The damp morning air of Sector 7 carried the bitter stench of sulfur and low-grade fuel from the refinery stacks. Walking down the metal staircase toward the transit station, Caine kept his right hand planted firmly inside his jacket pocket.
Underneath the faded fabric, his palm felt uncomfortably heavy. The dense, silent current from his midnight awakening hadn't faded; it had settled deep into his marrow like liquid lead. Every time a passerby bumped into his shoulder on the crowded platform, Caine instinctively pulled back, terrified that a sudden twitch might release whatever was locked inside his hand.
Around him, other Academy students were showing off their early manifestations.
A broad-shouldered third-year cadet produced a bright, crackling blade of blue light from his palm, drawing admiring gasps from a crowd of lower-ring commuters. The digital meter mounted on the platform wall beeped, displaying a tidy CHPower 18 next to the cadet's ID badge. The light was flashy, loud, and instantly recognized by the system.
Caine glanced down at his own hand. If he tried to summon his energy right now, no bright aura would appear. No public meter would beep. Standard digital sensors required an external light frequency to measure a cadet's output—and Caine's power didn't radiate outward. It crushed inward.
"A glitchy baseline," his Academy instructor had called him during yesterday's physical evaluation. "You can't even form a proper hilt, Caine. You're barely holding onto a 10."
Caine gritted his teeth, the memory burning hotter than the cold pressure in his bones.
He didn't care about the insults, but he cared about the reality behind them. At CHPower 10, the Academy would assign him to low-yield refinery guard duty after graduation—paying just enough credits to keep his family in the lower ring forever. Maya's upcoming term fees were due in two months, and his mother's hands were already swollen from double shifts at the fuel vats.
He needed a real hunter's classification to get past the wall and earn real merit credits. But more than that, he needed to make sure his own body wasn't going to tear itself apart.
During the two years since his awakening, Caine hadn't spent his time idly wallowing in his baseline status. While the Academy dismissed him, he had spent nearly every weekend sneaking past the lower-ring perimeter scrap yards. He scavenged high-density alloy plates, broken Jahgred crawler plating, and discarded core housings from the old war era.
That was how he met Silas.
The old war veteran operated out of a subterranean bunker hidden beneath the black market scrap heaps. Initially, Caine had gone to Silas merely to trade salvaged metal for extra credits to help his mother pay for food and Maya's baseline medical checkups. But Silas—a former Level 3 Master missing an eye and half his left leg from the early Jahgred wars—quickly took notice of the kid who brought in high-yield scrap without a scratch on him.
Over those two years, Silas became more than a buyer. He became an anchor. When Caine's physical training pushed his body to the brink, Silas gave him off-grid maintenance advice, repaired his worn gear, and warned him about the Directorate's strict control over registered cadets. Caine trusted the old mechanic with his life—though he had never shown Silas the true nature of his CrystalHeart.
Until today.
When the heavy, armor-plated fusion bus hissed to a stop at the platform, Caine boarded with the crowd, taking a spot near the rear doors. The metal floorboards vibrated beneath his boots as the transport lurched forward, heading toward the industrial core.
He closed his eyes and focused on his chest. Beneath his ribs, his CrystalHeart thrummed with a terrifying, compact density—a quiet monster waiting for a single slip in concentration.
He knew better than to report this to the Academy medical bay. If Directorate trainers realized his core was behaving outside standard parameters, they wouldn't train him; they would tag him as a volatile hazard and lock him in a containment cell for study.
Silas was the only person who understood off-grid technology and irregular awakenings.
As the fusion bus rumbled toward the lower-ring black market, Caine tightened his grip inside his pocket. It was time to show his old mentor what had really happened to his body.