A small brass lamp attached to the metal railing snapped on. Harsh, yellow light violently flooded the cramped space around the bed, banishing the shadows.
I dragged my heavy eyelids open, squinting against the sudden, blinding glare. My lungs pulled in the sharp, sterile scent of Odic antiseptic, desperately scrubbing the phantom smell of burning plastic and freezing ink from my airways.
"What the fuck are you doing, you moron?!"
A harsh, furious voice sliced through the absolute silence of the room.
Zee Kazrana Lestune stood exactly half a step away from my mattress.
A rigid, thick medical brace locked her neck perfectly in place, forcing her to pivot her entire torso just to pin my arm down. Her Haldia uniform was gone, replaced by a standard white hospital gown, but she was still wearing her heavy leather combat gloves.
"Are you trying to bleed out on the fucking floor?!" Kazrana aggressively shoved my pinned hand back down onto the mattress. She took a quick, frustrated step backward, wincing sharply as the sudden movement pulled at her battered, freshly taped ribs. "You were literally ripping your own IV line out, you idiot!"
I stared at her.
I looked at the glowing red eyes. I looked at the heavy cervical brace locked around her neck. I looked down at my left arm, where a completely mundane, cyan-glowing IV drip was quietly feeding painkillers into my bloodstream.
The streamer room was the dream.
The melting ink was the transition.
This... this architectural nightmare of a trauma ward, the catastrophic biological pain in my muscles, and the incredibly angry aristocrat yelling at me in a neck brace... this is the reality.
I am back.
I let the back of my head hit the stiff hospital pillow with a heavy, hollow thud. I slowly adjusted the collar of my gown, letting my breathing decelerate from a frantic sprint to a manageable, exhausted crawl.
"Why are you hovering over my bed in the dark like a sleep paralysis demon?" I rasped, my voice sounding like crushed gravel.
Kazrana's jaw tightened. A dark flush of sheer irritation crept up her pale neck.
"Because the medical staff cut the overhead breakers an hour ago," she snapped, aggressively pressing two leather-clad fingers against her temple. "And because you talk in your sleep. Loudly."
She let out a harsh, exhausted breath.
"Some weird, broken, garbage language. Guttural syllables," she continued, glaring at the stone wall behind my head. "You were thrashing around like a dying animal and the damn noise woke me up."
English.
I stared blankly at the sterile white ceiling, offering absolutely no translation.
"Also, my ODICIOS terminal wouldn't stop vibrating." Kazrana pulled a heavy uniform jacket over her uninjured shoulder, shifting the topic with aggressive velocity. "The Headmaster sent a direct system override to my wrist while I was trying to sleep. She ordered me to wake you up. Check your messages."
The most powerful entity in this Academy bypassed high-grade medical privacy firewalls just to use a hospitalized aristocrat as my personal alarm clock. Institutional boundaries truly do not exist for her.
I tapped my wrist. The ODICIOS interface flared with a soft blue light.
07:06 PM.
I opened the unread message.
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[ Malenia Sandhipath Alarictsa ]: My office. Now. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
I was hoping for a quiet dinner. The cosmos continues to deny my requests.
I swiped the prompt into nothingness. I pushed the thin white blanket aside and swung my legs over the edge of the cot. The stone floor hit my bare feet with the biting, absolute temperature of a morgue.
She reached the heavy white fabric of the privacy curtain. Her leather-clad fingers gripped the edge.
She stopped.
Right in the center of my vision, my Native System flared quietly against the white fabric.
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[ ANNOTATION — Zee Kazrana Lestune ]
◈ [GREEN] [EYE]
…
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
A Green Eye. Stable. Safe. The immediate threat of violence had vanished.
She didn't turn around. She just stood there, staring at the thick curtain fabric.
"We look like absolute trash."
The words lacked their usual heat. They emerged flat, quiet, and startlingly honest. Just a tired teenager acknowledging the sheer wreckage of their current reality.
I leaned down, picking up my heavy boots from the freezing stone.
"Speak for yourself. I'm going for the 'survived a natural disaster' aesthetic. I think it's working."
Kazrana glanced over her shoulder. The harsh, yellow light of the bedside lamp caught the deep, bruised exhaustion in her dark red eyes. Her gaze mapped the dust flaking off my collar, the necrotic violet bruises on my knuckles, and the sheer emptiness on my face. Then, her eyes dropped to the rigid plastic brace locking her own neck in place.
A short, quiet sound escaped her. Half a scoff, half a sigh.
Her leather-clad fingers moved to her throat. She gripped the edge of the rigid medical plastic, her jaw tightening as she tried to violently rip the industrial latch open.
The thick plastic groaned under the pressure, refusing to yield. Her broken ribs aggressively protested the sudden movement. She winced, her breathing hitching, but her fingers just gripped the latch harder, preparing to brute-force the mechanism.
"If you snap the hinges on that thing," my voice cut through the quiet, completely flat, "the medics are going to bill you for property damage. I am mathematically certain that costs more than my entire net worth."
She stopped. Her dark red eyes snapped to me, burning with sudden, humiliated irritation.
"The latch is stuck." Her hand dropped to her side with a frustrated, exhausted exhale.
It isn't stuck. It has a dual-release safety lock. But aristocrats generally have people to unclip things for them, and her right arm is currently a useless liability.
I stood up, walking the single step to her. My hands reached toward her neck. "Want me to get it?"
The impenetrable wall of Haldia pride warred openly with the reality of her battered torso. She stared at me for three agonizing seconds, calculating the exact cost of accepting an enemy's assistance.
She dropped her hands completely.
"Do it." An absolute command to bury the vulnerability.
The proximity was suffocating. Up close, the smell of burnt threading and ozone on her uniform was sharp. My fingers didn't hesitate, pressing against the hidden release joints at the back of the heavy plastic. Two crisp, metallic clicks severed the quiet in the ward.
The thick brace loosened instantly.
I pulled it free, tossing the heavy medical plastic onto the empty cot beside her, and stepped back to reclaim my own space.
Kazrana rolled her stiff, bruised neck with a sharp wince, her pale fingers gingerly touching her throat.
I returned to my cot, picking up my left boot. "Miraculously healed? Because walking around with a broken neck just to look cool seems like a pretty stupid biological oversight."
"I am not walking through the hallways looking like a leashed dog."
A Haldia brawler's absolute pride. She would rather risk permanent paralysis than be seen wearing the physical proof of her defeat.
"Fair." My fingers pulled the heavy laces tight. "It completely ruins the 'I just got folded like a cheap lawn chair' aesthetic."
Her hands stopped adjusting her ruined collar. The temperature in the trauma bay plummeted by five degrees.
"I didn't get folded." Her dark red eyes locked onto me, burning with sudden, lethal intent. "I made him drop his weapon. I forced him into a bare-knuckle brawl."
"You made him realize he didn't need a weapon to dismantle you." My tone remained perfectly flat and informative. "You charged a guy who can punch through solid stone, and your grand tactical masterplan was to aggressively hit his fists with your ribs."
The murderous heat in her eyes stalled. The sheer, suicidal audacity of the tactical review completely derailed her anger.
"You forced the system's safety protocol to physically terminate your biological functions because your brain absolutely refused to accept a loss," I added, picking up my uniform jacket from the foot of the cot. "As a survival strategy, it is a complete medical catastrophe. But as a spectator experience? Ten out of ten. Highly cinematic. I genuinely wanted to ask the medics for popcorn."
The silence in the trauma bay became architectural.
She stared at me. The impenetrable wall of Haldia pride cracked. Two leather-clad fingers pressed against her temple, squeezing her eyes shut as if trying to physically hold her brain together under the weight of the absolute disrespect she had just received.
And then, she laughed.
Not a polite, aristocratic chuckle. A short, genuine, breathless laugh cracked in the middle as her broken ribs immediately protested the movement. She winced, wrapping an arm around her battered torso, but the smile stayed on her pale face for exactly two seconds.
"You are a complete lunatic," she breathed, shaking her head.
The amusement faded, leaving a sudden, quiet space between us. For a fraction of a second, the heavy, suffocating hostility that usually followed her around simply vanished. She looked like exactly what she was: a seventeen-year-old girl who had just been beaten half to death and was currently hiding in the dark.
She realized it a second later.
A sharp, unsteady breath rebuilt her aristocratic armor before she could look too human. She looked away, her dark red eyes catching the soft, sterile blue light still pulsing faintly from my left wrist.
The ODICIOS notification.
Kazrana nodded toward my wrist. "If you talk to her like that, she is going to turn you into a permanent stain on her floor."
A quick glance down at the glowing prompt. "I'll try to keep the popcorn comments to a minimum."
She didn't smile again, but the tension didn't return either. She simply watched the blue light with a careful, measured intensity.
Her voice dropped into a low, serious register. "Why does she want you? The Headmaster."
I pulled my jacket on. "Probably to expel me. Or to ask for my skincare routine. It's a coin toss, really."
The impenetrable wall of Haldia pride completely faltered, giving way to genuine, deadpan disbelief.
"If you get yourself expelled before I get the chance to break your legs," her voice dropped into a low, irritated promise, "I am going to be seriously pissed."
My left wrist vibrated.
The ODICIOS interface flared to life, projecting a crisp, sterile blue notification directly into my field of vision.
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[ ODICIOS / NOTIFICATION ]
CONTACT REQUEST RECEIVED
From : Zee Kazrana Lestune
House: Haldia | Year 1
[ ACCEPT ] [ DECLINE ] [ HOLD ]─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
I stared at the glowing blue prompt hovering in the air, then looked up at her.
Kazrana didn't look at the screen. She adjusted the frayed edge of her ruined collar with her good hand, her dark red eyes fixed deliberately on the blank stone wall behind me.
"Accept it. I need to know exactly which hospital wing you are hiding in when I decide to break your legs. Saves me the trouble of hunting you down."
She physically cannot say 'let's keep in touch' or 'tell me if you survive the Headmaster' without turning it into a premeditated assassination plot. Her algorithm simply does not allow it. I accept this translation.
My right hand rose, tapping [ ACCEPT ].
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[ CONTACT ADDED : Zee Kazrana Lestune ]─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
I stood up straight, rolling my shoulders. "Consider my live location permanently forwarded to your hitmen. I'll try to stay enrolled just for you."
"Whatever. Die in her office for all I care."
A short, quiet exhale escaped her. She shoved the heavy white fabric aside and walked out into the cold corridor, leaving me alone in the dim, yellow glow of the bedside lamp.
The silence of the infirmary settled around me.
My boots carried me toward the small, attached washroom at the back of the trauma bay. The brass faucet turned. Freezing water splashed over my face, aggressively scrubbing the residual ink and the rotting apartment walls of my nightmare from my eyes.
A stiff paper towel dried my skin.
My eyes lifted to the mirror.
My right hand rose to wipe a stray drop of water from my jaw.
The hand in the reflection stopped me.
There was no bare wrist with a faint, shiny callus from dragging a gaming mouse across a mat for ten years. The hand staring back at me was wrapped tightly in rough, sterile medical gauze. Faint yellow stains from Angelica's alchemical salve bled through the white fabric, mixing with the dark rust of my own dried blood. Beneath the tight bindings, the frostbitten joints throbbed with a rigid, sickening heat—trembling faintly from the biomechanical backlash of forcing an iron broadsword through an impossible trajectory against the Winter Blade.
My gaze traveled up from the bandaged hand to the face.
Black hair threaded with faint white sparks. Blue eyes carrying the specific, heavy exhaustion of someone who had finally, completely stopped waiting for a respawn point.
I turned away from the mirror.
My knees are safe from Kazrana for today.
I have officially acquired a heavily armed, extremely aggressive stalker. Which brings my current roster of stalkers to exactly two. One is an aristocratic brawler who politely asks for my live location so she can efficiently break my legs. The other is a silver-blonde transmigrator who spends her free time aggressively memorizing my barrier logs and seating charts like a corporate serial killer.
I am building a very specific, highly concerning demographic.
Now, I just have to survive a meeting with a cosmic entity who thinks texting me at seven in the evening is an acceptable management strategy.
My boots echoed down the center aisle of the massive, antiseptic-scented infirmary.
Near the heavy oak double doors, a blonde trainee nurse sat behind the triage desk. Angelica Astoria Godfrey. She wore the deep green uniform of House Symbiode beneath a pristine white medical apron. She looked up from her ODICIOS terminal, her cerulean eyes taking in my dusty Abyssion uniform, the bandaged hand, and the general aesthetic of someone who had spent the entire day surviving natural disasters.
I anchored my voice into a hollow rasp. "Patient Astarte. Checking out."
Angelica blinked, tapping her glowing screen. Her forehead creased severely. "Your ARS saturation is still registering slightly above baseline. You are cleared for discharge, but you really should rest, Arzane. Real rest. Not whatever it is you do."
"I am heading to a meeting that will likely feel very restful."
A frustrated little sigh escaped her. She pushed a stray strand of honey-blonde hair out of her face. My wrist vibrated.
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[ ODICIOS / NOTIFICATION ]
CONTACT REQUEST RECEIVED
From : Angelica Astoria Godfrey
House: Symbiode | Year 1
[ ACCEPT ] [ DECLINE ] [ HOLD ]─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
I stared at the prompt.
Angelica pointed a severe, albeit entirely unintimidating, finger at me. "Accept it. If your frostbitten joints start burning again, or if your lungs feel like crushed glass, ping me immediately. I can sneak out some mid-grade stabilization salves. Don't just sleep it off like an idiot."
The endgame healer of this franchise is actively volunteering to be my personal emergency hotline. I will absolutely take this.
My thumb pressed [ ACCEPT ].
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[ CONTACT ADDED : Angelica Astoria Godfrey ]─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
"Consider me a highly communicative patient." I nodded toward the terminal. "Sign me out."
Angelica pressed her thumb against the glowing blue prompt on her brass terminal. A soft, institutional chime echoed in the quiet ward. Official discharge confirmed.
"Don't die on your way to the meeting."
I turned away from the desk. The exit. The threshold back into the suffocating politics of the Academy.
My wrapped hand pushed the heavy brass handle.
The doors hissed open, spilling the sharp, sterile scent of Odic antiseptic into the stale air of the outside hallway.
I stepped out of the trauma bay and walked out into the corridors of the Academy to face the Headmaster.