Academy City, Iron Front headquarters.
Rowan Mercer moved through the corridors in plain, forgettable clothes, heading straight for the deepest archive vault in the facility. As he walked, security cameras blinked out one by one, their feeds quietly smothered by a precise electromagnetic haze. No alarms. No red lights. Just silence.
He dressed deliberately. Neutral colors. Men's casual wear. A cap pulled low. Nothing flashy, nothing distinctive. The kind of outfit that slipped past the eye without leaving a trace. He had learned long ago that blending in was its own kind of armor.
Two Iron Front guards stood outside the archive door.
Rowan lifted a hand and murmured a short incantation. The air rippled for half a second.
The guards' eyes glazed over.
He walked past them as if he belonged there.
Inside, the archive smelled of dust and old paper. Academy City trusted machines, but it trusted paper when the stakes were high. Anything too sensitive to leave on a server ended up here, locked away in filing cabinets and sealed folders.
Rowan moved with practiced ease, flipping through documents, scanning diagrams, skimming reports. He had done this many times before. Research on enhanced individuals. Experimental data. Failed projects. Buried conclusions.
Then he found it.
Magic.
Not theories. Not speculation. Confirmed documentation.
Rowan paused, fingers tightening slightly on the page. His eyes sharpened as he read.
So it was real. Not just a fringe belief or an urban legend. This world truly had magic, operating alongside technology and psychic abilities, hidden in the margins.
According to the files, magical forces were scattered but structured. The largest influence came from three dominant religious factions based in Europe, each wielding immense political and supernatural power. Beyond them were smaller independent orders, underground circles, and unaffiliated practitioners.
Academy City's official stance was blunt. Magic was classified as a variation of supernatural ability. Mages were treated as anomalous espers by another name.
Unofficially, the city wanted nothing to do with them.
The documents also made one thing clear: the magical world was fractured. Alliances were fragile. Internal conflict was constant. Cooperation was rare.
Rowan closed the folder, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"Churches, huh," he muttered. "That narrows things down nicely."
If most high-level magic users operated within organized institutions, then answers were easy to obtain. Find one. Capture them. Read their memories. Simple, efficient, clean.
He replaced the files and slipped out of the archive, the guards none the wiser.
He had barely gone a dozen steps when a familiar voice called out.
"Subject 9981. It's time for another enhancement trial."
Dr. Farid stood in the hallway, lab coat immaculate, eyes sharp with curiosity and suspicion. He had always been observant, and lately Rowan's movements had been bothering him. Rowan disabled surveillance whenever he walked the base. Claimed he hated being watched.
Yet every time Dr. Farid went looking for him, it was always near the archive.
The guards swore they had seen nothing.
That inconsistency gnawed at him.
Rowan met his gaze calmly. "No problem."
He followed Dr. Farid into the laboratory without resistance.
The enhancement experiment was effective. Painfully so. It accelerated Rowan's abilities at an abnormal rate. But Dr. Farid's interest went far beyond improvement. He wanted answers. Data. The reason Rowan had mutated so differently from the others.
Unfortunately for him, Rowan could read every intention before a single word was spoken.
The moment they entered the lab, Rowan acted.
A silent spell. A subtle pulse.
Dr. Farid froze mid-step, his consciousness slipping neatly into Rowan's grasp. Surveillance systems died an instant later, drowned under electromagnetic interference.
For an ordinary human, the mental domination was absolute. With Rowan's psychic reinforcement layered on top, resistance was impossible.
"Begin the procedure," Rowan said evenly. "No blood samples. Alter the data afterward."
Dr. Farid obeyed without hesitation.
The experiment ran smoothly. When it ended, Dr. Farid checked the results and nodded.
"At this rate, two more months and you'll reach the next threshold."
Rowan sat up. "Change that to two years."
He removed a small vial from his pocket and inserted it into the analyzer. The blood inside didn't belong to him. It never did. He had been careful. Always.
False samples. False data.
All of it designed to mislead the one person who truly ruled Academy City.
From Dr. Farid's stolen memories, Rowan now understood the truth.
The Board of Directors was a façade.
There was only one real authority. One architect behind the city. One mind pulling every string.
Aureo.
The man was everywhere and nowhere at once, suspended in a life-support system deep beneath the city, yet aware of nearly everything that happened within it. Iron Front. Dr. Farid. The experiments. Even the autonomous surveillance machines that stalked the streets.
All of it traced back to him.
Rowan wasn't foolish enough to challenge that power head-on. Not yet.
So he hid.
He fed Aureo carefully edited information through Dr. Farid. He sabotaged tracking systems. He avoided observation whenever possible. When machines drew too close, he repelled them or vanished entirely.
When the experiment was complete, Rowan cast another spell.
Memories erased. New ones implanted. Seamless. Convincing.
Dr. Farid blinked, unaware that anything had changed. He watched Rowan leave, then turned back to the machine, preparing to analyze what he believed was Rowan's blood.
Rowan walked out of Iron Front headquarters, hands in his pockets, mind already moving forward.
Magic existed.
The city feared it.
And somewhere beyond these walls, powerful factions were watching the world just as closely as Academy City was.
The game had grown larger.