Zavian's training was a different from Sayan.
When Zavian arrived at the central training field. He saw that Sentry Nyla was already there standing in the center, as if she had been there all along.
Instructor Nyla stood like still water before a storm - quiet, composed, yet impossibly tense beneath the surface.
Her presence arrived before her voice ever did.
Slender and tall, she moved with a fluid grace that seemed untouched by gravity, as if her very steps flowed along hidden currents. Her skin held the faint luminance of moonlight on deep water - smooth, pale, and calm
Her long black hair was coiled into a high, braided knot, interwoven with tiny silver rings etched in runes - charms of water-binding, some whispered. Strands slipped free in the mist, yet somehow never seemed out of place.
No armor. No weapons. It was like she was standing their wielding herself as a weapon.
"You are late," she said, her voice no louder than breath and yet clearer than anything else.
Zavian froze. "I thought I- "
"Time is measured only by readiness," Nyla said while turning away. "Early or late makes no difference if you are not prepared".
Another figure entered the field. Zavian glanced back.
It was a boy he has seen during the ranking trials. Zavian recognized him because the boy was of Astraveld path.
Riven carried the wild elegance of the untamed woods. His moss-brown hair, grown long and often tied in a low, knotted band, hangs loosely with forest twigs and thin braids laced with copper-threaded beads. His eyes are a dusky gold, shimmering faintly with specks of green like sun filtering through a canopy. His skin bears the tan and weathered marks of a nomadic lifestyle, with inked symbols along his arms—tribal glyphs that echo the rites of his enclave.
"Riven Dace", Nyla said. "Of the Astraveld Path"
"You," she continued, now addressing both, "are both paths of perception. But even perception can be weaponized."
She gestured them to step forward. They obeyed.
"You will not fight with fists. You will not strike. You will unravel. One of you will mask a memory. The other will try to see through it."
Zavian glanced at riven and asks quietly, "Who begins?"
Riven answers, "I do"
Riven steps into the corner of the ring. Nyla hands him a crystal silver- a memory shard.
"Think of something real.
Something that defined you. Conceal it behind a veil of falsehood".
Nyla turned to Zavian.
"Now, Mindweaver,
Unravel what is false, Feel the fracture."
Zavian steps forward.
The mist envelops them both, Creating a dome of silence.
Sentry Nyla's voice cut through the fog.
"Your Etherpath," she said to Riven, "is not one of illusion.it is of possibility."
"Your mind does not fabricate lies. It reframes the truth."
"You are not to create a false world but rather take something real and bury it beneath something ethereal."
He nodded. And pressed the shard to his forehead.
Zavian's sight blurred. The world distorted.
And then-
He stood beneath an arch of flowering branches.
Autumn leaves lazily drifted through a lukewarm breeze. The echoes of laughter emanating from the playful frolic of the youth. A young boy- unmistakably Riven- sat on the grass carving lines into a shard of polished bark.
The scene pulsed with enamour and warmth. With tenderness and light.
Too much light.
Zavian narrowed his focus.
There was light, but no source. The children's laughter echoed and looped. The boy didn't have a shadow.
Zavian's breath slowed. This was the veil.
He concentrated on his mark. Because the senses can be betrayed but the mark is eternal.
As he started concentrating on the mark, the silver-blue ripples aroused beneath it.
And the Cognivault activates.
The moment it activates.
His heart stopped.
The world shattered like brittle glass.
The grove fell away.
The colours bled out.
And concealed beneath the veil the real memory revealed itself.
A frozen lake.
Grey skies heavy with silence.
A man lowered beneath ice- covered in violet funeral cloth.
Riven stood at the edge, alone. His eyes were dry but his heart was full. The kind of grief that had no shape, no sound. Only pressure.
It was containment.
Zavian inhaled sharply.
The mist began to recede slowly.
Riven lowered his Memory shard slowly. Zavian saw Riven, and for the first time; Riven looked surprised.
"How did you break it?" Riven asked astonished.
Zavian inhales and answers, "I didn't break it. I just pursued the truth without restraint and the veil came undone."
"Clever,' Nyla said softly. "Most would lose themselves in that loop for hours. Some forever."
She landed her gaze on Zavian.
"You did not unravel the veil. You shattered it in your relentless pursuit of truth. A dangerous instinct- and one worth sharpening."
Then Nyla asks, "How did you see through it that fast?"
Zavian shook his head, "I don't know. I just pryed deeper."
Her eyes studied Zavian with quiet precision. "After the pulse activates during the trine awakening. The sight gained by the guardians remains activated for two more days. This causes extreme fatigue and mental pressure as trainees aren't used to it. The ether shuts it down to protect the user in most cases."
"Some guardians reawaken their sight through pain. Some through patience and practice. You seem to have unlocked yours through something else."
"The veil of time is a difficult think to pierce.
And you shattered and tore through it without realizing how."
She stepped away. Then turning to Riven:
"You constructed your mask well. But in doing so, you also buried the truth from yourself."
"The next trial reverses."
"Tomorrow... Zavian will wear the veil."
And she disappeared into the mist.
Ziven exhaled slowly. The cold from Riven's memory still clung to him like frost on skin. Riven was standing a few paces away.
After a long silence, Zavian spoke.
"You built something beautiful… to hide something that hurt."
Riven watched him with a sharp gaze, then his gaze slowly softens.
"And you didn't look away".
'Neither did you," Zavian replied.
A silence passed between them.
Then riven murmured, "Tomorrow, I step into your mind."
Zavian replied, "Try not to get lost in it."
Riven smiled faintly, "if I do, don't pull me out too gently."
Zavian smiled and both of them nodded at each other and faded into the mist.
The stone hallway was quiet, lit by faint lanterns.
Zavian pulled his coat tighter around his shoulders as he stepped outside his quarters, still ruminating over the event of today's training.
Sayan leaned against the archway nearby, arms crossed, eyes half lidded but watchful.
"You're late." He spoke.
Zavian blinked. "To what?"
Sayan pushed off the wall. "To realizing you survived your first day".
Zavian managed a tired half-smile.
"Barely."
They began walking down the corridor together.
"You alright?" Sayan asked after a moment.
Zavian hesitated. "I saw something. Felt something. Not mine. Not his either."
Sayan didn't say anything.
Zavian looked at him. "Did you feel that too? With Aleric?"
Sayan gave a faint shrug. "With Aleric, everything feels like a blade pressed under your thoughts. But yeah, I felt something."
They didn't speak for a while and walked toward the cafeteria.
The cafeteria stretched out along the cliffside, its ceiling lined with faintly pulsing crystal veins. Rows of smooth stone tables sat under the soft glow of Ether-lanterns.
Zavian and Sayan sat near the edge, the mist- veiled drop visible through the wide crystal wall. A bowl of steam- grains lay untouched between.
Sayan tapped his spoon lightly. "You have stared at that food for ten minutes."
Zavian didn't look up. "I'm thinking."
Sayan exhales. "You think too much."
"Better than charging blind".
"Better than starving".
Riven Dace arrived quietly, tray in hand.
His gaze briefly met Zavian's.
Zavian shifted slightly. "You can sit"
Riven sat across him without a word.
No one spoke for a while. The silence wasn't tense- just real.
Then another figure approached, cloak trailing like a shadow.
Kaelen Thorne. Eyes dusk-silver, a scar brushing the side of his neck. There was nothing eager in his tone - only presence, quiet and assured.
"I figured I'd end up sitting near the Tesseract sooner or later."
Sayan looked up. "You know me?"
Kaelen nodded once. "Sayan Vale. Third rank. Tesseract Path. I'm under Aleric too."
Zavian's gaze lifted slightly. Kaelen turned to him.
"And you — the Mindweaver. First rank."
Zavian didn't respond at first. "You memorized the list?"
"Enough of it," Kaelen replied. "Your name stood out."
He sat beside Riven without ceremony, placing his tray with deliberate care.
"Word is you unravelled an Astraveld loop."
"I didn't unravel anything," Zavian muttered. "I just… saw what was underneath."
Kaelen tilted his head. "That's worse."
Riven spoke then, his voice quiet but certain. "He didn't hesitate either."
Zavian shrugged faintly. "Didn't have time to."
Kaelen studied him for a moment, something unreadable passing behind his eyes. "You weren't meant to. Some things only reveal themselves when you're already past the edge."
Sayan finally leaned back. "So, what does that make the four of us?"
Kaelen's reply was quiet. "Unlikely company."
Riven glanced up. "Not the worst kind."
Silence followed.
Not cold.
Not empty.
Just the kind that grows between people not used to speaking freely — but beginning to.
And from that silence, something held.
Not yet friendship.
But alignment.
Later that evening, while others filled the dorm halls with low chatter and shifting dreams, Zavian sat in the meditation altar with his eyes fixed on the space between his hands.
He closed them. Slowly. Like holding something invisible.
He thought about the moment he shattered the veil. A word suddenly stirred in his mind.
'Cognivault'
He whispered it now, almost afraid to speak it out loud.
Nothing happened. The room remained still and unchanged.
Then he recalled that when he couldn't trust his senses in the illusion, he concentrated on his mark.
Zavian observed his mark and closed his eyes while picturing the infinity and the endless threads of knowledge he first saw when his pulse activated.
Zavian remembered the first day when he developed his mark. From that day his vision had changed but Cognivault wasn't the same like his enhanced Mindweaver vision. It was a part of his pulse.
Then he slowly opened his eyes, while maintaining his concentration and focusing on his vision. He saw that his room was no longer an empty dorm room with stone walls. It was now a amalgamate of information. It was just like when he attained his pulse on the second day of his Trine awakening.
Zavian began studying it. Getting familiar with it and tried to understand it. But he was not able to maintain his Vision for long.
He laid down on his bed and fell asleep while thinking about his guardian vision.