The restricted herb gardens of Arcanum were a world away from the sterile stone of the Academy. Nestled within a natural sinkhole and shielded by a shimmering veil of Grade-5 concealment wards, the gardens thrived on a concentrated vein of Earth Mana. Here, the air was thick, humid, and smelled of damp moss and lethal beauty.
"The wards are cycling," the relic pulsed in Kael's mind. "Step forward when the light dims. Now!"
Kael slipped through the gap in the shimmering veil. His body felt like a coiled spring. Since the "Flicker Core" display, his status had shifted from 'invisible' to 'tragic.' It gave him a perverse kind of freedom, no one expected the boy with the dying meridians to be out past curfew, let alone infiltrating the most guarded botanical site in the province.
"I need the Frost-Veined Ginseng," Kael whispered, his eyes scanning the glowing flora. "You said it would stabilize the heat from the Qi refinement."
"It is a catalyst," the relic corrected. "It will act as a bridge between your burning blood and your cooling mana. Without it, the next stage of the Dual Core framework will cause your lungs to crystallize."
Kael shuddered at the relic's words. Nevertheless, he threw the fear to the back of his mind and moved with a phantom-like grace he hadn't possessed a week ago. His Qi, though still suppressed, had begun to reinforce his tendons, making his footsteps silent. He reached the center of the garden, where a cluster of pale, blue-veined roots grew near a stagnant pool.
But as he reached out, the relic's presence suddenly flared with a warning.
"Hide! To your left, someone is coming!"
Kael didn't hesitate. He dove behind a thicket of Ironwood ferns, holding his breath. He activated the 'Quiet', the balance technique that suppressed his resonance to a dead flat line.
A soft rustle sounded from the opposite side of the clearing. A figure emerged from the shadows. It wasn't a guard. The moon caught the flash of copper-red hair and the sharp profile of Luna. She was dressed in dark, form-fitting leathers, crouching by a cluster of Nightshade Lilies.
Suddenly, Luna stopped. She didn't turn around, but her shoulders went rigid.
"Who's there?" she asked, her voice low and sharp. She stood up slowly, her hand resting on the hilt of a dagger. She turned toward the ferns, her eyes narrowing as she scanned the darkness. "Show yourself. Now."
Kael realized hiding further was useless. He stepped out from the foliage, keeping his movements slow and his hands visible.
Luna's eyes widened, but not with recognition, with a deep, instinctive confusion. She didn't draw her weapon, but she didn't relax either. She stared at him, her chest heaving as if the very air around him was difficult to breathe.
"You..." she breathed, her voice trembling slightly. "Kael? Kael Ashborne?"
"It's me," Kael said quietly.
Luna took a step back, her gaze flickering from his face to the empty air around him. "How did you get in here? These are Grade-5 wards. Even the elite instructors need a jade pass to enter." She paused, her confusion sharpening into a look of genuine alarm. "And... what are you doing? I can't feel you. I'm looking right at you, but my senses say the space you're standing in is empty."
"I found a gap in the cycle," Kael lied, though the 'Quiet' was making the lie feel thin.
"A gap?" Luna shook her head, her face turning pale. "No. That's impossible. And your mana... aren't you the boy from the courtyard? The one with the erratic path? The 'Flicker Core'?" She gripped her dagger tighter, her knuckles slowly turning white. "In the light today, you were a mess of leaking energy. But here... right now... you feel like a void. It's like you're devouring the light around you."
She took another step back, her eyes filled with a primal, mounting dread. She wasn't just questioning him, she was reacting to the sheer wrongness of his presence. To a trained cultivator like her, Kael didn't feel like a person, he felt like a tear in reality.
"What the hell are you, Kael?" she whispered, her voice cracking. "No one with a broken core can stand in a mana-dense zone like this and not leave a single ripple. You aren't just hiding your power. You're... you're something else entirely."
The pressure of the 'Quiet' intensified as Kael's heart rate rose. The ambient mana in the garden began to settle unnaturally around him, turning stagnant. Luna gasped, clutching her throat as if the oxygen had suddenly thinned.
"Don't come any closer," she said, her voice small and terrified. "Whatever you're doing... whatever you are... just stay back."
Without another word, she turned and bolted. She didn't look like a student or a warrior in that moment, she looked like a deer fleeing a predator it couldn't understand. She vanished through the ward-line in a blur of panicked movement.
Kael stood in the chilling silence of the garden, the Frost-Veined Ginseng still clutched in his hand.
"She asked the right questions," the relic said coldly. "And her instincts gave her the only answer that matters. You are a predator in a world of prey, Kael. Get used to the solitude."
Kael looked down at his trembling hands. "I just wanted the herbs."
"You got them," the relic replied. "Now move. The 'Quiet' won't hide the disturbance she left behind for long."