The Beast Preserves smelled of damp earth, iron, and something older the scent of magic that had been left to grow wild.
Kael adjusted the strap of his borrowed leather armor, feeling its unfamiliar weight. The academy provided basic gear for first year hunting expeditions: reinforced leather chest piece, bracers, a belt with empty mana core pouches. Simple, functional, and somehow more intimidating than any reactor gantry he'd ever worked on.
Dominic checked his own gear with practiced efficiency. "Rules are simple: low tier beasts only. No deeper than the third marker. Anything that glows purple or has more than two elemental affinities, we disengage. Harvest the core, leave the rest for the disposal teams."
"And if something ignores the rules?" Kael asked.
"Then we run like hell and hope the perimeter wards save us," Dominic said, his dry tone not quite masking the seriousness. He hefted his practice mace a solid, unenchanted weapon first years were required to use. No fancy magi tech. No rune forged edges. Just steel and leverage.
The entrance to the preserves was a massive arch of weathered stone, carved with warnings in a dozen languages. Beyond it, the forest closed in not a natural woods, but a curated wilderness where the academy's alchemy and beast taming departments "cultivated" magical fauna for training and resources.
Kael's Black Gold veins hummed as they crossed the threshold. The air was alive with mana not the refined, channeled energy of the academy, but the raw, untamed flow of growing things and hunting things. His body thrummed with the urge to harmonize with it, to understand it, to join it.
Control, he reminded himself. Observation without assimilation.
Gareth's training echoed in his aching muscles: 'Your body is the vessel. Don't let the ocean crack the bowl.'
Lyra's voice layered over it: 'Understand why the mana flows as it does. Then you can redirect it without breaking the stream.'
They moved cautiously along the marked trail. The first marker a stone post etched with a single rune passed without incident. The second marker stood beside a creek where the water glowed faintly blue with dissolved mana.
"Here," Dominic whispered, pointing to tracks in the soft bank. "Crystal-backed toads. Low-tier. Their cores are small, but they're slow and predictable. Good for first harvest."
Kael nodded, but his attention was pulled elsewhere to the shadows between the trees where something watched. Not with malice, but with a predator's patient calculation.
"The forest knows you're here," Vaelthryx murmured in the back of his mind. "It is deciding whether you are prey or curiosity."
"Dominic," Kael said softly. "We're being followed."
"I know," Dominic said, not turning. "Two sources. One left, one right. They're herding us."
"Herding us where?"
"To where they want us."
The attack came from above.
Not a toad. Not anything slow.
A Storm-Jay a bird the size of a hawk, feathers crackling with captured lightning dove from the canopy. Its cry was the sound of tearing canvas and sparking wires.
Dominic moved first, swinging his mace in a wide arc that forced the bird to veer. Lightning scorched the ground where it had been aiming.
"That's not low-tier!" Kael shouted.
"It's not supposed to be here!" Dominic shot back, already repositioning. "The markers are wrong!"
The Storm-Jay circled, intelligent eyes evaluating. It wasn't attacking blindly. It was testing.
Gareth's training snapped into focus. Kael didn't think he moved. His body remembered the hours of conditioning, the drilled responses. He dropped into a low stance, weight centered, eyes tracking the bird's path.
The Jay dove again.
This time, Kael didn't dodge.
He raised his arm, bracer facing the strike, and absorbed.
Lightning slammed into him. Pain exploded white-hot and furious but his Black-Gold veins shivered, distributing the energy, translating it, understanding it. For a heartbeat, he felt what the bird felt: the thrill of the dive, the snap of static, the clean simplicity of hunt and strike.
Then he pushed back.
Not with a spell. Not with a technique he'd been taught. With understanding.
The lightning reversed its flow.
The Storm-Jay shrieked in surprise as its own energy arced back into it. It tumbled from the air, hitting the ground in a puff of feathers and fading sparks.
Dominic stared. "What was that?"
"I… don't know," Kael admitted, his arm smoking slightly. The bracer was blackened. His skin beneath was red and throbbing, but unbroken. "It just… made sense."
The Jay struggled to rise, one wing damaged. It looked at Kael not with fear, but with something like recognition.
Then the forest erupted.
From the left, a Crystal Toad the size of a dog emerged, its back studded with jagged purple gemstones. From the right, a pair of Ember Foxes, their fur glowing like banked coals. And from behind, something larger something that moved with a low, grinding sound.
"They're coordinating," Dominic said, voice tight. "That's not natural behavior."
"The Jay was a scout," Kael realized. "It was testing our strength for the others."
The larger creature stepped into the clearing. A Stone-Ram muscular, horned, with hide like granite and eyes that glowed with earth mana. Mid tier, Awakened. Definitely outside their clearance.
"We run," Dominic said.
But the Ram lowered its head. The ground trembled. Roots erupted from the soil, tangling around their ankles.
Trapped.
The Crystal-Toad fired first. A shard of amethyst shot from its back, aimed at Kael's chest. He twisted, the shard grazing his armor and leaving a deep gouge. The impact knocked the breath from him.
The Ember-Foxes darted in, fast and fluid. Dominic swung his mace, connecting with one in a solid thud that sent it yelping back. The other circled, looking for an opening.
Kael's mind raced. Lyra's lessons: Understand why before how. Magic is a conversation. What were these creatures saying? What did they want?
The Stone Ram charged.
Time slowed.
Kael saw the Ram's intent not just to gore, but to pulverize. Earth mana concentrated around its horns, a battering ram of condensed force. He saw the Toad gathering another shard. The Foxes waiting to strike when he dodged.
A plan formed not in words, but in geometries of force and motion.
He didn't try to block the Ram. Instead, he stepped into its charge, at the last possible moment twisting aside and slamming his palm against its flank. Not to hurt it. To understand its momentum, its mass, its trajectory.
Then he redirected.
The Ram's charge carried it past him straight into the Crystal-Toad. Horn met crystal with a sound like shattering glass. The Toad exploded in a spray of purple fragments and viscous fluid.
One threat down.
The Ram staggered, confused. The Ember-Foxes hesitated.
Dominic didn't. He lunged at the nearest Fox, his mace coming down in an overhead strike that broke its shoulder. The creature whimpered and fled.
The remaining Fox backed away, then turned and vanished into the undergrowth.
Only the Stone-Ram remained, shaking its head, one horn cracked from the impact with the Toad.
It turned on Kael, eyes blazing with something deeper than animal rage with offense. It had been used. Manipulated.
"Just like you," Vaelthryx whispered. "Another tool in someone's game."
"Who sent you?" Kael asked, not expecting an answer.
The Ram charged again.
This time, Kael was ready. He didn't have a weapon. He didn't have a spell. But he had understanding.
He saw the flow of earth-mana through the Ram's body how it reinforced muscle, hardened hide, focused power into the horns. He saw the pattern, the rhythm, the why of its magic.
And he saw a flaw.
A tiny instability where the mana channels crossed near the shoulder a scar, perhaps, from an old injury. A place where the conversation between beast and magic stuttered.
Kael reached for that flaw.
Not with physical force. With conceptual pressure.
He didn't attack the Ram. He attacked the connection.
His Black-Gold veins flared. The "unmaking" power the one that had erased the Violent Purple Quartz in Lisa's lab stirred. But this wasn't erasure. This was… dissolution.
He whispered to the mana, not in words, but in meaning: This bond is fragile. This pattern is strained. Remember how it was before.
The earth-mana around the Ram's shoulder unraveled.
Not violently. Gently. Like a knot coming undone when you find the right thread to pull.
The Ram stumbled, its front leg giving way. The hardening of its hide faded patchily, like stone weathering suddenly to sand. It made a confused, hurt sound the loss of its magic more painful than any physical wound.
It looked at Kael with something almost human: betrayal. Then it turned and limped away, crashing through the brush.
Silence.
Kael dropped to his knees, gasping. His veins burned. His head pounded. Using the "unmaking" power even that controlled, focused application felt like trying to hold a star in his hands. Beautiful. Terrifying. Hungry.
"What," Dominic said slowly, "was that?"
"I don't know," Kael said again, but the truth was dawning. Lyra had said his veins were translators. Maybe this was what they translated to not just understanding magic, but speaking to it in a language so fundamental it could convince reality to reconsider its choices.
Dominic helped him up. "We need to harvest what we can and get out. Before whatever orchestrated that decides to send something worse."
They moved quickly. The Crystal-Toad's core was a small, violet crystal that pulsed weakly. The Storm-Jay's core was a tiny, crackling sphere of captured lightning. They left the Ember-Fox—alive, just injured and didn't pursue the Ram.
As they retreated to the marked trail, Kael felt eyes on them again. Not beasts this time. Higher. In the trees.
He looked up.
Two figures watched from a high branch, camouflaged by light-bending spells. He couldn't see their faces, but he caught the glint of silver an academy monitoring badge.
They'd been watched. Tested.
This hadn't been an accident.
Back at the entrance arch, the disposal team took the corpses without comment. The assessment officer at the credit counter raised an eyebrow at their haul.
"Storm-Jay and Crystal-Toad cores," he noted, scanning them with a mana meter. "Low to mid quality. Twenty credits each." He stamped their record sheets. "Not bad for a first outing. Try not to get dead next time."
Forty credits. Enough for a week of decent meals, or a basic potion, or a down payment on better gear.
As they walked back toward Silver Streams, Dominic broke the silence. "That power you used… the one that made the Ram's magic come apart. That's not normal, Kael."
"I know."
"People will notice."
"I know."
Dominic stopped, turning to face him. "When they do, they'll want to use it. Or break it. Or break you to get to it."
Kael met his friend's gaze. "What should I do?"
"Get stronger," Dominic said simply. "Stronger than their ability to use you. Stronger than their ability to break you." He paused. "And until then, try not to do… that… where people can see."
They both knew it was already too late for that. The watchers in the trees had seen. Someone had orchestrated the attack. Someone was testing his limits.
The Credit Grind wasn't just about earning resources. It was about surviving the attention that came with being something the world didn't understand.
That night, in Room 7B of Silver Streams, Kael lay awake. His muscles ached from Gareth's training. His mind whirled with Lyra's theories. His veins still hummed with the echo of unraveled magic.
He'd fought physically, using the stamina and instincts Gareth was building. He'd used spells—or something like them guided by Lyra's principles of understanding. And he'd touched the "unmaking" power again, more controlled this time, but no less terrifying.
Three paths to power. Three mentors. Three ways he could break or be broken.
And somewhere in the darkness, a dragon's promise waited, and a city built on chains trembled at the approach of a boy learning how to speak to the foundations of the world.