Four throwing knives came to a halt in midair.
They did not stop abruptly.
They were not seized by force, nor pinned by any visible constraint.
Instead, it felt as though an invisible yet exquisitely precise hand had reached out, not to grab them, but to gather them—guiding their momentum with calm inevitability. Their trajectories bent smoothly through the air, curving inward as if the space itself had been rewritten, until they converged and settled steadily above Seven's right hand.
There was no collision.
No sharp clink of metal striking metal.
No echo, no friction, no protest from physics itself.
The knives simply arrived.
For a brief moment, no one reacted.
The stands still held the residual hum of conversation—scattered comments, half-formed thoughts, the restless noise of an audience accustomed to spectacle. Then, one by one, those sounds faded, as if someone had slowly turned a dial.
People leaned forward without realizing it.
Some stopped blinking.
Others felt their breathing grow shallow, controlled, cautious.
Even the livestream chat—normally relentless—hesitated. The scroll slowed by a fraction, as if thousands of fingers hovering over screens had simultaneously paused.
"Seven looks like he's… demonstrating something?"
Jackson's voice emerged from the commentator's booth, quieter than usual. Not hushed, but restrained. He himself hadn't noticed the subtle shift.
It wasn't a question.
It was an instinctive test, probing the shape of something unfamiliar.
The camera zoomed in.
Seven's right hand was raised slightly, fingers relaxed, naturally spread. There was no visible tension in his wrist, no clenched muscles, no posture that suggested strain or deliberate exertion. The four knives hovered above his palm, motionless, suspended at an identical height. The distance between them was perfectly even—too even to be accidental.
Not balanced.
Calculated.
Then Seven opened his left hand.
There was no buildup.
No dramatic pause.
No surge of light or distortion in the air.
Yet the instant his fingers spread, something shifted.
The atmosphere rippled—not violently, but subtly, like the surface of water disturbed by a breath.
Four more knives appeared.
They did not burst into existence.
They did not arrive with sound or spectacle.
They were simply there.
As if they had always occupied that space, unseen, waiting for permission.
Eight knives now hovered around Seven—four on the right, four on the left—perfectly mirrored. The symmetry was so exact it felt deliberate to the point of severity, almost cold.
A sharp intake of breath escaped somewhere in the audience.
"Abilities can be trained and controlled."
Seven spoke at last.
His voice was calm, unhurried, and carried without effort. He wasn't projecting, nor trying to command attention. It sounded less like an explanation and more like the statement of a principle—something fundamental, something that did not require agreement.
"And—"
He paused.
Not theatrically.
Not for emphasis.
It was the kind of pause that assumed everyone else needed time to catch up.
"If your imagination can fully match the ability itself…"
Seven lifted his gaze from the knives. His eyes moved forward, past the camera, past the visible crowd—toward the vast, unseen mass watching through screens.
"Then the result becomes… quite interesting."
Silence fell over the commentator's booth.
"That can't be right, can it?"
Jackson finally reacted. His voice jumped upward, sharp with disbelief, before he consciously forced it back down.
"Mid-level telekinesis… the number of controlled objects shouldn't just double like that."
This wasn't skepticism.
It was reflex.
Jackson knew the rules too well. Telekinesis was bound by limits that every practitioner learned early—object count, stability, mental bandwidth. At the mid tier, control was always a tradeoff. More objects meant less precision. More precision meant fewer objects.
There was no known exception.
What Seven was doing didn't stretch the framework.
It ignored it.
Seven offered no response.
Instead, he raised his right index finger.
The motion was minimal. Almost lazy.
Yet the moment the finger moved, the four knives on the right responded instantly. They rose upright, blades pointing skyward, and began to rotate. Not erratically, not with accelerating speed—but at a steady, uniform pace, as though each were mounted on an invisible axle.
Then Seven moved his middle finger.
The four knives on the left followed suit.
Same angle.
Same rotation speed.
Same distance from the axis.
No sound accompanied the motion.
No vibration.
No oscillation.
It was clean. Too clean.
"Th-this is…?"
Jackson's voice dropped without him realizing it. Something about the scene resisted interruption, demanded quiet observation.
Seven continued.
Ring finger.
The rotation of the knives subtly adjusted—angles shifting by degrees so small they were barely perceptible, yet perfectly synchronized.
Little finger.
Spacing changed. The blades drifted outward by equal margins, maintaining formation with mechanical precision.
Each finger movement translated into a distinct adjustment, as if the knives were no longer external objects but extensions of Seven's own nervous system—responding directly, without delay or interpretation.
The audience stirred.
Murmurs rippled through the stands, hushed but urgent. No one shouted. No one cheered.
They watched.
Because somewhere beneath the awe, an unspoken understanding was forming:
This was not something meant to be shown casually.
Then Seven flicked both wrists.
It was a small motion—a subtle tremor, nothing more.
The formation broke instantly.
All eight knives shot outward, each in a different direction. Their trajectories crossed and intertwined in midair, forming a fleeting lattice of motion that should have resulted in chaos.
It didn't.
Each blade followed its own precise curve, adjusting mid-flight, correcting without hesitation. They decelerated at exact moments, reversed course, and returned.
Every single one re-entered Seven's control radius.
No hesitation.
No misalignment.
No residual wobble.
Seven spoke again.
"This is the answer."
The words were flat. Final.
"When imagination is directly linked to the ability itself…"
"Ability stops being a tool."
A pause.
"And becomes part of the body."
The stands erupted.
This time, restraint shattered.
Voices overlapped. Chairs scraped. People stood, craning for a better view. Some clutched railings. Others stared at the arena, terrified of missing even a fraction of a second.
"What?!"
Jackson leapt to his feet. His chair shrieked as it scraped backward across the floor.
"I've never heard of anyone using an ability like this…!"
His voice shook.
"This isn't just mastery—he's treating telekinesis as part of his own body!"
Seven did not respond.
He simply raised his head.
And then—his toes left the ground.
It wasn't a jump.
There was no recoil.
No visible force lifting him.
He just… floated.
Naturally. Effortlessly.
His center of gravity remained perfectly aligned. His clothes drifted slightly, reacting to air currents that no longer seemed to apply to him in the same way.
"No way…"
Jackson forgot himself entirely.
"Don't tell me… he's applying telekinesis to his own body?"
The words froze him mid-sentence.
Every known doctrine warned against it. Self-application was taboo—too dangerous, too unstable. One miscalculation could tear muscles apart, shatter bones, rupture organs.
That wasn't enhancement.
It was suicide.
Seven smiled faintly.
"Correct."
His tone was light. Almost amused.
"This commentator really knows his stuff."
He flipped in midair.
Clean. Efficient. Perfectly controlled.
When he landed, there was no impact sound worth noting. His breathing was unchanged.
"All right."
Seven looked forward, eyes sharp, focus absolute.
"Sorry to keep you waiting."
"I've finally found… the feeling I'm familiar with."
At this moment, Seven gave off an uncanny impression.
He looked as light as a feather.
Yet somehow—
as immovable as the center of space itself.
"So—"
Seven raised his hand slightly.
"We begin."