Cynthiya, standing across the room, was leaning against the wall, clutching her head. Her Shadow mark was flickering erratically, like a dying candle. To a Shadow user, Julian's power was poison—it wasn't just light; it was a vacuum that sucked the "substance" out of her darkness.
She looked at Julian with a mixture of hatred and genuine, primal fear.
With a sudden, fluid motion, she collapsed into a pool of ink on the floor. One of the SIT agents fired his weapon, but the bullets only thudded into the hardwood. She was gone, retreating into the deeper darkness of the Mirror World.
The lead SIT agent—the one who had lost his arm—was being tended to by his comrades. They used a strange, metallic spray from their suitcase to seal the wound. He looked at Julian, his face pale but his eyes sharp with a new, dangerous interest.
"Level One... but the output was equivalent to a Resonance level," the agent muttered, his voice strained. "We need to move. Now. The 'Quiet' you created just rang like a bell in the Nothingness. They know exactly where we are."
Julian didn't answer. He was staring at Ryon. His friend was breathing, but it was shallow and irregular. On Ryon's forehead, the "Unknown" symbol was no longer a faint outline; it was glowing a sickly, pulsing purple—the color of a bruise.
"Ryon?" Julian reached out, his hand still shaking.
As his fingers brushed Ryon's skin, a jolt of static electricity snapped between them. Julian felt a flicker of Ryon's mind—it wasn't empty. It was a chaotic, swirling storm of numbers, equations, and faces he didn't recognize.
Yuri crawled over to them, her knees scraping the floor. She ignored the SIT agents and the blood. She only saw Julian's silver hair and the way his eyes seemed to struggle to focus on the present.
"Julian, look at me," she commanded, grabbing his shoulders. "We have to go with them. We can't stay here."
Julian looked at her, and for a second, Yuri saw the "Unreachable" part of him. His eyes were so calm they were terrifying. Then, the boy she knew returned, and he slumped against her, the adrenaline finally leaving his system.
"He's still smiling," Julian whispered, his voice barely audible. "Ryon's shadow... it was still smiling when it broke."
The SIT agents grabbed their suitcases and hauled Ryon's unconscious body up. One of them pointed a device at the center of the cafe. A rift of white light tore open—a doorway back to reality.
"Move!"
As they stepped through the rift, Julian looked back one last time. In the corner of the cafe, where the darkness was thickest, he saw a pair of bright, white teeth flash in a grin.
The rift collapsed behind them with a sound like a closing tomb. Julian stumbled, the cold, dry air of the desert hitting his lungs.
They weren't in a prison. They were in a cavernous, high-tech hangar carved into the bedrock of Area 51. Vast monitors lined the walls, showing live feeds from London and New York. In those feeds, the sun was shining, and people were walking their dogs, oblivious to the fractured reality Julian now lived in.
"They can't see it," Julian whispered, his thumb brushing his cracked phone screen.
"And they never will," a voice commanded.
The three SIT clones stepped into charging stations along the wall. A man in a dark, high-collared military uniform with the silver crest of the UKA stepped down from a raised observation platform. This was Commander Vance.
"I am Commander Vance. Welcome to the SIT's primary intake facility," he said, his eyes scanning Julian's silver-streaked hair.
"Are you locking us up?" Yuri asked, her voice trembling as she watched medical droids wheel the unconscious Ryon toward a glass-walled wing.
"The UKA is a nation of laws, Miss Arima. We cannot simply 'keep' university students against their will without cause," Vance replied, though his tone remained chillingly formal. "However, you are now a walking security risk. You cannot return to your old lives. If you 'Wake Up' in a public lecture hall, people will die."
Julian narrowed his eyes. "So what happens to us?"
"You are being transferred," Vance said. "The King has authorized the funding for a specialized institution—Aethelgard College. To the public, it's an elite, private research university. In reality, it is the only place on Earth where individuals with your... 'condition'... are taught to function."
Julian's breath hitched. "There are others? A whole college of people like us?"
"You aren't as unique as you'd like to think," Vance said, walking toward a monitor. "There are others—some who have been there for years. The SIT manages the facility, but you will continue your studies. We don't just need soldiers, Julian. We need physicists, engineers, and doctors who can look at the sky and not go insane."
Julian looked at his hand. The Tranquility mark was a dull throb now.
"Ryon is a physics major," Julian said, his voice dropping into that terrifying Stage 1 stillness. "He belongs in a lab, not a morgue. If you're sending us to this school, he comes with us. Awake and alive."
Vance didn't flinch, even as the coffee in a nearby technician's mug froze solid from the sheer drop in local temperature.
"The medical team at Aethelgard is the best in the UKA," Vance said. "They deal with 'Unknown' flares once a week. He will be stabilized and enrolled by Monday morning."
Vance turned back toward the observation deck. "A car is waiting to take you to the campus. Enjoy your weekend, Mr. Stevenson. At Aethelgard, the curriculum is a bit more... demanding... than what you're used to."