That night, I didn't sleep.
Not because I couldn't—but because sleep would have been inefficient.
The moment my mother's breathing evened out, I stepped into the bathroom, locked the door, and let reality loosen its grip.
The alchemy domain answered immediately.
No flare.
No announcement.
Just access.
The world inverted, then folded—walls dissolving into structured light, the familiar hum returning like a held breath finally released.
My base.
I didn't waste time.
The desk reassembled itself at my approach, journals sliding into position without instruction. The alignment surfaced a projection of Ironwood Academy—not its layout, but its conceptual footprint.
Students.
Saints.
Latent anomalies.
Observation vectors.
Justice wouldn't strike directly.
Not yet.
They would probe.
So I denied them clean data.
I opened my palm.
A thin filament of light descended from the alignment, threading itself into my skin—not invasive, not painful. It synchronized.
[Countermeasure design: passive.]
[Method: probability contamination.]
I smiled faintly.
"Deploy Ghost Layer," I said.
The domain hesitated—not in refusal, but in calculation.
[Warning: long-term feedback distortion possible.]
"I know."
I placed my hand against the projection.
The campus didn't change.
That was the point.
Instead, assumptions began to decay.
Predictive models aimed at Ironwood would now return slightly different answers each time. Emotional readings would drift. Causal chains would blur just enough to be unreliable.
Not invisibility. Noise.
Justice could look—but never be sure what they were seeing.
The filament burned briefly, then cooled.
[Ghost Layer active.]
[Scope: localized.]
[Operator signature masked.]
I stepped back, exhaling.
One countermeasure laid.
Not a shield.
A question mark.
I exited the domain without ceremony, the bathroom reforming around me like nothing had happened.
I slept.
⸻
The next day at Ironwood felt… off.
Not wrong. Indeterminate.
Eli noticed it halfway through second period.
He froze mid-step, fingers tightening around the strap of his bag. His expression didn't change—but his Will surged, reflexive and sharp.
Someone was pushing.
Not physically. Conceptually.
I felt it too.
A distant pressure—like a thumb pressing gently against the world, testing for give.
Justice's people.
Observing Eli.
Waiting for resistance.
I didn't intervene.
Not yet.
Eli did exactly what I told him to do.
Nothing.
He sat through class. Took notes. Laughed at Lina's whispered commentary like everything was normal.
Inside, his Will was a locked door.
No counterforce.
No backlash.
Just endurance.
The pressure increased.
Subtle manipulations followed—probability nudges meant to provoke reaction. A dropped pen at the wrong moment. A teacher calling on him when he wasn't ready. A ripple of attention that wanted him to assert himself.
He didn't.
Good.
I watched the future paths narrow—not collapse, but converge.
Justice expected escalation.
Instead, they got ambiguity.
Confusion.
I adjusted one thread.
Just one.
A ripple passed through the Ghost Layer.
The pressure slipped.
Not gone.
Re-evaluating.
Eli exhaled slowly, shoulders relaxing a fraction.
He glanced at me.
"You feel that?" he murmured.
"Yes," I replied. "You passed."
His brow furrowed. "Passed what?"
I met his eyes.
"Being predictable."
The pressure withdrew entirely.
For now.
Justice had their answer.
Ironwood wasn't weak.
But it wasn't responding the way it should have.
And that uncertainty would eat at them.
Eli leaned back in his chair. "You know," he said quietly, "every time something big happens, you look like you planned it a week ago."
I didn't deny it.
Lina leaned over. "I hate that tone. It's your 'things are about to get worse' tone."
I allowed myself a small, private smile.
"They already did," I said. "You just didn't notice."
Outside, far beyond Ironwood's walls, someone was recalculating their strategy.
And for the first time—
They were doing it without clean data.
That night, I returned to the domain without hesitation.
No transition lag.
No recalibration delay.
The space recognized me faster now.
The desk assembled before I reached it, journals already open to the correct pages. The alignment didn't ask questions—it adjusted.
That alone confirmed it.
I was stronger.
Not in output.
In authority.
"Ironwood wasn't the target," I said quietly. "It was the reference frame."
The projection shifted.
The campus folded outward, lines extending beyond its borders—transport routes, communication relays, emotional population density.
Justice wasn't looking for power.
They were mapping decision points.
"Expand Ghost Layer," I ordered. "Secondary scope."
[Warning: cascading uncertainty may affect non-hostile agents.]
"Acceptable."
The domain pulsed once.
Not energy.
Consensus.
The Ghost Layer spread—not as a blanket, but as a selective haze around individuals of interest. Anyone Justice's models were tracking would now exhibit behavioral variance just outside predictive tolerance.
Saints would feel it most.
That was intentional.
I leaned over the desk, fingers hovering above a new construct.
"Add reflective bias," I continued. "If an external observer pushes… reflect the pressure sideways."
[Countermeasure complexity increased.]
[Risk: observer feedback.]
I smiled.
"Good."
Justice needed to feel their own hand slipping.
The alignment finalized the deployment.
[Ghost Layer v2 active.]
[Observer interference detected: minimal.]
[Confidence degradation ongoing.]
I stepped back.
Two countermeasures now.
Still no shields.
Still no weapons.
Just uncertainty weaponized.
I exited the domain.
⸻
Justice adjusted within hours.
That, too, told me everything.
Something was different, Justice action was expected— in fact, I planned for it.
He had enough of the interference from the Ghost Layer, so he sent a proxy, to keep an eye on things from the inside.
The Proxy arrived at Ironwood the next morning under the most boring cover imaginable: a transfer student. No flare. No announcement.
Too clean.
I felt them before I saw them.
Not power.
Alignment pressure.
A Saint—partial, but refined. Someone tuned to judgment, hierarchy, and inevitability.
They weren't there to fight. At least not yet, but we can't rule that out.
They were there to stand near us and see what broke.
Lina noticed first. "Why does that guy feel like a walking headache?"
Eli stiffened.
"Neo," he said under his breath. "That's not a normal anomaly."
"No," I replied. "He is not."
The proxy sat two rows ahead of us.
Perfect posture.
Perfect stillness.
Too perfect.
The Ghost Layer immediately went to work.
Probability nudges misfired.
Behavioral predictions drifted.
Every attempt to align the room around the proxy returned inconsistent data.
They frowned.
Just slightly.
Good.
During lunch, the proxy made their move.
They didn't approach me.
They approached Eli.
"Saint of Will," they said casually, sitting across from him without invitation. "You don't resist enough."
The table went quiet.
Lina's foot brushed mine under the bench.
Eli didn't flare.
Didn't push back.
He smiled politely. "I'm working on my patience."
The proxy's eyes narrowed.
Their ability pressed—testing moral weight, seeking compliance, trying to rank him.
The Ghost Layer bent the pressure.
Reflected it sideways.
The proxy's expression twitched.
They felt it.
I spoke then—calm, almost bored.
"Let's stop this theatrics," I said. "You're not here for him are you," he turned to me, "you're here to see if I'd interfere."
For the first time, their presence wavered.
"You're… difficult to classify," they said.
"I know," I replied. "That's deliberate."
Justice's model cracked further.
The proxy stood abruptly, chair scraping.
"This environment is compromised," they said aloud—to no one in particular.
Then they left.
Not defeated.
But uncertain.
Eli exhaled. "Was that… a test?"
"Yes," I said. "And you passed twice."
Lina stared after the retreating figure. "I don't like how calm you are about this."
I looked down at my hands.
Neither did I.
Justice had escalated.
And instead of collapsing the board—
They'd just learned they were playing on terrain I controlled.
——
I didn't rush back to the domain.
That would have been a mistake.
Rushing was a habit from my past life—when I still believed I needed to arrive before disaster instead of arranging things so disaster arrived late.
I went home.
I slept.
Real sleep this time.
No dreams. No echoes. Just darkness and breath.
When I woke, the solution was already waiting.
Not inspiration.
Convergence.
If Justice had sent a proxy, then escalation was no longer theoretical. And if a Saint-level entity decided to test me directly, the worst possible move would be to meet them unmediated.
My abilities didn't break things.
They overwrote assumptions.
Which meant any prolonged fight would collapse into unintended outcomes—civilian exposure, infrastructural damage, witnesses.
Unacceptable.
So I needed a layer between myself and consequence.
Not armor.
An interface.
⸻
The domain opened the moment I stepped inside.
No greeting.
No fanfare.
The desk assembled. The journals aligned. The alignment listened.
I had saved a lot of rare materials from the old civilization of my past life, that would go for Trillions in this day and age. I had what I needed to begin what I needed to do.
"Begin construct design," I said. "Combat-adaptive frame. Solo deployment."
[Clarify parameters.]
I didn't hesitate.
"Saint-compatible."
"Wisdom-synchronized."
"No autonomy."
The last condition mattered most.
I wasn't outsourcing survival.
I was amplifying decision speed.
The projection expanded—dozens of skeletal frames blooming outward like branching thoughts. None of them quite right.
Too rigid. Too reactive. Too dumb.
I reached deeper. Not for power.
For principle.
"Alchemy isn't transformation," I murmured. "It's agreement."
The design shifted.
The frame thinned.
Layers folded inward.
Mass redistributed until the suit wasn't something you wore—it was something that accepted you.
A lattice of adaptive material formed around a human silhouette.
Not metal.
Negotiated matter.
Each segment carried conditional properties—hard when struck, fluid when moving, intangible when wisdom demanded passage.
I pointed at the core.
"Anchor it to me," I said. "Not biologically. Conceptually."
[Warning: feedback risk.]
"I know."
The suit wouldn't run on energy.
It would run on intent.
The Saint of Wisdom didn't need reactors.
He needed latency to disappear.
⸻
The helmet formed last.
Not a visor. A lens.
When I looked through it, I wouldn't see the world as it was.
I'd see it through my ability's eyes.
Trajectory ghosts.
Intent vectors.
Micro-hesitations in muscle and thought.
The suit wouldn't predict.
It would refuse to be surprised.
I stepped into the forming construct.
The moment it closed around me— The domain flinched.
Not rejection.
Respect.
The suit settled, weightless and absolute. No pressure. No strain. My breathing didn't change.
Good.
I raised my hand.
The suit raised it with me.
No delay. No interpretation.
Just continuation.
I focused lightly—just enough to test.
The alignment rippled.
The suit absorbed it.
Redistributed the pressure outward, away from causality, venting it as harmless probability decay.
I smiled.
This would work.
⸻
I dismissed the construct, letting it collapse back into folded light and dormant sigils.
Stored. Ready.
Not deployed.
Yet.
I stepped away from the desk.
If Justice's proxy came for me, I wouldn't meet them as a naked variable.
I'd meet them as a closed system.
One that couldn't be bullied by judgment or forced into spectacle.
One that fought clean.
I exited the domain. The city waited. School waited. Ironwood waited.
And somewhere— Justice was deciding whether to push harder.
I hoped they did.
Because next time— I wouldn't just be prepared.
I'd be optimized.