The group wandered through the vibrant halls of the campus with aimless steps.
"Well… she cancelled all our other classes for today," Marcus said, glancing over his shoulder at the others.
"So, what now?"
"I'm hungry, man." Giuseppe groans, putting his hands over his stomach.
"Same," Arthur nodded, rubbing the back of his neck. "I feel like I haven't eaten in years."
"What time is it?" Tandav asked, tapping the side of his Connector.
[153:42 PM]
"Did that bitch seriously make me miss lunch?" Giuseppe scowled, immediately changing his opinion on Mavena.
"Yes. Yes, she did," Arthur confirmed the grave offence solemnly, enabling him.
"I will remember this."
Marcus chuckled lightly, but his smile quickly faded. He fell silent, his eyes grew distant, and an unreadable expression appeared on his face.
Then—
"Hey, go on ahead for a bit. I've got something I need to take care of."
Tandav narrowed his eyes slightly. "You good, bro?"
"Yeah, I'm good," Marcus replied quickly, brushing it off with a casual wave.
"Just a couple errands, you know."
Giuseppe and Daniel exchanged a glance. Neither said a word, but both noticed the strange shift in Marcus's behaviour.
"Alright," Arthur said eventually.
"Don't take too long or we'll absolutely eat without you."
Marcus gave them a half-smile, then turned down a side-street without looking back.
***
Marcus walked alone through a corridor that stretched beneath the twilight of the academy's upper district.
Students parted around him like a stream around a stone, offering quiet nods or glances of mild curiosity.
But many let out subtle sighs of relief when they noticed Giuseppe wasn't by his side.
After a while, Marcus stopped before a massive, matte-black door marked with golden letters: C.I. Mavena
Knock. Knock.
"Come in," came the unmistakably firm voice from within.
The instructor's office was almost bare. Functional. A desk sat at the far end beneath a digital skylight, a smooth leather couch on the other side of the office, and half a dozen holographic windows hovered midair, each displaying student dossiers.
Mavena didn't look up as Marcus stepped inside.
"I know why you're here, Marcus Vathan," she said without ceremony.
He blinked. "So you do know her."
"Indeed. Leona was my lieutenant before her promotion."
A small smile played at Marcus's lips briefly.
Finally, Mavena looked up from her screens. She studied him for a moment, then sighed and flicked her fingers.
The other holograms dissolved, replaced by a single, larger one—a portrait from a file, the letters were blurred by black lines to him, but they weren't his focus.
A young woman, early twenties, regal and radiant. Dark skin, golden eyes, black hair cascading from beneath a sharp black military cap.
Her face was calm, neutral, yet unmistakably strong. She looked like him. Or rather, what he could be if he ever lived up to her image.
"Leona Vathan. Brilliant, relentless. The kind of soldier who silences rooms by merely entering. She's thriving, child. You do not need to worry about her."
Relief threatened to crumple his stance, but he held steady. His brows lowered as he looked at Mavena with a serious frown.
"Then... what is she fighting? What could possibly warrant so much manpower at the Great Border? We've conquered stars. What enemy could need the presence of a Storywalker like her?"
The air in the room chilled. Mavena's voice, when it came, was quieter and unmistakably heavy.
"That information is classified. You know that," her cold green eyes bore into him.
"I do," Marcus said, staring back unwaveringly.
"But I need to know anyway. Because if I don't understand what she's up against… then how do I become strong enough to stand beside her?"
Their eyes met. And something unspoken passed between them. She didn't answer. Not with words.
Instead, the next thing he knew, he was flying backwards across the floor of a training hall.
Smack.
His body slammed against the mat, pain blooming across his ribs. He gasped, one hand pressing to his side as he tried to get up.
Mavena stood over him with arms folded.
'She's not like him,' Marcus thought, his vision blurring slightly.
'Giuseppe fights with instinct and raw will. She dismantles my moves, mechanically and methodically.'
Marcus's mind flashed to the earlier fight. His own rigidness. The raw, unrefined aggression of his opponent.
"You don't get to analyse your own flaws in the middle of a fight," Mavena said sharply, crouching below him.
POW!
Another blow—clean and efficiently—hit his gut. He folded forward, coughing as he held his ribs in pain.
"You and that boy. You make an interesting pair. He moves like an animal. You think too much. Brilliant together. But separately, your weaknesses are clear to an experienced opponent."
Mavena stepped closer, her gaze cutting into him.
"Crazy people are dangerous because they don't stop to ask Should I? They just do. You need some of that madness in you."
She stopped in front of him. Her eyes bore into his soul, "Be a little crazier."
Marcus groaned. He wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hands, then rolled off his knees.
'This is going to hurt,' he thought to himself.
"Good," Mavena said with a thin smirk.
"A proper punching bag shouldn't talk back."
He exhaled slowly through his nose, dragging himself upright. He flexed his fingers, grounding himself, then met Mavena's gaze.
"Again."
Mavena's smirk widened, for just a moment.
"Someone's a glutton for punishment."
***
Marcus lay defeated on the smooth leather couch in Mavena's office, his breaths shallow, his body heavy with exhaustion.
The sterile ceiling lights reflected off the sweat on his brow. Each muscle in his body protested movement, yet rest evaded him.
Across the room, Mavena sat at her desk, seemingly immersed in the blue-white glow of floating holographic screens. Student files flickered and shifted before her eyes, yet her hands hadn't moved in minutes.
The steady tapping had stopped. Her eyes weren't on the data anymore. Her gaze flicked to Marcus.
"I'm surprised the other boy didn't come with you."
Marcus turned his head slightly, a brow lifting. "What do you mean?"
"I would've thought Castellano would want to know about him," She muttered mysteriously.
He held her gaze, trying to mask his confusion. 'Him?'
Mavena didn't elaborate. Instead, with a faint gesture, one of the holograms shifted. A new image appeared—its details just out of Marcus's view.
She looked at it for a long moment. Her eyes softened, almost imperceptibly, and the faintest nostalgic smile tugged at the edge of her lips.
The photo showed Leona smiling brightly. Her arm was around a man close to her age, his build was athletic, and his posture was relaxed.
He had shoulder-length black hair that curled slightly at the tips, and a bucket hat slanted lazily on his head. His features were sharp but not overly so, effortlessly handsome—like someone pulled straight from a dream.
Beep.
The soft chime from Mavena's Connector cut through the silence. She glanced at it briefly, then leaned back in her chair.
"I think that's your cue," she said, her tone casual but final.
"It's getting late."
She gave a small nod toward the door.
Marcus took the hint. With a quiet grunt, he rose from the couch, dragging himself toward the exit, every movement felt like a direct protest from his bruised body.
Just as he reached the door, he paused.
"…Thank you," he said, closing the door behind him.
Mavena sat in silence for a moment.
***
Location: Judicator Corps Headquarters — The Majesty.
The stars bent unnaturally outside the massive glass wall of the chamber, refracting in geometries no mortal eye could fully comprehend. Nebulae spun backwards. Moons orbit themselves. Celestial bodies pulsed like living nerves. Time ticked forward and backwards in the same instant.
Here, at the heart of existence, reality was malleable, raw, breathing, and endless.
This was The Majesty — the headquarters of the Judicator Corps, a fortress suspended between timelines, anchored in the folds of existence where the multiverse converged like veins in a heart. An endless cathedral of steel, glass, and blackened crystal, lit by the flickering pulse of infinite realities.
A familiar Judicator stood alone in the Hall of Causality.
His armour was obsidian and polished like a mirror. Etchings of every law ever broken shimmered faintly across his pauldrons, alive with golden threads of condemnation. A void-black mantle draped over his armour, the symbol of a red scale on its back.
No face could be seen beneath the helmet, only an ever-shifting absence, like a hole punched through existence itself.
Before him floated a vast, rune-etched vault, locked with high-order encryption.
With a gesture, data-streams of information unravelled from the vault, pouring out in fragment chains and entanglements.
The Judicator's hand hovered over a flaring red thread, and a name came into view.
[Castellano]
The Judicator raised his hand, stopping the data stream. He followed the thread as it split off into another name.
[File Fragment: Vincenzo Castellano – Deceased.]
[Judicator Clearance Level: Commander]
[Access Denied.]
The Judicator tilted his head, just slightly.
Then came a voice, soft and smooth—another Judicator stepped forward behind him, her body wreathed in a silk white cloak, trimmed in gold.
Her armour seemed to be crafted in black and gold crystal, and her helmet bore no mouth, no face, only two eyeholes that burned with piercing golden irises, bright as twin stars.
"Captain," she said.
"We've been alerted. The confidentiality protocol surrounding Vincenzo Castellano has been breached."
No reply. The Captain remained silent. Still as a stone monolith.
Until—
A faint blue light blinked in the corner of his vision.
He raised his hand. A gesture formed a holographic screen suspended in the air.
On the other end, seated at a modest desk surrounded by flickering student data, Mavena looked up from her Connector with an unreadable face.
"Since the famous captain of the seventy-seventh division is contacting me personally. I'll assume this isn't a courtesy call," she said with dry mirth, folding her arms.
The Judicator's voice rumbled through the screen—deep, mechanical and emotionless.
"You viewed an archived image. Subject: Vincenzo Castellano."
Mavena didn't flinch. "I did."
The Judicator's helm tilted slightly. A cold pause. Then he turned to his lieutenant without a word.
The woman stepped forward, activating a data slate. Lines of code flickered past her visor.
"There was no direct breach," she said crisply.
"The memory resurfaced during a conversation with a student—Marcus Vathan..."
Mavena couldn't see his eyes, but she could tell, the Judicator's gaze had sharpened. "And this student is connected to him?"
"No," Mavena said. She shook her head, slowly.
The lieutenant watched silently.
"Not to Vincenzo. He has no idea. I thought—" Mavena caught herself. "It was incidental."
The silence that followed was judgmental. Then the Judicator spoke, his tone colder than the Arctic of the old world.
"All records of Vincenzo Castellano were meant to be purged from every Earth-Class network. That was the agreement."
Mavena's eyes narrowed—an instinctive flicker of defiance.
"I never agreed to forget him."
The Judicator's helm caught the light. On the screen, Mavena's reflection hovered across its obsidian surface, as if trapped within it.
"If this happens again," he said, voice low and final.
"Whether you want to forget him or not… it won't be your choice."
"…I know," Mavena whispered, barely audible.
The lieutenant's golden irises stared at Mavena silently, her visor hid a complicated expression.
The screen blinked to black at the Captain's gesture, cutting the connection.
Mavena exhaled slowly. The hum of her office returned. She leaned back in her chair, the blue light of the dead screen still etched on her face.
Her eyes closed.
And in the stillness, a laugh echoed—soft, warm, unmistakably his. But memory was then shattered by the opening of her office door.
A young woman stepped inside, her heels clicking softly against the floor. There was a poised stillness about her.
Mavena didn't rise, she only turned her head slightly.
"Vice Principal Orelia," she said evenly.
Orelia offered a tight smile, thin as a thread, that didn't reach her eyes. "The Principal would like to see you."
A moment later, Linda hurried in after her, brow furrowed with concern. "I'm sorry, ma'am—I told her you were preoccupied."
Mavena waved her off gently. "It's fine,"
She stood, brushing a hand over a long, white coat hanging on the wall.
"Let's go, then."
***
The Principal's Office – Apex Tower, Glory Academy.
The room was quiet.
The hum of the city far below was muffled behind tempered glass and silence wards. Within the lofty chamber, the only audible sound was the measured tapping of the old figure seated at the desk.
Mavena stood still before the Principal's white crystal desk, posture immaculate, hands clasped behind her back like a soldier awaiting debrief.
Across from her, Principal Aldric Malchus Hadi was seated in a high-backed chair, reviewing a luminous slate etched with data streams.
He said nothing for a long moment, letting the silence stretch—whether as a test or a habit, Mavena couldn't tell.
Finally, without looking up, his voice cut through the silence.
"What are your current thoughts on the students?" he asked, his voice calm.
"How many do you believe could survive their Foundational Script?"
There was no hesitation in Mavena's reply.
"Most likely only the top ten, sir."
Principal Hadi looked up then, sharp eyes locking with hers. A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, though whether it held amusement or grim satisfaction was unclear.
"Well," he said, leaning back in his chair.
"That's more than last year."
The two stayed silent for a moment.
"…Vincenzo's brother. Was that your idea?" Mavena asked, her tone unreadable.
Aldric didn't flinch. "Yes," he said calmly. "Yes, It was. I thought it best. For both of you."
Mavena's eyes narrowed slightly. "I see."
***
Mavena exhaled slowly as she stepped into the corridor, the ambient hum of the academy's upper tower returning like background static to her senses.
Beep.
A soft pulse at her wrist. Her Connector lit up with a pale blue glow.
She didn't check it right away.
Instead, she paused mid-step, eyes narrowing slightly. The sound was enough to tell her what she already suspected—that the world was not yet done demanding her attention.
Mavena rolled her eyes, a quiet exasperation flickering across her otherwise composed face.
"Of-fucking-course," she muttered.
With a resigned flick of her fingers, the display expanded into view.
_________________________________
Author Note
;)