Blackridge Academy – Sublevel Alcove
The vents hissed behind him, stale air pushing through narrow gaps like the school itself was exhaling. Jason crouched in a service alcove behind the eastern stairwell, knees pulled to his chest, one hand clenched over the sigil crawling up his wrist.
He hadn't eaten. Not that it mattered.
Every breath felt like a gamble—like his body might decide this was the moment it stopped playing along.
His holopad flickered against the dark, cracked screen dimly lighting his face. The interface pulsed with sterile calm:
[Collapse Event Countdown: 4.2 Days]
[Recommendation: Tier II Stabilizer]
[Warning: Incomplete Core – Risk of systemic failure increasing by 4% per hour]
Jason exhaled sharply through his nose.
Four days.
Less than that now.
No one knew. Not Veil. Not Milo. Not even Aven, whose attention he both craved and resented.
Everyone saw him as the ghost of the academy—half-living, Coreless, forgettable. But he was waking up. Quietly. Violently. Alone.
The sigil on his palm pulsed once. Deep gold, nearly black at the edges. He stared at it like a wound he'd carved himself.
"If I don't build this," he muttered, "I die."
And no one would mourn him. Not the students who laughed. Not the faculty who passed over his name. Not the system that had labeled him non-viable and moved on.
Only the Black Book cared.
And the Black Book whispered in strange tongues.
Same location, 11:42 AM
He tapped into the interface node labeled STABILIZER_TIER_II.
It resisted at first—like a door trying to stay shut. Then it cracked open, and a formula unfurled like a scroll across his vision:
Mind Anchor A-3: 300mg, Trace Seraphinite (crystallized): 2.4mg, Nootropic Regulator: Grey Series – 150mg, Sodium Ketoglutarate: 750mg, Dimethyl-ether Suspension Base (Inert carrier): 50ml
Warning: Subject must pre-prime with Heat Buffer or risk neural leak
Jason blinked. Some of the ingredients were… impossible. Not just hard to get — literally regulated out of existence. Grey Series Regulators had been banned after they triggered seizures in ten percent of unawakened users. Trace Seraphinite? He hadn't seen a working shard in years, and even then, it was more myth than medicine.
Still, the interface continued to stream.
Then the words shifted, bleeding red across his vision:
[Substitution Protocol Activated – Manual Synthesis Required]
[You may substitute any component if compound function is preserved]
[Warning: Chemical deviation may result in Core failure]
Jason stared. Then smiled.
"You want me to fake alchemy."
Of course it did.
His system didn't hand out power like candy. It demanded blood, sweat, precision. It was giving him the framework… and trusting him to build around the holes.
His breath came faster. Not in panic. In something else. The edge of invention. The old part of his brain that still dreamed of becoming a scientist before the world went sideways.
He whispered, "You're not going to kill me, are you?"
The system did not reply.
Only the sigil on his hand did—pulsing once, then settling. Like it approved.
Jason's room, early afternoon
He tore open the false panel behind his dresser. The stash inside was half chaos, half precision—rows of faded pill bottles, crushed vials, and black-market compounds sealed in plastic with hand-scrawled warnings like "NOT FOR USE W/O STABILIZER".
He tossed each onto his desk, sorting them by name, function, and volatility.
Creatine? Easy.
Rhodiola? Low-grade, but might work as a Seraphinite proxy.
Grey Series mimic? Maybe if he buffered noopept with ginger extract and stacked with taurine—risky, but the modulating ratio looked familiar.
He opened his holopad, wiped dust from the screen, and pulled up an old schematic of the Academy compound. The map had been stitched together from janitorial schedules, discarded drone routes, and cached data leaks from first-year orientation.
He started tapping points:
Sublevel 4 – Auxiliary Storage Wing: Mostly abandoned after the incident with that brawler who self-imploded.Nutrient Reclamation Lab – Backfreezer Access Point: Might still have sodium ketoglutarate in the old metabolic tanks.Recovery Clinic Trash Lockers: Discarded compound canisters often tossed without deactivation.
Each dot glowed faintly on the map as he built a scavenger's route.
"You don't get to wait for a savior," he muttered.
"You become one."
He shoved the holopad into his satchel, looped a black bandage over his sigil, and headed out. His bones ached like they were remembering every crash, fall, and rejection—but still, they moved.
He didn't need to glow.
He didn't need to be chosen.
He only needed time.
And time was running out.
Jason slipped into his usual seat in the back, still damp from his scavenger run. The edges of his sigil throbbed under the compression sleeve he'd wrapped around his wrist. His bones felt glass-thin, like a loud enough sound could crack them.
At the front of the room, Instructor Veil was already mid-sentence.
"—Harmonization is not about strength. It's about coherence. Most collapses occur not from external force, but internal chaos. Your Core can only channel what your mind can structure."
A diagram floated in the center of the lecture hall: a human figure surrounded by slow-pulsing energy bands. The threads of Erisflow glowed in synchronized waves—then jagged, buckled, and burst.
"Those with unstable threads tend to fracture under pressure," Veil said, tapping a control. The figure in the diagram spasmed, its energy flaring uncontrollably before flatlining.
Jason watched, heart ticking against his ribs.
He already knew this. He'd lived it. The night before last, when his limbs twitched on the floor and bile coated his teeth—he'd felt what instability really meant.
Veil continued. "Erisflow is not random. It's responsive. Your thoughts, your fears, your expectations—they shape it."
Jason's eyes flicked across the room.
Aven Rourke sat near the front, spine straight, hands folded in her lap.
Her coat's sleeve shifted. For just a moment, Jason glimpsed it—a sigil.
Not glowing like the others. Not activated.
Moving.
It danced like ink suspended in zero gravity—black lines circling beneath her skin, rearranging in silent rhythm to some unheard song.
She wasn't glowing.
She was becoming.
Jason's throat dried. She wasn't just gifted—she was self-guiding.
His hand curled tighter under the desk, wrapped around the growing heat of his own sigil.
She hadn't said a word all semester. But in that moment, Jason realized they had something terrifying in common:
They didn't need permission.
They were both writing something the system didn't understand.
….
The hall hadn't been used in years.
Jason stepped softly, breath fogging in the chilled air. Sublevel 4 was where the failed enhancements had been shelved—equipment too unstable to recycle, too expensive to incinerate.
The corridor lights flickered in long, lazy pulses. Half the hallway was swallowed by a ceiling collapse from a past "incident," one they didn't talk about aboveground.
He moved past shattered crates and rusted dispensers, guided by the half-glowing map on his holopad. His fingers traced the layout instinctively—he'd memorized it.
Locker 112-B. Last logged as containing metabolic experiment scrap. If he was lucky, they'd left stabilizer-grade ketoglutarate behind.
He crouched, jimmied the lock open with a splintered pry hook, and—
Click.
A soft sound. Too soft to be mechanical.
He froze.
A drone hovered at the far end of the corridor, its triangular chassis rotating with mechanical grace, lenses adjusting focus. Pale blue scan-lights fanned across the hallway like searchlights.
Jason ducked behind a shattered crate. The interface buzzed in his mind:
[Unregistered Flow Detected – Risk of Surveillance Flag: Medium]
[Sigil Suppression Engaged]
His hand burned as the system attempted to cloak the signature crawling up his arm.
The drone passed by, humming low like a predator sniffing uncertainty. Jason didn't move. Didn't breathe.
It paused.
Scanned.
Flickered.
Then floated on.
Jason exhaled so slowly it felt like bleeding.
He turned back to the locker. Inside, beneath broken tubing and a dented IV bag, sat a canister labeled:
S-K Buffer Compound: Lot #X12-B | Expired
He didn't hesitate.
He took it, along with three other partial vials, and ran.
The ingredients were lined in rows like offerings on an altar.
Jason sat cross-legged on the floor, a cracked porcelain plate in front of him acting as a makeshift mixing dish. The air smelled of burnt metal and bitter herbs. The Black Book hovered in his interface, projecting chemical ratios and binding rituals across his field of vision.
[Ritual Type: Internal Harmonization (Crude)]
[Base Components: Alchemical Approximation Accepted]
[Stabilizer Protocol: Tier II – Incomplete]
[Rite Risk Level: HIGH]
[Ancestral Sigil Anchor Detected – Calibrating...]
Jason pulled out the black cloth from his pocket—the faded rune drawn in ash-gold pigment. It had belonged to his father. Or maybe someone before him. He didn't know anymore.
He placed it under the plate.
The interface pulsed.
[Echo Link Stabilized – Begin Rite.]
Jason added the components slowly—each with shaking hands.
First, the crushed adaptogens. Then the expired ketoglutarate, reduced to fine powder. He stirred with a glass pipette, adding warm water from his thermos, swirling until it became a murky suspension.
As he raised it to his lips, the sigil on his palm began to glow. Not brightly—just enough to paint shadows on the walls.
"To pain," he whispered.
He drank.
And screamed.
Jason's Room (Consciousness Disassociated)
Jason didn't black out.
He split.
One moment he was on the floor, clutching his gut as the ritual stack rewired his blood. The next—
He was standing in a desert of black glass under a violet sky. The horizon pulsed. The stars blinked like living eyes.
And across from him…
A figure.
Robes torn, arms bare, skin cracked with glowing threadmarks. Sigils danced across his flesh like they were alive, shifting with every breath. He stood before a table carved of obsidian, carving something into his own rib with a blade of light.
Jason stepped forward, but the ground didn't move beneath his feet—it rearranged itself to bring him closer.
The figure looked up. One eye was silver. The other was missing.
"You're early," he said. His voice wasn't cruel. It wasn't kind either. Just… true.
Jason opened his mouth. No sound.
The man—no, the Alchemist—held up the rib he had carved. It was marked with the same triangular spiral sigil now etched into Jason's hand.
"You are not meant to survive this," the Alchemist said. "You are meant to change it."
He stepped closer. Jason's body felt like it was turning to salt and fire.
"The system was never meant to hold us."
Then everything burned.
Jason felt his bones fracture, his nerves thread with heat, his blood sing.
He awoke choking.
Hands shaking, mouth dry, eyes wide and raw like he'd seen through the skin of the world.
His body lay in the same spot he'd collapsed—sigils scorched into the floor where the spilled mixture had dried into crystalized residue.
The interface flickered alive.
[Alchemical Core Stabilized: 9%]
[Neural Integrity: 74%]
[Collapse Event Risk: Delayed]
[Warning: Peripheral Glyph Spread Exceeding Predicted Range]
Jason staggered to the mirror. Pulled his sleeve back.
The sigil had crawled.
Not just on his palm now. Not just the wrist.
His entire forearm was veined in black-gold threadmarks, glowing faintly beneath the skin like circuitry lit from within.
His reflection stared back—tired, thinned, alight with something unholy and hungry.
And above his head, the interface pulsed a new line:
[You are becoming.]
Jason didn't smile. He didn't cry.
He just nodded.
….
Instructor Veil's Private Chamber – Academy Command Level
Veil sat alone in the dark, her hand hovering above a pulsepad.
The surveillance drone logs replayed on the screen in front of her: corridor flickers, distorted motion signatures, and—
A resonance spike.
Not high enough to match Tier 2.
But not… empty.
She zoomed. Paused. Zoomed again. The distortion made it impossible to get a clean ID. No facial clarity, no sigil outline.
But the thread signature… she recognized that frequency. Unstable alchemical harmonic.
She'd only seen it once before.
She tapped the console, opened a classified directory titled GHOST PATH CANDIDATES, and entered a new note.
UNKNOWN SUBJECT – BLACKRIDGE
THREADMATCH: 84.6%
RISK LEVEL: HIGH
OBSERVE DISCREETLY
She closed the file.
Whispered to herself, "The system's whispering again."
….
Blackridge Academy – Courtyard Monitors
The next morning, the campus stirred early.
Jason walked through the outer commons, breath misting in the cold.
His body felt hollow but functional. Like his bones were scaffolding being built around something still molten.
Students gathered near the central fountain as the announcement screens flared awake.
Instructor Veil's voice played calmly beneath the academy seal:
"Attention all unregistered students. A mandatory Awakening Re-Test will be conducted in forty-eight hours. All Coreless students are required to report for rescan. Failure to comply will result in declassification."
Jason stopped.
Hands in his jacket. Sigil hidden under a black band.
He stared at the countdown clock now displayed in the air.
48:00:00
"If they scan me now…"
"…they'll know I've changed."
His eyes stayed locked on the screen.
"But I haven't finished becoming."
Cut to black.