Early in the darkness, Isaac opened his eyes.
It was far too early, earlier than the early hours that he usually woke up at.
Drowsy, but unable to sleep. It was a classic case of insomnia, and it has been affecting him for the past few days after the midnight fight—although he hasn't let this be shown to others.
He lay still for a moment. The ceiling of the Golden Repose room was different from his previous room. Higher. Clearly, the Golden Repose dormitory was designed for comfort.
Yet, he found more comfort back when he was in the Hollows, when no one bothered to spare attention on him.
He sat up.
The iron charm was on the desk's edge where he had placed it. The knife in its sheath beside it. The room had the specific quality of a space that had been occupied without disturbance—nothing moved, nothing displaced, the door closed as he had left it.
He figured that he'd start his morning routine early. He sat on the floor and closed his eyes.
The meditation was the same meditation it always was—the diagnostic practice of turning attention inward to the Manafold Circuitry and reading what was there with the same precision he brought to any other observation. The Circuitry presented itself cleanly. Zero-friction mana thread.
The system was fine.
He was not.
He registered this with the flat attention he brought to accurate results he didn't prefer. The Circuitry's health and his own sleep quality were different variables. The Circuitry ran clean regardless of whether he had slept. His body did not.
Three nights since the garden fight, he had woken between two and four times each night at sounds the Golden Repose's ordinary ambient noise produced—a door closing in the corridor, another resident's footsteps, the building's thermal contraction in the pre-dawn cold. Each time, he had been awake and assessing the room before the conscious decision to wake had registered.
The body had decided to treat every sound as a potential entry event.
This was not sustainable.
He opened his eyes. Looked at the room's window. At the door. At the walls. Potential entry points.
Call him paranoic, but he needed to address this. He knew what the problem was, and what needed to be done to solve this problem.
He needed an alert system that can alert him of potential enemies, even without the warnings from Lyra Aetherion.
He took in a deep breath. He reached his heart and felt its thumping rhythm.
It has already been over a month since the Rite of Manifestation. Since the breaking of the wand. The contempt from his biological father and dismissal from Caspian Valerius. Back then, there used to linger the feeling of wanting to be accepted. Then, there was a nervousness following the disinheritance, mocked by others at his lowest.
Now, after one threat named Silas Fulgur passed, another threat has arrived. His body reacted with tension.
His mind, for some reason, was no longer as nervous as it used to be. It was calm—as if not afraid of consequences. It was as if he truly became whom he was acting as in the public.
Strange.
But it was a good type of strange.
He cleaned himself. Drank a cup of water. Dressed. Placed the iron charm in his pocket. Picked up the sheathed knife. Left his room.
The corridor outside was still quiet, with most of its residents—if not all—still asleep. It suggested Golden Repose as a space designed for people who had grown up in comfortable households and had no institutional reason to be awake at this hour.
There were many unresolved cases. There was no point in worrying over them when there wasn't much that could be done at the moment.
He walked toward the garden, thinking that he'd get a breather.
Mid-way, he heard a subtle noise in the training annex that he was passing by. He paused.
Most of the Golden Repose's residents—noble families, good settings, skill supremacy as a philosophical baseline—did not train at dawn. The skill was the primary instrument. The body was secondary. Physical training before the scheduled practical sessions was the habit of people who had been told their bodies mattered by circumstances rather than by preference.
The annex had one occupant, and Isaac took a guess: Blanc.
Pushing the garden to the second priority on the list, he opened the doorway into the annex.
There, Blanc stood with the dim lamplight as the only guiding source of light. Still pre-dawn and at fourth bell at best, the time was far too early.
He was running a sword form with that of familiarity. The long sword moved through its sequence with the ease of something that had been done so many times the body had absorbed the pattern and could run it without the mind's active participation.
Isaac recognized that his sword training, rather than being an active training, was a morning routine akin to his meditation. Also, now that Isaac thought about it, he had a weapon. This meant that he likely was in the higher class of third-year.
He noticed Isaac's arrival at the door. Finished the sequence's current phrase before pausing.
"Isaac." The warm register he always brought to people he considered worth knowing. "You're up early."
"Likewise, Blanc," Isaac said. He moved to the annex's edge and set down the sheathed knife. He thought he'd give a try—before giving up on the idea. No method was taught on him yet, and a clumsy training now may give him bad habits.
"Knife, that's what you chose." Blanc asked.
"Yes."
"Well, if I were to advise you as a senior, don't necessarily think that knife would be the only thing that you will be dealing with—contrary to what the faculty says." Blanc said. "Weapon shortages limit our practice. Still, war is flooded with weapons. Should you be put into a dangerous situation with your mana reserve low, and the only thing available in proximity is a weapon of another type, would you not use it because it isn't the type of a weapon that you trained? The answer is no."
Blanc resumed his form. They worked in the comfortable parallel of two people sharing a space without requiring conversation to justify the sharing.
It lasted approximately ten minutes before Blanc spoke again.
"Now that I think about it, you were Valerius in the past, right? You probably heard about the Terra-Zephyr situation." He said with the register of someone raising a topic they had been thinking about and had decided to voice.
"Some," Isaac said.
"The land dispute." Blanc ran the sword through a downward sequence with the unhurried quality of someone for whom the movement and the conversation were operating simultaneously without interference. "There was a lesser noble—House Caldwin, eastern territory, no heirs. The Patriarch died childless three months ago. The land reverts to the Crown in ordinary circumstances, but the eastern territory sits at the boundary between Terra's and Zephyr's lands." He paused at the sequence's end. Reset to the beginning. "Both houses filed claims within the same week. The Crown hasn't ruled—which makes sense, since they are busy with war."
Isaac nodded, agreeing to the idea.
"The thing that I find strange," Blanc continued, with the tone of someone who had been carrying an observation and had found the appropriate moment to put it down, "is the timing. Two Pillar houses filing competing land claims against each other during an active war. House Terra and House Zephyr are both critical to the Kingdom's infrastructure in every single aspect. The Crown needs both." He ran the sword through a horizontal sequence. "Picking a fight with each other right now doesn't make sense. Unless one of them has decided they don't need the Kingdom's approval anymore."
"Sounds like a conspiracy without concrete evidence."
"Heh, it surely does!"
Blanc grinned cheekily with his routine still ongoing. He was breaking sweats, and he enjoyed it.
"However," Isaac decided to add on, "Personally, I find your suspicion plausible."
"Well, I hope I'm wrong."
Blanc returned to his form.
Isaac watched the senior perform his routine for a bit longer.
"I will be on my way then."
"Huh? Oh, you were here to visit me, weren't you? See you, Isaac!"
Without a further do, he left the training annex, now back on the plan of heading toward the garden.
The corridor was still dark, with the conversation with Blanc not having lasted long.
He walked. It didn't take long until the garden was at sight, seen through the transparent window. Opened the door. Entered. Found his seat around the centre of the location.
He sat still, unlike himself as no thought occupied his mind. Completely blank. He was zoning out, and in a way, this was the best substitute of sleep that he could find.
His trance wasn't long-lasted, however, as footsteps were heard.
At this time?
He turned.
Irine was there, walking into the garden. The effect of her skill, [Glamour], was still there, running its background enhancement. Her appearance was, objectively speaking, the most memorable and remarkable among all the students in the Academy.
"Good morning." He nodded once at her. Then shifted his attention away. However, the footsteps didn't stop. With a noise, she took a seat nearby him.
"How do you handle it?" She abruptly spoke.
Isaac blinked. Moved his attention back on her.
She was looking at him as if she had been carrying a question for a while and had found the opportunity to ask it.
"The audience," she said. "The attention. People who look at you for the wrong reasons. Who have already decided what you are before you've spoken." Her expression was flat. However, there was fatigue deposited in her eyes.
He could tell that she, just like him, wasn't able to sleep well, but for a different reason.
He knew what she was asking because he knew the shape of what she was living in. The isolation that looked like popularity from the outside.
She wasn't asking about technique. She was asking about endurance.
He owed her an honest answer. After all, he still hasn't forgotten about the fact that she stepped in for him during his past encounter with Camilla.
He opened his mouth.