The gates of the Rift Academy didn't open.
They hesitated.
Two thick slabs of stone laced with sigillight stood still as Root approached. The guards on either side—a pair of upper-class students with etched armor and legacy summons—watched with unease.
One tapped a comm crystal.
The other reached for his weapon.
Root kept walking.
Veyr floated beside him, silent for once, coat dragging invisible lines through the dust. The atmosphere around them felt pressurized, like the air wasn't sure whether it should part or push back.
[ WARNING: Entity Status – Unranked ]
Academy Registry: Not Found
Rift Completion: Unverified
Sigil Rating: Glitched
Access: Pending Manual Review
Root smiled.
"Funny. I did the hard part already."
One of the guards stepped forward, stiff-backed and formal.
"State your classification."
Root met his eyes.
"Root."
"That's not a class."
"No," Root said, stepping past him. "It's what's left."
[ Access Override Detected – Hollow Trace: Collapsepoint ]
System Note: Manual clearance required… Overruled.
Welcome Back.
The gates groaned open.
Students stared from the inner courtyard. Whispers broke out immediately.
"Is that—"
"No way he survived—"
"What's floating next to him?"
Veyr gave them a polite wave.
"You'd think they've never seen a well-dressed voidspawn before."
Root kept walking, boots striking clean stone.
And then…
A figure blocked his path.
Lyra.
She looked different. Sharper. More dangerous. But her summon—the upright rabbit with electric trails—perked up as soon as it saw him.
"Root?" she asked quietly.
He didn't slow.
Didn't stop.
Just nodded once.
"Told you I'd come back."
The council chamber was never meant for students.
Seven thrones sat in a ring—each occupied by an instructor or administrator so old, their names had become whispers passed down between dorm floors. Each throne pulsed with authority, layered in sigils that flickered and recorded every breath Root took.
[ Initiating Review: Rift Survivor "Root" ]
Status: Unranked, Hollow-Touched, Crown Trace Present
Summon: Veyr – Classification: Unknown / System Breach
Protocol: Containment… Failed. Proceed with caution.
Root stood in the center of the sigil ring.
No chains.
But that was the illusion.
These people didn't need chains.
A man with a silver monocle adjusted his sleeve. "Your Rift wasn't approved. Your summon wasn't authorized. Your survival wasn't predicted."
Root raised an eyebrow. "You forgot 'your lecture isn't interesting.'"
The woman to his left leaned forward. Her throne radiated time magic. "Explain your summon."
Root looked at Veyr, who hovered nearby with perfect stillness, like a ghost haunting a courtroom.
"Hello," Veyr said cheerfully. "I eat gravity and sarcasm. Which do you want first?"
One of the thrones dimmed slightly.
The man with the monocle cleared his throat. "Your presence destabilizes students. You're unranked. Unverified. You didn't complete your Rift path through standard progression."
Root tilted his head. "Maybe your standards are the problem."
They didn't laugh.
They didn't blink.
One of them—an older woman with hair like drifted ash—tapped her staff.
[ Vote Initiated: Termination or Testing? ]
Root: Hollow anomaly.
Risk Level: Escalating.
Root stepped forward.
Not cocky.
Certain.
"I didn't come back to take your approval. I came back to take your system apart."
One of the thrones cracked.
The vote froze.
Because a new name entered the chamber.
[ Interruption Detected ]
Requesting Override: Councilmember Kain Voss
Title: Arch-Curator of the Outer Crown
Reason: "He's mine."
The council chamber vanished in a flicker of authority override—replaced by a silent chamber made of black stone and slow-moving light.
Root stood motionless.
He'd felt pressure before.
But this was different.
The air wasn't heavy—it was observing him, like a memory that had learned to judge.
Walls of shifting glyphs circled the room. Some whispered. Others blinked in languages he didn't know yet. They weren't sigils for spellcasting. They were system warnings—preserved here, quarantined from the rest of the academy.
In the center, surrounded by a half-ring of gravity-null light, stood a man in ink-black robes with no sigils at all.
Kain Voss.
He looked like someone who had been carved out of restraint and sealed inside time. His skin was pale and untextured, like the color had long since bled out of him. His eyes shimmered silver—not glowing, not mechanical. Just… aware. Too aware.
"You made quite the entrance," he said without moving. His voice was smooth. Heavy. Calibrated.
"Collapsepoint?" he added, tapping a glyph that showed the Rift tearing apart in slow replay. "That anomaly has only ever been theorized. No player has triggered it without being erased."
Root didn't speak.
Not yet.
Veyr hovered beside him like a shadow that chose its own shape. His expression was unreadable—mask tilted slightly, hands folded behind his back like he was being polite on purpose.
"You've made enemies," Voss continued. "But more importantly, you've done something no other Hollow-touched has. You've hijacked the system. You made it your weapon. That makes you dangerous."
He took a step forward.
"That also makes you mine."
Root's jaw tightened. "I don't belong to anyone."
A long silence followed.
Then Veyr muttered:
"Correction: you belong to chaos, coffee, and trauma. In that order."
Kain Voss chuckled. It was the kind of laugh you weren't sure was meant for you.
"I don't want to own you," he said at last. "I want to use what you are—to prepare you for what's next. You think this academy is the battlefield?"
He waved his hand.
A glowing projection flickered into life above them: a rotating map of the Rift's deeper layers. It looked like a crumbling solar system—but instead of planets, there were thrones. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Each floating in orbit around a hollow core shaped like a broken crown.
"This," he said, "is the Outer Crown. It's what exists outside the simulation boundaries—beyond the system's pre-approved quests, beyond the thrones you're taught to chase."
Root squinted at one of the throne projections. It flickered and distorted, as if rejecting observation.
"These are unstable," he noted.
"They're unclaimed," Voss corrected. "Some belong to failed kings. Some are bait—meant to trap those who reach too far. But one of them? One of them is you."
The projection pulsed.
A single node on the map blinked red—faintly shaped like the sigil Root now bore on his chest.
Root glanced at it. "You want me to take it?"
"No," Voss said, stepping closer. His tone shifted from intrigued to serious.
"I want you to build one."
Root blinked.
"What?"
"Your system is broken, Root. Your powers are misclassified. You've already proven the Hollow Sigil responds to your presence in ways we can't document."
Voss paced in slow circles now, hands behind his back.
"Instead of claiming a system throne and locking yourself into a path they designed, I want you to forge a throne outside of it. Something new. Something that doesn't exist in their code—yet still holds authority in the Rift."
He stopped walking.
Faced Root head-on.
"I want you to build the first unranked throne in recorded system history."
Root didn't respond.
The projection above flickered again—this time showing battles between crown-tier duelists, Rift anomalies, and entire simulations collapsing under unstable sigils. One image showed Root himself—recorded during Collapsepoint, black blade drawn, consuming system code mid-combat.
"You think the system hasn't noticed?" Voss asked. "It's already moving against you. The Second was only the beginning."
Root looked up.
"Then why help me?"
For the first time, Voss's expression cracked.
Just a little.
"Because the system isn't the enemy. Not yet. But it's afraid."
He raised his arm. His sleeve pulled back, revealing glowing lines etched deep beneath his skin.
"These," he said, "are the same codes embedded in crown-tier commands. I've carried them for decades. They mark me as obedient."
He clenched his fist.
"They also make me a prisoner."
Root didn't answer.
Didn't need to.
"I can't escape my throne," Voss said. "But you… you never had one to begin with. That makes you the first true threat to the system's balance since the Rift was created."
He turned.
"The only question left is whether you want to survive it—or reshape it."
Root stepped forward, one hand resting on the hilt of Draive.
Veyr, still hovering, offered no jokes this time.
Root stared at the projection of the unformed throne—the one pulsing red.
"…How long do I have?"
Voss smiled.
"Until the system sends something worse than the Second."
The room darkened.
And in the projection's final flicker, a shape appeared—
Not a throne.
Not a player.
A figure wrapped in light, faceless, floating just beyond the boundary of the Outer Crown.
Watching Root back.