Eron stood before the mirror in his dorm room, watching the nanofibers of his academy uniform shift and tighten, adapting to his biometric scan. It looked the same as it had before—clean black trim, white collar, copper-seamed badge—but it felt heavier now. Like it remembered how he died, too.
The Academy's integrated system pinged across his neural HUD: [08:00 | Training Hall C | Instructor: Daren Kahl | Subject: Combat Protocols I]
He didn't need the reminder. Daren Kahl. The same man who taught him how to fight with honor… and later stood by while that honor was used against him.
Eron stepped out, blending into the morning flow of students. Laughter. Bragging. Status projections flashing in the air—some kids already showing S-rank affinity. Most of them clueless.
He passed one group where a student was boasting about synchronizing with a rare Chrono-sigil. Eron glanced at the faint echo of the sigil—it was unstable, improperly bound. A trap in the making. He could see the glitch in its temporal weave, a fracture in the flow of time around the student's spine. No one else noticed.
Of course they didn't.
The system had always been broken. Not just the tech—the philosophy. Train the best, discard the rest. Glorify sacrifice. Mask servitude as loyalty.
Not this time.
Training Hall C loomed ahead. Inside, students were lining up along the grid-marked floor. Eron took his usual place at the back, like he had before—until Daren Kahl's booming voice sliced through the hall.
"New cadets, listen up. Today's lesson is live combat simulation—zero assists. We want to see instinct, not programming. Pair off."
The air buzzed as names matched in the system's pairing matrix.
Eron blinked. His HUD flashed: [MATCH FOUND: Eron Vale vs. Kasen Drix]
He went still. Kasen Drix. One of the elite initiates—the kind who smiled during a duel and broke ribs without blinking. Back then, this fight had nearly broken Eron's arm.
Now, it would be different.
Kasen approached, smirking. "You're new. Or recycled?"
Eron didn't answer. He stepped onto the marked circle, stance relaxed, eyes calculating. Kasen's aura flared—combat-ready, wired with kinetic enhancers.
"Initiate!" Daren barked.
Kasen lunged.
Eron shifted.
To the spectators, it looked like he vanished.
In truth, he used a microburst of temporal drift—just enough to sidestep into a parallel millisecond. His chrono-core couldn't rewind time fully—not yet—but it could bend it, selectively.
Kasen stumbled past him, off-balance. Eron followed with a single, controlled strike to the shoulder joint. Kasen dropped.
Daren's brows lifted slightly. "Beginner's luck?"
The class buzzed, murmurs sparking.
Eron didn't stay for praise. He knew what would come next. Whispers. Tests. Surveillance.
Good. Let them watch.
He left the hall with the soft vibration of a private message pinging in his neural HUD. Unknown sender.
> "I know what you are. Meet me in Sub-Level Nine."
He froze.
Sub-Level Nine didn't exist—at least, not officially. But he remembered it from before. Hidden under the Archives. A level for failed experiments… and rebels.
His chrono-core pulsed faintly in his chest.
He smiled.
The system had failed him once.
Now, he was going to fail it back—beautifully.