The ceiling groaned again. Old wood, worn thin by heat and time, bowed with every gust of wind that slipped through the cracked eaves. Hari blinked his eyes open in the dim light, the smell of rust and warm dust already thick in the room.
For a moment, he just lay there — one arm tucked behind his head, the other draped protectively over the small body curled beside him. Elori had crept into his bed sometime in the night, toes cold, curls tangled, whispering something about a noise outside. She always said that — even when there was no noise. Hari didn't argue anymore. If the world scared her, he'd let her feel safe where she could.
He slid out from under the covers carefully, feet landing on the concrete floor with practiced silence. She didn't stir. Good.
The room was barely large enough for their beds, a chipped wash basin, and the squat clay stove he'd patched up with spell-chalk. He crouched beside it, rubbing the chalk lines back into shape with his knuckle. Then, with a whisper:
"Ana riska. Flame, hold gentle."
The Nous inside the lines shimmered faintly — not bright, not flashy — just warm. A flicker of orange heat breathed to life under the kettle. It was an old-world spell, originally used by vendors to keep soup warm on festival days. Useless in battle, invaluable to the poor.
Hari stood as steam began to rise, moving on instinct. He rinsed the bowl, cracked two preserved eggs into a pot with powdered leaf mix, then added dried root from a jar Elori had labeled in her shaky handwriting: "GOOD STINKY".
As the food cooked, he glanced back. Elori had kicked the blanket off her legs and now lay sprawled sideways, half a foot hanging off the mattress. Her curls — thick and coiled like knotted threads — fanned out across the pillow. A string of drool hung from her bottom lip. Hari smiled.
"Five more minutes," she mumbled, eyes still closed.
He chuckled. "I didn't say anything."
"Didn't have to," she yawned. "You're too loud when you worry."
He opened his mouth to protest, then shut it. She wasn't wrong.
By the time breakfast was on the table — such as it was — Elori was sitting up, arms stretched to the ceiling, eyes still half-lidded. Hari placed a bowl in front of her. She poked at it dramatically.
"Ugh. Root again?"
Hari nodded, chewing slowly. "Root again. What happened to gratitude?"
"She left me for someone with bread," Elori muttered.
He nearly choked laughing.
Later, while tying the laces of her scuffed shoes, Elori paused and looked up at him.
"Will you come back before sunset today?"
Hari didn't answer immediately. There were rumors — always rumors — that today's protest would get ugly. That someone would try a glyphbomb again. That Enforcers were already being pulled from the upper district. He'd lived through too many "maybes" to brush this one off.
But Elori's eyes were big and waiting, and he wasn't going to teach her to flinch from the world. Not yet.
He tied the last knot and tapped her knee gently. "Always."
She narrowed her eyes like she didn't believe him. Then fished something from her pocket.
It was a bead — small, a deep cobalt blue — strung on a thin bit of copper wire twisted into a ring.
"For luck," she said, "in case gratitude doesn't come back."
Hari slipped it on his wrist, just above the burn scar he never talked about. "Then I'll wear it where she can see."
The sun had barely cleared the eastern spires when Hari and Elori stepped out onto the street. Heat was already gathering between the tin roofs, clinging low like a warning.
The slums of Virelia weren't built — they were stacked, piece by desperate piece. Homes leaned into each other for balance, tied together by vines, bent pipes, and wishful engineering. Nous hummed weakly beneath the stone — too faint and fractured to be useful, but enough to make the air feel off, like a drum with one skin loose.
Hari adjusted the strap of his satchel. Elori walked beside him, one hand gripping the hem of his coat.
"Can we take the long way?" she asked.
Hari raised an eyebrow. "That'll make you late."
Elori shrugged. "I don't like the market bridge. There's always yelling."
He didn't answer right away. The market bridge crossed directly into the denser blocks — an overcrowded district where tension clung to every conversation. Too many mouths, too few supplies. The last time he'd passed through, an old man got his jaw broken for selling root wine without a permit. Hari had carried him home. The man had died that night. No one talked about it.
"We'll go the long way," Hari said.
They turned down an alley that curved like a ribcage, past faded murals of Nouson that no longer existed. A boy with gray-white hair — Afrumi, maybe nine — was drawing spell signs in chalk on a doorframe. Hari slowed to watch. The boy looked up, startled.
"It's just a heat glyph," the boy stammered. "A basic one i swear."
Hari nodded. "Looks clean. Double-check the base rune — it's leaning."
The boy blinked, surprised. "Oh. Thanks, mister!"
Elori smirked up at Hari. "You're gonna make him think you're nice."
"I am nice."
"Not to grown-ups."
Hari shrugged. "They can take a punch."
The quiet didn't last.
As they neared the outer edge of the school district, voices rose in the distance — not arguing yet, but close. Tense. Sour.
A dried-out fountain sat crooked in the plaza's center, cracked tiles flaking around its rim. There, a Sika merchant in a faded purple robe stood rigid beside his cart, guarded by three fluttering Nouson — winged, beetle-bodied creatures with mirrored shells and soft, pulsing antennae. They hovered like orbiting moons, clicking nervously.
Across from him stood three Etis teens in spotless academy jackets, each marked with golden sun glyphs stitched over the chest. Wealth markers. Second sons of someone important.
"You shorted me!" one of them shouted, pointing at a small pouch of dried saffra. "My sister saw you weigh it light!"
The Sika kept his arms crossed, his expression calm but alert. Sweat gathered at his temples despite the cool breeze. "The scale was sealed. Check the chalk lines. I'll wait."
The tallest teen stepped forward with a sneer, his voice curling with disgust. "You callin' her a liar, Nouson lover?"
A few in the nearby crowd scoffed or muttered — not at the insult, but at the Sika. At the sight of his insectlike companions fluttering in place, glowing faintly with instinctual spells of defense. Not threatening. Just present.
Hari instinctively moved in front of Elori, hand brushing her shoulder as he steered her to the far edge of the street. "Keep walking," he whispered.
Elori looked up at him. "They're gonna hurt him."
"I know," he said. But he didn't stop walking.
The tension was rising fast.
One of the Etis teens flared his palm, and a filament of golden light twisted across his knuckles — spell-light, decorative but sharp, a status piece more than a weapon. It buzzed like a low hornet's drone.
"You let those pests touch your food, don't you?" the second teen said with a curl of his lip. "No wonder the lot of you stink like mold."
"Shouldn't be allowed to sell in the open," someone murmured from the crowd.
"They're not even bonded to the Nouson," another added. "Just let them crawl around like rats."
The merchant didn't flinch. One Nouson settled gently on his shoulder, clicking softly in rhythm with his breath. Bonded or not, it seemed to understand. They always did.
One teen drew back a hand, fingers poised for a strike.
Not yet, Hari thought. Not now.
And then—
A sound split the air like a faultline cracking: a shattering boom from somewhere south. Followed by the brittle scream of glass exploding.
Then a scream.
Then another.
The plaza stilled for a heartbeat, tension snapped mid-strike. The teens turned, spell-light dimming. The Nouson at the Sika's side darted upward, wings humming like knives, their glow intensifying. Protective posture.
Hari froze.
"That was near the artisan row," Elori whispered.
Another scream echoed — this time closer.
And suddenly, the plaza was moving. Not toward the sound, but away.
Everything stopped for half a second.
Then the city ignited.
From across the rooftops, the second blast came — not magical, not clean. A crude burst-glyph, chained to a fuel drum or worse. Smoke climbed like a black root filling the sky. From the corner of his eye, Hari saw Enforcers dropping down from grapnel lifts — white-cloaked silhouettes sweeping in without warning.
The Etis teens ran. The Sika man hit the ground and covered his head. Civilians surged in every direction.
"Elori."
She was frozen beside him, eyes wide.
"Elori, look at me."
Her gaze snapped up.
"Go to Uncle Ken's place. Now. You know the door chant?"
She nodded. "Two-tap left, mirror, blue line high."
"That's my girl. Don't stop. Don't look back."
Elori swallowed hard. Then she turned and ran, darting between panicked legs and knocked-over crates like a spark through dry grass.
Hari stood still for a moment.
Just one moment.
Then he turned toward the smoke — and ran the other way.
Hari ran with his head low, coat flaring behind him, dodging through chaos that had no shape yet — just noise and smoke and momentum.
People were flooding out of buildings. Market stalls collapsed under the press of feet. A woman screamed not in pain, but in panic, clutching a child who couldn't stop coughing. A pack of enforcers pushed past Hari, their hoods marked with blue ink — riot detail. One of them paused just long enough to look Hari in the eye. No words. No nod. Just judgment. Then he was gone.
The second explosion had gutted a transport garage, its thick glass and rigged enchantments meant to contain fuel and heat. Now it was a burning hole, half the surrounding plaza already turned to wreckage. Nous symbols flickered and warped on shattered walls, their meanings scrambled.
Someone had targeted this.
This wasn't just a riot. This was a statement.
A Sika girl — maybe fifteen — knelt near the flames, face bleeding, teeth bared like she wanted to bite the smoke. Her left arm was stuck under a beam. Hari didn't stop to ask questions.
He dropped to one knee and set both palms against the beam. He didn't chant, didn't draw. He pushed not enough to lift it outright, but enough crack the wood, and send the whole thing groaning aside. The girl shrieked as her arm came free. He caught her before she hit the ground.
"I'm not gonna hurt you," he said.
She stared at him. "You're not an Enforcer."
"Good guess."
He carried her a dozen feet before an Enforcer yelled, "Put her down!"
Hari paused. Two whitecloaks approached, boots crunching over soot and bone. One had a stave marked with the Central Seal — a district officer.
"She's wounded," Hari said, setting her down gently. "She needs—"
"We'll handle it," the officer cut in. "Back away."
Hari stood, fists clenched. The second Enforcer, taller and younger, looked ready to swing for no reason. Hari didn't blink.
"I'm walking," he muttered. "Don't follow."
The taller Enforcer stepped forward anyway, hand raised, spell crackling — and that's when someone threw a brick.
It hit the officer's stave mid-chant, knocking the Nous focus from his grip. The glow collapsed.
A beat of silence.
Then chaos again.
The riot had reached full bloom.
A girl with sun-glyphs carved into her cheeks screamed curses in a tongue older than the Kingdom. Two Afrumi twins danced through the crowd with glittering chalk, leaving delayed-tuned glyphs in their wake — traps that burst with color, confusion, and disorientation.
Someone nearby was bleeding from the eyes. A Nous overload, maybe. Or worse — a wild spell caught mid-chain.
Hari moved through it all with hard shoulders and clear direction. He didn't cast. He didn't chant. He just moved. Pushed when he had to. Shielded others with his body. Shouted commands that only some obeyed.
He wasn't trying to be a hero.
He was just trying to get to the girl he saw near the square — tiny, half-hidden beneath a fruit cart, eyes wet and full of firelight.
Not Elori.
But it could've been.
She was no older than six. Brown skin smudged with ash. Hair like soft wire, tangled and matted, still tied with ribbon from a life that had probably ended five minutes ago. She didn't cry. She just stared — wide-eyed and still, like a creature that hadn't yet decided whether to trust her fear.
Hari's knees hit the ground beside the fruit cart. Its wooden frame was half-splintered, one wheel cracked clean in half. Burned fruit pulp stuck to the cobblestones like blood.
"I'm not gonna hurt you," he said softly, repeating the same words he'd told the Sika girl.
The girl didn't move.
Behind them, screams tore through the air as a dome of force cracked open — an officer had triggered a suppression spell. A moment later, a plume of uncontained fire Nous erupted skyward from somewhere west. Someone wasn't just fighting back. Someone was trying to win.
Hari ducked lower, voice level. "I need to carry you. Just for a bit. You're not safe here."
Still nothing.
Then a shift — her hand moved a little, just enough for him to see the tremble in her fingers.
"I have a daughter," he said. "She's about your size. You remind me of her."
The girl blinked. It wasn't permission, not really. But it was enough.
He lifted her gently, one arm under her legs, the other around her back. She tensed, ready to scream — and then didn't. Just buried her face in his shoulder.
Then Hari turned.
A man in a cracked copper mask stood five paces away.
The mask wasn't decorative — it was rigged with voice-filter glyphs, which buzzed faintly as he breathed. The rest of him looked stitched together: scrap leather armor, ritual gloves, a sleeveless mantle painted with dead glyphs and riot-ink. On his chest: a crude symbol of Nous — but inverted, the sign of a Scorched.
Cultists. Anarchists. Or just pissed-off spellmakers who'd had enough.
Hari's body moved before his mind caught up. He pivoted his shoulder, shielding the girl, and stepped left, eyes locked on the man.
"I'm not here to fight you," Hari said. "Let me pass."
The masked man tilted his head. A guttural click echoed from inside the voice-filter.
Then he raised his hand.
A spell sigil burst to life — half-formed, jagged, done without chanting or tools. Raw Nous. Dangerous. Hari recognized it too late.
Chain pop.
The cart behind Hari exploded as coiled tendrils of energy snapped out piercing him in the shoulder — debris flying everywhere. Hari dropped low and rolled, tucking the girl against his chest as a wooden beam flew over them and cracked into a wall.
The masked man lunged forward, arm winding up for a second spell.
Hari moved.
He snapped his fingers — a faint flicker of Nous sparked in his left hand. No chant. Just shape and instinct. He slammed it into the ground.
Crackle.
The cobblestones beneath the masked man's feet buckled. A pulse of heat warped the air — not fire, not wind — just pressure, twisting upward and throwing the man off balance.
Hari was already there.
He didn't use glyphs.
He used his fists.
One jab to the throat — not hard enough to kill, but enough to shock the mask's filter. The second punch came from low — a body hook straight into the ribs, followed by a knee. Then he spun behind the man and slammed an elbow into the back of his head.
The mask cracked. The body dropped.
Hari stood panting. The girl still in his arms, unharmed.
He didn't notice the woman watching him from the tower above.
Sophia Doyle stood inside a bell tower, twenty feet up, surrounded by chalk lines and floating glyphwork that hovered like flower petals in the air.
Her white hair caught the firelight. Her hands were folded, calm, deliberate. A faint smile traced her lips.
She'd been watching since the first scream. Watching him.
Beside her, a glass-eyed assistant scribbled in a floating book.
"Name?" Sophia asked.
"Hari Mikamo," the assistant whispered.
Sophia's gaze never left the street. "Send a seal to his door."
The smoke hadn't cleared by the time Hari reached the district fringe. His coat was slashed near the shoulder, and blood — not his — stained one sleeve. The girl in his arms was asleep now, or maybe just exhausted beyond response. Her breath came soft and shallow against his neck.
Ken's place sat at the end of a narrow walkway behind the school district — half-gym, half-home, with padded walls, spell-resistant flooring, and two exit tunnels masked by training mats. The front sign, faded from heat bursts and storm damage, read simply: "Kling's".
Hari gave the knock — two taps left, mirror, blue line high.
The door creaked open before he finished.
"Damn," Ken said. "You look like you fought a brick wall and made friends with the fire that built it."
Hari stepped inside. "Something like that."
Ken Kling was already moving, his broad shoulders rolling as he reached out to take the sleeping girl from Hari's arms. Despite being half a head shorter, his hold was solid — gentle, practiced.
"She alright?"
"Shock," Hari said. "No burns. No visible breaks. Probably dehydrated."
Ken nodded, laying the girl on a training bench padded with old focus mats. "Got spare water and rice spells in the back. Kid food. From last week's run."
A small figure shot down the side hallway — Elori, her curls a wild halo, arms flung wide.
"Papa!"
Hari dropped to one knee just in time. She crashed into him, burying her face in his chest.
"I stayed," she whispered, voice muffled. "Did the chant. Didn't run past the seal."
"I know." He kissed the top of her head. "You did perfect."
Ken watched them for a moment, arms crossed over his barrel chest. His tone softened. "She's tough, Hari. Like her dad."
Hari gave a tired nod, pulling Elori in tighter.
Ken stepped toward the worktable, flicking his wrist to activate a stored light glyph. Soft amber glow spilled into the room.
"Scorched?" he asked.
"Yeah. Maybe more than one. Masked. Organized. This wasn't a spark. It was deliberate."
Ken clicked his tongue. "No shit. I heard the first blast from two districts over."
Hari stood slowly, adjusting his coat. "Girl under the cart. I had to move fast. Enforcers were sweeping everything clean."
Ken raised an eyebrow. "Sweep clean or sweep quiet?"
Hari didn't answer.
Ken shook his head. "Place is sliding again. You ask me, Virelia's about five bad hours from going full blackout."
Hari rubbed his shoulder. "Not just Virelia."
Ken looked at him long, amber eyes sharp. "You think it's that bad?"
Before Hari could reply — three knocks.
Not on the door.
On the side window.
Ken's brow furrowed. "Nobody uses that side."
Hari moved first, hand near his belt, Nous whispering at his fingertips. He reached the glass and found a sigil drawn in the dust — a spiral inside a triangle, traced with precision.
His body tensed. Even Elori looked up, sensing the change in the room.
Ken came up behind him, already squinting. "That… royal?"
Hari opened the window just enough to retrieve a folded vellum letter tied in silver thread. No wax. No emblem.
He undid the knot.
One sentence. Ink still humming faintly with Nous.
You are hereby summoned to the Academy. Report by first light.
Hari stared at the words. The silence around him deepened.
Ken peered over his shoulder, reading aloud. "No signature. No explanation. Just a straight command." He let out a low whistle. "You sure know how to make an impression."
Hari didn't smile.
Elori walked up beside him. "What is it?"
He looked down at her. Then back at the paper. Then at Ken.
Ken scratched his chin. "You going?"
Hari said nothing for a long beat.
Then: "Looks like I don't have a choice."
Ken grinned, teeth flashing. "Guess it's enrollment season early."
Hari handed him the letter, just for safekeeping. "Watch her."
"You even gotta ask?" Ken ruffled Elori's hair. "She's my favorite gym rat."
Elori scowled. "I am not a rat."
Ken winked. "You bite like one."
Hari allowed himself one breath — not of peace, but of commitment. Then he grabbed his coat from the hook, adjusted the strap, and stepped back into the night.
Behind him, the door shut quietly.
The bell tower was quiet now.
No screams. No smoke. Just the faint hum of glyphs rotating in the air like lazy constellations.
Sophia Doyle stood at the apex, where the city stretched below like a broken tapestry — streets scorched and trembling, the aftermath of a riot that hadn't ended so much as gone underground.
She didn't seem bothered by the ruin.
In fact, she looked pleased.
A breeze caught her white hair, tugging it gently around her shoulders. The glyphs circling her dimmed, responding to her shift in thought. Her fingers twitched, and one of them dissolved into static — the spell dismissed.
"You saw him?" she asked, not turning.
Her assistant stood behind her. Thin, bone-pale, with a glass eye that clicked softly as it focused. He carried two books: one bound in black Nous-thread, the other floating just above his hand like a tethered memory.
"I did, My Queen," he said. "He moved as you predicted. Not toward safety. Toward the girl."
Sophia's smile curved — small, exact. "He protects without needing to be told. Bleeds without waiting to be thanked. No formal Nous education. No divine blessing. But his instincts are precise."
"The Scorched seemed aware of him."
She nodded once. "Everyone in the slums knows of him. The Gentle Giant. The soft Aun brawler who towers the streets."
The assistant flipped open the floating book with a wave of his hand. An ink-sketch of Hari Mikamo's profile hovered over the page — already annotated with glyphic metrics and behavioral tags.
"Strength-class Argent, if evaluated traditionally," the assistant noted. "But he doesn't fit the scale."
"No," Sophia agreed. "Because he doesn't want to."
A moment passed. Wind pushed through the shattered openings of the tower.
"Your orders?" the assistant asked.
"Send word to the Board," Sophia said. "I'm activating Academy Placement Directive One-Seven."
The assistant blinked. "That's… only for—"
"I know what it's for," she said calmly. "I'm invoking it anyway."
He didn't argue.
Sophia turned, robes whispering behind her like smoke. Her boots made no sound as she stepped toward the scrying basin in the center of the bell tower — a shallow pool of silver water held in suspended gravity.
The image rippled. Hari's face shimmered, overlaid with the ruined market square.
She traced a fingertip across the surface.
"No formal wish… yet," she murmured. "But it's waiting inside him. I'm sure of it."
The assistant hesitated. "He's unranked. Unregistered. The gods may not even care about him. His presence at the Academy will be… disruptive."
"Exactly, maybe they'll follow his example. The academy right now is overflowing with racist nobles and self-centered prodigies. Talented but problematic." she said.
"And what of the others?"
Sophia glanced sideways — through the water's glow, another image surfaced: a 18 year old boy with too-wide eyes and a cracked tooth smile, Andre Cruz, tossing Caliburnus into the air like a toy. Beside him, the third piece — Amari Abara, arms crossed, half-hidden in shade. A boy too young to see war but too skilled not to.
"The trio," Sophia whispered. "Three sparks. One storm."
She reached into her sleeve and withdrew a slender knife — not metal, but stone, carved from the base of the Old World Monoliths. She pressed it lightly to her palm until it drew blood, and let a single drop fall into the scrying basin.
The water hissed. The image distorted. Time warped.
In its reflection, for one brief second — three boys standing on a battlefield that had no end.
"They'll be the end of something," she said.
"Or the beginning," the assistant offered.
Sophia's smile sharpened. "Both."