Year 1003.
Four years passed.
In that time, the instructors gave up trying to classify Biji's ability.
Her scroll still read:
Ability: ?????
But the results were undeniable.
She didn't chant. She didn't boast. She didn't light the sky on fire or crack the floor with thought. And yet—
She beat everyone.
No explosions. No showy moves.
Just quiet, absolute control.
She never even looked like she was trying.
They tested her against believers of fire, steel, beasts, wind, even time.
Every time, they walked in confident… and walked out broken.
Not physically. Spiritually.
Because losing to someone you don't understand—someone whose power you can't even see—makes you question your own belief.
And doubt… in Arcane… is fatal.
They whispered about her in the halls:
> "Maybe her power is… absolute adaptability?"
"No. That wouldn't explain how she blocked Zakar's illusions."
"I heard she doesn't have a power. She just is."
No one had answers.
Not even Biji.
She only knew how to do one thing: adapt and overcome.
---
Then one day, while walking to the southern courtyard — barefoot, just to feel the grass — she paused.
There was someone sitting beneath the old whisper-tree.
A figure in black, kicking their legs like a child, eating dried mango slices.
They looked up.
> "Oh hey. You're that girl, right? The question mark one."
Biji said nothing.
The stranger stood.
Small frame. Unruly hair. Scar on the left eyebrow.
Eyes like cracked glass — full of something sharp.
> "Name's Otg1234," they said casually. "People call me One Tiny Girl. Dumb nickname, I know. I kept it."
Biji raised an eyebrow.
> "You're… a guy."
He grinned.
> "Yup."
> "Then why 'One Tiny Girl'?"
> "Because that's what people expect to lose to the least."
And then he lunged.
No warning. No build-up. Just a blur of motion.
His kick curved like a crescent moon.
Biji ducked.
She moved—not with speed, but like she already knew where he would strike.
They fought for ten minutes.
Grass tore. Air cracked.
He used short, sharp bursts of belief-enhanced movement, like someone rewriting the physics of each step as he went.
Biji matched him.
Not by copying. Not by overpowering.
But by becoming what she needed to be—exactly in that moment.
When he flowed like water, she became stone.
When he struck like lightning, she turned into a void.
In the end, she stood above him, both hands in her pockets.
Breathing once.
He lay on the grass, arms wide, laughing.
> "Damn. That was amazing."
> "You're the strongest I've fought," she said.
> "And you're the strongest I've lost to," he replied, grinning through a bloody lip.
"Wanna be friends?"
She blinked.
It was the first time anyone had asked that.
She nodded, just once.
And the world — the Veil itself — hummed quietly, like it approved.
---