New Elysion's drinking age was eighteen. That fact alone explained half the chaos. The other half was money—real money. The Academy was technically private, but flushed with public funds from the New Elysion education department. Generous scholarships. Subsidized tuition. "Merit-flexible" admissions. Every year they pulled in a strange mix: scouted prodigies, exchange students from collapsed areas, rich kids with Kamuy, and broke kids who tested just high enough to qualify for the free ride.
And every year, the weekend before classes started... they all lost their minds.
According to Matt, by Saturday afternoon, the central quad was a zoo. Kamuy users lighting up like stage effects, some practicing, most just showing off. Flames, forcefields, airborne stunts. A guy levitated over the reflecting pool with his shirt off, narrating his own life story in real-time like it was a podcast. A freshman girl burst into tears when her Kamuy misfired and covered a food truck in frost. Nobody helped. People just filmed it.
Security drones hovered outside windows, scanning for heat signatures and blood. Solan asked if someone was going to shut it down. Matt just laughed. "As long as no one crashes through a government building, they'll let it ride."
That was the rule here: keep it contained, and no one cared. Kamuy weren't banned, just discouraged from being obvious. Power was tolerated the way noise complaints were—only punished if someone important noticed.
Campus security tried to enforce a "soft crackdown" Saturday night. It didn't work. By Sunday, the party had simply migrated—off-campus bars, friends' apartments, rooftops.
That night, Matt dragged him out with the urgency of someone who'd just discovered God was hosting a flash sale.
"Come on," he said. "You need to see this."
Solan didn't ask questions. He figured it was safer not to.
They ended up beneath an unfinished metro line—just off-campus, under steel struts and the echo of reverb. Jury-rigged floodlamps cast the whole place in uneven gold. Portable speakers buzzed with distortion. Students were already packed around the ring—leaning off railings, sitting on half-installed benches, some still wearing their orientation shirts like they'd wandered into the wrong part of campus and decided to stay.
The fights had already started. Two students circled each other inside the makeshift ring. One had some kind of metal crawling slowly across his chest—like it was growing, or maybe being forced out. The other hadn't moved. Just stood there barefoot, smaller, wiry—maybe a girl? Her eyes stayed half-lidded, like she was listening to something no one else could hear.
Then came the impact. A shockwave cracked through the concrete and rolled through the crowd like bass. Dust spiraled up. Someone behind Solan whooped like they were at a concert. Another voice started live-commentating the moves like it was a televised sport.
Solan's face twitched. He didn't say anything, but in his mind, he saw himself taking a hit like that—launched backward like a kite with a broken spine.
It was chaotic. Loud. Raw. But it wasn't random. Every blow was weighted. Measured. Practiced.
Telekinetics. Hardlight users. Skin that shifted on contact. Someone with windstep movement, like she was skipping between seconds. Another snapped the ground upward with a palm strike—like the floor had veins, and he knew exactly where to tap.
No guns, though. Solan noticed that. New Elysion didn't have a Second Amendment—they had policy . Whatever that policy actually said, no one here seemed worried about breaking it. Kamuy, blades, hand-to-hand, even someone with what looked like a spine mod—no one stopped them. Apparently that was fine. Apparently you could do anything here. You'd just bleed more if you weren't fast.
Matt leaned in, yelling over the noise, grinning like he was part tour guide, part cult recruiter. "This one's legit," he shouted. "It's re-ranking weekend."
Solan gave him a look. "That's a thing?"
"Unofficially." Matt shrugged. "Also not really secret. School acts like it's an urban legend. Students treat it like gospel."
He pulled out his phone, thumbed to a corner feed, and held it up like a holy relic. "The Scratchlist," he said. Solan squinted. It looked like a glorified leaderboard: names, ranks, a glowing scroll of match histories, some already updating in real time. Matt tapped the screen. "Top hundred fighters in the student body. Ranked. Public. Updated whenever someone wins—or gets humiliated."
Solan arched a brow. "So an underground fight club."
"Exactly how it started". Matt went on "Back in the '80s, couple of freaks in the South Wing basement just wanted to prove whose Kamuy hit harder. Probably had a chalkboard and everything. It was said the original list only had ten names. No one even admitted to writing them down, but the fights kept happening, and eventually someone started tracking them. Now, the Dean probably gets weekly analytics. You win, you rise. You lose in public, you fall. It's stupid. But it runs everything."
He started ticking off perks on his fingers. "Internships. Research opportunities. Professors who never reply to emails suddenly 'see potential.' Some private club parties even require a list number for entry."
Solan stared at him, unimpressed.
"And, y'know. Sex. " Matt added dramatically, wagging his eyebrows. "Girls or guys. Whatever your deal is. You won't be lonely."
Solan sighed. "Of course."
"No, seriously," Matt said. "You make this list, you're vetted. You don't need to be nice. Or smart. Or functional. Just throw one good punch in the right direction—and bam."
Matt said. "You should give it a shot. At least your blade looks intimidating."
"I would"—Solan inhaled sharply, the way you do when you see someone take a fist to the stomach—"if I had the good kind of insurance."
He turned his gaze back to the screen. The list wasn't glamorous. It looked kind of dumb. But the students crowding around it didn't think so. Neither did the ones whispering, or glancing, or quietly adjusting their stances like they were already planning their own ascent. He just kept one hand in his pocket. Resting near the place where the mark still sat beneath his skin. A black thread of something that didn't quite belong to him. Not yet.
By the time they walked back, his ears were still ringing from the shockwave. His ribs ached from something that hadn't touched him. And the blade? Still where he left it. He didn't summon it. He didn't sleep well either.
The first day of classes came too soon. Solan pushed open the lecture hall door, his stomach was still curling from that carton of questionable milk. He wasn't sure if it was the dairy, the blade he'd left in the dorm... or the slow, bone-deep fatigue that hadn't let up since. The same kind of uncertainty that made him wonder if choosing Disaster Response Theory was an act of self-preservation... or just another bad decision Matt had talked him into.
"With your stamina? If you don't learn how to survive a stampede, they'll be scraping what's left of you off the sidewalk by midterms." That was Matt's pitch. The kind only an American could deliver without irony.
The lecture hall looked hungover. Students slumped in chairs, half-listening, half-dissolving into coffee steam and second guesses. The whole place smelled like budget coffee and mild regret.
Solan slumped into a middle row seat. Dropped his brand-new textbook on the desk like it owed him something.
"Is this seat taken?" The voice was soft. So soft it landed more like snowfall than sound.
He looked up—and forgot to breathe for a second.
She stood just beneath the light from the aisle window, black hair falling past her shoulders, the school insignia stitched neatly into her collar. Her fingers were curled around the edge of a weathered notebook. There was nothing commanding about her expression—just a kind of tentative, almost hesitant poise. Like she wasn't really asking if the seat was free, but quietly hoping not to be turned away.
"N... no," Solan stammered.
She was already seated. A jasmine-scented breeze brushed past him as she settled in, flipping open a dog-eared copy of Disaster Response Theory. The inside cover was scribbled with dense notes—lines, arrows, and symbols in pencil so fine they looked like a second language.
Solan's fingertips twitched. That profile. That movement. That— That was the girl from the bunker. Wasn't it?
No. Not possible.
She wouldn't remember.
Just a coincidence.
The air felt warmer than it should. His collar scratched at his neck. He tapped the desk, trying to shake off the silence.
She turned, eyes curious, voice soft. "I heard this professor's tough. Is that true?"
"Huh? I—uh—dunno." He nearly bit his tongue.
She smiled, just a little. Her lashes cast faint shadows in the morning light.
"Last semester's fail rate was 48%."
"What?!" His voice cracked through the nearly empty room. Someone in the front groaned and shifted in their seat.
"...should never trust a guy named Matt."
"Matt?" she asked.
"My roommate. He said you could basically nap through it..."
"Oh." She blinked once, then tilted her head. "Then maybe you should start reading the textbook yourself."
Solan stared. It wasn't mean. It wasn't even teasing. It was... advice. Plain and honest and kind. She bent back over her notebook, already taking notes from the opening slide. Solan, on the other hand, was still trying to process her first "harsh" sentence—which didn't sound harsh at all. More like... a soft tap on the shoulder in a burning building.
And then, it hit him. This wasn't the first time he'd seen her. It was yesterday. Outside the administration building. He'd dropped his documents for the third time. The wind slapped half the stack into his face, and he was gearing up to swear when he caught a whiff of lemon laundry detergent. Then she stepped out through the revolving glass door. White shirt. Black hair. The sun hit her like she was still being sketched in. Unfinished. Untouchable.
He'd ducked his head and pretended to read file numbers. His cheeks stung from wind and embarrassment. His heart was doing something it absolutely shouldn't have been doing. She passed him without even looking. Now, she was sitting next to him. Asking him if the professor was strict. As if this was nothing.
Solan looked down at his pristine, plastic-wrapped textbook. His throat felt tight. She leaned forward again, taking notes in a calm, practiced hand. A strand of her hair slipped to one side, revealing the pale line of her neck. His hand moved before his brain caught up. He reached for the edge of the book. The plastic sleeve tore with a slow, shhhhlick .
"Damn thing's sealed like a blade sheath," he muttered under his breath.