The dormitory smelled like damp cloth and old incense.
Sung Jin Ezio locked the door twice anyway.
The first lock was habit.
The second was fear.
He stood with his back against the wood for a moment, listening. The hallway outside was quiet—too quiet. No footsteps. No laughter. No late-night arguments drifting through thin walls. Only the faint, distant hum of cultivation lamps and rain tapping the window like impatient fingers.
He exhaled slowly and crossed the room.
On the desk, beneath the weak glow of his lamp, lay the stolen scroll.
It looked harmless.
Thin paper. A lacquer seal. A disciplined aura that did not flare or glitter the way battle manuals did. It didn't feel like a weapon.
It felt like a contract.
Ezio's fingers hovered above it.
His wrists still ached from silk training. Faint red lines marked his skin where threads had snapped back and bitten him. His Illusion Seed—barely more than a warm ember behind his sternum—fluttered faintly as if it recognized what lay on the desk.
Lucifer's voice came quieter than usual.
"Careful, kiddo."
Ezio swallowed. "You sound nervous."
Lucifer scoffed, but it didn't carry its usual playful edge. "I sound experienced. There's a difference."
Ezio stared at the seal. "It's just a primer."
"Just a primer," Lucifer repeated dryly. "That's what people say before the primer teaches them how to ruin their own lives."
Ezio's jaw tightened. He didn't answer. He pressed his thumb to the lacquer and peeled it open.
The scroll unfurled with a soft, dry sound.
There were words at the top.
Not many.
Not poetic.
Not grand.
A simple line, written in ink so dark it looked like it absorbed the lamp-light:
Power is the art of choosing what happens next.
Ezio's chest tightened.
He read the next line.
And the next.
The script looked ordinary at first, but as his eyes moved across it, a strange sensation crawled through his skull—like someone gently turning a key in the back of his mind.
The words weren't teaching him a technique.
They were teaching him a lens.
The ink seemed to shift as he read, the strokes becoming less like language and more like… pathways. Patterns. Arrows. A web of decision lines branching off a single point.
Ezio blinked hard.
The room wavered.
For a heartbeat, the desk looked farther away than it should. The lamp-light dimmed, then returned. The air tasted faintly metallic.
He realized he was holding his breath.
He exhaled, slow.
The scroll's aura tightened around him like a thin collar.
Lucifer murmured, "There it is. The hook in your jaw."
Ezio tried to ignore him and kept reading.
The primer described no flashy moves. No sword forms. No qi blasts. No spiritual beasts. Instead it spoke of circulation—yet not the kind all cultivators learned.
It spoke of circulating intent.
Qi follows breath.Breath follows mind.Mind follows desire.Therefore: desire is the true river.
Ezio's eyes narrowed.
He read deeper.
The primer explained that most cultivators were blind because they cultivated only the body and the qi. They treated emotion as noise. Weakness. Something to suppress.
Machiavelli treated emotion as currency.
Fear constricts the river.Greed accelerates it.Lust bends it toward possession.Pride inflates it beyond its banks.Guilt poisons it.
Ezio swallowed.
He could feel those truths in his own chest.
His Illusion Seed stirred, warm and uneasy, like a small animal sensing a predator outside its nest.
Then he reached a section marked with a simple symbol—an ink-black circle cut by a vertical line.
A ledger mark.
Ezio read the first line beneath it.
To see what comes next, you must first count what is already owed.
The moment he finished that sentence, something inside him shifted.
Pain stabbed behind his eyes.
Ezio flinched, a sharp gasp escaping him. His hands tightened on the desk edge.
The lamp flickered violently.
The shadows in the corners deepened.
For a second, he thought the mirror on his washstand had darkened.
Lucifer's voice slid in, satisfied and cruel.
"Oh, kiddo… it's happening."
Ezio forced his breath steady. "What… is happening?"
"You're learning to breathe like a liar," Lucifer murmured. "And liars see the future first."
Ezio clenched his jaw and returned to the scroll.
The primer instructed him to sit upright, spine straight, eyes half-closed, and do something that made his stomach twist:
Recall your deepest want.Do not judge it.Let it rise like heat.
Ezio's hands trembled.
His deepest want wasn't noble.
It wasn't enlightenment.
It wasn't revenge, not purely.
It was simpler and uglier:
To never beg again.
To never feel disposable again.
To never have someone's silence decide his worth.
His throat tightened as he let that desire rise.
The ache of abandonment returned—not as a wound, but as fuel.
The primer continued:
Now observe the room.Count the pressures.Count the exits.Count the lies you could tell to survive.
Ezio frowned.
He was alone.
There were no lies to count.
Then he realized the primer meant something different.
Not lies spoken aloud.
Lies embedded in reality.
He closed his eyes and tried anyway.
He listened to the rain. The distant hum of lamps. The faint creak of the building as it settled in the cold.
Then—faintly—he felt something he had never felt before.
A pressure in the air, subtle as a fingertip hovering near the skin.
Not a presence.
Not a spirit.
A probability.
Ezio's eyelids fluttered.
He opened his eyes and stared at his door.
Nothing moved.
But he felt it, a thin line of certainty:
Someone would knock soon.
His heart began to pound.
Lucifer's voice was soft, delighted. "Oh? You can smell the next page turning."
Ezio swallowed and forced himself to keep reading.
The primer described a practice called Ledger Breathing—inhaling while cataloging intentions, exhaling while sorting likely outcomes. It was not mystical prophecy. It was the cultivation of prediction until prediction became reflex.
Ezio tried it.
Inhale: the rain is steady.Exhale: the campus is quiet.Inhale: the dorm's hallway is empty.Exhale: but it will not remain empty.
The warm ember behind his sternum—the Illusion Seed—responded. It spun faintly, as if the act of counting gave it shape.
Then his nose began to bleed.
A warm drop slid over his upper lip.
Ezio jerked, startled, wiping it away with the back of his hand. The blood was bright under the lamp.
His stomach turned.
Lucifer chuckled. "That's the toll. You wanted future sight? Pay with meat."
Ezio's hands shook, but he didn't stop.
He leaned closer to the scroll, ignoring the metallic taste in his mouth, ignoring the dull ache building behind his eyes.
He wanted to understand.
He needed to understand.
Because if the world was a board, he had been a piece moved by others his whole life.
He was done being moved.
He read until the words blurred.
He read until the lamp-light seemed too sharp.
He read until his Illusion Seed burned hot enough that his ribs ached.
And then—
Knock. Knock.
Ezio froze.
The sound came from his door.
Two light knocks.
Exactly as the pressure had promised.
His breath caught.
He stared at the door as if it had grown teeth.
Lucifer's whisper was a purr. "Well well. Look at you. Predicting."
Ezio's mind raced.
Who would knock at this hour?
He was nobody. He had no friends worth visiting. No clan. No sponsor.
Only Vesper.
But Vesper didn't knock. She appeared.
Ezio wiped his nose again. More blood.
Knock. Knock.
The door sounded again, slightly firmer.
Ezio stood slowly, careful not to make noise. He approached the door and pressed his ear against the wood.
A voice came through, muffled.
"Ezio? It's Lin."
Lin.
A classmate from one of the basic cultivation lectures. A boy who borrowed notes and returned them late. Not a threat. Not an ally.
Ezio's stomach tightened.
Why was Lin here?
Before he could decide, the world flickered—
A sudden, brief overlay like a ghost-image.
Ezio saw it: Lin's face on the other side of the door, smiling nervously. Lin's hand shifting behind his back. Lin's fingers tightening around something small—metal, sharp.
A needle?
A hidden token?
Ezio's pulse spiked.
The flicker vanished.
Ezio stood in the dark, breath shallow, heart hammering.
Lucifer's voice was delighted. "There you go. Two seconds of truth."
Ezio didn't answer. His palm hovered above the latch.
He could open the door and pretend nothing was wrong.
He could refuse and make Lin suspicious.
He could… speak first.
Ezio forced his voice steady, low. "What do you want?"
A pause.
Lin's voice softened. "I… I wanted to talk. Just for a minute."
Ezio's Illusion Seed fluttered.
The primer's words echoed: Lies distort qi.
Ezio focused on the sound of Lin's breath through the door.
He felt it—a tiny constriction before the words, a tension that didn't match the gentle tone.
Lin was afraid.
Not of Ezio.
Of failing his task.
Ezio's stomach went cold.
Lucifer whispered, amused and cruel: "Kiddo, someone's using your name in a sentence you weren't invited to."
Ezio didn't open the door.
Instead, he spoke softly, carefully, as if coaxing a snake not to strike.
"Lin," he said, "if you're here because someone told you to be, you can still leave."
Silence.
Then a shaky exhale.
Lin's voice returned, smaller. "What are you talking about?"
Ezio felt another flicker—Lin's hand tightening behind his back.
Ezio's gaze slid to the floor near the door, to the gap beneath it.
He exhaled and extended a single silk thread from his bracelet—so thin it was invisible in the darkness. It slipped under the door like a hair.
His wrist stung immediately from the strain.
He guided the thread toward Lin's shadow on the other side. The thread brushed metal.
Ezio pulled.
Something scraped softly.
Lin inhaled sharply.
"What—?"
Ezio pulled again, harder, nausea rising. The thread trembled violently, close to snapping.
Then a small object slid under the door and into Ezio's room.
A needle.
No bigger than a fingernail.
Its tip glimmered faintly with a dull green aura.
Poison.
Ezio's throat tightened.
He stared at it as if it were a living thing.
On the other side of the door, Lin's breathing went frantic.
Ezio spoke quietly. "Go."
Lin's voice cracked. "Ezio, I— I didn't—"
"Go," Ezio repeated, and his voice carried something new—not volume, not strength, but inevitability.
A pause.
Then footsteps retreated down the hallway, fast and uneven.
Ezio stood motionless until the sound faded.
Only then did his legs threaten to give out.
He stumbled back to the desk and sat heavily, staring at the poison needle on the floor.
His hands trembled.
He was still weak.
Still nobody.
But someone had just tried to poison him.
Or test him.
Or scare him.
And he had stopped it—not with strength, but with two seconds of sight.
Lucifer hummed. "Well, kiddo… welcome to being counted."
Ezio swallowed, wiping more blood from his nose.
His gaze slid to the scroll.
The primer lay open like a mouth that had tasted him and wanted more.
He should have burned it.
He should have hidden it.
Instead he leaned forward again, hunger tightening his chest.
He read.
The next day, the world felt… slightly wrong.
Not obvious wrong.
Not dramatic.
Just wrong in small ways that made Ezio's skin prickle.
In the lecture hall, a professor who usually arrived early came late, eyes tight, aura constricted. Ezio felt the pattern before the man spoke—fear first, then guilt, then forced calm. The professor announced a sudden change in curriculum: advanced students would be "evaluated" by visiting sect envoys next week.
Ezio watched students react.
Excitement. Pride. Anxiety.
And underneath—calculation.
Ezio's head ached. His Illusion Seed fluttered like an anxious ember.
In the courtyard, Ezio passed Lin.
Lin did not look at him.
Lin's aura was messy—fear spiking, shame constricting, relief thin and weak.
Ezio's stomach turned.
He could almost see the chain:
Someone pressured Lin.Lin tried to obey.Lin failed.Now Lin was afraid of punishment.
Ezio walked past without speaking.
Lucifer whispered, "Look at you. Reading lives like scrolls."
At midday, Ezio went to the notice board.
A new list had been posted: dorm inspections would occur randomly this week due to "security concerns."
Ezio stared at the paper.
He could feel the intent behind it—tight, controlled, bureaucratic.
Not panic.
Procedure.
As if the university had quietly decided to check its locks.
Ezio's throat tightened.
He returned to his dorm early and hid the Machiavelli scroll beneath a loose floorboard he'd noticed months ago but never had reason to use.
When he finished, he sat on his bed and stared at his hands.
They looked the same.
Still thin. Still weak.
But his mind felt… sharper.
And lonelier.
Because once you start seeing intent, you stop being able to enjoy ignorance.
Every smile becomes suspicious.
Every kindness becomes a calculation.
Lucifer's voice softened, almost intimate.
"Does it feel good, kiddo?"
Ezio's throat tightened. "No."
Lucifer chuckled quietly. "Of course not. Power never feels good in the beginning. It feels like losing your last excuse."
Ezio closed his eyes.
Behind his sternum, the Illusion Seed pulsed faintly, warm as a buried ember.
In his head, Machiavelli's primer continued to unfold like a map.
And somewhere in the world—far away, beyond the university walls—something invisible shifted, not in anger, not in urgency…
But in interest.
Not a hunter.
Not yet.
A ledger.
A quiet line being written.
Ezio opened his eyes again and stared at the cracked mirror over his washstand.
For a moment, he thought he saw Lucifer smiling there.
Then the reflection was only him.
Wet-eyed.
Tired.
Alive.
And no longer unseen.