The orientation hall was a cathedral of silence, the air thick with the stagnant scent of old stone and the sharp tang of elite mana. I stood alone on the obsidian platform, the center of a five-hundred-person target. Instructor Vane looked down from his podium, the light catching his silver hair, making him look like an ice-sculpted god.
"Gravity: 3x," Vane commanded.
The air didn't just thicken; it turned into a physical weight, visible as a violent purple shimmer in the air.
CRACK.
My knees slammed into the stone. I didn't just fall; I was crushed. The force felt like iron bars being laid across my spine one by one.
"AGH! STOP! IT... IT'S TOO MUCH!" I screamed, the sound tearing from a throat I didn't recognize.
I was pinned flat, my cheek pressed against the cold, unyielding stone. From the corner of my eye, I saw the crowd. Some students were laughing, their fingers pointed at the 'Zero-Link' failure. Others, the lower-rank kids, looked away, their faces twisted with a pity that burned worse than the gravity.
Stand up, Kuro, I heard a voice whisper—not in the room, but in the core of my mind. It was Hana. Please... stand up. You're the only one who knows the truth of our mother's fire. If you fall here, who will stand between me and the Void? Push through it, Brother. Protect me.
"Still conscious?" Vane's voice drifted down, cold and mocking. "Let's fix that. 6x."
The world turned white. My scream reached a pitch that made the hall's windows vibrate in their frames. My eyes began to roll back into my head. I was slipping away.
Then, in the absolute blackness of my fading mind, a sound echoed. It wasn't a digital beep. It was a CHIME—deep and resonant, like a silver bell struck in a frozen valley.
[DING!] [CONDITION MET: ULTIMATE PHYSICAL SUFFERING] [REWARD: THE SOVEREIGN'S FIRST BREATH] [LEVEL UP! LVL 2 → LVL 6] [SKILL UNLOCKED: THE ASHEN MIST]
On the platform, my body went limp for a heartbeat. Vane smirked, his fingers twitching to release the spell, thinking he'd won.
But then, the temperature in the hall plummeted. A thick, bone-white Mist began to pour out of my skin. It was cold, heavy, and smelled of ancient, untouched snow.
I didn't just stand. I rose.
My body drifted vertically, my feet hovering inches off the ground. I was floating in the dead center of a B-Rank gravity field. The white mist swirled around me like a protective cocoon, neutralizing the purple gravity as if it were nothing but a breeze.
My eyes snapped open. They weren't brown anymore. They were a Furious Hazel, glowing with a piercing silver light.
"I don't care about your ranks!" I roared, the sound shaking the very foundations of the hall. "Powerful or powerless... I am her brother! That is my fate!"
Vane's face turned a bruised purple. "You dare bark at me?! 10x GRAVITY!"
The platform cracked. The floor tiles shattered into dust. But I just smirks. In a flash of Grey Mist, I Shadow Stepped.
One second I was under his thumb—the next, I was standing directly behind him.
The Hall gasped in a single, unified breath. Hana watched from the crowd, a small, knowing smile touching her lips. She wasn't surprised. She had been waiting for me to wake up.
Vane spun around, his ego driving a gravity-enhanced punch toward my face. I caught it. One hand. The shockwave rippled through the room, blowing back the hair of the students in the front row, but I didn't budge. At Level 6, the raw physical strength I'd cultivated for ten years finally had a trigger.
"Is he... even human?" someone whispered.
I moved like a ghost, dodging Vane's desperate strikes with fluid, effortless grace. I slid my hand up, gently touching Vane's cheek—a gesture of total, humiliating dominance.
"Enough!" Vane barked, pushing me away, his hands trembling with suppressed rage. He straightened his collar, looking at the stunned, silent crowd. "I have... more important matters to attend to. Enjoy your luck, Yami."
He vanished in a swirl of gravity, fleeing the scene of his own defeat.
Later, the courtyard was a blur. Hana ran to me, throwing her arms around my neck in a fierce hug. "You did it," she whispered. "You actually did it."
I needed air. I needed to think. I climbed to the obsidian roof of the Academy, looking out over the neon sprawl of the city, trying to process the cold weight of the System in my soul.
"It's quiet up here, isn't it?"
I spun around. Ren was leaning against a vent, her eyes unreadable. My heart skipped. My Perception was high now, yet I hadn't felt her.
"I didn't hear you coming," I said, my voice low. "Your aura... it's gone."
"I can compress my aura for stealth," Ren said, a faint smile playing on her lips. "Just like how you compressed yours to hide that White Mist power."
We shared a long, silent look. The secret was out, at least to her.
I turned back to the edge and looked down at the courtyard. My heart dropped. Below, I saw Hana walking with Kenji. He was laughing, his hand resting casually, familiarly, on her shoulder.
My eyes flared with that Misty Hazel glow again. A protective, jealous fire burned in my chest, colder and more dangerous than any gravity Vane could ever conjure