Jup woke up feeling like something inside his body had gone to war without telling him.
For a few seconds he stayed flat on his back staring at the ceiling, trying to understand why breathing felt heavier than it should.
When he finally attempted to sit up, pain answered immediately.
His ribs tightened, his right shoulder burned, his forearm felt dense and sore in a way he had never experienced before, and his legs shook the second they touched the floor.
He made it halfway upright before dizziness slammed into him hard enough to force him back onto the mattress.
Jup stared at the ceiling.
“…what.”
Triōhnah answered immediately.
Ki reserve depletion consequences remain active.
He closed his eyes.
“You waited until now to explain that?”
You did not ask.
“That answer is starting to irritate me.”
Correct.
Jup slowly sat up again and managed to stay there this time, breathing through the pain while his body decided whether it wanted to cooperate.
His hands shook when he lifted them in front of his face.
His knuckles were bruised, and his arm throbbed from wrist to shoulder with a deep ache that reminded him of the punch before he wanted to remember it.
The man’s head snapping sideways.
The crack beneath his heel.
The way he stayed standing anyway.
Then the screen opened.
Not partially.
Fully.
Blue light filled his vision.
────────────────────
UNREGISTERED HOST SYSTEM
HOST: JUREEL AMON
LEVEL: 0 AUTHORITY: DORMANT
────────────────────
PHYSICAL STATS
Strength: 5 Agility: 5 Durability: 5 Perception: 5 Stamina: 5
────────────────────
CURRENT STATUS
HEALTH: 62% STAMINA: 38% KI: 0% MANA: 0%
────────────────────
ENERGY PATHWAYS
MATTER: LOCKED / UNSTABLE DARK MATTER: LOCKED ANTI-MATTER: LOCKED
────────────────────
ESSENZ PRESSURE: SUPPRESSED REGULATION STATUS: ACTIVE
────────────────────
WARNING: HOST OUTPUT EXCEEDS CURRENT REGULATION TOLERANCE
────────────────────
Jup stared at it.
Then he looked at his hands.
Then back at the screen.
“My stats are all five.”
Correct.
“I nearly broke that man’s face with all my stats at five.”
Your attack was inefficient.
Jup blinked.
“…inefficient?”
Target defense was refined.
“That explained absolutely nothing.”
Correct.
He stared at the words DARK MATTER, then ANTI-MATTER, then ESSENZ PRESSURE: SUPPRESSED.
The longer he looked, the less the screen felt like an upgrade and the more it felt like a warning written in a language his body had learned before his mind did.
His voice lowered.
“Why would my father leave me something like this?”
Triōhnah remained silent.
That silence felt intentional.
Jup’s jaw tightened.
His father had always felt larger than the apartment they lived in—not because he was loud, but because he never needed to be.
He remembered the weight of his father’s hand on his shoulder after bad days, the quiet pride in his eyes when Jup brought home his first technical certification, and the way he could make the apartment feel calm just by existing inside it.
Soldier.
That was the story everyone gave him.
Killed in the war.
Gone too soon.
Clean.
Simple.
This system didn’t belong to a simple story.
His father had known.
That thought should’ve made him angry.
Instead, it made him feel like he had been handed something too heavy for someone his age to carry.
He pushed himself to his feet carefully and stood still for a moment while his room settled around him.
The new clothes Aya had found for him yesterday were folded neatly near the edge of his bed.
The blanket hiding the crushed remains of his old chair still sat in the corner like a badly kept secret.
Triōhnah rested motionless on his desk, silent now, its dark frame somehow making the room feel smaller.
Jup stared at it.
“I genuinely don’t know if I’m adapting to this or losing my mind.”
Mental instability remains unconfirmed.
“That’s not comforting either.”
His stomach twisted violently.
Hunger hit like a physical attack.
“Oh no.”
⸻
He destroyed the kitchen.
Rice, eggs, protein packs, bread, leftovers, fruit—anything he could find disappeared faster than he wanted to admit.
Then he found Dominique’s hidden emergency juice behind the vegetables again and stared at it for a full second.
“She’s definitely gonna hate me.”
He drank it anyway.
By the time he finished eating, the shaking in his hands had lessened enough for him to stop gripping the counter.
The screen flickered.
KI: 4%
Jup frowned.
“That’s it?”
Current recovery is primitive.
“Primitive?”
A new screen opened.
KI RECOVERY PATHS
Breath Control — Locked Meditative Circulation — Locked Combat Absorption — Locked Essenz Conversion — Locked Metabolic Recovery — Locked
CURRENT ACCESS: NONE
Jup stared at the list.
“…that feels disrespectful.”
Observation acknowledged.
Aya entered the kitchen and stopped.
Her eyes moved across the destroyed kitchen first, then to Jup, then to the empty juice container in his hand.
“You ate all that?”
Jup looked around at the evidence.
“…yes.”
Aya looked exhausted.
Not angry.
That somehow felt worse.
She quietly grabbed her bag.
“Eat before you leave next time.”
That was it.
No yelling.
No lecture.
No mention of the police calling her.
No replay of the night before.
Just a tired sentence that made Jup feel smaller than any shouting could have.
“Aya—”
She stopped but didn’t turn.
“I need you to be sixteen sometimes.”
That hit harder than anything that happened in the service lane.
Then she left.
Dominique walked into the kitchen rubbing her eyes, froze at the sight of the counter, and then slowly turned toward him. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
“…did you drink my emergency juice?”
Jup blinked.
“Your what?”
“My emergency juice.”
She looked heartbroken.
“You’re actually evil.”
Then she walked away.
That nearly made him laugh.
Nearly.
⸻
School felt offensively normal.
Lockers slammed.
Students yelled across the hallways.
Teachers pretended everything mattered with the same exhausted authority they always carried, while people were being worked like machines three districts away.
Large holographic screens rotated school announcements above the hallway traffic.
CMAS QUARTERLY EVALUATION CYCLE
18 DAYS REMAINING
The screen shifted.
Upcoming Evaluation Schedule
Week One: Academic Assessment
Week One: Combat Assessment
Week Two: Internal Force Conditioning
Week Two: Environmental Trial Assignments
Week Three: Behavioral Review
Final Day: Biometric Scan
The next screen rotated.
Top-ranked students may qualify for:
Military placement priority
Corporate internships
Scholarship acceleration
District housing upgrades
Expanded travel clearance
Then another screen displayed the ranking bands.
S Tier
A Tier
B Tier
C Tier
D Tier
Unranked
Groans spread through the hallway.
“Academic assessments start next week.”
“I hate writing prompts.”
“You hate spelling.”
“Combat week is worse.”
“Not if you can actually fight.”
“Please don’t give me tunnel duty when environmental assignments drop.”
“I heard flooded transit routes are worse.”
“My brother got a cave assignment last quarter and almost died.”
“That story gets more dramatic every time you tell it.”
“At least cave assignments pay extra if your team extracts enough Ether.”
“That’s if you survive long enough to cash it.”
Another student groaned loudly.
“I’m failing Internal Force Conditioning before it even starts.”
“You can’t even make your hand warm.”
“That was one time.”
“China Ascendant students would bully this entire school.”
“Nah, Africa United would.”
“That’s why America keeps shoving Ki classes down our throats.”
“Marcus is definitely dropping next quarter.”
“No way he stays C.”
“Still better than being Unranked.”
Someone glanced at Jup.
He kept walking.
Marcus was still publicly C-ranked.
Jup was still publicly Unranked.
Neither label felt real anymore.
Robert caught him near class.
“You keep disappearing like a ghost.”
“I keep going home.”
“That is objectively false.”
Jup kept walking, and Robert stayed beside him with the kind of persistence that made ignoring him impossible.
“You good?”
“Yes.”
Robert narrowed his eyes.
“You keep answering like you’re listening to something else.”
Jup stayed quiet.
Robert sighed.
“Cool. Very concerning.”
They split near class, and Robert pointed at Jup’s shoes before heading the other way.
“If you die mysteriously, I’m stealing those.”
“That’s weirdly specific.”
“I believe in planning.”
⸻
Civic Systems came early.
Ms. Calder stood in front of a giant diagram showing authority layers.
Governance.
Enforcement.
Compliance.
Appeals.
Clean boxes.
Clean lies.
“When enforcement fails,” Ms. Calder asked, “what keeps systems intact?”
Hands went up around the room.
“Fear.”
“Punishment.”
“Routine.”
“Incentives.”
Then she looked at Jup.
“Mr. Amon?”
The workers flashed through his mind.
Bruised faces.
Steel doors.
Silent hands moving because stopping was not allowed.
“Silence.”
The room quieted.
Ms. Calder tilted her head.
“Explain.”
Jup leaned back.
“When nothing changes on the surface, people assume nothing underneath needs fixing.”
The room stayed quiet.
Ms. Calder nodded slowly.
“That’s one way systems survive.”
⸻
Liz caught him after class and stared at him longer than usual.
“What?” Jup asked.
She frowned.
“Are you taller?”
Jup blinked.
“What?”
“Your posture changed.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
“And your shoulders look wider.”
“That sounds insulting.”
She laughed softly.
“It wasn’t.”
Then her expression changed. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
“You look exhausted.”
“I’m fine.”
She gave him a look that made it clear she didn’t believe him.
“Whatever you’re doing…”
Her voice lowered.
“Don’t let it eat you.”
Then she walked away.
⸻
After school, Jup locked himself in his room and opened the payment logs.
One by one.
First repair.
Normal.
Second repair.
Normal.
Third repair— he leaned forward.
Same clearing branch.
He opened the fourth.
Same branch.
His breathing slowed.
Then he opened the transit yard payment.
Same branch.
Same routing pattern.
Same masked clearing signature.
His stomach dropped.
They had been moving him.
The jobs weren’t random.
They had funneled him.
Every normal repair had been a leash disguised as work.
He looked at Triōhnah.
“My father wasn’t just a soldier.”
Negative.
“That answer feels way too casual.”
Observation acknowledged.
Jup leaned forward, his thoughts sharpening around the memory of the man in the dark suit and the way his body had absorbed damage like structure had mattered more than strength.
“What did that man do?”
Triōhnah responded instantly.
You utilized external Ki discharge.
Target utilized internal Ki reinforcement.
“Translate.”
Your attack was stronger.
His defense was smarter.
That landed hard.
Jup sat there for a moment, letting that truth settle into the room with him.
The man hadn’t survived because Jup was weak.
He survived because he knew how to hold himself together from the inside, and Jup had nearly torn himself apart trying to throw everything outward.
“…teach me.”
⸻
The first hour was failure.
His breathing kept breaking.
His focus collapsed every time pain pulled his attention sideways.
Ki slipped whenever he tried to control it, either vanishing before he could feel it properly or gathering too sharply and forcing him to stop before it turned into another backlash.
Frustration built fast.
“I’m doing exactly what you said.”
Incorrect.
Jup glared at the drone.
“That felt personal.”
Correct.
He tried again.
And again.
And again.
Each attempt taught him what not to do before it taught him anything useful.
Forcing it made the pressure scatter.
Holding his breath made it collapse.
Chasing the feeling made it disappear.
The closest he came was when he stopped trying to grab it and paid attention to where it already wanted to move.
Then something almost clicked.
A faint current moved through his forearm.
Held.
For one second.
Then broke apart.
The screen appeared.
KI: 14%
13%
12%
Jup smiled despite himself.
“There you are.”
Then it vanished.
KI: 9%
Jup exhaled hard and leaned back, frustration mixing with something too small to call progress and too real to dismiss.
“Barely counts.”
Minimal circulation achieved.
“That was you being encouraging?”
Accurate.
Jup noticed a small bolt on his desk.
He picked it up, turned it between his fingers, and focused.
Its structure opened beneath his perception.
Density.
Threads.
Weak points.
Composition.
He understood it.
Then tried to change it.
The bolt trembled.
Its threading shifted by a fraction, so small he would have missed it if he had not felt the change happen from the inside.
For one impossible second, the alteration held cleanly enough for him to know it was real.
Then pain exploded behind his eyes.
He nearly collapsed.
Triōhnah spoke immediately.
Molecular stress detected.
Host neural strain elevated.
Ki depletion: 7%.
Jup gripped the desk and breathed hard until the room stopped tilting.
Then he stared at the bolt.
Same size.
Almost the same structure.
But not identical.
He hadn’t moved it.
He had changed one tiny part of what it was.
That thought settled into him quietly.
Not victory.
Proof.
He picked the bolt up again, but this time he didn’t try to change it.
He only held it and let the knowledge of its structure sit in his mind.
For once, the silence did not feel like something watching him.
It felt like a question.
Jup looked at the bolt in his hand, then at Triōhnah’s dark frame across the room.
The system had called him Unranked.
Cognis had called him Authority Zero.
His father had left him a machine that spoke in warnings and restrictions.
But none of those names explained what he was becoming.
Jup closed his hand around the bolt and felt the faint altered threading press against his palm.
For the first time, he understood the worst part.
The scariest thing wasn’t that he could change matter.
It was that a small part of him wanted to try again.