The Academy did not wake gently.
Long before dawn touched the towers of Nova Astra, the air itself stirred—an invisible tremor, a pulse that resonated across every training field and dormitory hallway. Windows rattled. Mana lanterns flickered. Birds abandoned their roosts, fleeing into the faint purple haze hanging over the eastern sky.
Something was wrong.
Something had shifted.
And at the highest balcony of the Northern Wing, Sebastian Raizen stood alone—black coat rustling faintly against the wind, hair brushing his forehead as the first threads of sunrise cut through the horizon.
He looked like someone fully awake.
But he wasn't awake.
He was aware—a state far sharper, far deeper, far colder than consciousness.
Last night's collapse had left microscopic fractures along his mana pathways, hairline distortions in his bones, even the faint ghost of a pulse echoing inside his ribs. Any normal student would still be bedridden. Even a member of the Big 8 would need a week.
But Sebastian…
Sebastian's paradox body refused to remain broken.
Regeneration blossomed through him like quiet wildfire—unseen, uncelebrated, unstoppable. Every breath sharpened him. Every blink stabilized him. Every heartbeat rewrote the laws trying to crush him.
He should have been terrified.
Instead, he simply breathed.
A soft set of footsteps broke through the balcony's wind.
Luna Blossomveil emerged from the shadowed hall—silver hair revealed by the dawn, violet eyes reflecting calm that was far too thin to hide her worry.
"You're awake," she said softly.
"I never slept."
"That doesn't make it better."
She stepped closer, aura threaded with that Plum Blossom refinement inherited from the strongest martial artist alive. She studied his face, searching for cracks—exhaustion, strain, anything that would make him human again.
She found none.
Jovhan Raizen arrived next, aura steady but sharp, scanning his cousin like he might collapse at any second—or explode. "You know damn well you shouldn't be standing."
Sebastian exhaled lightly. "Standing is not the problem."
"What is?"
"The fact that something is standing on the other side of the Gate."
Both fell silent.
Last night's explosion—
The Gate roaring open—
Mana flaring like a dying star—
Sebastian's body snapping under impossible pressure—
And then… something touching him.
Something that looked like him.
The memory pulsed like a phantom wound.
Before any of them could speak again, the Academy's warning bells ignited—deep, metallic, ancient. Not frantic. Not chaotic.
But solemn.
The kind of bell struck only when something irreversible had begun.
---
By the time they reached the central courtyard, hundreds of students were already gathered. In the center of the marble plaza, Headmaster Vassilis stood with his officers, face grim, coat rippling with contained energy.
The Big 8 arrived moments later:
Kenjie Velstorne, storm-light humming under his skin.
Arcturus Wyrmnwell, qi coiling around his arms like restrained fire.
Draco Sernas, mana circuits glowing faintly under his veins.
Valric Rievan, nearly invisible in the courtyard's shadows.
Elincia Verez, eyes shimmering with quiet cosmic patterns.
Cyril Altheon, footsteps silent as breath.
Nova Astra's strongest students.
Five universes represented.
One crisis pulling them together.
The Headmaster's voice carried across the courtyard.
"Last night, the Gate registered an anomaly unprecedented in the Academy's history. An entity attempted to synchronize with our reality."
Murmurs erupted.
Students stiffened.
The air tightened.
Vassilis raised a hand.
"For the first time since the Academy's founding… the Gate mirrored a living mana signature." His gaze shifted toward one person—sharply, heavily, inevitably. "Sebastian Raizen."
Hundreds of eyes snapped toward him.
Some in fear.
Some in awe.
Some in confusion.
Sebastian did not react.
"The Gate did not just react to him," Vassilis continued. "It recognized him."
Luna's hand touched her sword.
Jovhan's aura flared in anger.
Kenjie muttered, "Here we go…"
Vassilis hardened his expression.
"Effective immediately, all universes have activated recall protocols. Evacuation preparations begin today. Students will be extracted back to their home worlds if necessary."
Massive uproar.
Shouts.
Curses.
Questions.
The Headmaster cut through it like a blade.
"There is one exception."
The courtyard froze.
"Sebastian Raizen is forbidden to leave."
A tension so sharp it felt like a drawn sword sliced the air.
Luna stepped forward instantly. "You're containing him."
Jovhan snarled, "He's not a weapon."
Kenjie's storm-light buzzed dangerously. "He's not a lab specimen."
Vassilis lifted his palm. "We are not imprisoning him. We are preventing panic. If he leaves, the Gate may destabilize further."
"And if he stays?" Sebastian asked quietly.
Vassilis hesitated.
Which was answer enough.
---
While the courtyard argued and the Big 8 radiated lethal defiance, Sebastian's senses faded into white noise. His mind extended outward—reading mana flows, heartbeats, aura frequencies, air pressure shifts, even the trembling vibration of the Gate beyond the walls.
Something was building.
Something was waiting.
Something was… familiar.
He turned slightly, eyes focusing on the highest point of the sky.
A thin ripple shimmered through the clouds.
A distortion spreading like a crack through glass.
Elincia whispered, "Something is forming…"
Kenjie exhaled sharply. "Not another Gate, right?"
"No," Elincia murmured. "Not a Gate. Something… reflecting."
Sebastian's heart beat once.
A sound reverberated—not through the air, but through reality.
A whisper.
A voice he recognized.
"You're early."
Sebastian's breath stilled.
Luna's eyes widened. "Did you hear—?"
Jovhan took a step back. "What the hell was that?"
The ripple collapsed.
Silence followed.
But Sebastian knew.
The voice was his.
Not from the past.
Not from the future.
Not from memory.
From something else.
Something watching.
Something approaching.
And his entire paradox body pulsed with a warning it did not know how to articulate.
He whispered under his breath:
"Forty-eight hours…"
The first tremor of collapse had begun.
The courtyard had barely settled when the Headmaster's officers began forming perimeter lines, directing students back toward their dormitory blocks. The sky continued to warp—subtly, rhythmically—as if reality itself were breathing in uneven intervals. Even the mana rivers beneath the Academy grounds hummed with instability, each vibration deepening the tension in the air.
Sebastian felt all of it.
Not with fear.
Not with panic.
But with a strange, instinctive focus.
A clarity that wasn't taught.
A clarity that wasn't human.
A clarity that—if the alternate version of him was to be believed—belonged to something far beyond the Academy's understanding.
Luna stood beside him now, her presence a steadying force in a sea of rising dread. She didn't need to speak; her silence was enough. But the way her fingers hovered over her sword's hilt betrayed her internal turmoil.
Jovhan remained on Sebastian's other side, jaw clenched, aura flickering with tightly controlled fury. He glared at every instructor who dared look their way, as if preparing for a brawl he hoped he wouldn't have to start.
Across the courtyard, the Big 8 watched the sky.
Arcturus breathed deeply, qi swirling in azure spirals around his forearms. "That ripple… it felt alive."
Draco Sernas' eyes glowed, arcane circuits shifting under his skin. "No. Not alive. Reactive. As if responding to something here."
His eyes briefly flicked toward Sebastian.
Kenjie Velstorne cracked his knuckles, storm-light running along his arms in restless arcs. "If something's coming through, I say we meet it head-on. I'm not hiding in a bunker."
Valric didn't speak. He simply stepped backward into a shadow that did not belong to anything cast by sunlight, vanishing from sight.
Elincia's Shield Eyes opened fully—two galaxies reflecting through her pupils. "Headmaster… the dimensional fabric is thinning faster now. We do not have days."
The courtyard stilled.
Not days?
Not even hours?
Sebastian's gaze sharpened—but only slightly.
He knew.
His alternate self hadn't spoken metaphorically.
Forty-eight hours was not a number.
It was a deadline written in inevitability.
Headmaster Vassilis motioned sharply. "Sebastian. With me."
This time, the tone wasn't commanding.
It was pleading.
As if the Headmaster already suspected the truth—that none of them understood what was coming, and only Sebastian had even a fragment of clarity about it.
Sebastian followed without resistance.
But the Big 8 moved too.
Luna walked beside him.
Jovhan on his other flank.
Kenjie behind them, hands in pockets but aura ready.
Cyril and Arcturus flanked the rear.
Draco and Elincia kept pace silently.
They all understood something unspoken:
If the Academy wanted to isolate Sebastian, they would have to get through the eight strongest students in five universes first.
Inside the Headmaster's Hall, the atmosphere changed instantly.
Cold.
Dense.
Ancient.
The Obsidian Memory Spire waited in the center—crystalline, black, and pulsing with silent light. Its entire structure hummed with resonance as the distortions outside intensified.
Vassilis approached the Spire with slow steps.
"The anomaly recorded a mana echo last night," he said, voice tight. "We believed at first it was a reflection of the Gate reacting to your presence."
He turned toward Sebastian, expression darkening.
"It wasn't."
He tapped the Spire.
The chamber dimmed, runes lighting up across the dark stone walls.
A projection materialized—Sebastian collapsing under the Gate's shockwave. The students watched silently as the mana tore him apart from within.
Luna's breath hitched.
Jovhan stepped forward involuntarily.
Kenjie muttered, "What the hell—?"
And then the projection glitched.
The moment Sebastian fell—
another figure appeared.
A silhouette made of pure shadow and starlight.
A shape that mirrored Sebastian perfectly.
A presence that radiated terrifying, quiet authority.
Elincia's eyes widened. "That… is not a reflection."
No one breathed.
The silhouette knelt beside Sebastian's collapsing projection and placed a single hand over his chest.
The damage reversed.
The overload vanished.
The collapse stopped instantly.
Arcturus stepped closer. "That's a healing technique I have never seen in any universe…"
"No," Draco corrected quietly, brows furrowed. "Not healing. Overwriting."
The silhouette looked up.
Directly into the projection.
Directly into the Spire.
Directly at them.
Kenjie stumbled back. "Did it just—look at us?"
Vassilis clenched his staff.
"It did. During the recording."
The voice from the projection emerged—cracked, distorted, but unmistakable.
"He's not ready to die yet."
Luna whispered, "…Sebastian."
It was his voice.
Not just similar.
Identical.
Jovhan swallowed hard. "You heard your own voice… from something that isn't you?"
Sebastian exhaled slowly. "He is me."
Silence rang like steel.
The projection faded.
The chamber felt colder.
Vassilis turned to Sebastian, eyes trembling with a mixture of fear and necessity. "If this is true… if an iteration of you exists beyond our worldline…"
He inhaled slowly.
"…what does that make you?"
Sebastian looked at the empty air where the silhouette had been.
"I don't know."
He said it calmly.
Too calmly.
Then something snapped behind them.
Not a sound.
Not a step.
Not mana.
A ripple.
The same ripple from the courtyard.
But this time—it was inside the hall.
Luna's sword was half-drawn in an instant, violet aura slicing through the air. Jovhan's aura surged around Sebastian. Kenjie's storm cracked the marble beneath his feet.
But none of them could react fast enough.
A voice spoke behind Sebastian.
Refined.
Quiet.
Inevitable.
"You weren't supposed to see that yet."
Sebastian turned.
The Big 8 froze.
Headmaster Vassilis stumbled backward.
And standing behind Sebastian—
—was Sebastian.
Older.
Calmer.
Carved with a terrifying stillness.
Black eyes containing entire night skies.
The alternate Sebastian stepped forward, reality bending around him without effort.
"You're early," he said softly.
Sebastian didn't step back.
The Big 8 didn't breathe.
The alternate tilted his head slightly.
"It's time we talked."
The silence that followed the alternate's disappearance lingered like a second presence, a shadow that refused to dissolve. The air thickened with it. Not fear. Not awe. Something older. Something expectant.
Sebastian stood still for a long moment, eyes half-lidded, posture steady. But every Big 8 member felt it—something in him clicked into place. A new rhythm entered his breathing. A new cadence settled into his aura. His mind sharpened so decisively the world itself seemed slower, thicker, easier to parse.
Luna felt the shift first. Her sword hand trembled slightly, not from fear, but from the instinctive recognition of a predator waking beside her. Jovhan sensed the Raizen bloodline stir violently inside him in response, a primal alarm ringing through their shared heritage. Kenjie's stormlight dimmed, as if the electricity itself bent away from Sebastian's presence rather than crackle toward it. Arcturus inhaled sharply, qi stumbling against a pressure he had never encountered before. Draco's circuits flickered. Elincia's pupils dilated. Valric's shadow recoiled.
The change was subtle.
And yet overwhelming.
Vassilis took a single step forward, voice quiet. "Sebastian… what do you feel?"
Sebastian didn't answer at first.
He simply raised his eyes.
And the entire hall seemed to breathe differently.
Every mana circuit brightened.
Every torch flickered.
The Obsidian Spire pulsed.
The air hummed.
He exhaled.
And the sound of that exhale carried weight.
Something ancient.
Something inevitable.
Something becoming.
"I feel alignment," he finally said.
The word struck like impact.
Luna whispered, "Alignment of what?"
Sebastian looked down at his own hand.
Flexed his fingers slowly.
Watched the movement with unusual attention.
"Mind. Body. Instinct."
Jovhan frowned. "Like… synchronizing?"
"No." Sebastian's voice softened, calm but edged. "Like I'm finally occupying my own body fully."
Draco inhaled sharply through his nose. "Your paradox physiology… it's accelerating."
"Elincia," Kenjie murmured, "is something wrong with his aura?"
"No," Elincia said, staring. "It's… reorganizing."
Arcturus stepped closer, qi swirling defensively. "Reorganizing into what?"
Sebastian lowered his hand.
"Into what it was meant to be."
The hall trembled—not from him, but from the sky outside.
A thundering crack split through the atmosphere, so loud every pane of glass in the Headmaster's Hall vibrated. Vassilis raised his staff immediately, mana shields flaring across the dome overhead.
More cracks followed. Not lightning. Not explosions. Dimensional pressure. The fabric of reality tightening in on itself, pulling thin like stretched skin.
The alternate had said forty-eight hours.
But the thinning had accelerated.
The pressure was rising.
And the Gate was responding.
Another crack boomed, closer this time.
A shockwave rippled across the Academy grounds.
Students screamed outside.
Mana conduits sparked and burst.
The illumination crystals above the courtyard shattered.
Sebastian's voice cut through the rising panic.
"It's searching."
Luna turned toward him. "What is?"
He stepped toward the door, each pace deliberate.
Not rushed.
Not panicked.
Calculated.
"The predator," he said softly. "It is looking for the anchor."
Draco's face paled. "You."
"Yes."
Jovhan moved instantly to block his path. "Then you're not walking out alone."
"Neither am I," Luna said, stepping beside them.
"And neither of you," Kenjie added, lightning buzzing across his shoulders.
The rest of the Big 8 fell in with equal decisiveness.
Sebastian paused at the threshold, glancing at each of them, expression unreadable.
"You understood what he meant," he said quietly. "Whatever is coming… only I can confront it."
Arcturus shook his head. "Then we buy you time."
Cyril's silent blades glinted.
Elincia nodded once. "We stabilize the Academy."
Valric emerged from a shadow near Sebastian's left shoulder. "We protect you until you awaken."
Vassilis stepped forward, voice trembling yet resolute. "Then the Academy will stand with you."
A deafening boom tore across the courtyard.
The doors of the Hall flung inward, wind howling through the corridors like a starving beast. Students ran across the plaza, instructors shouting orders as cracks spread across the sky like veins of fractured glass.
The Big 8 rushed into formation around Sebastian.
He stepped forward.
The world slowed.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
His senses expanded, stretching across the courtyard, over rooftops, past the barrier towers, into the trembling atmosphere above. He felt everything—the panic, the mana spikes, the structural weaknesses, the flow of qi from Xianjing students, the static discharge from Nova Terra tech-users, the chants of Verneville mages calling resilience wards.
And beyond all that…
A point.
A point of pressure.
A point descending.
A point hunting.
Luna followed his eyes upward. "Sebastian… what is that?"
Sebastian whispered a single word.
"Contact."
The sky broke.
A spear of black light plunged downward, silent and merciless, ripping a hole through the clouds so violently the wind screamed.
Students cried out.
Instructors raised shields.
The Big 8 lowered stances.
And Sebastian…
…watched the spear fall as though he had been waiting for it.
The impact never reached the ground.
Because he moved.
No aura flare.
No burst of power.
No dramatic explosion.
He simply stepped forward once.
And the world cracked.
His foot touched the ground.
Air pressure imploded around him.
Wind reversed direction.
Sound cut out for a heartbeat.
Before anyone could blink, Sebastian was no longer beside the Big 8.
He was in the courtyard center.
Right beneath the falling spear of black light.
Right where the predator had aimed.
Luna's eyes widened.
Jovhan shouted his name.
Kenjie cursed.
Elincia gasped.
Arcturus' qi roared.
Sebastian lifted one hand.
Calm.
Precise.
Almost gentle.
And the spear stopped.
Frozen in the air, inches from his palm.
Time did not stop.
The spear did.
A chorus of gasps echoed across the courtyard.
The predator's first strike—something meant to kill him instantly—hung suspended like a trapped heartbeat.
Sebastian stared into its swirling void.
And spoke softly.
"You found me."
The spear shattered.
A voice rolled through the sky, ancient and hungry.
The hunt had begun.