AN:Please comment as much as you can — I really want your help so I can improve.
Friday morning arrived cloaked in gray light and bone-deep fatigue. Marie Williams moved through her routine like a ghost haunting her own life. Dress. Tie hair. Grab datapad. Skip breakfast. Exit.
The air outside Fortress City Wiesbaden was unusually still, the sky overhead too uniform in color. Not overcast, exactly—just blank. Drones buzzed listlessly through patrol routes. Power lines hummed faintly, and the filtration towers exhaled mist in slow, tired pulses.
Everything felt a beat too slow.
Marie noticed it, but said nothing.
There was no one to say it to.
At school, the hallways echoed more than usual.
Conversations between students had taken on a sharper edge—quieter but more intense. The medical results had clearly triggered something. Groups huddled together in tight knots, comparing data, speculating on builds, talking about projected classes.
"She's totally going to be a Light-Spear. Her efficiency is like 90%."
"Yeah, but no capacity. She'll burn out in ten seconds."
Marie passed through the crowd like a phantom. No one stopped her. No one noticed.
Just the way she preferred it.
Except…
That wasn't entirely true anymore.
"Marie."
The voice stopped her at the entrance to homeroom.
She turned.
It was Ms. Aoki.
The Magical Theory instructor stood just outside the faculty lounge, dressed as impeccably as always. She wore her hair pinned up today, a dark tablet tucked under one arm.
"I wanted to give you something."
Marie blinked.
Ms. Aoki tapped the tablet, transferred a file, and held out her own datapad. Marie accepted the transfer.
"It's an annotated article," the teacher explained. "An older thesis on non-standard affinity presentation. Might help you think about your results differently."
Marie nodded, fingers tightening slightly on the device. "Thank you."
"I mean it," Aoki added, lowering her voice. "Don't let the lack of clarity scare you. Some of the rarest affinities don't appear cleanly. They conflict with known mana archetypes."
Marie didn't know what to say to that. So she nodded again.
Ms. Aoki gave a small smile and stepped away.
The morning passed in patches of fog.
Literature. Arithmetic. Combat History. All taught by instructors who clearly didn't want to be there. No one wanted to teach the week after medical evaluations.
Every lesson was laced with oblique references to Awakening. "Your attributes will soon define your path." "Those with high INT will want to look at mana synergy." "If you score above 80 in PER, consider reconnaissance or scouting tracks."
It was like the whole school had entered pre-selection mode.
Marie took notes, eyes focused but mind elsewhere. The article from Ms. Aoki sat unopened in her archive.
She didn't feel ready to look at it.
Not yet.
Lunchtime brought no relief.
The stairwell was occupied again. Someone had found her hiding place.
Two second-years sat there, laughing over a video feed from a Gate run. Marie didn't feel like confronting them, so she backed away and found a dusty maintenance corridor instead.
She sat on the floor, knees up, soup thermos beside her.
The warmth helped, but only slightly.
Across from her, someone had scrawled a phrase into the wall with a burnt stylus:
"Only the strong remember their own names."
She stared at it for a long time.
The afternoon classes were replaced by a "Motivational Projection."
It was held in the auditorium. All third-years, no exceptions.
A massive holoscreen showed footage of famous Hunters. They were smiling, powerful, surrounded by cheering fans or victorious over monsters that barely looked real.
A narrator spoke in clean, bold tones:
"With courage, anything is possible. With strength, everything is within reach."
Marie sat in the back row.
At one point, a projection glitched. The image froze. A flicker. A monster—faceless, mouthless—appeared for half a second before being overwritten by a grinning Hunter with fire-based attacks.
No one else seemed to notice.
Marie did.
She always noticed the margins.
After school, she went to the Cold Weapon Club.
Tanaka-sensei was already there, cleaning blade cores. Today, he handed her a different training tool: a weighted baton meant to simulate center-balanced weapons.
"You've improved," he said without preamble.
Marie accepted the baton and began her forms.
Strike. Guard. Rotate. Step.
The movement settled her thoughts, as it always did.
But today, she was off balance.
Her fourth set ended with a misstep. She caught herself on the edge of the mat.
"Again," Tanaka said, eyes unreadable.
She obeyed.
By the time she got home, the sky had darkened.
She didn't bother turning on the main light. The dim glow from her datapad was enough.
She finally opened the file Ms. Aoki had sent.
"Mana Divergence and Obscured Affinity: A Study of the System's Edge Cases"
By: Dr. Hideo Takamura, Assoziation Archives
It was dense. Technical.
But one passage stood out:
"Affinities that overlap multiple mana channels may not register clearly. Instead, they show conflicting markers or suppression effects until triggered by external catalysts."
Marie reread that line.
Triggered.
By what?
She kept reading until her eyes burned.
At night, the dreams returned.
This time, she stood in a glass corridor, surrounded by reflections of herself. All identical. All wrong.
One reflection moved when she didn't.
It smiled.
And whispered.
"You were not meant to wait."
Marie woke up with her pulse hammering.
Saturday passed without event.
She went to school for club training, even though it was optional. The dojo was almost empty. She practiced for three hours straight, ignoring her aching arms.
On her way home, she passed a small display window showing a broadcast from the capital. A new S-Rank Gate had opened in East Korea. Three Guilds were responding.
People gathered around to watch.
Marie kept walking.
That evening, she returned to the rooftop garden.
The dead planters hadn't changed.
She leaned against the metal railing, listening to the hum of the city below. In the distance, the filtration towers pulsed steadily, washing the sky in faint waves of silver-blue light. The cold air stung her skin, but the solitude felt welcome.
Above her, the clouds hung motionless. Somewhere beyond them, gates flickered and mana shifted. Her turn would come soon enough.
She didn't need signs.
She just needed time.