Waking up felt like swallowing a handful of hot coals.
Kael gasped, his eyes snapping open.
He expected the pitch-black ceiling of the dungeon and the smell of dead monster.
Instead, he found a pristine white ceiling and the sharp, sterile scent of high-grade antiseptic.
He tried to sit up.
His chest immediately seized, but the pain was entirely wrong.
It wasn’t the jagged, breathless agony of shattered bone tearing into a lung.
It felt like hot wire and grinding chalk, a frantic, itchy friction deep inside his ribcage.
“I wouldn’t move.”
The voice came from the corner of the room.
Kael turned his head.
Mori sat in a rigid metal chair under a single lumen-lamp, her legs crossed, a data slate resting on her knee.
She was no longer wearing her perfectly pressed academy coat; she was in a practical black undershirt, her sleeves rolled up to the elbows.
Her hands were stained with dried blood.
Kael realized vaguely that it was his.
Kael forced a raspy exhale, trying to shake the fog from his head.
“Is this the afterlife?
Because the decor is incredibly boring.”
Mori didn’t smile.
She didn’t even blink.
She just stared at him with the cold, precise intensity of a researcher dissecting a new species.
“Not funny.
Got it,” Kael muttered, leaning his head back against the pillow.
“Where am I?”
“Restricted medical wing,” Mori answered smoothly.
“My father’s clearance.
The monitoring staff doesn’t have access to this floor.
Which is fortunate for you, considering what I found.”
Kael looked down at his chest.
His uniform had been cut away, his torso wrapped in heavy compression bandages.
Underneath the gauze, his skin radiated an unnatural, feverish heat.
“I found a C-rank Grave-Stalker with an iron pin driven through its optic nerve,” Mori stated, her voice dropping to a flat, clinical whisper.
“And I found an F-rank student with three shattered ribs, a punctured lung, and massive internal bleeding.
A fatal assessment by every metric in the registry.”
Kael met her eyes, keeping his face perfectly blank.
“I have a fast metabolism.”
[Error: ‘Fast metabolism’ is a statistically terrible lie.
Recommend finding a new excuse before the B-Rank female decides to dissect you herself.]
Mori stood up, walking slowly to the edge of his cot.
She reached out and pressed two fingers directly against his bandaged ribs.
Kael winced, but he didn’t scream.
He could literally feel the bone fusing under her touch.
“Two hours ago, these ribs were completely detached from your sternum,” Mori said, her dark eyes searching his face.
“Now?
They are hairline fractures.
Fast metabolism doesn’t knit bone, Morgan.
Your cellular division is operating at a rate that defies every registered medical parameter in the Academy.”
“Must be the nutrient paste they feed us in the basement,” Kael deflected.
“Builds strong bones.”
Mori pulled her hand back, her expression tightening into a scowl.
“Stop playing the idiot.
It’s insulting to both of us.
My father tasked me with monitoring the provisional students.
I am the one who reviews the anomaly reports before they go to the government liaisons.”
Kael’s heart skipped a beat.
The quiet watcher from the balcony.
It had been her all along.
“Sebastian confessed to locking you in the lower pens,” Mori continued, pacing a slow circle around the foot of his bed.
“He intended for you to die.
You should be dead.
But you parry strikes you shouldn’t be able to see, and you survive monsters you shouldn’t be able to scratch.
Your official registry file has a blank evolution ceiling.”
She stopped pacing and leaned over him, planting both hands on the rails of the cot.
“The monitoring division thinks the blank ceiling is a clerical error,” Mori said softly.
“But I was in that dungeon.
I saw the ambient mana in the air.
You didn’t just kill that Grave-Stalker, Kael.
You absorbed it.”
The silence in the room became suffocating.
Kael’s Faster Brain raced through a dozen different lies, but looking into Mori’s calculating eyes, he knew none of them would work. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
She was too smart.
She was the system functioning as intended—analytical, duty-bound, and ruthless.
If she reported this, the government field teams would be dragging him to a black site by morning.
Kael dropped the sarcastic smile.
The humor vanished, replaced by a cold, precise edge.
“So what happens now?
Do you call the liaisons?
Hand the anomaly over to the government so your father can get a commendation for raising the perfect, obedient daughter?”
Mori held his gaze for a long time.
The insult landed, but she didn’t react to it.
The tension between them was palpable, a heavy friction born of two people who understood exactly how dangerous the other was.
Then, slowly, Mori stood up straight and picked up her data slate.
She tapped the screen a few times, bringing up the official incident report for the lower dungeons.
“A C-rank Grave-Stalker broke free due to a rusted locking mechanism,” Mori read aloud, her voice perfectly devoid of emotion.
“It was neutralized by a faulty gas line explosion in the feeding chamber.
Provisional student Kael Morgan was found unconscious due to smoke inhalation.
No anomalous mana signatures detected.”
Kael stared at her, stunned.
“You’re lying to your father.”
“I am securing a variable,” Mori corrected sharply.
She slipped the data slate into her pocket.
“If the government gets you, they will dissect you, and I will learn nothing.
You are an equation that breaks the logic of my world, Morgan.
I don’t destroy data until I understand it.”
She walked to the door, resting her hand on the heavy metal handle.
She didn’t look back.
“I am going to watch your every move.
If you step out of line, or if you become a threat to this Academy, I will personally sign your capture order.
Get some sleep.
You have combat drills at dawn.”
The heavy metal door clicked shut, leaving Kael alone in the sterile room.
The blue screen pulsed once more in the quiet.
[Warning: The B-Rank female is terrifying.
I like her.]
“I was going for charming, but I guess that works too.”