Bernard Van Keunen sipped black tea from a porcelain cup worth more than most professors made in a year.
His eyes never left the arena.
The demonstration had ended hours ago, but he still saw the flawlessness, the precision, and the failure. That was the part that mattered. Not the golem. Not the applause. Not even the spell mimicry.
The rebound was something he was hoping for.
He set the cup down.
"Haku," he said aloud, testing the name like a knife's edge.
There was a knock at his door.
"Enter," he said.
Elena stepped inside, robes crisp, expression sharper. "I assume you saw it."
"I was watching before it began," Bernard replied. "And now I'm sure."
"Sure of what?"
"That he's not from here."
Elena's lips pressed into a thin line. "That's been your suspicion for over a month."
"No," Bernard said, standing slowly and walking toward the tapestry on his office's west wall. "Before, I thought he was something else. A failed experiment. Or a clever magician. But now. While most would not be able to notice any mage of circle 7 or higher could tell that the mana in the world did not move while he performed."
He pulled aside the map.
Behind it, a silver panel blinked softly. Arcane runes crossed with something much older. Not magic.
He pressed a hand against it, and it recognized him. The wall melted open.
Inside, the chamber hummed.
Elena followed without needing to be told.
"I've activated the Concordat channel," Bernard said. "It's time."
The Veiled Concordat hadn't met fully in over two decades. Not since the last "anomaly" appeared a child who came from beyond the stormy ocean, who died shortly after trying to reinvent steel manufacturing with lemon juice and volcanic glass.
But Haku was different.
He wasn't just some nobody, it seemed.
He was playing with them.
Bending rules without ever showing the lever.
"He made them believe it was magic," Elena said, watching as sigils spun to life on the central dais. "But that wasn't spellcraft. It was a performance."
"No," Bernard said. "It was worse. It was understanding. He didn't channel the arcane; he substituted for it. That's not a mage. That's a Pattern Breaker."
Elena stiffened.
"You think he's... one of them?"
"I think he remembers he's from beyond the stormy ocean and that the principal is hiding this fact for some reason. With no mana. I'm assuming that he's a martial artist or a sorcerer from beyond, he might even be part of the cult."
He tapped a rune, and an image flickered into being, Haku's demonstration, slowed down, dissected by aether threads. The core never ignited. The "destabilization" was atmospheric. The gloves? Resonance conduits. The sparks? Thermite powder. Thermite. He had found or made it. Here.
"I knew he was hiding something," Elena said, teeth bared. "But this? He made us all look like fools."
"He showed us a version of power without power," Bernard said. "And that makes him the most dangerous man alive."
They stood in silence for a long moment.
Finally, Elena spoke. "Then we kill him."
Bernard turned to her, face grim.
"Yes. But not yet."
She looked ready to argue, but he raised a hand.
"We need to understand what he's done. How far does it go? He hasn't met the Principal yet. Do you know what that means?"
"That the Principal is ignoring him?"
"That the Principal already knows him," Bernard said, voice darkening. "And is choosing to stay out of sight. Which means we're not just dealing with a Pattern Breaker."
Elena paled slightly.
"We're dealing with someone allowed to be one."
The chamber lights dimmed, signaling an incoming Concordat transmission.
Bernard turned toward the dais, spine straight, voice cold.
"Get me the full file on Haku's students and his assistant. The girl, Yue. The boy, Alex. I want magical, political, and theoretical breakdowns. If he's training them, we need to know if he's making more of himself."
"And if he is?" Elena asked.
"Then we don't kill Haku."
She raised an eyebrow. "No?"
"We erase him. Past, future, and the echo in between. Concordat Protocol Seven."
That silenced her.
The dais flared as a sigil locked into place.
A voice spoke distorted, layered, and ancient.
"Bernard Van Keunen. We have received your summons. Do you confirm the Pattern Breaker has awakened?"
Bernard didn't hesitate.
"I do."
"Then begin observation. And prepare the blade."
The chamber dimmed again.
Bernard looked back at the frozen image of Haku on the display.
Still smiling that infuriating, unreadable smile.
He leaned forward.
"I will break your pattern, outsider."
And in the shadows behind the academy, the Veiled Concordat began to move.
Bernard let the Concordat sigil fade before turning his attention to the chamber's rear vault sealed with old-world metal, not enchanted locks. Sometimes, to hide from magic, one had to stoop to engineering. Ironically, that was now the enemy's domain.
He keyed in a sequence. No wand. Just tactile input.
Behind the vault door sat a thick, lead-bound box. He opened it, carefully, and removed a single item: a jagged obsidian dagger, older than most nations.
It didn't hum with mana.
It didn't glow.
It simply was.
Lethal in every world.
"Protocol Seven," Bernard whispered. "No rebirth, no memory trace, no chance of reconstruction."
Elena lingered behind him. She hated it when he went quiet. Thought it meant he was getting poetic. She was wrong. It meant he was thinking about murder.
"Haku's patterns don't match any of our historical analogues," she said, thumbing through a runic tablet. "Even the First Veil incidents. He's not an ascended remnant. He's not a lost soul. He's... new."
Bernard didn't answer. He was watching the dagger's shadow.
Even that moved wrong as if not following the laws.
"You think he'll teach those two how to do what he did?" Elena asked. "The girl Yue is dangerous. Fast. Improvisational. Reminds me of a younger me."
"You weren't that dangerous," Bernard replied dryly.
Elena glared. "She's smarter than she lets on. So is the boy. If Haku teaches them to replace mana entirely."
"He won't," Bernard cut in. "He doesn't trust them."
That made Elena pause.
"You saw how carefully he controlled that demonstration," Bernard continued. "He doesn't teach. He directs. There's a difference. That's not mentorship. That's containment. They're not apprentices. They're variables."
"You think he's afraid of them?" she asked, almost amused.
"No," Bernard said. "I think he's afraid of something else, I don't know what yet."
A long silence.
Elena shifted. "So what now? We wait? Hope he slips up?"
Bernard finally looked at her. "We accelerate."
He strode to a crystal interface and tapped in three requests.
1. Surveillance of Haku's quarters, with passive resonance sniffers.
2. Yue's personal records, edited and unedited versions.
3. A private meeting with the Principal.
Elena raised an eyebrow at the last one.
"I thought you said the Principal was letting this happen?"
"I did," Bernard said. "And I need to know why."
He turned to face the high window, the spires of the academy piercing through the mist like knives left in a sleeping giant's back. His hands were clasped behind his back, his expression that of a man too used to war to enjoy peace.
"Do you know how long we've kept this world stable?" he asked.
Elena rolled her eyes. "I know Bernard. We both are the descendants of the Accords."
"Exactly," he murmured. "We built this world on patterns. Predictable structures. Magic has rules, and rules are leverage. That's why we've lasted."
He turned back, eyes dark.
"But Haku doesn't use our rules. He uses something else. The kind of something that redefines the system until the system begs to be rewritten."
Another pause. Then Elena, quietly: "Like he already has once."
Bernard nodded.
That was the real danger. Not that Haku had outsmarted them.
But that he wasn't trying to.
Which meant he was just getting started.
Elsewhere.
In a locked observatory dome high above the northern wing, a cloaked figure wrote notes by moonlight.
It was Ricardo.
His figure leaned back, fingers twitching with excitement. Beneath his cloak, a Concordat ring pulsed once, then vanished.
"If he really is the dragon of the sun," Ricardo whispered, "then the game's already broken. Maybe I shouldn't have been reborn this late this time, at least I would be more powerful, but the price one pays for eternal life is that one does not know exactly within what time frame one is reborn."
Below, Haku sat on his balcony, watching the same moon.
He had no idea they were watching.