Arata woke up hours later, though it felt like lifetimes to him, due to the fatigue from that accursed trial. He checked his surroundings to see where he was. it was the infirmary.
Every machine around him was dead. Paper charts replaced monitors; the air stank of burned ozone.
He wasn't alone in the Infirmary. There was Nebula. Sat in the corner, back straight, hands folded in her lap. "You're conscious," she said.
"What are you doing here?" Arata tried to get up, but his body had other plans. "Ahh.."
"You were pretty banged up after the Trial , I had to carry you to the Infirmary." Nebula replies as she looked at the struggling soldier.
"What happened?" His voice was a rasp.
"You broke the Containment Field. Your score at the end was 97 percent." Nebula said.
Is that jealousy? She doesn't even know me that well to be jealous.
She studied him, head tilted slightly. "You fought the voice from the Flame didn't you?"
"i am not even sure who was even speaking to me in that thing." Arata said as he looked at the white ceiling.
"What did you hear?"
"I don't know, sometimes it were the Dragons, other times, I don't remember. But no one in that memory felt nice." Arata answered. "By the way, do you even know my name? You are here asking me all these questions."
"Yeah.. I know your name. It is Rookie." Nebula said as she got up from her seat. "Rest up and be happy, all your other batch mates are in worse conditions then you except for two."
"Yeah very comforting, Thank you." Arata said as he closed his eyes.
"By the way whatever it was in your trial, don't fight it. The trial reveals the meories in the blood of the dragon you have merged with. There is a reason we are called Wyrmbound and not Dragonmen. The blood of the Dragon is not separate from your existence, it is what your existence depends upon." Saying that Nebula took her Exit from the Infirmary.
Now that was solid advice from the top senior.
Arata lay still. he had the obsidian shard from Rhea in his hand. It had become a habit of his, to fiddle with it, in times of stress, in times when he was deep in thought. There was a pulse in that shard that somehow calmed him down.
He fell asleep holding that Shard.
The necklace with the moonstone had been shining all the while on his throat. Both the items now had formed an synergy. The SHard calmed him down, and the moonstone kept the Voices away.
...
Arata woke to the slow, mechanical breathing of the infirmary machines. This time he was greeted with Doctor type people on his bedside. In the Academy no person just conformed to one role. Every body had multiple tasks to perform.
The air was heavy with incense and iron. Silver conduits ran from his arms to a set of rune-glass cylinders, each one pulsing faintly with his heartbeat.
"You're conscious," said a voice, it was quiet, measured, feminine. A Sub-Magister stood by the door, her robe inked with sigil-threads that shimmered when she breathed. Her face was bare: pale, severe, beautiful in the way marble statues are beautiful.
"That's the second time someone has said that to me." Arata repleied.
"Good, if you can reply with nonsense, you must have recovered." The lady barely 2-3 years older than him said adjusting her glasses.
"Who are you?"
"i am your assigned Mentor, but if I had to explain it in simpler terms, I am your babysitter in the Academy, I will look after you, make sure you don't do stupid things. Don't die etc and etc."
She recorded his pulse by hand. No devices worked near him anymore the energy shorted them out.
"You're lucky" she said. "The array broke before you did."
"If this what you call Luck, What do you call the Bad days? Nightmares?" Arata smiled a little.
Lyra smiled faintly. "You'll understand in time. For now, you'll be going back to your dormitory. Tomorrow will be your first lecture. The Magisterium wants to see how you react when the Flame is discussed in a… controlled setting."
He frowned. "You're testing my reaction to words?"
"To truth" she said. "We all must start somewhere."
...
The Harmonics Hall was nothing like a classroom.
It was a cathedral pretending to be a laboratory. The ceiling was a dome of shimmering diagrams there were planetary spheres connected by luminous filaments. The walls breathed faint heat. Every surface hummed with invisible machinery, runes, and veins.
The hall was majorly filled with new and budding Engineers and researchers, who worked on veins. Three cadets filled the lower seats in their black and silver uniforms. Above them, along the terraces, sat the senior ranks — those who had survived resonance beyond the first year. Arata caught sight of one familiar figure among them: Nebula.
Professor Neil began the lecture. His voice carried like a ritual invocation.
"Because of the Incident yesterday, Seven Cadets of the First year are unable to attend today's lecture. To the three present here I welcome you to the Academy of the First Flame. Today on the 8th of the 17th month, I officially welcome the batch of year 1020. Now let us start with your first class." The professor turned to close the curtains. complete darkness.
"The Flame flows between worlds," he said, gesturing to the dome where the filaments between planets were now glowing gold. "Zues and Terra, bound by divine resonance. One gives, the other receives. We maintain the balance by drawing energy where it overflows."
As he said that tow planetary bodies glowed. A red globe webbed with light, connected to a smaller white one by golden arteries.
"The red one is Terra, the white one must be Zues." The male cadet besides Arata mumbled under his breath.
"That's right, Master Flint. But it's not the Terra you would like to believe it is..." The Professor paused as he looked at him, "It is not alive. It is the echo of a great life, long extinguished more of an ember that sustains our civilisation. It's an echo of the past civilisation."
Al the people in that dome recited a line like prayer: "The dead must serve the living."
Arata didn't repeat it. In a world where the value of death was so degraded. He didn't want to add to the depreciation. The dead must be respected.
Neil's words turned clinical: "Resonance is harmony between the human soul and the ancient Flame. The weak disintegrate and the strong adapt. You are here to prove that humanity can wield what other creatures are born with."
The hall dimmed as he expanded the projection. The arteries between the two planets throbbed with light, pulsing like veins. The sight should have inspired awe. Instead, Arata's chest began to ache in sync with the pulse.
He pressed a hand to his sternum. It was there again, that pulse that sounded like a heartbeat. Not his own. Slow, vast and patient.
You hear it now, a whisper threaded through the back of his skull.
The priestess's stone glowed. Arata Shuddered.
Arata was not present in the lecture mentally, when someone nudges him.
"Dude, I don't want to startle you but your neck is glowing." Flint said to him pointing at his Throat.
Arata looked down and sure enough saw the necklace glowing. It was a miracle how the professor had not noticed it.He glanced upward. Nebula sat motionless on the balcony, her face unreadable. Only her eyes betrayed thought with a flicker of recognition, then silence again.
The lecture came to an end. The students, cadets, Researchers all started going out.
...
Outside, the corridor stretched long and empty.
The walls still pulsed faintly with light, veins crawling up to the ceiling.
Arata stopped by one, pressing his palm to the warm stone.
The hum deepened, it was faint, almost tender.
They learn my rhythm but not my song.
He pulled his hand away, trembling. The air smelled of metal and ozone.
He remembered Darwin's Note : The Academy is listening.
Maybe it was saying something too, maybe singing.
Arata made his way back to the Dormitory. He expected silence, but instead he was greeted by his only dorm mate, Wanuy. He was sitting on his bed. Hunched back, Twiddling his thumbs, shivering.
Arata slowly closed the door, but in an empty room, a needle is enough to announce the Apocalypse. Wanuy practically Jumped out of his bed.
"Hey Man, Sorry for Frightening you. It wasn't my intention." Arata apologised, the asked, "You alright."
"Hu...huh. Yeah, I guess." the certainty from the boy's voice was gone. It was replaced with Anxiety or stress.
Arata didn't press him. He set his journal down on the desk and sat on his own bed instead, boots still on.
Silence settled between them it wasn't empty, but thick.
"The Doctors at the Infirmary said that I passed." Wanuy said suddenly. "Forty-one percent." He let out a hollow laugh.
"That's… passing, right?"
Arata thought of what Lyra had said to him when he had woken up The Magisterium wants to see how you react when the Flame is discussed in a… controlled setting. From One test to another.
"It is" Arata replied to Wanuy.
Wanuy nodded, too quickly. His hands kept moving, fingers rubbing together until the skin reddened. "I thought that when it started...I thought I was going to disappear. Not die. Just… be gone. Like I wouldn't even get remembered."
Arata watched him carefully. "But you didn't."
"No." Wanuy swallowed. "And that's the problem."
Arata tilted his head slightly. "Explain."
Wanuy stared at the floor. "Everyone who failed… it was fast, fatal, Final." His voice dropped. "For me, it just… kept going. Like it was testing how much I was willing to give. And I kept giving. I didn't even know I had that in me."
His hands stopped shaking for a moment. "That scares me more than failing would've."
Arata was quiet for several seconds.
"In war" he said finally, "the first time you survive something you shouldn't have, you feel proud. The second time, you start wondering what it'll cost next."
The PTSD stricken Soldier looked up at him, eyes wide. "So what do I do?"
"You stay alive" Arata said simply. "And you make sure to kill that something, the next time you meet it in battlefield."
Wanyu let out a breath he'd been holding. His shoulders slumped.
"…You're weirdly good at this" he muttered.
Arata gave a faint shrug, "I've sat in rooms like this before. They were different walls but the silence was the same."
Wanuy hesitated, then asked quietly, "Do you think they'll make us do it again?"
"Yes"
Wanuy looked at him and replied, "Then I guess I'll need to get better at being scared."
"That's not how it works" Arata said.
Wanuy turned his head slightly. "Then how does it work?"
"Tell me If you figure it out."
The room fell silent again.