Location: Jerkin Residence - Grand Hall / Courtyard
Time: Evening - After the Celebration
---
At the edge of the courtyard, half-hidden behind a marble pillar, the geeky kid with glasses stood perfectly still. His lenses caught the dim light of the evening—and within them, a faint shimmer of circuitry pulsed. He adjusted the frame with two fingers, tilting his head just slightly. The world through his lenses was not the world the others saw. It was sharper. Faster. Recorded.
His lips moved—barely a whisper, meant for no one but himself.
"Let's see how this plays out."
---
The doors to the Grand Hall burst open.
No knock. No announcement. No permission.
Eight figures strode into the hall as if they owned it—as if the Jerkin name meant nothing, as if the marble floors belonged to their boots. The celebration died in an instant. Conversations stopped. Trays clattered to tables. Every head turned.
At their lead, a woman with sharp eyes and a sharper tongue—her hair pulled back tight, her posture dripping with spoiled confidence. Her name was Vaela. Behind her, seven others fanned out in a loose crescent. Among them, one figure stood apart—a young man whose eyes were hollow, sleepless, red-rimmed from days without rest. His name was Corvin. He stared at nothing. And then, slowly, he stared at Leo.
His hand was intertwined with Vaela's.
The Jerkin cadets tensed. Caspian was on his feet before anyone else, his body already coiling, his hand already rising—ready to strike the intruder who had landed on the floor moments before.
And then he saw Corvin.
He froze.
The air around the young man shimmered—not with light, but with a heaviness, a pulling sensation, as if the space near him was slightly emptier than it should be. Caspian's skin prickled.
The intruder he had thrown earlier—a Jerkin cadet, bleeding and broken—rolled away on trembling arms. His voice cracked across the hall, shrill and frantic.
"Murderer! You killed someone! In our base! You—!"
A voice from the intruders cut him off, flat and bored. It belonged to a wiry man with dead eyes—Sable, the third of the eight. "So what? He was just a bug anyway."
---
Caspian's hand clenched. His muscles coiled.
A hand closed around his wrist.
Valerik had appeared from nowhere—sweat on his brow, breath short, eyes wide. He shook his head with the gravity of a man who had just run a great distance.
"Hey. Stop. Trust me—I just saved your sorry life. You do not want to be messing with them."
Leo stepped forward, his voice calm but carrying a note of genuine curiosity. "Who are they?"
Valerik swallowed. His voice dropped, and the tone of it made the nearest cadets lean in.
"They're from Pyre Base."
The words landed like a stone in still water. Several cadets exchanged glances. Someone in the back whispered, "That's just a rumor—"
"It's not," Valerik cut in. His voice hardened. "They do things with the essence inside a person. Old arts. Misunderstood arts. They call it soul-work—but it's not spiritual, not poetic. It's practical." He paused, glancing at Corvin. "Out of every forty applicants who walk into that place, only two walk out. Still breathing."
The hall went silent. Cadets stepped back, instinct overriding pride.
Valerik turned toward Corvin, raising a hand in a cautious, diplomatic gesture. "Look—let's just talk. Why are you—"
A sharp voice cut him off.
"Would you, for heaven's sake, just shut up already?"
Vaela hadn't even looked at him. Her mouth twisted in a sneer. "Seriously, your breath stinks. That whole aura around you just reeks of—" she made a show of pinching her nose— "well. You know."
Valerik's face flushed crimson.
But Corvin still hadn't moved. His hollow eyes stayed locked on Leo. Unblinking. Hungry.
Leo's internal voice screamed.
Oh, for the sake of my sanity—why does he keep staring at me?! It's creeping me out! Don't tell me he's one of those types with bizarre tastes—don't tell me I'm the type he's after—
Goosebumps raced down Leo's arms. He glanced away. When he looked back, Corvin's eyes were still on him. Still hollow. Still locked. Like a wolf deciding which cut of meat to take first.
---
Valerik's jaw worked. His voice came out tight. "Look here. I don't care what—"
Vaela cut him off again, this time with a mocking gesture—fingers fluttering, eyes rolling, as if swatting away a gnat. "We aren't here for some has-been prospect. Save it."
Valerik's fists clenched. His face went from red to something darker—something tight and furious.
"Has-been?"
"You heard me." Vaela turned her sharp eyes on Leo and jabbed a thumb in his direction. "We're here for that dummy. The one who's been running his mouth."
Leo blinked. "Wait—what did I do to you?"
Vaela's smile was thin and cruel. "Stop the pretense. We heard you did well against those Torrent losers. Maybe it got to your head—maybe now you're all hot air. And you ticked off the wrong guys. I can assure you of that, Leo Jerkins."
Leo's brow furrowed. "I think you've got the wrong guy."
"Do I?" Vaela lifted her phone.
The screen lit up.
A video played.
A young man—drunk, swaying, slurring—sat on a curb under a flickering streetlamp. His face was unmistakably Leo's. His voice was unmistakably Leo's.
"I'm the top operative prospect in all of Crestwood. The current ones? They aren't in my league. None of them. If any of them approached me—they'd only be fit to clean my boots."
The on-screen Leo mimed the gesture—bending down, wiping an imaginary boot with exaggerated flourish, laughing with a mouth full of cheap drink.
The title beneath the video scrolled: "LEO DISSES THREE FAMILIES' BASES — PROSPECTS SOUND OFF."
The hall erupted in whispers.
Caspian's face went pale. The other graduates—Irina, Ivan, Jax—stared at Leo with disbelief.
"That's not me," Leo said, his voice rising. "That's not—that's not me! Guys, wait, it isn't me!"
Vaela wasn't finished. She scrolled to another photo. A printed portrait lay on the ground in the video—Leo, swaying, unzipping his pants over the photo, laughing.
"See this fellow here? He's just like the rest of those bums who think they're something. But we know what they are."
Caspian's voice was low, tight, wounded. "Brother—I praised you. I called you the real deal. And now I'm starting to doubt it."
Leo turned, desperate. "Caspian, I swear it isn't me—"
Irina folded her arms. Ivan raised an eyebrow. Jax just stared.
"Oh please," Vaela said, waving the phone. "Yeah, right."
She hooked a thumb at Corvin. "My boyfriend here didn't take too kindly to your little escalade. He'd like some pointers—to see if your abilities match your mouth."
Leo's voice came out strained, half a laugh, half a groan. "Since when are women this foul-spoken?"
Corvin began to walk toward him.
Valerik stepped between them, arms spread, jaw set.
"Look. I don't care what the kid said or didn't say. This doesn't need to—"
"Don't call me kid," Leo muttered. "We're basically the same age."
Valerik didn't even look at him.
Corvin didn't stop walking.
---
It happened in a single breath.
Corvin's hand shot out—not a punch, not a claw. Just an open palm pressed flat against Valerik's chest. And from that palm, something spun. A faint rotating shimmer, like heat over asphalt, like a screw turning in soft wood—and it extended. It sank through cloth, through skin, through bone, and kept going.
Valerik's eyes went wide.
His voice came out as a wheeze. "Wha—"
The eight moved as one.
---
Twenty-seven Jerkin cadets were in that hall. They were trained. They were armed. They were the future of the base.
It didn't matter.
Sable was the first to reach them. He didn't strike so much as arrive—a sideslide that carried him under a swinging baton, then a tackle that took three cadets off their feet. He was up before they landed, already behind a fourth, already climbing. He locked arms around a cadet's shoulders and held—and the cadet's body went slack, drained, as if something had been pulled out through his spine. The cadet collapsed. Sable moved on. He was already hunting the next.
Rhen hit the graduates like a thing that had no joints. He moved low, then high, then low again—feet planting, body twisting, arms sweeping in a rhythm that wasn't a fighting style so much as a feeding pattern. Irina's guard was pried open. Jax's stance was stolen from under her. Ilya's counter never left her hands. One by one, they went down—not beaten, but emptied, their movements growing sluggish, their eyes growing dim, as if their will was being poured out of them through a hole no one could see.
Marek and Dross worked the flanks—twin brothers with the same hollow eyes, the same hungry hands. They didn't speak. They didn't need to. They simply took, and the cadets they touched stopped being cadets and became weight on the floor.
Veyra and Talon—the last two of the eight besides Vaela and Corvin—swept through the back of the hall, cutting off the exits, emptying anyone who tried to flee.
Leo stood at the edge of it all, and his mind raced.
What's wrong with these guys? The way they move—it's not normal. It doesn't belong to any style I know. It's like they're not even fighting. It's like they're—
He looked at Caspian.
Caspian was under a table.
"Bro!" Leo hissed. "What are you doing?!"
Caspian's voice floated up from under the tablecloth, muffled but determined. "I still believe you can do it, bro!"
Leo stared at the table. Then at the chaos. Then back at the table.
"I hate you," he whispered. "I hate you so much."
Valerik was still standing—barely. He had fallen into a low, coiled stance, palms forward, weight shifting in slow sways—like a dolphin cutting through water, always in motion, never committing. His aura pulsed, holding him to the ground against a force that wanted to peel him off it. Auditory, the sound of him was a low, controlled hum—the sound of a man keeping himself cool while pressure tried to crush the calm out of him. He was frustrated. He was afraid. He was holding.
Corvin came at him again, and this time Valerik saw the palm coming and twisted—just enough. The rotating shimmer missed his heart and grazed his shoulder, and where it touched, the skin went pale and cold.
Corvin didn't react to the miss. He just came again. The sound of him was different from Valerik's. Valerik hummed; Corvin itched. A hungry, urgent, rising sound—like something that needed more and would always need more. He was stronger than Valerik. And he was still getting stronger.
---
Somewhere in the chaos, Vaela finished with Irina, Jax, and Ilya—dismissing them with a flick of her wrist as if they were houseflies. She turned, and her sharp eyes found Leo.
"Hey, you dumb Jerkin!" she shouted across the hall. "I'm coming for you!"
Leo took a step back. His hands came up. His mind screamed the only honest thought left in it:
Why me? Why does the universe keep doing this to me?!
He readied himself anyway.
---
The hall was in ruin—tables overturned, food scattered, cadets groaning on the floor. Valerik held his ground, barely, locked in a grinding deadlock with a boy whose eyes had no bottom.
And Vaela advanced on Leo Jerkins, grinning like she had all the time in the world.
Behind a pillar, the geeky kid with the glasses tilted his head. The faint circuitry in his lenses pulsed once.
"Interesting," he murmured. "Very interesting."
The doors were still open behind him.
And the night outside was very, very quiet.