The academy did not announce the investigation.
It simply happened.
By morning, new wards threaded themselves through familiar corridors. Observation arrays adjusted their angles. Instructors who had never shown interest before began appearing where they did not belong.
Kurogane felt it like static beneath his skin.
Not lightning.
Anticipation.
Raishin noticed first.
"Your posture's wrong," he said quietly as they stood at the edge of a secondary training ring. "You're bracing for witnesses, not opponents."
"There are witnesses," Kurogane replied.
Raishin didn't deny it. "That's the problem."
They trained without spectacle. No lightning discharge. No chained techniques. Only balance drills—pressure without resolution, endurance without release.
It hurt more than fighting.
Each time Kurogane resisted the urge to let lightning answer tension, the energy curled tighter inside him, coiling like a thought that refused to be forgotten.
"That tension," Raishin said carefully, "isn't supposed to feel familiar yet."
Kurogane paused. "Yet?"
Raishin looked away.
Before he could answer, a presence crossed the ward boundary.
Mizuki Yukihana approached, robes whispering softly across stone.
"You're being watched," she said bluntly.
Raishin gave a humorless smile. "We noticed."
"Not by the council alone," Mizuki continued. "External observers have submitted formal interest."
Kurogane stiffened. "Interest in what?"
"In outcomes," she replied. "They don't care what you are. Only what you become."
Raishin's voice hardened. "You said we were controlling exposure."
Mizuki met his gaze. "We were."
A pause.
"Something changed after the demonstration."
Kurogane felt it then—a faint pulse inside his chest, not lightning reacting, but remembering.
"Someone recognized the pattern," Mizuki said. "Not the element. The method."
Raishin's hand clenched slowly at his side.
"…No," he murmured.
Mizuki's eyes sharpened. "You know what that means."
Raishin didn't answer.
Kurogane looked between them. "What pattern?"
Mizuki hesitated—a fraction too long.
Raishin spoke first.
"A way of containing lightning without releasing it," he said quietly. "Not grounding. Not dispersion."
"Integration," Mizuki finished.
Silence snapped tight around them.
"That method was abandoned," Mizuki continued carefully. "For good reason."
Kurogane swallowed. "You've seen it before."
Raishin finally looked at him.
"Yes."
Not in you, he didn't say.
In someone who broke.
Mizuki straightened. "For now, training parameters remain unchanged. But I'm issuing a restriction."
Raishin's eyes narrowed. "On what grounds?"
"You are no longer permitted to teach adaptation beyond documented thresholds," she said. "If lightning restructures further, we intervene."
Kurogane felt something inside him recoil.
"And if intervention kills me?" he asked quietly.
Mizuki held his gaze. "Then we will have prevented something worse."
Raishin stepped forward, dangerous now. "You don't get to decide that."
Mizuki did not flinch. "We already did."
She turned to leave, then paused.
"Be careful," she said—not to Kurogane, but to Raishin. "Some mistakes echo longer than people."
When she was gone, the ward hummed softly again.
Kurogane exhaled. "You knew this could happen."
Raishin closed his eyes.
"I knew it had happened," he corrected. "Once."
Kurogane waited.
Raishin did not elaborate.
Instead, he said, "From now on, you don't train to get stronger."
"What do I train for?" Kurogane asked.
Raishin opened his eyes.
"To remain yourself," he said. "Even when the world starts reminding lightning who it used to listen to."
Kurogane felt the hum inside him shift—subtle, uneasy.
As if something far away had heard its own name spoken without sound.