The lower dormitory floors of Tower Sigma had a different smell. Not ozone and ambition, but stale sweat, cheap soap, and despair. The mana-lights here flickered. The laughter from behind closed doors had a sharp, desperate edge.
Damian moved like a piece of the malfunctioning scenery, Veil of Stillness a perfect bubble around him. His Monarch's Gaze flickered over nameplates and the weak, flickering auras within. He needed someone no one would miss. Someone whose ruin would be blamed on their own inadequacy.
He found his target on the F-Class floor, in a room that reeked of sour wine.
The door was ajar. Inside, a skinny boy with lank hair and a pinched face was pacing, talking to an empty room. "F-Class! They'll see! My grandfather's line had a B-Grade Lightning once! It's in the blood! It's just... dormant! I'll show them at the scan! It'll flare up, you'll see!"
His aura was a pathetic, sputtering thing—1st Order, Rank 2, Lightning (F-Grade Unstable). The very picture of a novice whose own power was likely to consume him. Perfect.
Damian waited in the shadow of a support column until the boy, named Colvyn according to his nameplate, stormed out toward the communal washroom, muttering about "preparing his spirit."
He slipped into the room. It was a sty. On a rickety desk sat a half-empty pitcher of water. Damian took out the phial of Wither-Bark Sap. The blue, glowing liquid seemed to pulse with a hungry cold. Using a sliver of Shadow's Chill, he flash-frozed the tip of a needle he'd taken from the infirmary, then dipped it into the sap. A single, microscopic droplet clung to the frozen point.
He let the ice melt, depositing the infinitesimal drop into the water pitcher. It dissolved instantly, leaving no trace but a faint, almost imaginary chill in the air. By dawn, Colvyn would have drunk. The sap wouldn't kill him. It would do something worse: it would react with his unstable Lightning affinity during the deep soul-scan, creating a spectacular, horrific feedback loop of corruption.
[Ruthlessness +8: For deliberate, premeditated sabotage of a fellow novice's spiritual integrity for personal gain.]
The stat increase was a cold rush, like inhaling menthol. It sharpened his focus, deadened the faint, irrelevant whisper of conscience. Colvyn wasn't a person. He was a tool. A fuse.
Damian returned to his own floor just as the pre-dawn bells chimed. In his alcove, he swallowed the Veil-Weaver Elixir. It tasted of nothing, but a wave of profound numbness spread from his stomach through his spirit. His unique soul-fractures, his triple cores, his Darkness affinity—all of it was wrapped in a perfect, bland, magical neutral.
The Grand Atrium at dawn was silent, thick with tension. Two hundred novices stood in neat rows. Above, the complex scanning array hummed to life, a lattice of golden light forming in the dome.
Head Proctor Valerius stood watching, her expression severe. Proctors Grond and Lyra flanked her, their eyes like scanners themselves.
"Do not resist," Valerius's voice echoed. "The scan is painless. It measures your soul's integrity, affinity depth, and latent potential. Begin."
The golden lattice pulsed. A wave of energy, visible as a shimmering curtain of light, began to sweep from the front of the hall toward the back.
Damian stood in the middle of the Class B block. He felt the Veil-Weaver doing its work. As the golden wave touched him, his own internal senses went flat. He felt like a blank page. The wave passed over him without a ripple.
[Pragmatism +5: For successful implementation of a high-risk deception plan.]
He allowed himself no reaction. He kept his eyes forward, his breathing even.
The wave moved through Class C, then D. He saw Finn fidget, his wind aura fluttering but registering as normal.
Then it hit the E and F-Class blocks at the very back.
A high-pitched, electronic SCREEE tore through the atrium, followed by a blinding flash of necrotic-blue light.
All heads snapped toward the source. Colvyn was convulsing on the floor, his body arched backwards. From his mouth and eyes, tendrils of that same sickly blue Wither-Bark energy lashed out, mingling with his own violently short-circuiting Lightning affinity. His soul-structure, visible to the scanning array, was a horrific, public spectacle—a web of black cracks spreading through his spirit, pulsing with corrupt light.
"ANOMALY! CONTAINMENT!" Proctor Grond bellowed.
Chaos erupted. Proctors Lyra and two others shot forward, layers of frost and binding energy wrapping around the shrieking, thrashing Colvyn. The main scanning array flickered violently, its processing power overwhelmingly diverted to analyze and record the catastrophic event.
The golden wave scanning the rest of the novices stuttered, faded to a faint glow, and then stabilized into a simple, basic integrity check before powering down. The deep-spectrum analysis was aborted.
Alarms blared. Medics with containment stretchers rushed in. Colvyn's screams were muffled by a bubble of silencing ice.
Through it all, Damian stood perfectly still, a rock in a river of panic. He had passed. The plan had worked.
He allowed his eyes to track the commotion, his face a mask of appropriate shock. But his peripheral vision was checking the dais.
Head Proctor Valerius was directing the containment, her face a storm cloud. Proctor Grond was already shouting about "spiritual instability" and "reckless awakening."
But Proctor Lyra...
She had helped seal the boy. Now, as the medics hauled the contained, ice-wrapped form away, she turned. Her frost-pale eyes did not sweep the crowd. They moved with deliberate, chilling precision. They passed over the horrified faces of F-Class, over the murmuring mass of E and D... and landed directly on Damian.
Her gaze held his for three endless seconds. She was a Frost Sentinel. Her magic was about control, observation, the slow, inevitable reveal of truth.
Then she looked away, turning back to Valerius.
The Head Proctor silenced the alarms with a slash of her hand. The atrium fell into a ragged, shocked quiet.
"A tragic reminder," Valerius said, her voice cutting through the tension, "that the path of power is fraught with inherent dangers. Spiritual cultivation is not a game. You are dismissed to your first lectures. Let this be a lesson in vigilance—over your powers, and over yourselves."
The novices were shepherded out, buzzing with terrified gossip. "Did you see his eyes?" "What was that blue stuff?" "He said his Lightning would flare..."
Damian walked with the Class B stream toward the Mana Theory hall. The Veil-Weaver's numbness was fading. He had survived the scan.
But as he took his seat in the lecture theater, he felt a new weight. Not from the cult. From the Academy. Proctor Lyra's suspicion was a seed of ice now planted in the heart of his sanctuary. He had avoided the scan's light, only to step into the shadow of a different, more observant kind of hunter.
Magus Kaelen began droning about foundational mana particles. Damian stared ahead, not hearing.
In the back of his mind, his System updated.
[Primary Objective: 'Survive Deep-Spectrum Scan' - COMPLETE.]
[Reward: 500 Universal Credits. Cult Favor (Minor) increased.]
[New Status: Proctor Lyra (Frost Sentinel) - Disposition: 'Suspicious/Observant'. Threat: Potential.]
[Ruthlessness Total: 43/100]
[Pragmatism Total: 48/100]