The elevator descent felt like a fall from grace. As the numbers on the display ticked downward, the air changed—the scent of expensive ozone and floral stabilizers replaced by the thick, heavy stench of cooling oil and recycled carbon. The Bronze Wing wasn't just a dormitory; it was the Academy's basement, a labyrinthine industrial sprawl where the "failures" were stored like surplus hardware.
Ken stepped out of the lift and was immediately met by the oppressive hum of the massive mana-turbines that kept Aethelgard afloat. The noise was a constant, low-frequency vibration that rattled the teeth of anyone living here, a reminder that they were the closest to the machine and the furthest from the light.
"Keep moving, 0.8," a mechanical voice crackled. A rusty maintenance drone hovered nearby, its optical sensor flickering with a dim red light. "Dormitory Block 99 is through the primary ventilation hub. Do not obstruct the path of the service golems."
Ken didn't argue. He hitched his bag over his shoulder and began the long walk through the "slums." The corridors here were narrow, the walls lined with exposed conduits that pulsed with jagged, unrefined energy. Groups of students huddled in the common areas, most of them wearing the brown-trimmed uniforms of the Bronze Wing. These were the scholarship kids, the disgraced nobles, and the "mistakes" like himself. Their eyes were hard, filled with a mixture of desperation and resentment.
This is the gut of the beast, Ken thought, his silver eyes scanning the security nodes. The Gold Wing is a fortress of surveillance, but the Bronze Wing... it's a mess of blind spots. Perfect.
He reached Block 99, a stack of modular living units that looked more like shipping containers than rooms. His door was at the very end of a dark hallway. He swiped his student ID, and the door hissed open with a reluctant groan.
The room was five square meters of gray steel. A bunk bed, a single desk bolted to the wall, and a terminal that looked like it belonged in a museum. But Ken didn't look at the furniture. He closed the door, engaged the manual lock, and stood in the center of the room.
"Eye of Truth: Phase One," he whispered.
The three concentric rings fractured into existence in his right eye. The gray walls dissolved into a complex web of architectural data. He looked straight through the floor, past the layers of concrete and steel, toward the sub-levels below. His gaze traveled down, deeper into the dark, until he hit a massive, shielded vault buried miles beneath the Academy's core.
A pulse of recognition hit his mind. One of the relics—the Void-Coded Key—was down there. It was buried under layers of ancient security and lethal mana-traps, but it was there.
Suddenly, a sharp, rhythmic pounding on his door shattered his focus. The silver rings vanished instantly.
"Vaelstron! Open up!" a harsh voice shouted from the hallway. "I know you're in there, you lazy piece of trash. Rent's due for the hallway passage, and the 'Prince' is going to pay double."
Ken sighed, his shoulders slumping back into his "weak" posture. He moved to the door, his face twisting into a mask of hesitant fear. He opened it just enough to see a group of three older students—all of them Bronze Wingers who had spent too many years in the dark. The leader was a boy named Mike, a thick-necked bully with a low-tier fire affinity flickering around his knuckles.
"I... I don't have any mana-credits yet," Ken stuttered, his voice small and trembling. "I just got here. Please, I just want to sleep."
Mike laughed, a cruel, jagged sound that echoed in the narrow corridor. "Sleep? In the Bronze Wing? You don't get to sleep until you've paid the tax, little prince. If you don't have credits, maybe you have something else. That coat looks expensive."
Mike reached out to grab Ken's collar, his hand glowing with a dull orange heat.
Ken didn't move. He stood perfectly still, his eyes fixed on Mike's chest. In his mind, he was already calculating the trajectories. He could collapse Mike's windpipe with a flick of his wrist. He could drain the mana from the boy's core until his heart stopped. It would take less than half a second.
No, Ken reminded himself. Not here. Not yet.
"Please," Ken whispered, letting a single tear of fake frustration well up in his eye. "Take it. Just leave me alone."
He slipped the coat off and handed it over. Mike snatched it, sneering at the quality of the fabric. "Next time, have the credits, or we'll start taking fingers. Welcome to the bottom, Vaelstron."
They swaggered off, laughing as they disappeared into the darkness of the hub.
Ken closed the door and sat on the hard, thin mattress. He stared at the blank terminal on his desk. The coat was gone, but he didn't care. It was a small price to pay for the "Lazy Prince" legend to grow.
He tapped a hidden sequence on the terminal's keypad. The screen flickered to life, bypassed the Academy's mainframe, and opened a secure, untraceable link.
"Status," Ken said softly.
A line of text appeared on the screen, written in a code only two people in the world understood.
SELENE: The Empress is moving the third inquisitor to the Academy's security board. They're looking for a 'ghost' in the data. Be careful, Ken. The vacuum is starting to show.
Ken stared at the message until it auto-deleted. He leaned back against the cold steel wall and closed his eyes.
"Let them look for a ghost," he muttered. "I'm going to give them a nightmare."
End of Chapter 3.