The academy returned to its rhythm.
Morning classes folded into afternoon lectures without disruption. Bells rang with practiced regularity. Instructors moved through corridors with the same measured efficiency as always, correcting posture, adjusting pacing, maintaining order. Whatever unease had followed recent days never surfaced openly. It lingered instead as a background pressure most students no longer paid attention to.
Mana Fundamentals occupied the third period.
Instructor Halden stood at the front of the room, chalk resting between his fingers. He did not waste time on preamble.
"Efficiency," he said, writing the word once on the board. "Not capacity. Not output."
Students straightened slightly.
"Mana circulation is not about how much you possess," Halden continued. "It is about how little you waste while using it. Those who rely on raw reserves will always lose to those who control loss."
He drew a simple loop, loose and uneven.
"This," he said, tapping the board, "is what most of you do instinctively."
Then he tightened the loop. Narrowed the curve. Reduced unnecessary turns.
"And this," Halden added, "is what you should be doing."
The difference was subtle. Mana loss dropped, but not dramatically—just enough to matter over time.
"Practice," Halden said.
Students followed instructions, closing their eyes or lowering their gazes as mana began to circulate. The room filled with a faint, uniform pressure as dozens of circulation patterns overlapped.
Cain initiated his own loop.
The flow was smooth at first. Familiar. Controlled. MP drained at a steady, expected rate, matching both sensation and prior experience. He adjusted his breathing, settling into the rhythm Halden had demonstrated.
Then—
something slipped.
Not a spike.
Not resistance.
An unevenness.
Cain felt it as friction where there should have been none. MP continued to drain normally, but recovery lagged by a fraction, as though the loop hesitated before completing itself. He tightened control, narrowing the circulation path further.
The drain slowed.
The unevenness remained.
Beside him, another student completed their cycle cleanly. Mana settled. Breathing stabilized. No residual tension.
Cain adjusted again, compensating manually. The sensation diminished, but it did not vanish.
Around the room, students finished in sequence. Some opened their Status Windows briefly, checking MP values with quiet satisfaction or mild frustration.
Cain did not.
Halden moved between desks, observing posture and hand placement. When he reached Cain, he paused.
"Circulation speed," Halden said quietly. "Reduce it slightly."
Cain complied immediately.
The loop stabilized further. The friction eased—but did not disappear entirely.
Halden watched for another moment, then nodded and moved on.
Not suspicion.
Not concern.
Just correction.
The class ended on time.
Bells echoed through the corridors as students filed out, conversation rising in volume as tension dissipated. Some compared MP drain rates. Others argued over whose Control stat mattered more. Status Windows flashed briefly in corners of vision, then vanished.
Cain moved with the flow, listening without engaging.
By evening, the academy transitioned into its quieter phase.
Corridors emptied in stages. Doors closed. Lights dimmed. Mana usage across the grounds dropped steadily as students settled into dorms and training halls fell silent. The ambient density thinned, returning the academy to its baseline state.
This was when the academy ran its maintenance cycles.
Deep beneath the surface, systems older than any living instructor activated automatically. Containment arrays initiated quiet integrity checks—brief stabilization pulses designed to prevent long-term mana stagnation inside sealed formations. Residual pressure was redistributed. Density was equalized.
No curses were released.
No training was conducted.
The system simply ensured that what was sealed remained stable.
No supervision was required.
Cain did not return to his room immediately.
He walked instead, following the outer corridor that overlooked the academy grounds. The stone beneath his feet retained warmth from the day. The air was cool, carrying the faint scent of grass and old masonry.
Above him, the sky had cleared.
Stars emerged between slow-moving clouds, distant and steady. Cain stopped near the balustrade and rested his forearms lightly against it, breathing evenly.
For a moment, the academy felt distant—less a structure of stone and sealwork, more a silhouette against the night.
Then he felt it.
Not pressure.
Direction.
The awareness he had carried for days sharpened, no longer diffuse. It did not pull at him—but past him. As though something beneath the academy had finally oriented itself.
Below ground, within a reinforced containment chamber, a stabilization pulse passed through a sealed formation.
Mana gathered.
The curse inside began to respond—slowly, predictably, as it always had.
Then it hesitated.
Density spiked unevenly, pulling inward too sharply before settling. The containment array reacted immediately, reinforcing boundaries, tightening sigils, compensating for fluctuation.
No alarms sounded.
As far as the system was concerned, the cycle completed successfully.
But something slipped through.
Not the curse itself.
A fragment.
Thin. Unstable. Barely formed.
It passed through a seam in the formation—not breaking containment, not triggering safeguards. Just enough to exist outside the system's expectations.
Above ground, Cain felt the alignment complete.
He straightened slowly, eyes narrowing—not in alarm, but recognition.
The air nearby distorted faintly. Shadows deepened against the stone as the fragment gathered form, incomplete and flickering, yet heavy with presence.
Cain did not move.
He did not draw a weapon.
He did not open his Status Window.
He stood beneath the stars, calm and still, watching as something old responded to his existence without understanding it.
Behind him, the academy remained silent.
The systems held.
The seals remained intact.
But something that had been buried too long had finally found what it had been missing.
And it would not return quietly.
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