Raishin canceled the next three training sessions.
No explanation.
No announcement.
The academy records still showed Kurogane as "active," but his name was quietly removed from rotation schedules, observation slots, and public exercises.
"From now on," Raishin said, locking the door to a chamber Kurogane had never seen before, "you train where lightning cannot perform."
The room was wrong.
Not empty—absent.
No resonance. No ambient flow. The walls drank sound instead of reflecting it, and even Kurogane's breathing felt muted, as if the space itself refused to witness.
"What is this place?" Kurogane asked.
Raishin didn't answer immediately. He placed a metal rod—unenchanted, dull, imperfect—on the stone floor between them.
"This," Raishin said, "is where lightning stops being impressive."
Kurogane frowned. "No energy output?"
"No visualization. No technique chains. No endurance metrics," Raishin replied. "And most importantly—no audience."
Kurogane felt the internal brace tighten slightly at the word.
Raishin noticed.
"Good," he said. "That means it's listening."
He gestured to the rod. "Lift it."
Kurogane reached instinctively—not with lightning, not with earth.
With himself.
Nothing happened.
The internal hum stirred, uncertain, almost offended.
"I can't," Kurogane said.
"Yes," Raishin agreed. "That's the point."
Raishin sat down cross-legged. "Lightning learned to respond before you learned to choose. That ends now."
"How?" Kurogane asked.
Raishin met his gaze. "By failing. Repeatedly. Without reward."
Hours passed.
The rod remained on the floor.
Kurogane's muscles burned. Sweat soaked his collar. The internal pressure tested boundaries, searching for permission to act.
Raishin never intervened.
Finally, as exhaustion blurred thought into instinct, Kurogane reached again—not expecting success.
The rod scraped.
Barely an inch.
No spark.
No hum.
Just effort.
Raishin exhaled slowly. "There. Did you feel that?"
Kurogane nodded. "It didn't answer."
"No," Raishin said. "It waited."
That night, Kurogane slept deeply for the first time since Asterra.
And that was when the contact came.
Not through wards.
Not through dreams.
Through absence.
A point of awareness where lightning usually filled space simply… wasn't.
Kurogane's eyes snapped open.
A voice—not spoken, not heard—pressed gently against his perception.
We have been watching the gap you created.
Kurogane sat up, heart racing.
"Raishin," he whispered.
The voice continued, unconcerned with fear.
Others watch what you do.
We watch what lightning does not.
A symbol burned briefly behind Kurogane's eyes—three intersecting lines, incomplete, deliberately asymmetrical.
Not a threat.
An identifier.
You have learned restraint under attention.
That makes you valuable.
And dangerous to the wrong teachers.
Kurogane's breath came shallow. "Who are you?"
A pause.
Those who remember why the first cycle failed.
The internal brace shifted—not tightening, not releasing.
Aligning.
Raishin was on his feet instantly, blade in hand, eyes sharp.
"What did you feel?" he demanded.
Kurogane looked at him, shaken.
"They didn't touch the lightning," he said. "They… stepped around it."
Raishin's face went pale.
"That's impossible."
The air settled.
Far away, wards trembled—just slightly.
Mizuki felt it from across the academy and frowned.
Somewhere deep beneath sealed records and forbidden doctrine, a forgotten name stirred.
And for the first time, Raishin understood something he had feared but never proven.
The world was no longer choosing sides.
It was choosing teachers.