Kaien stood at the edge of the Ascendance Courtyard, the marble beneath his boots scorched from the last spar. Crimson dusk streaked across the sky like torn fabric—less a sunset, more a wound slowly closing. Behind him, Ayari stood silently, still catching her breath from the bout. Her shield shimmered faintly, flickering like a heartbeat.
He should've been grateful. She'd stepped in. Protected him again. But Kaien couldn't silence the guilt chewing through his ribs.
He'd been weaker—again. The whispers inside the Protocol still hadn't returned since the Labyrinth collapse. Nothing. Just hollow echoes.
"Still no Zero."
The phrase had become a joke among the lower cadets. A nickname in passing. A blade in disguise.
"You're not chosen. You're not even written."
Kaien had grown too used to being seen as nothing. And yet… he kept walking.
The Academy courtyard began to empty. Combat trials were done for the day. Rankings updated in flickering blue glyphs on the Ascendance Wall. Kaien's name wasn't even near the middle.
But someone else was waiting for him. Leaning casually by the gate. That same smug tilt to his stance. Silver-rimmed eyes sharp with interest.
Toval Rehn.
The arrogant First Disciple who had once broken Kaien's stance in the Tiered Fights—now strangely friendly.
"That was messy," Toval said with a light laugh, flipping an apple in one hand. "You move like someone holding back a scream."
Kaien didn't respond.
"You know, I've been watching," Toval added. "You're not useless. Just... misaligned. It's like something's twisted inside you. Something almost right."
He stepped closer, voice dropping. "I could teach you. If you're not too proud to learn."
Kaien blinked. This wasn't the same sneering brute from before. Something was different. Sharper. More calculating. Yet oddly sincere.
Ayari narrowed her eyes, sensing it too.
"You don't offer help without angles," she said coldly. "What's your stake?"
Toval shrugged. "Maybe I like stories. Maybe I like seeing what happens when broken pieces start moving again."
Kaien hesitated. He wanted to say no. But deep inside, something else stirred. A sense that if he didn't seize this—he might miss the storm already building.
"Fine," Kaien said at last. "But I don't trust you."
"Smart," Toval smirked. "Don't."
That night, Kaien returned to the apprentice quarters. Alone.
The moon was a flat silver plate above the horizon, unblinking.
And then—he saw it. On the edge of his desk.
A folded scrap of paper. Not his.
He opened it.
"You are not the glitch.
You are the bypass."
— V.
Kaien's fingers trembled. V? Vel?
The letter burned itself into the air after he read it—glyphs unraveling like severed nerves.
He looked around the room.
Someone had been here.
Meanwhile, deep in the Chamber of Mirrors beneath the Academy, a dark-robed observer leaned into an ethereal orb, watching Kaien's silhouette disappear into his room.
"Not yet," Nox whispered, voice barely audible through the spell-threaded glass. "Let him believe he is walking forward."
Behind her, Toval stood—expression blank, pulse steady.
"Is the rewriting proceeding?" Nox asked.
Toval didn't answer.
He merely turned away.
And smirked.
In the sky, a comet crossed against the loom of stars—its tail flickering violet, not white.
The color of Protocol Zero.