Dawn's light strained through the crystalline walls of the dormitory, painting rigid geometric shapes on the floor.
Ken was already awake. Had been for hours.
Lying still, he'd listened to the academy stir—the first groans, the hurried steps to communal showers, the distant hum of the floating platforms activating.
The death of Orric was now a processed data point.
*Threat neutralized. Security protocols unchanged. SS9 alert level: elevated (predictable).*
The circle left on the wall was a calculated risk, a direct challenge that would force a response. He needed them agitated, looking outward for a phantom, not inward at a prince.
His data-pad chimed with the day's schedule.
He rose and performed the morning ritual of Prince Ken: slightly sluggish movements, a carefully rehearsed yawn, clothes chosen for their bland functionality.
He examined his reflection.
The boy who stared back was a masterpiece of mediocrity.
---
**First Period: Foundational Combat. Instructor: Rourke.**
The training cavern was even more imposing by day. The air smelled of ozone and sweat. Fifty first-years stood at nervous attention on the polished combat floor.
Rourke paced before them like a caged wolf.
"You think power is about flashy lights and big explosions," he barked, his gaze scouring them. "It is not. Power is control. Control of your body, your breath, your fear. The first one to fall today learns that lesson fastest."
The exercise was brutal simplicity: maintain a combat stance while Rourke walked the lines, applying pressure with his presence, a verbal jab, or a sudden, testing shove to the shoulder.
Ken assumed the basic *Stellar Guard* stance.
He made two subtle errors—his rear foot was angled a degree too far inward, his leading hand a centimeter too low. Flaws a diligent but unexceptional student would have.
As Rourke passed, his **Eye of Truth** activated automatically.
He saw not just the instructor's formidable muscle density and kinetic potential, but the faint, old injury in the left knee—a minute weakness in the plating of a tank.
Data filed away.
Rourke's eyes swept over him, paused for a micro-second, and moved on.
Ken's stance, while flawed, was perfectly still. No trembling. No erratic breath. It was the stillness of a rock, not of a nervous student.
It had drawn a flicker of professional notice.
*Miscalculation. Adjust.*
When Rourke shoved the burly boy next to Ken, sending him sprawling, Ken allowed himself to flinch noticeably, his own stance wavering for effect.
Rourke's attention did not return.
The victor of the exercise was Seraphine Rae.
She hadn't moved a millimeter, her eyes fixed on a point on the far wall, her breathing a slow, measured cycle. When Rourke pushed her, it was like pushing a mountain.
He grunted, a sound of approval.
"Rae. Remember that name. The rest of you, remember her stance."
As the class was dismissed, Seraphine's eyes found Ken's.
Not with pride, but with that same analytical look. She had seen his initial, unnatural stillness before he corrected it.
Her gaze held a question he chose not to answer, looking away as if embarrassed.
---
**Second Period: Origin Theory. Professor: Lyra Aen Cirrus.**
The theory hall was a hemispherical room with holographic projectors descending from the ceiling. Professor Lyra was young, brilliant, and moved with the eager energy of someone who loved secrets the universe hadn't yet told.
"Today," she said, her voice crisp, "we discuss not *what* the Origin Code is, but the evidence it exists at all. The Glitch."
A hologram flickered to life, showing archival footage: a street in the capital where gravity briefly reversed, sending debris upward; a forest in the Sylvan Weald where colors bled and sounds came from the wrong directions.
"Glitches are localized, temporary paradoxes. Reality... skipping a beat. The dominant theory is they are stresses in the fabric of the Code, often near areas of high energy use or ancient tech."
Ken listened, recording every word.
His mind, however, was analyzing the professor. **Eye of Truth** revealed a keen, curious intellect, no fanaticism, a slight anxiety around the symbols of the Order of the Sacred Codex.
*Potential asset. Knowledgeable, non-aligned.*
Professor Lyra called for a volunteer to attempt a basic resonance with a harmless, stabilized Glitch-fragment contained in a crystal cell.
To Ken's sight, the fragment was a knot of tangled, angry light.
Dorian volunteered, channeling his Stellar-Touched energy at it. The fragment flared, repelling the energy violently, and Dorian was knocked back a step, to muted snickers.
"A blunt approach," Lyra noted kindly. "The Code is not a wall to batter. It is a language to comprehend."
Her eyes scanned the room.
"Vaelstron. You had minimal affinity, yes? A neutral presence. Try. Simply try to observe its pattern. Don't push."
A test within a test.
Ken stood and approached the crystal cell.
He let his **Eye of Truth** focus fully on the Glitch-fragment. To him, it wasn't a knot. It was a broken string of commands, a line of corrupted syntax screaming in silent error.
`[REALITY_QUERY: GRAVITY_DIRECTION] -> [ERROR: NULL_VALUE]`
He didn't try to resonate.
He did what an Umbral Scribe heir did instinctively, at a level so deep he barely understood it himself: he *read* the error.
He reached out a hand, not with energy, but with a focused thought of *correction*. Not to fix it—that was far beyond him—but to gently nudge the screaming error code toward a quieter, less volatile state.
To debug it, just a little.
The fragment's violent flickering softened. The angry light calmed to a steady, slow pulse. It didn't harmonize with Ken; it simply stopped screaming because he had acknowledged the error.
The room was silent.
Professor Lyra stared, her academic curiosity blazing.
"Fascinating. A passive, stabilizing effect. Not affinity, but... compatibility with disorder."
She made a note.
"Thank you, Prince Ken. You may sit."
Ken returned to his seat, feeling the weight of stares.
Dorian's was pure, hot jealousy.
But others were thoughtful. He had not been strong. He had been *strange*.
It was a different kind of camouflage, but potentially more dangerous.
---
**Third Period: Applied Engineering. Workshop Bay 3.**
Chaos.
Beautiful, creative chaos.
Workshop Bay 3 was a canyon of workbenches, scattered tools, half-built drones, and the smell of hot metal and ozone.
The assignment was to partner up and repair a malfunctioning servo-drive unit within the hour.
Ken stood alone, the last unpaired student, the obvious weak link no one wanted.
"Hey! Concubine's boy!"
Ken turned.
Jax Meridian waved from a bench buried under a miniature avalanche of gears and circuit boards. Goggles were pushed up on his grease-smudged forehead.
"You look like you've got the fine motor skills of a stunned ox, but I've got no partner and I work better alone anyway. You can hand me tools. Try not to shock yourself."
It wasn't kindness.
It was pragmatic isolationism.
Perfect.
Ken approached. Jax immediately shoved a spanner into his hand and pointed at a stripped bolt.
"Hold this. No, like *this*. Ugh, forget it."
But Jax didn't send him away. He talked, a constant stream of consciousness about torque ratios, sub-optimal academy-grade alloys, and the elegant design of "Renounced-era" coupling joints.
Ken held, fetched, and observed.
Jax's hands were a blur of intuitive genius. He didn't follow the repair manual; he saw the problem as a three-dimensional puzzle and rewrote the solution on the fly. His **Spark-Weaver Affinity** was clear—the broken components seemed to *want* to work for him.
"See, the idiot who designed this," Jax said, not looking up, "put the flux capacitor—okay, not really, but it might as well be—right next to the kinetic buffer. Recipe for resonant disaster. So I'm just going to..."
He bypassed two circuits with a homemade filament.
The servo-drive whirred to life, purring smoothly.
"Huh," Jax said, finally looking at Ken. "You didn't get in the way. That's something. You're weirdly quiet."
His eyes, bright with intelligence, narrowed.
"Not stupid-quiet. Listening-quiet. What's your deal, Prince?"
Before Ken could formulate a bland response, the workshop's main doors hissed open.
Two figures in the severe gray and white uniforms of the Imperial Inquisition stood there, their presence sucking the noise from the room.
Not campus security.
The Empress's personal eyes.
One stepped forward, his voice cutting through the silence.
"By order of the Regent, Empress Valeriana, a security audit is in progress following last night's tragic incident. All students will submit their data-pads for a routine scan of recent activity and energy signatures. Compliance is mandatory."
A wave of unease rolled through the workshop.
This was no audit.
This was a hunt.
The circle had drawn blood, and the hounds were here.
The Inquisitor's cold eyes swept the room, a predator's gaze. They landed on every student, judging, weighing.
They passed over Ken, lingered for a moment on his princely insignia, and moved on.
But Ken's **Eye of Truth** saw what others didn't.
The scan wasn't just for data. The lead Inquisitor held a small, ornate device that passively sniffed for residual quantum fluctuation signatures—the kind left by teleportation or phasing.
They were looking for the Phantom.
And they were starting with the student body.
Ken handed over his data-pad, his face a mask of polite confusion.
Inside, his mind was a storm of recalculations.
The game had just changed. The board was being shaken. Empress Valeriana had made her first direct move.
And as he watched the Inquisitor scan his pad, Ken knew one thing with absolute certainty:
The quiet part of his war was over.
---
**[End of Chapter 4]**