Sora flicked his fingers once.
"Your technique is messy."
The afterimages dissolved entirely, returning the void to silence.
The shadow's form trembled, then steadied. A slow grin spread across its face.
"Ah," it whispered. "Found it."
Sora raised a brow.
"Found what?"
"The part of you that you pretend isn't there."
The starfield dimmed.
The shadow stepped forward, and the darkness around it thickened into a cloak.
"The part that doesn't merely endure… but conquers."
Stars cracked beneath its feet.
"The part that wants the throne."
Sora's eyes narrowed slightly.
Before he could respond—
The shadow attacked again, but not with fists this time.
It raised its hand.
A star collapsed.
Light folded inward, then exploded outward in a beam of cosmic force aimed directly at Sora.
The dimension itself screamed.
Sora didn't move.
He inhaled.
Just one breath.
Then he stepped into the blast.
The explosion lit the entire void in a pillar of white-gold and shadow-black energy.
For several long seconds, nothing could be seen.
When the light finally faded—
Sora stood there, arm raised, the blast split apart around him like two rivers being diverted by a stone.
The shadow's eyes widened.
Sora lowered his hand.
"Finished?" he asked calmly.
The shadow's voice emerged hoarse, trembling between fury and admiration.
"…No."
"Good."
Sora blurred, disappearing from sight.
The shadow gasped, then a fist slammed into its stomach, launching it backward across the starfield, tearing open a trail of bent constellations.
Before it could recover, Sora appeared above it.
His foot came down.
The impact shook the entire dimension.
The shadow crashed through the starfield and skidded into darkness, coughing up flickers of black light.
It staggered, barely able to rise.
Sora stood a short distance away, gaze cool, tone quiet.
"This test is about potential, isn't it?" He stepped closer. "You're supposed to bring out what the academy wants to see."
The shadow looked up, trembling.
"Then show it…"
"Show me why they fear you."
The starfield began to crack.
Behind Sora, faint tendrils of golden and black light started to swirl, mixing, clashing, then stabilizing around him like a crown made of opposing forces.
The shadow froze.
Its voice shook.
"…Impossible."
Sora stepped directly into the spreading cracks of space.
He spoke in a calm, almost bored voice.
"Get up."
The shadow didn't move.
Sora clenched his fist.
The cracked starfield burst with light.
"I'm not done."
The starfield fractured like glass underfoot.
Cracks of pure light spider-webbed outward from Sora, each pulse of his aura erasing chunks of the dimension as though it were merely an illusion struggling to keep up.
Across from him, the shadow-Sora trembled.
Not from fear, but from the pressure. From the overwhelming sense that it was standing before something that should not exist in a fourteen-year-old body.
"This… this isn't part of your cultivation," the shadow hissed, its voice glitching with distortion. "This isn't Transcendence."
Sora's eyes lifted lazily.
"No," he agreed. "It isn't."
The shadow shuddered as more cracks split the sky.
"Then… what are you showing me?"
Sora tilted his head slightly, as if considering the question.
Then—
"A possible future."
The shadow collapsed to one knee.
Not by choice, but because the starfield itself bowed around Sora, bending as though the rules of the dimension were rewriting themselves under his presence.
The crown of swirling gold-black energy grew sharper, brighter, its tendrils spreading outward behind him like wings of light and void.
The shadow's voice grew faint.
"You shouldn't be able… to manifest this here…not right now."
Sora took another step forward.
The dimension dimmed further.
"You asked me to show what they fear," he said quietly. "And you're right."
He raised his hand.
"This isn't my cultivation."
A second pulse rippled out.
The stars around them winked out like candles snuffed in a storm.
The shadow clenched its teeth.
"…Then what—"
Sora smiled faintly. Arms wide open, gesturing to the stars around them.
"This world isn't real. This power is not mine, but it is part of me. My existence. The causality of a future me. A version of me. In the future."
A soundless detonation ripped through the starfield.
The shadow was thrown back, no, pulled back, as if gravity itself had turned inside out.
It struggled, clawing at the void, trying to stabilize its form, but the dimension kept warping around Sora like an unstable equation collapsing around its solution.
The shadow coughed, pieces of its form flickering.
"You… you can't be evaluated…"
Sora blinked, amused.
"This is your conclusion?"
"This realm… was built to measure potential…"
"And?"
"…And you are outside that scale."
Sora stepped forward again, closing the distance as the shadow dragged itself upright.
"A candidate cannot be measured if he exceeds the measurement."
Sora stopped an arm's length away.
He reached out, not with a fist, but with two fingers, and tapped the shadow in the centre of the chest.
A tiny gesture.
A pin-drop in the silence.
Reality shattered.
The shadow's body burst into threads of dark light, dissolving into pure mana that spiralled upward into the cracks above.
The starfield shattered around them like broken porcelain.
A final whisper echoed from the dissolving remnants of the shadow:
"…What are you becoming…?"
Sora watched it fade with an unreadable look.
Then he exhaled.
And the world inverted.
Outside the Chamber
Gregory jolted backward as the crystal walls of the chamber flared violently. Lightning-like cracks danced across its surface, glowing with alternating gold and black.
Professors scrambled backward. They had been watching.
"What—what is happening!?"
"The test has never reacted like this!"
"Is there an intrusion!? A dimensional break!?"
"No—no, look at the readings! The instability is coming from inside!"
Gregory's face drained of color.
"Sora… what did you—?"
Before he could finish—
The chamber exploded with light.