Chapter 41 – The Circle of Will
He couldn't really call it waking up; he had simply never stopped keeping his eyes open.
All night he had lain not in a bed, but on a border—between sleep and awareness, between exhaustion and readiness, tracing and retracing that thin line and waiting on it.
As the stone walls of the northern tower slowly swallowed the first pale light of morning, Seryn pushed his back away from the wall. His breathing was still counted.
Four short. Two short.
The gray vibration stirred briefly under his ribs, then settled again.
"No more full suppression," he murmured to himself. "Not as long as I keep the reins."
He looked out the window. There was already a small stir of movement at the top of the stairs leading down to the courtyard. Today wasn't about theory; it was about control. They wouldn't be tested on ink, but on breath.
He shrugged into his robe, gave the chaos of notes on his desk a single, swift glance, then opened the door and stepped into the corridor.
Nothing today would be "just another class."
---
The hall reserved for the control trial was smaller than the Great Hall, but it felt heavier.
On the last bend of corridor leading there, two different lines of guards stood—one in imperial armor, one in Temple whites. Neither spoke. They had long since given their voices over to paper and reports.
Seryn spotted two familiar faces in the waiting area.
Kai leaned against the wall, fingers linked behind his head. Dark circles under his eyes, same stubborn grin.
Rien stood straight, a scrap of paper in his hand, watching invisible points on an invisible map.
Kai waved. "Here he comes. The study addict has arrived."
Seryn walked up. "You've been here since dawn?"
"No," Kai said. "I slept down here, fought a pillar for pillow rights. Of course since dawn. Sleep and I broke up three days ago."
Rien cut in. "Being early isn't bad. Less room for mistakes at the front of the line."
"Comforting as ever," Kai muttered. "Thank you for reminding me how doomed I am."
Seryn's eyes went to the wide door leading into the exam hall. Above the frame, carved into the stone, was a design resembling the one he'd seen on the Great Hall's ceiling—but denser. Interlocking circles, intersecting diagonals, thin lines traced with mana stone.
"This time the net is tighter," he said quietly. "In the theory exam they read us from above. Today they'll try to go through us."
Kai swallowed. "Perfect. Officially scared now."
Rien didn't attempt to hide the tension in his shoulders. "At least in theory we could still breathe. Today, the breath itself is the test."
As if on cue, the door opened with a heavy scrape. An attendant spoke in a low, firm tone:
"First group for the control trial: List one. Enter in order as your names are called."
Names rolled. Seryn waited for his. The air flowing out from the open doorway carried the taste of mana—like metal left out in the rain.
"Rien Davor."
Rien dipped his head and went inside.
"Seryn Daskal."
Kai's eyebrow shot up. "Side by side… Is that good or bad?"
"Both," Seryn said. And he stepped through.
---
The hall inside was narrower than he'd imagined.
There was no single, grand formation at the center. Instead, a ring of half-closed "capsules" circled the room—waist-high stone walls, open at the top, each containing a single stone seat and a fixed mana crystal at the front.
It was like sitting halfway down an open well and staring up at the sky.
The ceiling was its own book: webbed lines connecting from one capsule to the next, funneling into a central convergence that ran down into a massive crystal on the rear wall. On that raised platform, decorated with Temple sigils, stood Inquisitor Atheon.
Just behind him, the imperial observer watched, his eyes carrying the kind of tiredness that never really slept.
At the front of the hall, addressing the incoming students, stood Seraphine and Calden.
Seraphine's voice filled the room without echo. "The control trial has three sections. In the first, you keep your mana at a stable rhythm. In the second, you redirect under pressure. In the third, you maintain flow despite external mental stimuli."
Calden added, "You will focus only on the crystal. Breath, intent, mana. The formation measures the rest. You don't have to close your eyes, but for most of you, it will help."
Behind Seryn, Kai whispered, "If I keep my eyes open, I'll fall. If I close them, I'll get lost. Wonderful options."
Seryn moved to his assigned capsule. The number didn't match his theory exam seat; clearly, the placements were deliberate.
Sitting on the stone bench, he found cold stone at his back and a silent crystal in front of him. When he laid his hand on it, he felt nothing—not yet.
The formation wasn't "breathing" yet.
---
"First section," Seraphine announced. "Breath and steady flow."
Calden gestured toward the ceiling. "Any sudden surge or drop is a penalty. What's being tested here is not strength, but consistency. Begin."
Under Seryn's palm, the crystal shivered faintly. A light began to move inside it—not bright, but present, like a coal buried under ash.
He started counting his breaths.
Four short. Two short.
He opened his normal mana channels first. The gray power he left where it was, untouched. The light in the crystal tried to synchronize with the flow in his body. One of the lines overhead trembled, shifting by the smallest fraction as the formation started to "define" him.
In neighboring capsules, some students breathed unevenly. A stifled sob here, a grit of teeth there, stone scraping under restless feet. The ceiling, indifferent, gathered them all into one big flow.
"We don't want emotional spikes," Calden said. "Fear and elation both distort your current. Keep your breath plain."
Seryn felt the gray vibration stirring under his sternum. It skimmed the edge of his ordinary mana, like two shadows that wouldn't fully separate, tracing a hesitant border.
So far, he could leave it alone.
But he also knew something now: every time he had locked the gray power away completely, unlocking it later had grown harder. Suppression wasn't erasure. It was delay.
Today isn't about delay, he thought. It's about steering.
He took another slow breath and widened his mana flow just slightly. The gray line moved with it by a fraction of a hair.
The light in the crystal changed tone. Not pure white, not pure blue; something shaded in between.
His overhead focus point brightened for a heartbeat, then leveled out again.
The first section, for now, was holding without cracks.
---
"Second section," Seraphine said. "Redirection under pressure."
Calden's voice sharpened. "In this section, the formation itself will apply external pressure. Your task is to maintain continuity and change direction. A sudden break or reflexive burst is a low mark."
The mana in the air suddenly grew heavier.
An invisible wave rolled down from the ceiling's center, passing over the capsules. It felt like a hand pressed flat against his chest, trying to shove his flow downward.
From some capsules came muffled sounds. One student sucked in breath and let it out in a shaky rush, another scraped his palm awkwardly as he nearly lost contact with the crystal.
Seryn felt the weight at his throat and realized the gray line, not his normal mana, was the first to react. Where ordinary mana bent to adapt, the gray stiffened against being pushed.
"Not yet," he thought. "I decide first."
He visualized his current not radiating from his chest, but a step lower—from his core. He forced himself to imagine the path as rerouted through his abdomen. The gray line slid with it, not according to its own impulse, but according to his drawn line. The crystal tracked the change with a faint tremor.
The ceiling paused over him for a heartbeat longer this time. It seemed to ask, What was that? Then it moved on, as if marking it "tolerable for now."
For a moment another thought surfaced: If I push hard, I could break the formation.
But that would be a one-day victory and a years-long invitation—to Temple cells and imperial interrogations.
He let it go.
Another wave came—twice as strong.
This time, Seryn forced his ordinary mana to pass not beside the gray line, but through it. The gray power resisted, then at some point had to cooperate. That instant of reluctant compliance flared in the crystal like a tiny inner storm.
Short, controlled, contained within his "narrow corridor."
The ceiling focus point hesitated again. It was like watching a chalk mark on a board get wiped and redrawn in a slightly different place.
Then the flow normalized once more.
"Enough," Seraphine said. "We move to the third section."
The faint note of relief in her voice mirrored the fact that gray had moved, but had not flattened anyone in its path.
---
"Third section: External stimulus."
A small stone appeared in Calden's hand. He lifted it. "I am feeding a mental pressure signal into the formation. You will maintain your current in the crystal. This is the cleanest drop point in the exam. Those who fall don't fall because they're weak, but because they don't know themselves yet."
The last sentence snagged in Seryn's mind.
Mental pressure was different from mana pressure. The air didn't grow heavy; thoughts did.
When the wave hit, the sound of the room changed.
Suddenly all the whispers, all the breaths, jammed together and slammed into his ears as if shoved down a narrow tunnel. For a moment, Seryn nearly lost his rhythm. Every scream, every blast, every whispered "Daskal" he'd ever heard seemed to pile up in the same instant.
The gray line, this time, didn't brace to defend; it reacted. It rose under his sternum, bristling like something that wanted to push the artificial noise back.
"I hold," he thought. "Not you."
In his mind he stopped using the gray as a barricade and instead spread it like the inner face of a thin shield. The pressure fell not directly on his body, but on that flexible layer governed by his will.
The crystal's light surged brighter, then settled—a brief inner storm, then calm.
From another capsule came a broken voice, "Enough… Enough…"
Someone else scraped their nails across stone as they recoiled from the crystal.
Seryn clenched his teeth but kept his hand where it was.
Four short. Two short.
The second mental wave hit. This time, buried between old memories, a much nearer picture surfaced: the Temple test, the gray flare, the priest's half-panicked "hybrid."
Atheon's silent, calculating eyes.
If you yield, they name you. If you don't, you name yourself.
For the first time, he let the gray current extend not only within his chest but also, in the thinnest of lines, into the crystal. As if he were drawing a narrow, one-person path between himself and the ceiling.
The formation noticed.
Overhead, the focus didn't just try to "correct" him—it answered. A sharp, brief tremor flashed over his capsule; a warning tap.
The crystal shuddered again; his fingertips went numb.
But the line did not snap. It did not widen either. It stayed where he had put it.
The narrow corridor.
"Enough," Seraphine's voice came, like a rope thrown in from above.
Calden lowered the stone. The mental pressure fell away. Thoughts lightened again.
"Hands off the crystals," Seraphine said. "The trial is complete."
---
When Seryn lifted his hand, the numbness in his fingers slowly transformed into pins and needles.
From the other capsules came rough breathing, muffled coughs, scattered phrases like, "Is it over?"
Stepping out of the stone ring, he looked up. The ceiling marks had already faded. Only a few faint record-lights flickered within the central crystal.
He saw Lucien across the hall: straight-backed, pale, but not empty-eyed. His hand had left the crystal, yet he stood as if still connected to it by a thin, invisible thread.
Their eyes met.
Lucien's lips moved just enough to form a single word.
He heard nothing, but he read the shape: You endured.
Seryn returned a small nod, unsure whether Lucien meant you, we, or both.
Kai collapsed to his knees the moment he stepped out of his capsule. "They tested my soul," he croaked. "I don't think I passed."
Rien wiped sweat from his brow. "You didn't fall," he said. "That's better than most."
"I didn't fall, but I didn't fly either," Kai grumbled.
Seryn looked at them both. "Those who try to fly today hit the ground harder tomorrow. Not flying is good for you."
Kai thought about that for a second, then smiled. "So you're… praising my mediocrity?"
"Not falling," Rien said, "is sometimes the highest form of success."
"So now you're both my emotional support squad?" Kai muttered, but the panic had bled out of his voice.
---
No official statement came that afternoon. No scores, no joint rankings. But the Academy's invisible channels moved as fast as the formation lines.
"I heard some people cracked their crystals."
"They say Lucien didn't flinch once."
"They say Daskal's light changed color twice."
Those sentences drifted from table to corridor to staircase, a secondary current under daily life.
Even in the lunch line, Seryn felt eyes on his shoulders. Curiosity and fear no longer separated cleanly; they had blended. But he was used to it now. Every new stare was just the echo of an old one.
Leaving the dining hall, he caught sight of Seraphine at the far end of the corridor, speaking with Valen. He didn't approach, but their voices cut through the quiet anyway.
"…the crystal didn't rupture," Seraphine was saying. "He held the gray within a corridor he drew himself. The formation logged it as 'anomaly,' but not as 'danger.'"
Valen's reply was low but sharp. "The word anomaly covers far too much ground in reports."
"Alternative term?" Seraphine asked.
A short silence. Then Valen: "In learning."
As Seryn walked past them at a normal pace, Valen's eyes touched his for a moment. There was no approval there, and no condemnation either. Only a message:
While you walk, I count.
Seryn dipped his head slightly and kept going.
---
By the time he returned to the northern tower, the sun had nearly set.
The sky had settled into a deep blue that refused to give itself fully to either day or night. Lights winked on in the Academy's towers one by one, while Temple seals still glowed faintly on the walls—like pale scars that refused to fade.
He closed his door behind him and didn't go to the desk. This time he chose the window.
The gray light in his chest wandered like something tired from taking an exam of its own.
"Hiding isn't enough anymore," he said softly. "Only those who know what they're hiding survive. I have to choose what to show."
He drew four short breaths in, two short out.
The rhythm had become more than a calming exercise; it was a signpost of his borders.
He could already feel the field trial looming—third test, real terrain, real risk. There, formations would matter less than dirt and breath and timing.
But today, he had drawn a line.
His gray light would not be defined solely by Temple reports. It would be named, first, in his own words.
He looked down into the courtyard. A few students still worked in small groups. Kai's voice carried up on the wind, crashing into the branches and scattering. Rien's silence lay over the flagstones like a second shadow.
My real exam isn't in their eyes, Seryn thought. It's in mine.
He turned back to the desk and opened a blank page.
He wrote a title:
> "Second Trial Notes – Visibility, line, will."
He picked up his pen.
And began to write.
---
💬 Author's Note (EN):
In this chapter, Seryn's real fight in the control trial isn't with the crystal—it's with himself. The gray light is no longer just a "danger to hide," but a resource he's learning to steer on his own terms. As we head into the field exam next, we'll see how that shift holds up when the risks are no longer confined to stone walls and mana nets, but to real terrain, real allies, and real chances of not coming back. ⚔️