I didn't make it back to the apartment.
I made it two streets away before my legs stopped responding.
The city didn't react.
People passed me without slowing. A commuter glanced once, then looked away. A delivery drone adjusted altitude and continued on its route. To anyone watching, I was just another exhausted worker leaning against a wall for too long.
That was acceptable.
I slid down until my back met the concrete and stayed there, head lowered, hands resting uselessly on my knees.
My body wasn't injured.
It was drained.
Every command took effort to transmit, as if my nervous system had been wrapped in resistance. I lifted my hand once, just to confirm I could.
I could.
Barely.
[STAMINA: 9% ⚠][CONDITION: SYSTEMIC EXHAUSTION]
I didn't attempt to stand again.
Losing consciousness in public created variables I wasn't prepared to manage.
Instead, I regulated breathing.
Slow intake.Longer release.
It took nearly five minutes for the shaking to stop.
That delay told me something was wrong.
Shadow backlash didn't hurt.
Pain would've been simple.
This was desynchronization.
A dull pressure behind my eyes, spreading outward until even thinking felt abrasive. Thoughts arrived intact but late, like information routed through a congested channel.
I closed my eyes.
Darkness helped.
A little.
[SHADOW STATUS: TEMPORARILY DISABLED][BACKLASH: COGNITIVE STRAIN — HIGH][RECOVERY WINDOW: 6–9 HOURS]
Better.
Defined limits meant predictability.
When I finally stood, it was in stages. Knees. One foot. Balance. Movement. I didn't straighten fully until I was inside the apartment and the door was locked behind me.
I collapsed onto the floor without bothering with furniture.
Cold concrete pressed against my side.
Reliable.
I stayed there.
This wasn't rest.
It was recalibration.
The silent gate hadn't been a victory.
It had been an audit.
And the findings were clear.
Shadow could override attention, but not raw force.Environmental manipulation worked—until the environment adapted.My stamina ceiling was lower than acceptable.Type III entities weren't enemies.
They were closures.
That was the key insight.
Silent gates weren't meant to be cleared.
They were meant to observe what tried.
Which meant my success hadn't gone unnoticed.
Not during the fight.
After.
I felt it as an absence — a pressure that should have existed, but didn't. Like a ledger entry left blank where something had been expected.
The system interface activated on its own.
No alert tone.No visual emphasis.
Just acknowledgment.
[SOLO CLEAR CONFIRMED — SILENT GATE][ENGAGEMENT TYPE: UNASSISTED][CASUALTIES: ZERO][OBSERVATION VALUE: HIGH]
The pause that followed wasn't lag.
It was evaluation.
Then the rewards resolved.
Not all at once.
Line by line.
Deliberate.
[+25 ANOMALY CREDITS][+10 ADAPTIVE DATA UNITS][SHADOW EFFICIENCY: +12% (PERMANENT)][PERCEPTION FILTER — PASSIVE UNLOCKED][AUTHORITY TRACE: TEMPORARY ACCESS GRANTED]
I sat up.
That was more like it.
Anomaly Credits weren't currency.
They were permission tokens.
Credits used to access restricted system functions — things not available through normal progression. Training accelerators. Skill calibration. Information access.
Enough to matter.
Enough to plan with.
The Adaptive Data Units explained the rest.
Raw experience, abstracted. Not power — learning capacity. Resources the system used to refine responses to anomalies.
Which meant it had learned from me.
And compensated accordingly.
The perception filter activated quietly.
No rush. No sensation spike.
Just… silence.
The background noise of emotional inference — imagined reactions, irrelevant weight — receded further. Decisions aligned faster. Thoughts completed themselves without friction.
This wasn't emotional suppression.
It was clarity prioritization.
Cold.
Efficient.
Necessary.
I expanded the final line.
[AUTHORITY TRACE: TEMPORARY ACCESS — UNSTABLE]
Authority wasn't strength.
Authority was standing.
For a brief window, the system had treated my actions as valid enough to grant provisional access — then flagged it as unstable.
Meaning I wasn't supposed to have it.
Meaning something older than the system had hesitated.
That was the first real sign.
Not aggression.
Attention.
I closed the interface and leaned back against the wall, eyes open, breathing steady now.
This hadn't been a reward for bravery.
It had been compensation for data acquisition under constraint.
Solo clears mattered because they removed noise.
No teammates. No external correction. No interference.
Pure outcome.
Which meant the next step wasn't another gate.
Not yet.
With these credits, I could:
Optimize Shadow recovery cycles
Unlock controlled skill refinements
Access restricted informational layers
Prepare for environments designed to kill anomalies
But all of that required legitimacy.
And legitimacy, in this world, had only one real entry point.
The academy.
I stood slowly, body still heavy but responsive, and began allocating credits mentally.
Whatever had noticed the silent gate collapse—
It hadn't moved.
That meant I had time.
And time, when properly invested, decided everything.