Sharo didn't look back as Arlin vanished into the misted courtyard.
His body moved on instinct—away from the frost-covered stones, away from the scrutiny of unseen eyes. The hallways of Velcrest Academy stretched before him, ancient stone lit by flickering torchlight. Footsteps echoed faintly behind closed doors, but none dared approach him.
When he reached his dormitory, he lingered at the threshold, hand resting on the iron handle. The cold still clung to his fingertips—not just the temperature, but the memory of what he'd almost unleashed. The voice beneath his skin still stirred.
He opened the door.
The room was sparse. A bed against the wall. A desk scattered with parchment. A blade leaning against the window, half-shrouded in moonlight. Black ice faintly lined its steel edge—residue of the legacy he'd been cursed to inherit.
He sat on the edge of the bed. Elbows to knees. Silent.
Then memory surged—unbidden and sharp.
~~ Flashback: A Winter Visit ~~
It was the eve of his sixteenth birthday.
Snow had fallen thick across the Velcryn homestead, cloaking the grounds in silence. Sharo had just finished drills with his grandmother. His knuckles were cracked and bloodied. Frost stung every breath.
He saw her before he saw the stranger.
She stood near the garden's edge, wind catching the ends of her gray hair. Her back was straight, her hands clasped. Unmoving.
A figure approached from the ridge—hooded, cloaked in deep black. The snow parted around him, swirling in spirals that never touched his boots. Trees leaned subtly away from his path. Even the air carried weight.
"Headmaster Kael," his grandmother said, voice softer than usual. "It's been a long time."
The man removed his hood.
His face was angular, his silver hair tied loosely behind him, and his eyes—deep, unblinking—shimmered like collapsing stars. As he stepped closer, the earth cracked beneath his boots. Pressure rippled outward.
Sharo knew it instantly: gravity magic. And something beyond.
"You've grown," Kael said. "And survived her training. That alone... speaks volumes."
Sharo wiped his knuckles, unsure whether to speak.
Kael stepped into range.
"I'm not here by chance, Velcryn. I've watched from afar. Your bloodline was never meant to remain buried."
He reached into his cloak and pulled free a silver seal—etched with an obsidian fracture.
"This will open Velcrest's gates when the time comes. We don't offer peace. We offer purpose."
Sharo didn't move. Didn't reach for it.
Kael narrowed his gaze.
"I remember your mother," he said carefully. "I remember the day she stood between a noble retinue and a cursefire behemoth. I remember how her frost carved a crater into the battlefield—how it screamed, not with rage, but hunger."
Sharo's eyes darkened. He said nothing.
"She wasn't killed because she was weak," Kael said. "She was erased because they feared what she carried. What you now carry."
Sharo's breath wavered.
"I'm not her," he said quietly.
"No," Kael replied. "You're worse."
The pressure in the air shifted—denser, more crushing.
Kael's gravity bore down on him like a mountain. Sharo gritted his teeth. Bones strained.
But he didn't break.
Instead—he opened his hand.
A sliver of frost formed across his palm. Not blue. Not white.
Black.
The ice bloomed upward in jagged, hungry veins. The ground beneath Sharo's boots hissed with cold, spidering fractures across the stone. His breath misted, and shadows dimmed.
Kael froze.
That moment stretched—gravity itself seeming to halt.
Then, the pressure eased.
Kael took a slow step back, watching the black ice retreat.
"Unmeasurable," he muttered. "Just like the old ones."
He turned to Sharo's grandmother. "The Fracture Path can't hold him."
She didn't respond.
Kael looked back to Sharo, the seal now resting between them in the snow.
"Come to Velcrest," he said. "Learn what you are. Or the world will decide for you."
And then he was gone—vanishing into the storm without a sound.
~~ Back to the Present ~~
Sharo's eyes opened slowly.
He crossed the room, the memory still heavy behind his ribs, and stopped before the desk.
Among the parchments was a sheet he hadn't read before—one the academy provided during orientation.
The Fracture Path.
The evolution of the soul from mortality to anomaly.
Each level was known as a Break:
Break One – Flicker
"A spark in the dark."
New mages. Emotionally unstable. Their magic flickers and fades.
Break Two – Threadbound
"The Current hears you."
Mages attune a personal Thread of power. Consistency begins.
Break Three – Weavewalker
"You don't cast magic. You walk with it."
Users manipulate their surroundings like an extension of thought.
Break Four – Rifted
"Part mortal, part Current."
The world bends around them. Time, memory, even gravity sways.
Break Five – Hollowborn
"No past. Only power."
They shed identity. Their presence alone changes rules of nature.
Fractureless – ???
"No Break. No scale. The Path follows them."
Anomalies. Living faultlines. The Current flows through them, not from them.
In the corner, someone had written a note in dark ink.
His grandmother's handwriting.
You are not a Break, child.
You are a Faultline.
Sharo stared at the words.
The ice stirred beneath his skin—silent, watching.
He closed the parchment, crossed the room, and sat again with the blade across his knees.
The system couldn't measure him.
But soon, it would try.
And when it failed, they'd remember what the old world tried to bury.