The next training cycle began without warning.
No bell. No countdown.
Fear slammed into the chamber like a collapsing ceiling.
I reacted instantly too instantly.
My circuit flared, pulling fear inward in a tight loop, stabilizing it
And then it snapped.
Pain tore through me as the loop fractured. Fear surged out of control, shredding the channels I had just reinforced. My knees buckled. Blood filled my mouth.
I knew this feeling.
Circuit burnout.
"This is it," I thought dimly.
But instead of vanishing, the world… slowed.
Fear didn't disperse.
It froze.
Every thread of energy hung suspended around me, trembling but intact. The pain dulled, replaced by a strange clarity as if I could see the structure of my circuit from the inside.
I gasped.
This wasn't stabilization.
This was interruption.
A second circuit had activated thin, imperfect, but real woven beneath the first.
Kael's sharp intake of breath cut through the silence.
"That's impossible," he muttered.
The fear pressure cut off instantly. The runes dimmed.
I collapsed, coughing, vision spinning but I was still there.
Still alive.
Kael knelt in front of me, eyes searching my chest, my pulse.
"You should be gone," he said quietly.
I laughed weakly. "That makes two of us."
He stood abruptly and turned away.
"End the session," he ordered the others. "Now."
The other Spirit Warriors obeyed, though their eyes lingered on me uneasy, curious.
Kael waited until we were alone.
"You didn't redesign your circuit," he said. "You layered it."
I frowned. "That's… bad?"
"It's forbidden," he replied.
He finally looked at me fully, fear flickering in his controlled expression.
"Layered circuits don't burn out," he said. "They cascade."
My stomach sank. "Meaning?"
"If one fails," he continued, "another catches the overflow."
I swallowed. "That sounds… useful."
Kael's voice dropped. "It's how the first Spirit Kings were made."
Silence crashed down between us.
"And how they all died," he finished.