The Evaluation report reached Kohler by the end of day. There was no seal on the envelope, no priest that came to deliver it. It was delivered by a junior clerk who did not meet his eyes and left immediately after placing the envelope on the desk.
Kohler waited until he was alone before touching it.
He already knew what it would say. Still, he read it twice.
CADET: ARATA
EVALUATION RESULT: INCONCLUSIVE
OBSERVATION: RHYTHMIC NON-CORRESPONDENCE
STATUS: NEITHER ALIGNED NOR MISALIGNED
RECOMMENDATION: MONITORING ONLY
CORRECTIVE ACTION: NOT ADVISED
Kohler exhaled slowly and leaned back in his chair.
Inconclusive.The word that gave every authoritarian person a headache.
Inconclusive meant something far worse than just heresy, defiance or corruption. It meant the System of Flame could not answer a question.
Kohler closed his eyes.
The Academy was built on classification. The whole society was built on classification.
Cadets were measured, sorted and refined. People were also measured in potential, sorted into class of rich and poor, and then refined into a member of society.
Power flowed through categories making it obedient, restrained sometimes broken.
Inconclusive fit none of them.
He stood and walked to the tall window overlooking the inner grounds. Below, ordinary cadets moved in orderly lines, training as they always had, unaware that the system governing them had just hesitated.
But the hesitation never lasted long. The Empire will also get the report in Arata, and they will not allow such an element to roam freely.
If the Flame could not define Arata…Then the Empire would.
A knock sounded at the door.
"Enter" Kohler said.
Halvek nodded. "The Tribunal found the result… unsatisfying."
Kohler turned. "Please don't make up words minister. The results were inconclusive. That too is only an observation"
Halvek smiled faintly. "Observations become liabilities when they cannot be acted upon."
Kohle' jaw tightened. "Maybe I should report to the king with my own observation of you being a liability on the treasury."
He walked to the window and looked out, mirroring Kohler's stance.
"Maybe watch your tone, Magister." Halvek continued. "A misaligned cadet can be corrected, A heretic can be removed. But a variable without classification...That invites interpretation."
Kohler said nothing.
"You know how the capital will read this" Halvek added gently. "A Wyrmbound candidate the Flame cannot define. A soldier who does not resonate. The program was kept a secret on your saying. If anything were to go wrong, will you be held responsible?"
"He's only a child" Kohler said sharply.
Halvek did not flinch. "A child who killed more men than anyone in the first year of service. He will be made a symbol by the empire."
"Monitoring has been advised" Kohler said. "Nothing more."
"For now" Halvek replied. "But monitoring is not neutral, Magister. It is a prelude."
"To what?" Kohler asked, though he already knew.
"Ownership" Halvek said. "Oversight. Reassignment."
Kohler turned fully toward him. "You intend to remove him from the Academy."
"I intend to prevent the Academy from becoming the problem," Halvek corrected. "If the Flame cannot account for him, the Crown will insist on doing so."
"As long as I am in charge of the academy, I will make sure no cadet of mine is used in political jargon."
Kohler looked back at the report.
Inconclusive.
He saw it now—not as uncertainty, but as invitation. The King would not tolerate uncertainty in a weapon.
"He is not ready," Kohler said quietly.
The Minister of Faith moved toward the door. "One final note," he said without turning. "The Tribunal has requested weekly updates on Cadet Arata's behaviour, associations, and training output."
Kohler's fingers curled slowly into a fist.
"Any deviation" Halvek finished, "will be escalated." The door closed softly behind him.
Kohler remained where he was for a long time.
...
The training yard smelled of iron and ozone.
Dawn burned pale above the towers, and fog rolled across the sand like breath on cold glass. Cadets were already moving through drills in lines of precision and sweat. The sound of their blades hitting the padded dummies was steady and clean, like a metronome.
Arata arrived last, silent as always. He moved like someone who didn't belong to the same rhythm as the others. Even standing still, there was something misaligned about him, as if he were always half a second ahead of the world.
Lyra was waiting near the observation deck, her tablet alive with faint blue runes. She didn't look up as he approached. "You've been walking the grounds at night" she said flatly.
"Can't sleep" he replied.
Her lips curved faintly. "You and every soldier who' seen too much." She tapped the screen. "We monitor for unusual field spikes. You cause them."
"Is that a problem?"
"According to Kohler... Yes. You are under observation." Arata didn't react. If the words bothered him, it didn't reach his face.
"For how long?" he asked.
Lyra finally looked up. Her eyes flicked to him, then back to the runes scrolling across her tablet. "As long as you continue to be… inconclusive."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're going to get."
She gestured toward the training yard. "You'll train with the others. No deviations. No improvisation. No resonance amplification beyond baseline parameters."
Arata watched the cadets move—perfect arcs, synchronised steps, bodies bending into the same shape over and over again.
"And if something happens?" he asked. "If I don't fit the rhythm?"
Lyra's stylus paused mid-motion.
"Then you stop" she said. "Immediately. You disengage, you ground yourself, and you wait for instruction."
"And if I can't?"
Her jaw tightened. Just slightly.
"Then" she said, "you make it look like exhaustion."
Arata almost smiled.
"That's your solution?"
"That's containment" Lyra replied. "There's a difference."
A cadet nearby misstepped. An instructor barked a correction. The drill resumed without pause.
Lyra lowered her voice. "You need to understand something, Arata. The Flame doesn't know what you are. That frightens people who live inside systems."
"So they watch."
"They catalogue" Lyra corrected. "Watching is passive. This isn't."
She turned the tablet toward him for just a second. He caught a glimpse of the readout—fluctuation curves, time stamps, annotations marked deferred.
"You're not being punished" she said. "Yet. But every action you take now becomes data."
Arata looked at the screen, then back at the yard.
"Drill positions" she said, straightening. "You're late."
Arata stepped forward, then hesitated. "Why are you telling me this?"
Lyra met his eyes.
"Because if I stop being honest" she said, "I become part of the machine that finishes you."
He nodded once and moved toward the formation.
As he took his place among the cadets, the rhythm adjusted around him it was subtle but unwillingly like water flowing around a stone it could not erode.
Lyra watched the fluctuation register on her screen. It was small and persistent.
She just silently deleted the data,
The drills began under a pale, frost-thinned sun.
Steel dummies gleamed white at the edges, their surfaces beaded with cold. Breath fogged the air in uneven bursts as cadets moved through formations, blades striking padded targets in clean, repetitive arcs.
Arata moved differently.
Not sloppily. Not slowly. Just… unhurried. Each strike landed where it was meant to. Each dodge came a fraction too early, as if his body anticipated the world instead of reacting to it.
When his partner lunged, the impact arrived half a breath late.
Arata didn't notice. He simply adjusted.
Nebula did. She leaned against the perimeter fence, arms folded, hair tied back with careless precision. Her uniform was half-buttoned...not from neglect, but intention. Older cadets gave her space without being told. Calm, composed, dangerous. That was her reputation.
Her eyes never left Arata.
When the rotation whistle blew, she straightened.
"I'll take the next round" she said.
The instructor frowned. "Nebula, he'..."
"I know who he is."
Arata turned, brow furrowing. "Do I get a say in this?"
"No" Nebula replied, already stepping onto the sand.
Not hostile. Certain.
The other cadets withdrew immediately, forming a loose ring. Lyra looked up from her tablet, her expression tightening.
"Go easy" she said quietly.
Neither of them heard her.
Nebula drew her practice blade—a short, twin-edged sabre, its hilt etched with faint runic channels. She rolled her wrist once, testing balance.
Arata picked up the wooden training sword at his feet.
"Rules?" he asked.
Nebula met his eyes. "None that matter."
...
They circled each other, slow at first.
Sand crunched softly beneath their boots, the sound oddly loud in the early quiet. Nebula's stance was flawless—left foot forward, weight balanced, blade low and angled. Textbook. Deliberate. Arata's posture, by contrast, was loose, almost careless. Not incorrect—just uncommitted. As if he were waiting for something else to decide when the fight would begin.
She struck first.
A diagonal cut, fast and clean. Arata's sword rose a fraction of a second before impact, catching her blade with a sharp crack that echoed across the yard.
Nebula slid back, eyes narrowing. "You're faster than you look."
"Reflex" Arata replied.
She came again—high, then low, feinting, breaking tempo mid-swing. Arata parried both. One strike grazed his sleeve, tearing cloth but not skin. His movements were simple, almost lazy, yet every block landed just before her blade reached him.
The air between them shimmered.
Not visibly—not at first. Just a distortion, like heat rising off stone.
Lyra's head snapped up from the sidelines. "Flux field rising…"
Nebula felt it too. A faint tug at the edges of space, as if the distance between them had softened—becoming elastic. Her jaw tightened. She pressed forward instead of retreating.
Arata stepped in at the same time.
Their blades met once. Twice. Then locked.
For a heartbeat, the hum beneath the yard synchronised perfectly with their pulses.
Then— Silence.
The sand around their feet sank a fraction of an inch, settling as if gravity had briefly reconsidered its opinion.
Nebula broke the lock first, twisting free and leaping back. She sucked in a breath, chest heaving.
"What was that?"
Arata straightened slowly, frowning at the ground.
"Probably nothing good" he said. "You okay?"
She nodded, still catching her breath. "You move like someone who's already fought their own shadow."
A faint smile crossed his face. "Maybe I have." The Bathroom's fiasco came to his mind. The reflection smiling back. He shacked the thought out of his mind.
The tension bled off it was not gone, but loosened. Nebula tilted her head, studying him anew.
"You didn't draw your real weapon" she said. "Why?"
"I don't have one yet."
Her eyes flicked to the plain practice sword in his hand. "You've been here two months. Everyone gets assigned their weapon by the first."
"I have a feeling mine will be delivered soon."
"By who?"
Arata's gaze drifted past her, toward the far edge of the yard, towards the Academy spires cutting through the fog like black teeth.
"By whoever's been waiting for me to stop pretending I'm normal." That gave her pause.
She watched him for a long second, then sheathed her blade. "Try not to get yourself killed before that happens."
"Same to you."
She walked away without looking back.
Lyra approached moments later, arms crossed, her expression carefully neutral.
"You bent the field again" she said quietly. "Half the sensors went dark for ten seconds."
"Sorry" Arata replied. "We were just sparring."
Lyra shook her head once. "Don't apologise." She tapped her pad, eyes scanning data Arata couldn't see. "Just understand this that when the world starts shifting to match you, it stops being training."
She looked up at him then. "And it starts being evidence."