The aftermath of the duel rippled through the Academy like stones thrown into still water.
Cassius Tiberion did not return to classes for a week. When he finally emerged from the Tiberion family estate, he was different—quieter, more withdrawn, his usual aristocratic confidence replaced by something harder and colder. He no longer spoke openly of destroying Kami, no longer rallied his followers to petition for the Devourer's removal. But his silence was more dangerous than his previous hostility, like a blade sheathed but ready.
The other students gave Kami an even wider berth now. They had seen what he could do, had witnessed the terrifying ease with which he drained Cassius's formidable Pneuma. Even those who had been neutral now looked at him with undisguised fear. The whispers followed him everywhere:
"Did you see how easily he took Cassius's power?"
"They say he could drain the entire Arena if he wanted to."
"What if he loses control someday? What if he decides to feed on us all?"
Only Thorwald remained unchanged, his faith in his brother unshaken. He visited Kami's tower daily, sharing meals and stories from the dormitories, maintaining the bond that kept Kami anchored to his humanity.
"They fear you more now than before," Thorwald observed one evening as they ate dinner in Kami's circular chamber. "You proved you could control your hunger, but all they remember is how powerful you looked when you fed."
"I know," Kami said quietly. "I showed mercy, returned everything I took, demonstrated discipline. But they only saw the monster. Not the choice I made to stop being one."
"Give them time, brother. Fear fades. Respect grows slowly."
But time brought complications neither brother anticipated.
A month after the duel, Grand Master Maximus summoned Kami to his office. The old man looked troubled, his usually sharp eyes clouded with concern.
"You have attracted attention," Maximus said without preamble. "Not just from the Academy, but from the capital. From the Emperor himself."
Kami felt his stomach tighten. "What kind of attention?"
"The dangerous kind." Maximus placed a sealed letter on his desk, bearing the Imperial Seal—a phoenix rising from flames. "The Emperor's advisors have taken note of your... unique capabilities. They see potential applications. Military applications."
"They want to weaponize me."
"They want to understand if you can be weaponized. There is a difference." Maximus unsealed the letter and read aloud: "'The Imperial Court requests that the student known as Kami Van Hellsin be made available for evaluation by the Silent Legion, His Majesty's covert forces, to determine suitability for specialized service.'"
The Silent Legion. The Emperor's assassins and secret police. Those who operated beyond law and morality, who disappeared threats to the Empire before those threats could fully materialize.
"I am thirteen years old," Kami said.
"And already more dangerous than most Legion veterans." Maximus set down the letter. "I can delay this request, but I cannot refuse it indefinitely. The Emperor's will is absolute. Within the year, you will be evaluated. The question is: what will they find when they test you?"
"I will not become an assassin. I will not use my gifts to murder for the state."
"Then you must demonstrate some other value to the Empire. Some application of your abilities that serves Imperial interests without turning you into a weapon of murder." Maximus leaned forward. "Think, boy. What can a Devourer do that serves civilization rather than destroys it?"
Kami considered this for a long moment. "Healing. I can remove disease, extract poison, drain corruption from wounds. Master Hadrian has said I could be the greatest physician in the Empire."
"Perhaps. But the Emperor has physicians. What he lacks are tools for dealing with threats that conventional forces cannot address." Maximus's expression was grim. "There are things in this world, Kami, that even the Empire fears. Pneuma-based diseases that spread like wildfire. Corrupted Pneuma-wielders who have been twisted by forbidden techniques. Ancient entities from before the Empire that still slumber in forgotten places. What if your Devourer nature could counter such threats? What if you could drain the Pneuma from a plague, from a corrupted wielder, from a monster that cannot be killed by conventional means?"
"You are still describing a weapon. Just aimed at different targets."
"I am describing survival. Yours and potentially the Empire's." Maximus stood, walked to his window. "In six months, representatives from the Silent Legion will come to evaluate you. Show them that you can be useful without being a murderer. Prove that a Devourer can serve the Empire as something other than an assassin. Or they will take you anyway, and what you become in their hands will not be your choice."
That night, unable to sleep, Kami stood at his tower window and watched the city burn with its ten thousand lights. Somewhere down there, in those streets and buildings, people were suffering. Sick, dying, corrupted by Pneuma-based afflictions that normal healers could not cure.
He could help them. His Devourer nature, which everyone feared, could be turned toward healing. He could drain diseases, remove corruption, save lives instead of taking them.
But would that be enough to satisfy the Emperor? Or would they see his healing abilities as merely a useful side effect of a tool better used for darker purposes?
The next morning, Kami approached Master Hadrian with a proposal.
"I want to work in the city's hospitals. Among the poor quarters, where Pneuma-based diseases are common and healers are scarce. Let me prove that a Devourer can serve the living instead of feeding on the dead."
Hadrian's eyes widened. "You want to heal in the slums? Kami, those districts are dangerous. The sick there often have aggressive infections, corrupted Pneuma from exposure to forbidden substances, even parasitic Pneuma entities that normal healers dare not approach."
"Exactly. They are dying because conventional healing cannot help them. But I am not a conventional healer."
"You are also still a student. I cannot authorize—"
"Then bring it to the Masters. Let them decide. But Master Hadrian, if I am to avoid being turned into an assassin, I must prove I am more valuable as a healer. Give me this chance."
The proposal went before the Seven Masters that afternoon. The debate was intense.
Master Severus argued against it: "We cannot unleash a Devourer into the city's poorest districts. The temptation to feed on the weak and sick would be overwhelming."
Mistress Octavia disagreed: "The boy has shown extraordinary control. And the slum hospitals desperately need help. Pneuma-based diseases kill hundreds every month in those districts."
Master Quintus remained neutral: "It is a risk. But perhaps a calculated one. Station guards with him. Limit his time. Monitor every patient he treats."
Grand Master Maximus cast the deciding vote: "Let him try. But understand, Kami Van Hellsin—one slip, one patient drained instead of healed, and you will be executed immediately. Not imprisoned, not exiled. Executed. Do you accept these terms?"
"I do," Kami said.
And so began the strangest chapter of his Academy career.
Three times per week, under heavy guard, Kami was escorted to the Copper District—the poorest quarter of Aurelius, where the streets ran with sewage and the air stank of disease. Here, the Academy maintained a charity hospital, understaffed and overwhelmed, where the desperate came for healing they could not afford elsewhere.
The patients there were unlike any Kami had encountered. Their afflictions were the kind that wealthy families could avoid: Pneuma-rot from working in contaminated mines, parasitic Pneuma entities from drinking polluted water, corruption from exposure to forbidden alchemical substances that desperate people used to enhance their labor capacity.
Normal healers could ease symptoms but rarely cure these conditions. The infections were too deeply embedded in the patients' Pneuma networks, too resistant to conventional treatment.
But Kami could drain them out.
His first patient was a miner named Gaius, whose lungs had been infected by Pneuma-saturated dust from the copper mines. The infection had taken root in his respiratory Pneuma channels, turning every breath into agony, slowly suffocating him from within.
Kami placed his hands on the man's chest and reached inward with his Devourer sense. He could feel the infection—a dark, twisted Pneuma signature that had wound itself around Gaius's life-force like strangling vines. Conventional healing would take weeks and might not even succeed.
Kami drained the infection in minutes.
He pulled the corrupted Pneuma out like extracting poison, drawing the dark energy into himself where his Devourer nature broke it down and neutralized it. Gaius gasped, then drew his first clean breath in months, tears streaming down his weathered face.
"The pain... it is gone. Completely gone. How did you—?"
"Rest," Kami said quietly. "Your body needs time to recover, but the infection is removed. You will heal naturally now."
Word spread quickly through the Copper District. The strange boy from the Academy, the one they called the Devourer, was healing people whom conventional medicine had given up on. Within days, lines of desperate patients stretched around the hospital block.
Kami treated them all, working until exhaustion made his hands shake, until Master Hadrian had to physically pull him away and order him to rest. He drained parasitic entities from infected wounds. He removed corrupted Pneuma from workers who had been exposed to forbidden alchemical compounds. He extracted disease from children who had been born with Pneuma-based afflictions that would have killed them before adolescence.
And with every healing, he felt the hunger.
Each time he drained corruption or disease, he consumed Pneuma—tainted, twisted Pneuma, but Pneuma nonetheless. It fed him, satisfied the eternal emptiness at his core. He could have easily justified taking more, draining not just the infection but some of the patient's vital life-force. They would never know. And he would grow stronger.
But he did not. Every time, he took only what was harmful and left everything else intact. It was exhausting, fighting his nature hour after hour, patient after patient. But it was also strangely fulfilling.
For the first time in his life, people looked at him with gratitude instead of fear. They did not care that he was a Devourer, did not whisper about abominations or monsters. They saw only the boy who had saved their child, their spouse, their parent. They saw mercy instead of hunger.
Thorwald came to watch him work one day, and afterward, as they walked back to the Academy under guard, his brother spoke with unusual solemnity.
"I always believed in you, Kami. Always knew you were more than what people feared. But seeing you today... you were radiant. Not with Pneuma, but with purpose. You have found something worth being."
"A healer?" Kami smiled tiredly. "The Empire will never let me be just a healer. They will see this as proof I can be controlled, directed, weaponized for their purposes."
"Then you prove them wrong. Keep healing. Keep choosing mercy. Eventually, even the Emperor must acknowledge what you are becoming."
But the world had other plans.
Six weeks into Kami's hospital work, a patient arrived who would change everything. She was brought in on a stretcher, unconscious, her skin gray and cold despite the summer heat. The hospital staff whispered in fear when they saw her.
"Pneuma plague," one of the healers breathed. "She has the plague. We need to quarantine—"
"What is Pneuma plague?" Kami asked.
Master Hadrian, who had accompanied him that day, went pale. "A disease we thought extinct. A corruption that spreads from person to person through Pneuma contact, that turns the victim's life-force into a vector for infection. It killed thousands fifty years ago before the Empire developed containment protocols. If it has returned..."
The woman on the stretcher convulsed, and black veins began to spread across her skin—visible marks of the plague consuming her Pneuma network from within.
"She will die within hours," Hadrian said grimly. "And everyone she has had contact with in the last week is likely infected as well. We need to evacuate this hospital, seal the Copper District, implement full quarantine protocols—"
"Or I could cure her," Kami said quietly.
"What?"
"I can drain the plague from her. Remove the corrupted Pneuma before it spreads further. If I work fast enough, I might be able to stop the outbreak before it truly begins."
Hadrian stared at him. "Kami, Pneuma plague is incredibly aggressive. It will fight back when you try to drain it, will attempt to infect you through contact. Even your Devourer nature might not be immune."
"Then it will be a test," Kami replied. "Of my control. Of my purpose. Of whether a Devourer can truly serve the living."
He approached the dying woman before Hadrian could stop him.
What happened next would be recorded in Academy archives and discussed by Pneuma theorists for generations.