**Previous Saturday**
Seraphina sat on the edge of her bed with the book Felix had brought her still open in her hands, though she hadn’t turned a page in several minutes.
Her eyes stayed fixed on the same paragraph without actually reading it, her mind kept drifting back to yesterday’s session instead. *Lower your center. Control your mana. Power isn’t control.*
She closed the book slowly. For a long time she had no reason to get stronger, no reason to care what tomorrow looked like.
That had changed. She wanted to learn. She wanted to actually improve. And, though she’d never have said this part out loud, she wanted to surprise him.
When Felix came back Thursday, she wanted him to see that she’d remembered everything.
A small smile crossed her face before she caught it and smoothed it away.
Her eyes drifted to the small bell mounted beside the door. She reached over and rang it.
*Ding.*
A guard appeared a few moments later. "Yes?"
"I want a message sent to Chief Rask."
"What message?"
"I want access to the training facility. Two hours a day, every day I’m permitted to use it."
The guard hesitated. "That’s something the Chief will have to authorize."
"I know. I only need you to pass along the request."
He nodded and left. Seraphina looked back down at the book, fingers brushing the cover.
*He’ll be surprised.*
Gideon read the request on his desk twice before looking up at the guard who’d delivered it. "Seraphina wants independent access to the training facility?"
"Yes, sir. Two hours."
That was new. Until now she’d only trained directly under Felix’s supervision, and Felix had been careful about starting her from the absolute basics. Gideon picked up his communicator and called Elena.
"Director Voss."
"What is it?"
"Seraphina’s requested facility access outside her sessions with Felix. Independent training, two hours."
A pause on the line. "Has she shown any aggression? Any resistance?"
"None."
Elena considered it briefly. "Approve it."
"You’re certain?"
"If she wants to practice what Felix has already taught her, that’s a good sign. Keep the usual security measures running." A beat. "And have her mana jammers disabled for the session, she can’t actually train with them active. Reactivate them the moment the two hours are up."
"Understood."
The call ended. Gideon turned back to the guard. "Take her down. Exactly two hours, jammers off for the duration, back on the second the time’s up."
"Yes, sir."
When Seraphina was told, she stood immediately, set the book carefully on her pillow, and followed the guard through the underground corridors. Before they reached the training room, he paused at a control panel.
"Your suppressors are being disabled for this session," he said. "Two hours. They’ll come back online the moment your time’s up, don’t test that."
"I understand."
The training room was empty when she stepped inside, exactly what she wanted. She walked to the center of the floor and closed her eyes, remembering Felix’s first lesson. *Forget that you’re an S-rank.*
She took a slow breath and let herself actually feel the reservoir sitting inside her core: the enormous, unrefined weight of it, the same power she’d spent years treating as something to simply release and let destroy whatever was in front of her. Felix had shown her there was another way. Control.
She guided a small amount of mana through her body, just enough until a faint blue glow gathered at her palm. She concentrated, and water began pulling itself together above her hand.
It trembled. The shape collapsed.
She opened her eyes, watched the droplets fall, and heard his voice in her head again. *Again.*
She tried once more, slower this time, with even less mana. The water gathered into a small sphere and held there, suspended above her palm, almost nothing compared to the power sitting behind it, but controlled. For the first time, she’d shaped her own mana instead of simply letting it go.
A faint smile touched her face. "Again."
Elsewhere in Acheron Deep, another prisoner sat alone in her cell, pink hair falling messily around her face, light pink eyes wide with fear, curled into the corner of her bed with her arms locked around her knees.
"Stay away..."
Across from her, keeping a careful distance, sat a woman in the formal uniform of the rehabilitation division, a specialist assigned to attempt contact with one of the facility’s harder cases.
"I’m not going to hurt you."
"Stay away."
"I only want to talk."
"Don’t."
The girl squeezed her eyes shut. "I’m a monster."
"You’re not a monster."
"Yes, I am. I’ll hurt you." Her breathing sped up. "Please..."
"I won’t come any closer," the specialist said gently, and stayed exactly where she was. The girl looked up, eyes full of fear.
"Can you tell me your name?"
A sharp shake of the head. "No."
"That’s all right."
"Don’t come closer."
"I won’t."
Minutes passed in silence, the girl still trembling, nothing changing. Eventually the specialist decided to use her ability, not ordinary healing mana, but something built specifically for cases like this: a talent for reaching into the mind itself, redirecting unstable thought patterns, easing emotional spikes that wouldn’t settle on their own.
Exactly the kind of tool this program had been designed to use.
She released only the smallest trace of it, let it cross the distance between them, and settle into the girl’s mind.
The trembling stopped instantly.
The specialist froze. The girl went completely still. For one full second, the room held nothing but silence.
Then the specialist felt it, her mana hadn’t met resistance. It had been *noticed.* Something deep inside that stillness had turned its attention toward her, and it did not feel like anything she’d braced for.
"What—"
The backlash hit before she could finish the thought. She wrenched her mana back on instinct, too late, the force of it threw her clean out of her chair.
*CRACK.*
She hit the floor hard, blood already running from her nose, then from the corners of her eyes.
The guards outside heard the impact and had the door open in seconds. "Doctor!" One rushed to the fallen specialist. "Get her to medical, now!"
The other guard turned toward the prisoner.
She’d curled into an even tighter ball than before, shaking again, voice barely audible.
"Stay away..." A shuddering breath. "I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want to—" She buried her face against her knees.
"Please..."
The guards carried the specialist out. The door closed. Silence settled back over the cell, broken only by quiet, broken sobs.
"I don’t want to hurt anyone," she whispered to no one, the words echoing softly off the walls.
The prisoner’s name was Liora Morven.
And nobody in Acheron Deep yet understood what kind of monster or what kind of person was sleeping behind those trembling eyes.