, that was the theory. Today, even those walls felt thinner. The torches lining the walls flickered with unstable flame, reacting to the lingering residue of the world's tremors. Shadows warped unnaturally, bending at slight angles, as if reality itself was fatigued.
Sebastian stepped inside with steady steps, Luna a pace behind him until the entry wards pulsed in warning. She stopped. They wouldn't let her pass.
Enra leaned close. "Only key individuals may enter. You understand."
Luna's voice dropped to a cold whisper. "If anything happens to him—"
"It will not," Enra said quickly, though he didn't sound as confident as the words implied.
Sebastian gave Luna the smallest nod. A silent assurance. Then he continued inward.
The heavy doors sealed behind him with a deep, echoing thrum. The chamber expanded into a wide circular hall with ten robed figures standing around the central projection table. The air hummed faintly—an energy he knew didn't come from mana alone. The Conclave maintained dimensional sensors of a higher order, systems meant to detect intrusions not from this world—but from any world.
Today those systems were overwhelmed.
As Sebastian stepped forward, every set of eyes turned toward him. Some sharp, some fearful, some calculating.
Grand Scholar Meridius, the highest-ranking figure present, broke the silence.
"Sebastian Raizen," he began, voice stern but uneasy, "you were at the epicenter of two dimensional distortions."
Sebastian said nothing. He waited.
Another scholar paced in agitation. "And in both cases, your presence changed the outcome."
A third added, "The anomaly stabilized when you approached. Then collapsed entirely upon contact."
None of them asked how he did it.
None of them asked whether he caused it.
They asked what frightened them most.
"What," Meridius said slowly, "did the anomaly recognize in you?"
Sebastian met the scholar's gaze without flinching. "A signature."
The chamber tightened instantly. Several scholars exchanged alarmed glances.
Grand Scholar Vellum's voice cracked. "A dimensional signature? Those do not simply originate."
"They're inherited," muttered Scholar Taelor. "Or imprinted from direct exposure."
Direct exposure to what?
The question hung in the air without needing to be spoken.
Meridius's eyes narrowed. "Raizen… have you encountered this phenomenon before?"
Sebastian considered the question. Carefully. The truth wasn't an option. Not fully. Not now. Not when even the world hadn't decided how much to reveal.
"I've sensed distortions," he said. "But this is the first time they've reached this strength."
A partial truth. Enough to satisfy, not enough to betray.
Vellum stepped closer, studying him. "When you made contact with the anomaly, your body showed brief signs of mana whiteout."
Murmurs erupted.
Mana whiteout was not a technique. It was a phenomenon associated with power surges so extreme they overwrote the natural color of mana. It only happened in individuals whose output exceeded the world's capacity to measure.
Sebastian remained silent.
"Your physical condition fluctuated," Vellum continued. "For a moment, it was as if your mana pressure expanded beyond its limit, then forcibly retracted."
A scholar's voice trembled. "That shouldn't be possible for a student."
Meridius slammed a palm onto the table. "Enough. Speculation will achieve nothing."
He turned back to Sebastian.
"What we need to understand is this: was the anomaly trying to form a Gate?"
A cold silence.
Sebastian closed his eyes for a moment. He remembered the flickering distortion. Its pull. Its resistance. Its final collapse.
"No," he answered. "It wasn't trying to open."
Scholars exhaled in visible relief.
"It was trying to connect."
Relief died instantly.
Meridius stiffened. "Connect… to where?"
"A place adjacent to ours," Sebastian said. "A plane pressing too close. The anomaly behaved like a finger testing fabric. It wasn't trying to break through—it was checking the tension."
"Like probing," Vellum whispered.
"Like tasting," Taelor said, paling.
"Like searching," Sebastian corrected softly.
A darker silence spread across the chamber.
The scholars' voices fell into frantic whispers.
"A plane trying to connect…"
"…that implies active intelligence."
"Or active instability."
"If this continues—"
"It will continue," Sebastian interrupted, calm and absolute.
Every head snapped toward him.
Meridius's tone sharpened. "Explain."
Sebastian looked at the projection table where faint traces of the anomalies still shimmered in mapping runes.
"The world didn't tremble because something entered," he said. "It trembled because something woke up."
The words struck with the force of a hammer.
Meridius leaned forward slowly. "Woke… up?"
"The distortions feel like a mind stretching after a long sleep," Sebastian said. "Not hostile. Not peaceful. Simply awakening."
The scholars exchanged horrified looks.
"What kind of mind?" someone whispered.
Sebastian didn't answer. He didn't need to. They all knew the implications.
Meridius paced back to the table, pressing his palms against the glowing runes. "We have two contained distortions, escalating pulses, global tremors, and active dimensional feedback…"
He lifted his head.
"And Raizen's presence at the center of every reaction."
Vellum swallowed. "Should we isolate him?"
Sebastian's eyes sharpened.
Meridius hesitated. He was many things—a scholar, a leader, a keeper of secrets—but he was not a fool.
"Isolate him?" Meridius said quietly. "From what? The anomalies? They seem to respond to him—not as a threat, but as a reference point."
A reference point.
A stabilizing anchor.
A key.
Taelor whispered, "It is possible… he's preventing the distortions from fully manifesting."
Meridius nodded slowly. "If that's the case, then removing him from the Academy would be reckless."
"Then what do we do?" Vellum asked.
Meridius turned to Sebastian again.
"For now, you will remain as you are. Continue classes. Continue training. But if another anomaly forms… you will report to us immediately."
Sebastian held his gaze. "Understood."
But the Conclave wasn't done.
Meridius sighed deeply. "One final thing, Raizen."
He tapped the projection. A waveform appeared—irregular, chaotic… and terrifying.
"This is the frequency of the tremor."
Sebastian's eyes narrowed.
Luna felt it but didn't understand it.
The Academy felt it but couldn't interpret it.
The Conclave recorded it… but couldn't decode it.
Sebastian, however, recognized it instantly.
It wasn't random noise.
It wasn't natural distortion.
It wasn't dimensional pressure.
It was a voice.
A resonance.
A name spoken by the world's bones.
Meridius didn't notice the shift in Sebastian's expression.
He simply said:
"It almost sounded like… something calling out."
Sebastian lifted his gaze.
"It was."
Meridius swallowed. "Calling who?"
Sebastian didn't blink.
"Me."
Silence crushed the chamber.
Some scholars stepped back.
Others stared in disbelief.
Meridius's voice was hoarse. "Raizen… why would a dimensional anomaly call your name?"
Sebastian didn't answer.
Because the truth burned too brightly to speak aloud.
Because the world itself wasn't calling for him.
Something else was.
Something older.
Something watching.
Something remembering.
Something waking.
The chamber dimmed faintly as another tremor whispered through the earth—quieter than before, but deeper.
And somewhere above, the sky flickered again.
Luna, waiting outside the sealed door, felt it like a cold hand brushing past her shoulder.
The world wasn't trembling now.
It was preparing.
And Sebastian Raizen walked out of the Conclave chamber with the certainty that whatever came next…
Would no longer be satisfied with mere whispers.
The Conclave doors opened with a low groan, releasing a faint rush of stale, cold air. Luna straightened immediately, her hand tightening unconsciously around the hilt of her practice blade—not out of fear, but instinct. Something in the air around her had changed while she waited. It wasn't tangible. It wasn't measurable. It was simply there—a tension like the world inhaling and refusing to exhale.
Sebastian stepped out.
He didn't look shaken. He didn't look troubled. He simply looked… quiet. Too quiet. That was what made Luna's chest tighten.
She approached him slowly. "What did they say?"
His steps didn't pause. "Nothing I didn't already know."
Luna walked beside him, matching his pace. She didn't press, because she saw it now—the faint shift in his gaze, a deeper stillness, as if something behind his eyes had widened into a horizon too vast for words.
They crossed into the open courtyard. The sky overhead had returned to its calm blue, but it felt like a lie. The Academy grounds were unsettled; instructors moved with urgency, arcane sensors pulsed in frantic cycles, students huddled in worried groups.
Luna took a slow breath. "Sebastian… this isn't normal. Everything feels wrong."
His eyes drifted upward. "It will get worse."
The certainty in his voice chilled her.
"What exactly is happening?"
He stopped walking.
Luna did too.
For a moment, Sebastian simply watched the sky, the breeze tugging gently at his hair. Then he spoke, voice low but steady.
"The world is being called."
Luna frowned. "Called? By what?"
"Not what," he said. "Where."
Before she could ask anything more, Professor Enra hurried across the courtyard, robe disheveled—something unprecedented for the meticulous scholar.
"Sebastian, Luna—come with me."
His urgency left no room for questions. Luna immediately followed. Sebastian took a single step, but then—
Another tremor.
Soft.
Almost gentle.
Yet somehow deeper than any before.
Students froze mid-sentence. Instructors lifted their heads. The wind hesitated. The very air seemed to dim for a heartbeat.
Luna felt her pulse stutter. "Another one? Already?"
Enra's face went pale. "That wasn't a pulse. That was a resonance echo."
Sebastian's eyes sharpened. "From where?"
Enra swallowed. "From everywhere."
The three moved quickly through the Academy's inner corridors, descending into the Arcane Monitoring Hall where dozens of artifacts were arranged across spiraling tiers. Crystals flickered erratically, mirrors glowed with warped reflections, rune-carved plates vibrated with unstable patterns.
A cluster of researchers gathered around a central pillar where a projection of the world map flickered violently. Pulses of light traveled across it in chaotic patterns.
"What's happening?" Luna demanded.
A senior researcher looked up, face drained of color. "The anomaly didn't dissipate."
Sebastian's voice was calm. "I know."
"It didn't move either," the researcher continued. "It multiplied."
Luna's breath caught.
The projection zoomed in.
Not one ripple.
Not two.
But dozens of faint distortions scattered across the continent—tiny, unstable, flickering signs of spatial pressure collapsing inward then expanding out again.
"They're forming simultaneously?" Enra whispered.
"No," Sebastian corrected. "They're practicing."
Luna turned to him sharply. "Practicing what?"
"How to open."
Another researcher pointed at one cluster of distortions. "Look here—Murim region. The pressure readings increased twice. This isn't just us."
"And Verneville too," another said. "Mana volatility is at its highest in decades."
"And Nova Terra's energy grid is experiencing dimensional interference."
The room descended into panicked murmurs.
Enra turned to Sebastian. "Tell me truthfully… is this the beginning of a Gate?"
Sebastian didn't hesitate.
"No."
Everyone froze.
Then he added, quietly:
"This is the world rehearsing."
Silence collapsed around them. Even the instruments seemed to dim.
Enra breathed out shakily. "Rehearsing for what?"
Sebastian's answer came without emotion.
"For when something on the other side decides to pull."
The chilling simplicity of the statement left no room for false comfort. Luna instinctively reached for her blade, her hand hovering near the hilt.
One of the researchers stuttered, "Then—then is this world going to be invaded?"
"No," Sebastian said—and for the first time, his eyes shifted, a faint coldness touching their depths. "It's going to be tested."
Enra steadied himself on a railing. "If this continues, the dimensional fabric could—"
"It will," Sebastian finished.
A deep hum vibrated through the room.
Every head snapped toward the central projection pillar.
The distortions began syncing.
Not perfectly.
Not fully.
But coordinated.
Like a heartbeat finding rhythm.
Luna felt her stomach twist. "That isn't random."
"It's communicating," Sebastian said.
"How can distortions communicate?" a researcher stammered.
"They're not distortions anymore," Sebastian answered. "They're openings waiting for permission."
The lights across the hall brightened suddenly. A wave of mana surged outward as the largest detection array in the Academy flared to life, triggered by a new spike.
The projection zoomed inward.
A new anomaly appeared.
Stronger.
Cleaner.
Sharper.
Larger.
This one wasn't flickering. It was stable. Deliberate.
Luna's voice trembled. "Where is that?"
The researcher's eyes widened, horror carving itself into their features.
"My gods…"
They zoomed the projection.
The stable anomaly sat hovering above a point.
The Academy.
More precisely—
The Southern Wall.
Enra's heart lurched. "That's where—"
"—I was earlier," Sebastian finished, unmoving.
As if on cue, the entire hall vibrated.
Softly.
Melodically.
Like a chime.
A sound so subtle yet so chilling it forced everyone to stillness.
Luna's hand twitched. "Sebastian—"
His head turned slightly, eyes sharpening as he focused on something no one else could perceive.
It wasn't sound.
It was tone.
A message.
A signal.
A call.
And it wasn't vague this time.
The world wasn't simply trembling.
The other side wasn't simply waking.
This anomaly wasn't simply watching.
It was searching.
And this time, it called out clearly.
Raizen.
Luna didn't hear it.
Enra didn't hear it.
No one in the hall heard it.
But Sebastian did.
His breath left him—not shakily, but with controlled restraint. As if the call resonated inside bone, inside blood, inside memory-not-memory.
Enra saw the shift in his expression. "What is it? What did it do?"
Sebastian lowered his gaze.
"It found me."
The room's temperature seemed to drop.
Luna moved closer, voice barely above a whisper. "What does that mean?"
He looked toward the projection where the anomaly pulsed like a beating heart.
"It means," he said quietly, "that whatever is on the other side isn't waiting for a Gate."
His next words were soft.
Calm.
Terrifying.
"It's trying to pull me back."
The hall fell silent. Completely silent.
And before anyone could react—
The sky outside cracked with a thin line of white light.
A soundless fracture.
The faintest tear.
A warning.
Not the Gate.
Not yet.
Just the world whispering:
Prepare.
The crack in the sky didn't roar. It didn't tear open like myth or prophecy.
It simply appeared—a thin white filament drawn across the blue, so delicate the naked eye could miss it, yet so heavy the world beneath it seemed to sag.
Luna felt her heart seize.
Enra staggered back, gripping the railing with white knuckles.
Researchers froze mid-breath.
Sebastian didn't move.
Not because he wasn't shocked.
But because this… this was familiar.
The faint fracture pulsed once—slow, rhythmic, like the blink of an eye older than time. The air shivered around it, not from heat or cold but from the sheer pressure of existence being asked to hold something it wasn't designed to.
Luna whispered, "Sebastian… what is that?"
He didn't answer immediately.
He didn't have to.
The world answered for him.
A wave of silence rolled across the Academy—not absence of sound, but the muting of reality itself. Leaves stopped rustling. Mana streams fell still. Even the hum of the crystal detectors faded into nothing. A dead quiet spread outward from the fracture in the sky, washing over the courtyards, the towers, the training fields.
Enra stared upward, breath trembling. "Reality shouldn't be able to… stop like this."
It wasn't stopping.
It was listening.
And then the fracture pulsed again.
This time, everyone felt it.
Not physically—spiritually, primally, in the marrow where instinct lived. A sensation like a presence leaning close, closer, too close, pressing its forehead to the veil between worlds to look through.
Sebastian inhaled slowly.
"It's looking," he said.
Luna's voice shook. "Looking for what?"
His gaze sharpened.
"For me."
The second those words left his mouth, the fracture widened slightly—so slightly it could've been imagination. But the world felt the shift, and the Academy shuddered from foundation to rooftop. Students across the grounds stumbled, clutching one another as dizziness swept through them. Some fainted. Others dropped to their knees.
The Big 8 moved at once.
Kael Nightforge, eyes glowing with technomantic runes, stepped onto the roof of the Northern Wing, analyzing the fracture with augmented vision. His whisper carried across all listening devices:
"Dimensional pressure… off the charts. This isn't a Gate. This is—"
His words cut off.
Rhea Velstorne stood at the West Tower, wind whipping around her like blades. Her eyes narrowed.
"It's searching for an anchor."
Kenjie Velstorne appeared beside her without sound, gaze fixed not on the fracture but on Sebastian far below.
"And it thinks it found one."
Adriel Dawnfall of the Divine Department knelt on holy sigils that flickered uselessly, sweat beading on his temples.
"Why do my blessings fail? What kind of presence—what kind of force—can suppress divinity?"
Soren Hale from the Murim Wing clenched his fists, aura flaring unconsciously as the fracture vibrated again.
"This is wrong," he whispered. "I've felt killing intent, demonic intent, divine intent… this is none of them."
Andrea Sylven, silent as ever, stood on a balcony with her bow lowered at her side, gaze unreadable.
And Luna Blossomveil…
Her hand tightened around Sebastian's sleeve.
"You're not going near it," she said. "Not alone."
He almost smiled.
Almost.
But then—
The fracture in the sky snapped violently, releasing a shockwave that rippled across the Academy.
Luna was thrown back.
Enra slammed into a railing.
Researchers crashed into tables.
Sebastian didn't move.
Not from strength.
But because the shockwave bent around him—flowing like water around an unmoving stone.
The world recoiled from him.
Luna pushed herself up, wincing. "Sebastian—!"
He took a slow step forward.
The air around him tightened. A thin trail of white flickered through his hair—a warning sign he didn't notice or simply chose to ignore.
"Stay back," Enra shouted. "Raizen—stay away from that fracture!"
But Sebastian was already listening to something deeper. Quieter.
A second voice behind the first.
A tone within the tone.
A whisper layered beneath the resonance.
Not calling him.
Naming him.
Luna reached for him—but her hand passed through a ripple of distorted air, forcing her back as if the world itself intervened.
"Sebastian!"
He didn't stop.
The fracture pulsed a third time.
This one struck straight through him.
His breath hitched—just slightly—but enough for Luna to see it.
And then—
The sky went black for a single heartbeat.
The sun vanished.
The clouds inverted into streaks of white on darkness.
The entire world flipped like a sheet of paper turned wrong-side out.
Students screamed.
Instructors collapsed.
The Big 8 froze where they stood.
And Sebastian—
He remained upright.
Barely.
His vision blurred at the edges. His mind stuttered. Not from pain, but from recognition so deep it carved through every layer of thought at once.
He steadied his breathing.
The world snapped back to normal.
Luna stumbled toward him. "Sebastian! Hey—focus! Look at me!"
He blinked once.
Slowly.
Calmly.
But Luna saw the truth.
His pupils were dilated.
His pulse too slow.
His aura too sharp.
His presence too cold.
"Sebastian—what did it do to you?"
He looked toward the sky.
"It remembered."
Luna froze. "Remembered… what?"
Sebastian's expression shifted—something unreadable crossing his features, something ancient, something knowing.
"Me," he whispered.
The fracture pulsed again—directly responding to his voice.
Luna's blood turned to ice.
The Conclave burst out of the monitoring hall, shouting for containment arrays, for emergency stabilizers, for dimensional anchors—but none of their tools worked. The arrays refused to activate, the anchors flickered, the crystals cracked under unseen pressure.
The world was rejecting its own defenses.
Enra shouted, "Raizen! We need distance! If that thing pulls any harder—"
Sebastian spoke quietly.
"It already can."
A deep, subsonic hum spread across the sky.
Everyone felt it in their bones.
Then—
The fracture widened again.
Slow.
Hungry.
Focused.
Luna's eyes widened. "Sebastian—move—!"
He didn't.
He couldn't.
Because the fracture wasn't pulling the Academy.
It wasn't pulling the world.
It was pulling him.
And only him.
Luna grabbed his arm, trying to ground him—but the moment she touched him, a violent current of dimensional force surged outward, blasting her backward across the courtyard.
"LUNA!"
Her body skidded across the stone, pain ripping through her ribs. She forced herself onto her elbows, breath trembling.
Sebastian didn't turn.
He simply said—
"…I can't hold it back much longer."
The Big 8 watched, helpless.
The Conclave panicked.
Students cried.
The world darkened at the edges.
And Sebastian Raizen…
Felt the call intensify.
Pulling.
Demanding.
Remembering.
The fracture widened another inch.
A voice—not heard but felt—pressed into reality.
Raizen… return.
Sebastian closed his eyes.
And Chapter 14 pushed toward the moment that would decide whether the world broke—
—or whether he would stand alone against something that had already chosen him.
The word return didn't echo.
It didn't vibrate in the air.
It didn't even belong to sound.
It slid through the seams of reality like a blade of light through silk, carving straight into Sebastian's bones, bypassing flesh, bypassing mind, bypassing the limits of what a human body could interpret. The whisper was too vast, too layered, too old. A command spoken by something that should not have a voice—and yet had chosen to shape one just for him.
Sebastian's fingers twitched.
Not in fear.
In memory.
Luna dragged herself upright, vision blurring at the edges, ribs screaming. She tasted iron. Felt her pulse hammering in panic. But none of that mattered. She pushed off the wall.
"Sebastian," she gasped, "don't you dare—don't you—"
Her words cut off as the air around him warped.
A ring of distortion formed at his feet, expanding outward like ripples in water. Not a Gate. Not a tear. A claim. Energy wrapped around him in spirals, bending the world's rules in quiet defiance. The stone beneath him cracked in a perfect circle. Light split. The sky dimmed again, not from shadow, but from pressure.
The Big 8 froze where they stood.
Andrea Sylven's hand hovered over her bowstring, eyes trembling for the first time.
Soren Hale's aura flared instinctively, then shattered under the weight of the pressure.
Kael Nightforge's mechanical eye flickered with error sigils.
Adriel Dawnfall's divine compact collapsed, holy sigils breaking like brittle glass.
Rhea Velstorne gripped the balcony railing until her knuckles whitened.
Kenjie Velstorne whispered a single word—
"…impossible."
Not because of the fracture.
But because of Sebastian.
The air around him distorted in concentric waves—layers of mana, force, and something deeper. Something the world's detectors couldn't classify. Something the scholars had no name for. Something even Luna, who had fought alongside him, had never seen.
A brilliance shimmered through his veins.
Not mana.
Not aura.
Something else.
Professor Enra stumbled backward. "What is that—what is he—?!"
"He's resonating," Kenjie murmured from far above. "Not with this world… but with whatever's calling."
Andrea's bowstring creaked. "Then that fracture isn't just looking for him."
"It's claiming him," Rhea finished.
A deeper hum pressed down, bending the very light. Luna took a shaking step forward. Another. Her legs trembled beneath her, but she forced herself on, teeth clenched against the pressure.
She reached out. Again.
The world shoved her back. Again.
"SEBASTIAN!"
Her voice cracked.
He finally turned to look at her.
But the eyes that met hers weren't the same shade of cold calm she knew. His irises glowed faintly—white, threaded with thin lines of pale gold. A light that looked too heavy for a human body to contain. A light that made Luna's breath stop in her throat.
Her voice softened. "Sebastian… come back. Right here. Right now."
He blinked.
Slowly.
As if moving through thick liquid.
"…Luna," he murmured.
Her heart seized.
He still heard her.
But the fracture pulsed again.
And the world broke.
Reality warped.
Space compressed.
Time hiccuped.
Dozens of students collapsed as vertigo ripped through their minds. Instructors screamed for containment arrays that refused to manifest. The Conclave chanted counter-forces in desperation. The ground cracked beneath Sebastian's feet as the circle of distortion expanded to three meters, then four.
Luna took another step forward—
"LUNA, STOP!" Enra roared, lunging to grab her arm.
The moment he touched her—
The world shoved both of them back, flinging them across the courtyard.
They slammed into the stone pillars.
Luna coughed blood.
Enra collapsed unconscious.
Sebastian's voice reached her—barely audible over the pressure.
"I told you… I can't hold it back."
Her vision swam. "Hold… what back?"
He looked up at the fracture in the sky.
The light flickered again.
"I am not the only one waking up."
Luna couldn't breathe.
Because she felt it now—beneath the fear, beneath the trembling, beneath the blinding pressure—something else.
Something alive.
The fracture pulsed like a heartbeat.
A cadence.
A rhythm.
A summon.
Sebastian closed his eyes.
The wind whipped violently around him.
White streaked deeper through his hair.
His aura flickered—dangerously close to tearing through the world's natural limits.
Kael shouted from the rooftop, "If he crosses his threshold—this entire area will collapse!"
Rhea hissed, "Then stop him!"
"How?" Andrea snapped. "He's syncing with a dimensional source!"
Kenjie's voice cut sharply across the air.
He wasn't looking at the fracture.
He was watching Sebastian.
"If he goes any further… he won't come back as the same person."
Luna's breath hitched sharply.
She pushed off the pillar, teeth clenched, body refusing to obey. Her legs shook violently. The pressure thickened around her like stone, but she dragged herself anyway.
"Sebastian… please…"
She reached for him.
But the world didn't allow her near.
His aura—no, the force around him—crackled, pushing everything away in a perfect sphere. The stones shredded around him. The wind tore into spirals. The fracture widened again, thin lines branching outward like cracks in glass.
Sebastian's voice dropped to a whisper—one no one else could hear.
"…I remember this."
The world trembled.
The silhouette from before—distant, unseen, undefined—reappeared at the edge of perception. This time closer. Sharper. Almost visible. Watching him.
Waiting.
The pressure peaked.
A blinding white flash erupted around Sebastian.
Luna screamed—
"SEBASTIAN!"
And then—
The world paused.
Truly paused.
The wind froze in midair.
Dust hung motionless.
Even sound halted.
Everything stopped.
Only Sebastian moved.
Only he breathed.
Only he looked up at the fracture, now opening into a thin vertical line—like an eye.
And he whispered into the stillness—
"…I'm not yours."
The fracture trembled.
The world shook.
And the entire Academy felt a force push outward from Sebastian—a rejection so powerful it distorted the air.
Light exploded from his body.
The fracture flickered—
—and began to close.
Not smoothly.
Not gently.
But like a hand slammed shut.
The pressure collapsed violently.
The world snapped back into motion.
Wind roared.
Stone cracked.
Students gasped.
The Big 8 staggered.
Luna fell to her knees, breath ripping through her chest.
Sebastian stood at the center of it all.
Alive.
Awake.
But trembling.
Just once.
Only once.
And then he whispered—
"…it's not done."
The fracture sealed completely.
The sky returned to normal.
But every living being who witnessed it felt the same cold truth settle in their bones:
This wasn't the Gate opening.
This was the Gate knocking.
And it had knocked specifically for Sebastian Raizen.
The world, for the first time in its long, stable history, was afraid.
The silence that followed was wrong.
Not peaceful.
Not relieved.
Not the calm after a storm.
It was the silence of a predator stepping back—not because it was finished, but because it had learned something.
The sky returned to its gentle blue.
The clouds drifted as if nothing had happened.
The sun warmed the stone walkways.
But no one moved.
Not the instructors.
Not the students.
Not the Big 8.
Not even the wind dared return fully.
Luna's breathing was ragged as she staggered to her feet. Every muscle trembled. She felt like she had run through a battlefield of pressure alone. Yet she forced herself upright, one hand gripping a shattered pillar for balance.
Her eyes searched for Sebastian.
He stood in the center of the courtyard, motionless. Too motionless. His posture was perfectly straight, but his fingers twitched slightly at his side, as if he were holding back the aftershocks of something only he had felt.
His expression was unreadable.
Not blank.
Not calm.
Just… unreadable.
The Big 8 reacted first.
Kenjie Velstorne vanished from the rooftop in a flicker of air, reappearing ten paces behind Sebastian, his breathing slow but strained. He didn't get closer. He didn't dare.
Rhea stepped to the courtyard railing, leaning over with wide eyes. The wind swirled around her legs, uncertain whether to obey her commands.
Kael's mechanical lenses recalibrated, flickering with error messages that refused to disappear. "Dimensional recoil… impossible… impossible…"
Soren Hale swallowed hard, sweat streaming down his jaw. "If that isn't a Gate… what in the hells was that?"
Andrea drew her bow halfway—not in threat, but because her instincts demanded preparation. Her eyes stayed fixed on Sebastian, her gaze narrowing.
Adriel Dawnfall silently crossed himself, lips forming a prayer that sounded more like a plea than devotion.
None of them approached.
None of them breathed easily.
Sebastian's presence—his stillness—felt heavier than the sky fracture itself.
Luna finally reached him. She stopped a meter away, because the space around him still felt wrong. Not hostile, but unstable. Like the world was struggling to interpret where he ended and the air began.
"Sebastian," she whispered.
He didn't answer.
She stepped closer. Her hand hovered near his shoulder. She didn't dare touch him yet—she remembered the blast that threw her across the courtyard.
"Sebastian… look at me."
Slowly, he turned.
His eyes weren't glowing anymore, but… something lingered in them. A faint ring of white around the iris, fading too slowly. A remnant of the resonance. A fingerprint from something on the other side.
Luna's breath hitched. "Are you… still here?"
He blinked once.
The world seemed to exhale with him.
"Yes," he said softly. "I'm here."
Only then did Luna let out the breath she'd been holding. Not because she doubted him, but because for a moment—for a terrifying moment—she could not tell if she was looking at Sebastian Raizen or the echo of something else wearing his shape.
Kenjie stepped forward finally, analyzing him with sharp, calculating eyes. "Your resonance output exceeded this world's safe thresholds by a factor of…" He paused as his calculations froze. "I can't measure it."
Sebastian didn't respond.
Rhea crossed her arms, her voice oddly hushed. "You pushed something back."
Soren whispered, "He pushed a world back."
Kael took a step forward. "Raizen… what did it say to you?"
Sebastian finally looked at them.
"It didn't speak."
Silence.
Then:
"It remembered me."
Those words hit harder than the tremor.
Meridius, who had just arrived with the rest of the Conclave, paled instantly. "Impossible—dimensional anomalies don't possess memory."
"Correct," Sebastian said. "They don't."
He looked at the sky.
"But whatever woke up does."
Luna's heart dropped.
Kenjie inhaled sharply. "Raizen. What exactly is… calling you?"
Sebastian didn't answer.
Not because he refused.
But because he didn't fully know.
And yet—something inside him did.
He wasn't lying to himself.
He wasn't delusional.
He wasn't guessing.
His body remembered.
His bones remembered.
His soul remembered.
Not from this life.
Not from this world.
Not from his memories in the real world.
But from something older.
Something he should not have.
Luna saw the distant look in his eyes, and her voice softened. "Sebastian… did it hurt?"
His expression finally shifted.
Just slightly.
"No."
She relaxed a little.
He continued.
"But it wanted to."
Her breath froze again.
Before she could speak, the crystalline detectors across the Academy all flared bright white for the first time in recorded history. Every last sensor. Every artifact. Every rune. Every ward.
Dozens of lights ignited at once.
A sole researcher screamed, "ALL detectors—ALL of them—are responding simultaneously!"
Meridius staggered. "But the fracture is gone—why are they reacting?!"
Kenjie's eyes widened with realization.
"They're not reacting to the fracture."
Everyone fell silent.
"They're reacting to him."
The words tore through the courtyard with brutal clarity.
Students gasped.
Instructors recoiled.
The Conclave froze.
The Big 8 fell silent.
Detectors measuring spatial instability weren't meant to react to living beings. They were designed to identify distortions, tears, rifts, Gates.
Not humans.
Not aura.
Not mana.
Only dimensional wrongness.
Only anomalies.
Only things that did not belong.
Luna whispered, horrified, "Sebastian… the detectors think you're—"
He finished for her.
"A Gate."
The courtyard shuddered with collective fear.
"No," one instructor choked. "No, no—this can't—humans can't—"
"They can't," Meridius whispered. "But the readings don't lie."
Andrea lowered her bow. "You're telling me the Academy's detectors classify him as a dimensional anomaly?"
Kenjie answered, voice low.
"No."
Everyone stared at him.
"They classify him as a dimensional origin point."
Luna's heart felt like it was falling.
Sebastian stared at the trembling detectors.
He didn't flinch.
He didn't deny it.
Because deep inside…
He felt it too.
The world had touched him.
And something on the other side had answered.
The detectors flared brighter.
The ground vibrated again.
A pulse rippled across the heart of the Academy.
Not from the sky.
Not from the anomalies.
Not from the Gate.
From Sebastian.
Luna reached for him instinctively—
"Don't touch him!" Meridius shouted. "We don't know what the resonance will—"
She ignored them.
Her fingers closed around Sebastian's wrist.
The world held its breath.
Nothing exploded.
Nothing shattered.
Nothing blasted her back.
The pressure eased.
Sebastian exhaled softly.
And the detectors across the Academy shut down—every last one.
Lights dimmed.
Projections faded.
Stones relaxed.
The Academy seemed to breathe again.
Luna blinked slowly, stunned. "It… stopped?"
Sebastian looked at her hand on his wrist.
"It recognized you."
"Me?"
"No," he said quietly. "You reminded it that I belong here."
She didn't understand.
Not fully.
But she understood enough.
Sebastian Raizen stood at the center of a world that now viewed him as something beyond human.
And Luna Blossomveil—by simply touching him—had pulled him back.
Sebastian met her gaze.
"It's learning," he said.
"What is?"
He looked up at the sky.
"The thing calling me."
Luna's grip tightened.
"And what will it do next?"
Sebastian's answer was softer than the wind.
"…It will try again."
Somewhere far above—too faint for the naked eye—a second, almost invisible line crept across the sky.
A whisper.
A promise.
A threat.
Chapter 14 had not ended.
The world had only just begun to wake up.
A breeze swept across the courtyard in a way that didn't feel like wind—it felt like breathing, a long exhale from something vast overhead. Students shivered. Instructors tightened their grips on their weapons. Even the Big 8—who rarely agreed on anything—stood united in silent dread as a second pale line, thinner than a hair and almost invisible to the eye, crawled slowly across the sky.
Sebastian stared at it with a stillness that was not peace.
Luna felt the tension in his arm where her hand still held him, grounding him, anchoring him to this world even as something beyond it continued to call.
Meridius rushed forward, his voice trembling. "We need an immediate full-system lockdown! Dimensional shields, perimeter seals, triple-layer mana—everything we have!"
Kael snapped, "We don't have shields for whatever this is!"
Adriel slammed a hand onto the nearest rune circle, trying to activate divine barriers—but the sigils flickered uselessly.
"Divinity isn't responding," he whispered, horrified. "Even the heavens refuse to counter this."
Andrea's bow lowered further. Her voice was quiet, but deadly serious. "What's on the other side isn't divine. It isn't infernal. It isn't spatial. It's something else entirely."
Rhea cursed under her breath and turned away, unable to look at the sky for more than a heartbeat. "Something older."
Kenjie clenched his fists so tightly the veins in his arms bulged. "And it knows his name."
Every eye turned back to Sebastian.
The one thing the anomaly had spoken.
The name it had whispered through a dimensional fracture.
Raizen.
Sebastian's gaze stayed on the growing second line. His voice emerged low, almost drowned out by the trembling air.
"That line… shouldn't be there."
Luna swallowed hard. "What is it?"
He exhaled.
"A decision."
Enra staggered back. "What kind of decision?"
"The kind a world makes," Sebastian said, "before choosing which side to open toward."
A terrified silence consumed the courtyard.
The Gate wasn't opening.
Not yet.
But the world was choosing how it would open.
Meridius spoke again, but this time his voice was small. "Raizen… if this Gate forms, will it be because of you?"
Sebastian didn't answer.
Because the truth was both yes—and no.
He looked at the sky fracture again.
The second line pulsed.
The first line responded.
Luna stepped closer to him unconsciously. "Sebastian… this isn't your fault."
He didn't look away from the sky. "It's not about fault."
Her voice softened. "Then what is it?"
His jaw tightened slightly.
"It's about recognition."
Kael froze. "Recognition from what?"
Sebastian's gaze lowered from the sky to the ground, as if he were listening to something deep beneath the earth.
He finally spoke.
"Something on the other side knows me," he said quietly. "But not from this life."
The courtyard went still as death.
Luna's eyes widened with pain she couldn't hide. "From… what, then?"
Sebastian closed his eyes.
A flicker of memory-not-memory stirred behind them.
The Real One.
The True Raizen.
The Architect's silhouette.
The echo of an existence beyond human.
He opened his eyes again.
"…from before."
Kenjie's breath caught. "Before what? Before this timeline? Before this world?"
Sebastian didn't answer.
Because he didn't know the answer in words.
Only in instinct.
Only in resonance.
Only in the primal recognition that came from being looked at by something that once shaped him.
The sky dimmed.
The two lines in the sky trembled, like cracks struggling to decide whether to spread or seal.
Enra's voice cracked, desperate. "We must stop this! If a Gate appears here—if dimensional pressure breaches—we could lose everything!"
"Yes," Sebastian said.
The word hit harder than the tremors.
Luna's voice shook. "Then do something."
Sebastian turned to her—really turned, as if reminding himself that she was here. That this world was real. That he still had a body that was bound to this place.
"I already am."
A faint light pulsed through his eyes again.
Not glowing.
Not flaring.
Just aligning.
Luna felt it instantly, a subtle shift, a tightening of the air around him. She stepped closer, ignoring the instinct screaming for distance.
"What are you planning to do?"
"Stop the world from choosing the wrong outcome."
"By yourself?"
"There's no one else it listens to."
She grabbed his hand again, harder this time. "You're not doing this alone."
He looked at her hand on his.
This time he didn't tell her to step away.
Enra shouted, "Raizen! You cannot interfere with dimensional decision-making! The backlash could—"
"I know," Sebastian said calmly.
Andrea's eyes narrowed. "What's the plan, Raizen?"
"Stabilize the resonance."
Kael stared. "With what?! We don't have the technology—"
Sebastian cut him off.
"With my existence."
No one spoke.
No one breathed.
Luna's heart cracked open. "Sebastian… that could kill you."
"Or worse," Kenjie added.
Sebastian said nothing.
Not because he dismissed the danger.
But because danger was irrelevant.
He looked up at the sky one more time.
The two cracks pulsed simultaneously—but this time, instead of expanding outward, they began to drift toward each other. Slow, deliberate movement. Like two blades crossing. Like two doors aligning.
The formation of a single fissure.
The first stage of a Gate.
And this one wasn't searching anymore.
It had found what it wanted.
Sebastian stepped forward.
Luna moved with him.
Enra shouted, "STOP THEM!"
Adriel tried to form a barrier.
Andrea snapped her bowstring to full draw.
Kael activated magnetic restraints.
Rhea unleashed wind walls.
Kenjie vanished and reappeared in front of Sebastian, reaching out—
All of it failed.
The moment they touched the air around Sebastian, reality bent subtly. Not violently. Just enough to redirect them. Their forces dissipated. Their movements softened. Their energies collapsed.
Not blocked.
Not repelled.
Rewritten.
Sebastian walked past them as if their attempts existed in a different page of the story.
Luna kept pace.
When he reached the center of the courtyard, directly beneath the forming fissure, he stopped. The sky darkened. Light dimmed. The fracture writhed.
A cold wind swept through the Academy.
Not from weather.
From expectation.
Sebastian lifted his gaze.
His voice was quiet but absolute.
"Enough."
The world froze.
A shockwave burst outward.
Not explosive.
Not destructive.
But commanding.
The second crack stopped moving.
The first trembled.
The fissure in the sky—the almost-Gate—hesitated.
Sebastian lowered his head slightly, his voice barely audible to anyone except Luna.
"You don't get to choose."
The sky trembled.
The fissure pulsed.
Sebastian whispered:
"I do."
Light exploded.
Not outward.
Upward.
The fissure split—
—but not open.
It shattered.
Into light.
Into dust.
Into nothing.
The world exhaled like a lung unclogged.
The sky returned to blue.
The fractures were gone.
The wind rushed back.
Students cried out in relief.
Instructors collapsed.
Meridius fell to his knees.
The Big 8 stared in disbelief.
Luna's hand tightened around Sebastian's.
He swayed.
Just slightly.
Only she saw it.
"Sebastian…"
He kept his gaze on the sky as the last remnants of the fractures dissolved.
"It listened," he whispered.
Then—
His knees gave out.
Luna caught him before his head hit stone, pulling him close, her arms trembling from effort and fear.
He wasn't unconscious.
But his breath was thin.
Shallow.
Unstable.
His aura flickered like a candle in wind.
She held him tighter. "Sebastian—stay with me."
His hand weakly lifted.
Rested against her shoulder.
His voice was a faint whisper, almost lost in the air.
"…it's still watching."
Luna swallowed.
"Sebastian… what is?"
His eyes opened, dim but aware.
His voice barely a breath.
"…the thing that remembers me."
The chapter did not end in triumph.
It ended with a promise.
A world quieting only so something on the other side could take another look—
and decide how to reach him next.
The courtyard had barely begun to breathe again when the stillness broke—not with sound, but with pressure, the kind that slipped beneath skin and bone and wrapped around the spine like a cold, invisible hand.
Luna tightened her grip around Sebastian, instinctively pulling him closer, shielding him with her own body even though she knew she couldn't shield him from something like this. The air vibrated with a low hum, too faint to be heard yet too heavy to ignore.
The students closest to the courtyard stumbled backward. Some collapsed entirely. Garet dropped to one knee, gasping. His spear clattered beside him, vibrating against the stone as if resonating with an inaudible frequency.
Every member of the Big 8 snapped their heads upward in unison.
Because the sky wasn't done.
A ripple—small, thin, almost delicate—ran across the upper atmosphere.
A ripple that did not belong to this world.
Andrea's arrow froze mid-draw as she stared upward.
"What… is that?"
Kael staggered, palms pressed to the ground as if the earth beneath him was suddenly unstable. "No… no, that's impossible. The fracture is gone—why is the pressure increasing?"
Adriel's divine senses recoiled violently, forcing him to crouch, panting. "This isn't dimensional… it's not even spatial…"
Kenjie's voice dropped into something grim. "It's intent."
Luna turned sharply toward him. "Intent from what?"
Kenjie's jaw clenched. His answer came like a curse.
"From whatever fell silent when he shattered the Gate."
A soft tremor ran through Sebastian's body again. Luna's heart clenched at the sight—because she could tell this was not from pain. It was from memory. Something in the air resonated with him, and his body—no matter how human it looked—responded instinctively.
She shook his shoulder gently. "Sebastian. Look at me."
His eyes opened slowly—heavy, unfocused, flickering between clarity and something deeper.
Luna cupped his face. "Stay here. Stay with me. You are in this world. You are Sebastian Raizen. You—"
He interrupted her with a whisper.
"I know who I am."
But his eyes drifted back upward.
"And so does it."
The wind died.
Leaves stilled mid-air, suspended unnaturally.
The sun dimmed by a fraction—just enough to make everyone feel suddenly watched.
The air behind Sebastian shimmered for a heartbeat—no, less than a heartbeat—like a second silhouette flickered into alignment with him, standing where he stood, occupying the same space, the same outline…
…then disappearing.
Meridius staggered backward so hard he nearly tripped.
"Did anyone else—did you SEE THAT?!"
Kael cursed and activated his ocular implants, scanning the area—only to freeze when the readings came back.
"No anomaly detected… but the prediction model just spiked into the impossible. It's projecting… it's projecting a return signal."
"A return signal from where?" Rhea snapped.
Kael swallowed.
"I don't know. But whatever it is… it tried to stand where Raizen stands."
Luna's arms tightened protectively around him.
Sebastian's fingers curled weakly into her sleeve as a faint tremor ran through him—not of weakness, but of resonance.
As if something that once shared his shape had almost stepped through.
Adriel finally found his voice again.
"This isn't over. The Gate didn't close—it was interrupted. And whatever was on the other side is recalibrating."
Andrea's eyes narrowed, bow lifting again. "Then we prepare for a second impact."
"No," Enra said sharply. "We evacuate—"
Luna cut in.
"No one moves."
Every head turned to her.
Some shocked, some furious, some terrified.
But then they saw why she said it.
Because Sebastian—barely conscious—lifted his gaze to the sky once more.
Because his aura flickered.
Because the pressure in the air responded to his presence alone.
And because something above them shifted in a way that felt disturbingly like acknowledgment.
"It's not hostile," Sebastian murmured.
Luna's breath hitched. "If it isn't… then what is it?"
He blinked once, slowly, as if the answer came from somewhere deep inside him—somewhere older than his memories in this world.
"…curious."
A collective shiver rippled across the courtyard.
Garet, still on one knee, lifted his head despite the crushing pressure. His voice trembled.
"If this is curiosity… then what happens when it becomes something else…?"
Sebastian didn't answer.
The sky rippled again.
This time, the pressure coiled downward—not to crush, not to break, but to scan.
To observe.
To understand.
To compare.
The air around Sebastian tightened.
Not threateningly.
Not maliciously.
But intimately.
As if assessing something that belonged to it.
Luna immediately reacted, pulling Sebastian into her arms, stepping between him and the sky as if she could block the gaze of a world beyond worlds.
Kenjie whispered under his breath, "Luna… careful…"
She didn't care.
She held Sebastian tightly, jaw trembling with fury and fear.
"You're not taking him."
A pulse in the atmosphere answered.
But it didn't feel like it was angry at her.
It felt… amused.
A low vibration rippled outward, like a distant laugh echoing across universes.
Luna felt her blood run cold.
Until—
The pressure collapsed inward on itself.
The ripple in the sky folded.
The strange intent withdrew.
The air normalized.
Gravity reset.
Time resumed.
Birds began to chirp again.
The sun brightened to normal.
Leaves fell to the ground.
And the silence that followed was worse than the fear.
Because everyone realized what had just happened.
The Gate hadn't opened.
The Gate hadn't broken.
The Gate hadn't been defeated.
It had simply…
decided to wait.
Sebastian exhaled shakily against Luna's shoulder, breath finally stabilizing. She loosened her hold slightly, her forehead brushing against his.
"You're okay," she whispered, more to herself than to him.
"You're okay. I've got you… you're not going anywhere…"
His eyes remained half-lidded, but conscious.
Barely.
He whispered back.
"For now."
And though his voice was weak…
There was something in it.
Something that made Luna's heartbeat stop.
A hint of recognition.
A hint of resignation.
A hint of warning.
"…it'll try again."
The Academy remained still, holding its breath around him.
Because everyone knew—
Sebastian Raizen had not won.
He had only postponed the arrival of something that wanted him.
Something that recognized him.
Something that remembered him before he existed here.
And next time—
It wouldn't ask.
A low rumble drifted across the courtyard—too soft to be thunder, too steady to be wind. It seeped through stone, bone, and breath like a memory awakening inside the world itself. The air thickened again, not with danger this time, but with aftertaste, the lingering echo of something vast and incomprehensibly patient withdrawing its gaze.
Students remained frozen long after the pressure faded. Some trembled. Some stared at the sky. Some looked at Sebastian with expressions ranging from awe to terror. None dared speak.
The Big 8 slowly regrouped. Andrea lowered her bow. Kael's metal restraints powered down. Kenjie forced his breathing to steady. Rhea wiped sweat from her brow, glaring at the horizon as if daring it to ripple again.
Only Luna moved.
She eased Sebastian upright, one arm around his back, the other supporting his jaw as if afraid he might fall forward. But he didn't. Even weak, even exhausted, he held himself with quiet resolve.
His voice finally broke the silence, soft but sharp enough to cut through the lingering dread.
"It tested the boundary."
Enra stepped forward, almost stumbling. "Tested? That was testing?! If that pressure had increased by even one percent—"
"It didn't," Sebastian murmured.
"Because it didn't want to," Kenjie added grimly.
Garet finally rose to his feet. His legs shook, but he stood tall, eyes locked on Sebastian. "It aimed at you."
Luna stiffened.
Sebastian didn't deny it.
Meridius approached next, wiping his trembling palms on his robe. "Raizen… the Academy's defense grid recorded nothing. Zero data. Zero readings. It's as if—"
"As if a higher system was overriding ours," Kael finished, voice raw with disbelief and anger.
Sebastian's gaze slid to him. "Not overriding. Observing."
Kael nearly snapped. "And you're just fine with that?! Something looked at our world like it was a glass box!"
Rhea stepped between them. "Kael. Enough."
"No. Not enough." Kael pointed upward, trembling. "That thing didn't care about any of us. It looked at him. Only him. If he hadn't interfered—if he hadn't been here—maybe none of this would've—"
Luna turned slowly.
Her eyes were not angry.
They were lethal.
"Watch your words."
Kael froze, air leaving his chest in a sharp exhale.
Not because of her glare.
Because the courtyard temperature dropped five degrees.
Sebastian hadn't moved.
He hadn't spoken.
He hadn't even looked at Kael.
But a faint pressure seeped out of him—thin as mist, cold as stone, precise as a blade. Not enough to harm. Not enough to threaten.
Just enough to remind everyone:
Sebastian Raizen was not the cause of the danger.
He was the barrier between them and it.
Kael swallowed hard. "I… I wasn't blaming—"
Sebastian closed his eyes.
"You're scared. It's normal."
Kael's lips parted—but he didn't speak again.
Sebastian continued, voice quiet but steady.
"That intent… wasn't malicious."
Several heads snapped toward him in disbelief.
"Not malicious?" Andrea hissed. "It nearly collapsed the entire courtyard!"
"It could've killed us," Rhea added.
"It didn't," Sebastian said.
"Because it only cared about one thing," Kenjie muttered.
Sebastian nodded.
"Me."
Luna's grip tightened again. "Why you? Why does something beyond the Gate recognize you? What does it see?"
A flicker crossed his eyes—not fear, not confusion, but the ghost of a question he'd carried long before the Gate appeared.
"I don't know," he said.
It wasn't a lie.
But it wasn't the whole truth either.
Luna saw it.
She always did.
But she didn't push.
Instead she whispered, "Then we'll figure it out."
He turned toward her, and for a brief second, the world—the cracks, the Gate, the presence, the pressure—faded to nothing but her voice.
"Not alone," she added.
A beat passed.
Sebastian nodded once.
The moment broke when Enra approached carefully, as if stepping near a recovering storm. "Raizen. The Conclave is demanding a full report."
Sebastian didn't move.
"They'll want to know what you did. How you broke the fracture. Why the Gate reacted to you. Everything."
Still, he said nothing.
"They'll also demand your containment for examination."
Luna's head snapped around. "Absolutely not."
Adriel stepped forward. "Luna—"
"No." She stood, still supporting Sebastian but facing the instructors now. "You saw what just happened. You all saw. If the Conclave forces anything on him—restrains him, locks him away, tries to dissect this—whatever's on the other side will come back."
Rhea nodded. "She's right. If they interfere, it might interpret that as hostility."
Kael exhaled sharply. "We're not equipped for a war with the unknown."
Andrea looked at Sebastian. "But he is."
Sebastian's gaze stayed on the sky, senses still tracing after the fading ripple.
"No," he murmured. "I'm not."
Everyone froze.
Luna's breath caught. "…Sebastian?"
He slowly looked down at his own hand—steady now, but faint tremors lingered beneath the skin.
"That wasn't me fighting. That wasn't me stopping it. That wasn't me resisting or overpowering anything."
His hand curled slightly.
"That was it choosing not to come through."
The courtyard chilled.
Not from aura.
From realization.
Rhea whispered, "The Gate… allowed itself to be shattered?"
Andrea's voice trembled despite her strength. "It let him interfere?"
Sebastian nodded once.
And the weight of that nod felt heavier than any surge of power could.
Meridius collapsed onto a bench, face pale. "Then… then the fracture wasn't an attack."
"No," Sebastian said softly. "It was an introduction."
Silence.
Crushing, suffocating silence.
Garet's voice broke it, quiet but clear. "Then the real Gate… hasn't even started."
Sebastian raised his head toward the sky one last time.
The faintest shimmer lingered—so faint only he could sense it.
A promise.
A return.
A waiting gaze just beyond the edge of reality.
"No," he whispered.
"It hasn't."
The Academy remained frozen in the aftermath of something they could not name, could not measure, could not prepare for.
And Sebastian—
Still weakened.
Still resonating.
Still unknowable to even himself—
was the only reason the world still stood.
Luna leaned her forehead against his temple, whispering shakily:
"Then we hold the line until it does."
Sebastian exhaled.
Soft.
Steady.
Resigned.
"Then we will."
Because whatever was coming next—
It wasn't curiosity.
And it wasn't observation.
It would be interest.
And after interest…
Came claiming.