I didn't spend the credits immediately.
That impulse—to act the moment resources appeared—was common among people who mistook motion for control. I wasn't interested in feeling productive. I was interested in being correct.
I stayed on the floor for a while after closing the interface, back against the wall, eyes open, breathing steady. My body still carried the weight of exhaustion, but it was no longer collapsing inward. The trembling had stopped. The pressure behind my eyes had dulled into something manageable.
Functional.
That was the threshold I worked from.
Only after confirming that my thoughts arrived cleanly—without lag, without distortion—did I reactivate the interface and open the allocation panel.
Not the marketplace.
The ledger.
[ANOMALY CREDITS: 25][ADAPTIVE DATA UNITS: 10]
The options weren't dramatic.
No explosive power.No sudden mastery.No shortcuts that screamed danger.
Instead, the system offered refinements. Small adjustments that changed how I functioned, not how strong I looked.
That told me something important.
The system didn't reward risk with spectacle.
It rewarded survival.
I ignored everything that increased raw physical output. Strength and speed were visible metrics. Visibility led to attention. Attention led to containment.
I needed efficiency.
The first choice was obvious.
[ALLOCATE: 8 ANOMALY CREDITS]→ Shadow Recovery Calibration
The confirmation came quietly.
No sensation. No rush.
But the interface updated.
[SHADOW RECOVERY WINDOW: REDUCED — 23%]
That mattered.
Shadow hadn't failed during the gate. I had failed by treating it like a consumable. One use per fight was unacceptable. This didn't increase Shadow's power.
It made it usable more than once.
That alone justified the cost.
I paused before touching the Adaptive Data Units.
These weren't currency.
They were permanent decisions.
Adaptive units didn't make me stronger. They decided what information reached me first and what never surfaced at all.
A mistake here wouldn't weaken me.
It would make me wrong.
I reviewed the options carefully.
Training acceleration came with instability.Stress partitioning dulled judgment.Perception upgrades overlapped with what I already had.
Two stood out.
Cognitive compression.Threat pattern indexing.
Neither increased power.
They increased accuracy.
[ALLOCATE: 6 ADAPTIVE DATA UNITS]→ Cognitive Compression (Low-Level)→ Threat Pattern Indexing
The system paused.
Not lag.
Evaluation.
Then acceptance.
The change wasn't dramatic.
Thoughts simply stopped repeating. Unnecessary possibilities failed to surface. Decisions reached conclusions without internal resistance.
It felt like removing clutter from a room.
Empty.
Cold.
Efficient.
I left the remaining credits untouched.
They weren't for comfort.
They were for emergencies.
The Authority Trace still lingered at the edge of the interface.
Inactive.
Unstable.
Watching.
I didn't open it.
Authority wasn't something you tested. Authority attracted hierarchy. Hierarchy attracted attention.
Whatever layer I had brushed during the silent gate collapse wasn't meant to be accessed casually.
I closed the interface and stood.
Movement responded cleanly. No delay. No tremor. Shadow was still locked, but my baseline had stabilized.
Acceptable.
I crossed the apartment and stood by the window. The city looked unchanged—traffic flowing, lights steady, people moving with the confidence of those who believed systems existed to protect them.
They were wrong.
Systems existed to normalize outcomes.
Anything that couldn't be normalized was removed.
The silent gate hadn't triggered alarms because it hadn't disrupted order. No casualties. No witnesses. No administrative burden.
Resolved.
But something else had noticed.
Not an enemy.
A layer.
Which meant escalation wasn't immediate—but inevitable.
Legitimacy mattered now.
I didn't need influence.
I needed cover.
The academy wasn't a place of growth.
It was a filter.
A system built to absorb outliers, label them, and decide which were worth keeping.
Perfect.
I opened the academy portal.
Name: Rowan HaleStatus: Civilian
Aptitude Declaration: Undeclared
Background: Standard
I left aptitude blank.
Declared strength invited scrutiny.
Uncertainty invited delay.
Delay created space.
[APPLICATION RECEIVED][STATUS: PENDING — EVALUATION REQUIRED]
Expected.
Before closing the portal, I reviewed public academy data—not rankings, but affiliations.
That was where real power sat.
The top-performing first-year class was A-Class.
And at its center was a familiar name.
Evan Arclight.
House Arclight wasn't one of the old ruling families, but it was rising fast. Military contracts. Gate response funding. Clean reputation.
They were useful.
Which made them protected.
Evan's party reflected that.
Lena Myr — sponsored by House Myr, a medical-noble line with direct ties to academy support divisions. Healers like her weren't allowed to fail publicly.
Sylpha Rune — backed by an arcane research consortium, not nobility, but wealthy enough to influence curriculum placement.
Bran Holt — from a minor military house, bred for frontline roles. Disposable, but reliable.
Noah Kirel — unaffiliated, but retained because his tactical scores justified the cost.
Together, they weren't just a party.
They were an investment bundle.
The academy didn't support individuals.
It supported structures.
That was why they advanced smoothly.
That was why the system bent around them.
I closed the portal.
I wasn't chasing the story.
I wasn't rewriting it.
I was placing myself inside it so deeply that removing me would require justification.
And systems hated justification.
Whatever had noticed the silent gate collapse would act eventually.
But by then—
I wouldn't be an anomaly.
I'd be a variable.
And variables, when integrated properly, decided outcomes.