Thursday arrived the way Baekho did everything—without asking if he was ready.

  Aiden woke before his alarm because his body had learned to anticipate punishment.

  The dorm corridor was still dim, the lights held at a low maintenance glow. Somewhere down the hall, someone’s shower ran in a steady hiss. The air smelled like detergent and the faint metallic tang of the academy’s warding plates warming with the day.

  He dressed in the uniform and checked his tablet.

  Thursday: Alchemy and Enchantment.

  Friday: Corruption Studies.

  Saturday: Mana Theory (half-day).

  Sunday: Rest.

  Rest, Baekho called it.

  Mercy is what he felt.

  -----

  THURSDAY — ALCHEMY AND ENCHANTMENT

  Alchemy classrooms were the first place the academy felt like a school instead of a fortress.

  Benches. Glass. Labels. The precise, patient smell of chemicals that didn’t care about rumors.

  The instructor didn’t look at Aiden like he was an eyesore.

  He looked at him like he was a teenager with clumsy hands and too much potential for mistakes.

  “Mana is not a hammer,” the instructor said. “It is a thread. Pull too hard, and it will snap. Push too fast, and it will tangle. Alchemy and enchantments are the art of weaving, not striking.”

  Aiden stared at the array of vials and powders in front of him and tried not to think about corruption like a second set of teeth in his chest.

  They were first taught safety warded gloves, containment circles etched into the bench surface, the proper way to vent excess mana away from volatile mixtures.

  Then a simple enchantment:

  A strip of cloth.

  A stabilizing rune.

  A thin, disciplined thread of mana pressed, formed into shape.

  Aiden kept his output small. A controlled ember.

  He thought he’d feel relief in a class where nobody tried to hit him.

  Instead, he felt a different kind of pressure.

  Alchemy demanded patience.

  Patience demanded stillness.

  Stillness gave him room to hear himself.

  And when he listened, he could always hear it beneath the red warmth of his mana, the colder current idling like something trained to wait.

  He finished his work. He didn’t fail.

  And when the instructor walked past and checked his rune, the man nodded once.

  “Acceptable,” he said.

  Aiden felt the word settle into him like a coin.

  Not kindness.

  Currency.

  -----

  FRIDAY — CORRUPTION STUDIES

  The department existed in a wing that looked like it had been designed by people who didn’t want to admit what it was.

  The corridor was bright.

  The doors were clean.

  The signage used neutral fonts.

  But the wards in the walls were heavier.

  Aiden felt them against his skin the way you felt pressure changes before a storm.

  Corruption Studies wasn’t just a lesson.

  It was a warning.

  The lecture hall had a single symbol burned into the display wall: a circle broken by a jagged line.

  The instructor, an older woman with silver at her temples and eyes that didn’t blink often, began without preamble.

  “Corruption is not a fairytale,” she said. “It is not a myth used to scare children into obedience. It is a measurable phenomenon with predictable patterns.

  “And it is permanent.”

  Aiden’s red mana tightened.

  He forced his shoulders to stay loose.

  Around him, students shifted in their seats.

  Some nervous.

  Some curious.

  A few—too few—bored, as if danger became ordinary when it lived in a textbook.

  The instructor tapped her tablet and the display filled with diagrams.

  Baselines.

  Delta checks.

  Residue signatures.

  “WODS/SCAG provides most of our field data,” she said. “We teach you what you are allowed to know. Anything beyond this room is clearance dependent.

  “Which means some of you will die of curiosity.”

  A few students laughed, uncertain.

  The instructor didn’t.

  “Our corruption detection is not perfect,” she said. “People like to believe they will know a monster when they see one."

  “They don’t."

  “You know a monster when it finally bares it fangs.”

  Aiden kept his face empty.

  He couldn’t afford a flinch.

  He couldn’t afford to look too interested.

  Halfway through the lecture, the instructor shifted from diagrams to case examples.

  Not names.

  Not faces.

  Just the shape of decisions.

  A recruit who disappeared on a day off.

  A student who came back “calmer,” as if fear had been surgically removed.

  A squadmate who began insisting on private conversations.

  A signature offer:

  CONTROL.

  The word landed in Aiden’s stomach like a stone.

  He felt it, suddenly, like the academy had reached into his future and pressed a finger against a bruise.

  He looked down at his notes.

  Pretended his hand wasn’t tightening around the stylus.

  To his right, a girl sat with her hair tied back tight and her posture held in careful discipline. Blue mana brushed her skin like cool air—faint, steady.

  Ji-Min Lee.

  Aiden had noticed her before. Everyone did, eventually.

  She was one of those students who made the room feel quieter without trying. When other people argued, her voice came in measured and low.

  Calm.

  Fair.

  The kind of person instructors trusted because she seemed to want the same thing they wanted: order.

  Now, as the instructor spoke about contracts and costs, Ji-Min’s expression didn’t change.

  But her fingers did.

  She rotated her simple ring, silver, unadorned, a habit that looked like thought.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Then she lifted her hand.

  “What happens exactly when somebody makes a contract with an Inferni?”

  The room held still.

  The instructor’s gaze settled on her.

  “At first, not much,” the woman said. “Your mana seems more controlled. More powerful. Your thoughts finally feel clear and your indecision is replaced with confidence.”

  “You feel completed.”

  “And then the second price comes. The moment the contract locks, your mana starts to feel wrong, if you know what to look for. It doesn’t disappear immediately. It corrupts slowly, layer by layer, until corruption is all you can use and the person you once were is devoured.”

  Ji-Min nodded as if she were filing the information in the correct place.

  Aiden tried to tell himself it was nothing.

  Students asked questions.

  Smart students asked precise questions.

  But something in the phrasing stayed under his skin.

  Not how to avoid it.

  Not how to report it.

  How it starts, what it cost.

  As if she were already past the decision and needed only details.

  At the end of class, students rose and moved toward the doors.

  Aiden waited, letting the crowd thin the way he always did.

  As he gathered his tablet, he saw Ji-Min stand and slip a folded paper into her sleeve instead of into her bag.

  Not contraband.

  Not proof.

  Just a motion that didn’t match her.

  Measured people didn’t hide.

  They organized.

  He watched her leave the hall without looking back.

  Aiden’s red mana ticked once, sharp with irritation he didn’t understand.

  Beneath it, the colder current pressed upward like something pleased.

  He pushed it down.

  Not now.

  Not here.

  -----

  SATURDAY — MANA THEORY (HALF-DAY)

  Mana Theory felt like someone trying to turn a wildfire into a formula.

  Equations on the wall display.

  Vector diagrams.

  Talk of flow rates, resonance, and how the body’s nervous system acted like a conduit that could be trained.

  The instructor, a thin man with tired eyes that looked like he’d explained the same thing a thousand times to students who thought power was a gift instead of a responsibility.

  “Mana is predictable,” he said. “Control is not strength. True control lies in precision and repetition."

  “If you cannot reproduce it, it is not skill. It is luck.”

  Aiden wrote everything down.

  Halfway through the lecture, the instructor fielded questions.

  Aiden surprised himself by raising his hand.

  The instructor’s tired eyes landed on him. “Yes?”

  “If mana is so fundamental,” Aiden said carefully, “why are NAWs the majority?”

  A ripple of attention moved through the hall—people pretending not to look while listening anyway.

  The instructor didn’t seem offended. He only looked older.

  “Because reality doesn’t care what would be convenient,” he said. “Awakening is common enough to shape policy and rare enough to ruin families. That contradiction is most of what you’ll be studying here.”

  He didn’t trust his memory.

  His old life had already started dissolving at the edges.

  He wasn’t sure how long he could rely on anything that wasn’t recorded.

  When the half-day ended, students spilled into the afternoon.

  Saturday afternoons were the academy’s illusion of freedom: open training, clubs, the chance to pretend they were normal teenagers instead of future casualties.

  Aiden started to go back to his room.

  Then he saw the notice board.

  A crowd had formed in front of it.

  Students pressed in, trying to read over shoulders. Someone laughed too loudly. Someone cursed under their breath. A few stood back, faces tight with the kind of anxiety that looked like hunger.

  Aiden’s stomach tightened.

  He already knew what it was before he could read the header.

  PROVISIONAL PORTAL TEAM ASSIGNMENTS — YEAR ONE

  The words were printed in three languages.

  Aiden moved closer.

  Not fast.

  Not eager.

  Just another student trying to see.

  He found his name.

  BLACKTHORN, AIDEN — TEAM A.

  A list beside it.

  PATEL, ARJUN.

  VASQUEZ, ELENA.

  CHOI, HYE-RIN.

  THORN, CALEB.

  Five names.

  Five colors.

  Core awakened slots.

  Aiden’s red mana flared like it wanted to bite.

  He forced it down.

  A team meant eyes.

  A team meant drills.

  A team meant being measured by people who could compare his baseline to his deltas and decide whether the gap was human or something worse.

  “Hey,” a voice said, bright as electricity.

  Arjun Patel elbowed his way to Aiden’s side like they’d been friends for years.

  His yellow mana crackled faintly at his fingertips, restless.

  “Team A,” Arjun said, grinning. “We’re either going to be famous or dead.”

  Aiden didn’t answer.

  Arjun didn’t seem to mind.

  He leaned closer, voice dropping. “Thorn’s on it.”

  Aiden followed his gaze.

  Caleb Thorn stood a few steps back from the board, posture straight, expression controlled into something that almost passed for boredom.

  Blue mana, faint and cool.

  Aiden could feel the weight of the name more than the mana.

  Thorn.

  Same name as the Headmaster.

  Her ward.

  Aiden looked away.

  Hye-Rin Choi arrived like a rumor made flesh—quiet steps, a perfectly measured smile, purple mana brushing the air at the edge of perception like perfume.

  Her eyes flicked to Aiden.

  Not fear.

  Not disgust.

  Interest.

  As if his existence had finally become relevant.

  “Blackthorn,” she said, polite enough to be sharp. “Guess the academy couldn’t resist putting a Blackthorn and a Thorn on the same team. What’s next, a Rose?”

  Aiden’s lips twitched, the faintest hint of amusement breaking through his usual stillness. He glanced at the board again, as if the joke didn’t deserve more than that.

  She looked past him at the board again, as if confirming the assignment wasn’t a mistake.

  “Provisional,” she murmured. “So they can break us and reassemble the pieces.”

  Elena Vasquez arrived last, green mana calm around her, eyes already scanning the board like it was a map.

  “Five-person composition,” she said, as if reciting a checklist. “They’ll want cohesion by the end of month one.”

  Aiden stared at her.

  “How do you know that?”

  Elena shrugged. “Because they always do.”

  Aiden’s throat tightened.

  Always.

  As if the academy had been doing this long enough for it to be routine.

  It had.

  Across the board, another crowd formed around one name in particular.

  PARK, JOON-HO — TEAM B.

  People moved as if gravity had shifted.

  Joon’s presence did that.

  Even printed, his name pulled attention.

  Aiden saw the rest of the list.

  LEE, JI-MIN.

  PETROV, NADIA.

  KIM, MIN-JUN.

  PARK, SEONG-HYUN.

  Aiden’s gaze paused on Ji-Min.

  Her name sat there like it belonged.

  Blue slot.

  Defensive stability.

  The kind of teammate you wanted.

  The kind of teammate you trusted.

  Aiden remembered the question she’d asked in Corruption Studies.

  What happens exactly when somebody makes a contract?

  His stomach tightened.

  It meant nothing, he told himself.

  It meant too much.

  Both could be true.

  Aiden stepped back from the board before anyone could see his face.

  He spent the rest of the day in his room, training. The exercises were meant to be simple—control drills, mana flow patterns, the kind of repetition that built a foundation. But as the hours passed, he couldn’t ignore the truth pressing at the edges of his focus.

  The corruption wasn’t just waiting. It was helping.

  His mana bent to his will faster, sharper, like a blade honed too quickly. What should have taken weeks to master came to him in hours, the red warmth of his power burning brighter, steadier. And beneath it, the colder current coiled tighter, pleased.

  Aiden stopped only when his hands began to shake—not from exhaustion, but from the quiet, growing certainty that his progress wasn’t entirely his own.

  -----

  SUNDAY — REST

  Sunday was a leash disguised as a necklace.

  Students were permitted off campus in approved windows, through approved gates, into approved districts. If you had clearance, you could even take the portal to Infernal Haven.

  They were tracked.

  They were monitored.

  They were told it was for their safety.

  Aiden believed that, in the way you believed the bars of a cage were technically designed to keep predators out.

  But the bars were still bars.

  He left the academy late morning, moving with the stream of other students, crest on his sleeve like a target.

  Seoul swallowed them quickly.

  Underground corridors and reinforced stations, neon signage and security checkpoints, the quiet hum of wards in the concrete.

  Aiden kept his head down.

  He wasn’t here to enjoy a day off.

  He was here because he’d spent a week being watched inside Baekho, and his skin felt too tight with it.

  And because, when he was honest, he wanted to see if Ji-Min’s hidden paper had been nothing.

  He saw her near the station entrance.

  She was alone.

  He slowed.

  He pretended to check his tablet.

  Ji-Min adjusted her sleeve with the same deliberate motion he’d seen the day before.

  Then she moved.

  Not toward the usual student cluster.

  Toward a side corridor marked with restricted access signage.

  Aiden’s pulse ticked faster.

  He followed at a distance.

  Not close enough to be obvious.

  Not far enough to lose her.

  The city made it easy to be swallowed.

  A turn.

  A crowd.

  A train arriving.

  For a moment, Ji-Min’s blue presence vanished into the noise of other mana signatures.

  Aiden pushed through people and caught sight of her again—just the back of her head, hair tied tight, moving with purpose.

  Then the doors closed.

  The train pulled away.

  Aiden stood on the platform with the wrong kind of emptiness in his chest.

  He had followed.

  He had failed.

  He hated how much that felt like relief.

  He hated how much it felt like fear.

  His tablet buzzed.

  A notification he didn’t remember subscribing to.

  A WODS/SCAG public advisory about stability ratings.

  STABILITY IS SURVIVAL.

  The slogan scrolled across the screen like a verdict.

  He shoved the tablet into his pocket.

  He needed air.

  He needed somewhere loud enough that his thoughts couldn’t get traction.

  He ended up in a bar because the city’s approved districts were full of places designed to keep people sedated.

  Music.

  Bright screens.

  Tables packed close.

  Aiden chose a seat in a back corner where he could see the entrance without looking like he was trying.

  He ordered something bitter he didn’t finish.

  He sat with his shoulders tight and his mind running in circles.

  If Ji-Min was clean, he was paranoid.

  If she wasn’t, and he did nothing, he would be complicit.

  And he had no proof.

  Only a question.

  A sleeve.

  A missed train.

  Aiden’s fingers curled around the glass.

  His red mana simmered.

  The colder current beneath it stirred, amused.

  Then someone sat down next to him without asking.

  The man looked ordinary in the way predators always tried to look ordinary.

  Clean jacket.

  Short hair.

  A face that would disappear into a crowd the moment you turned away.

  But the air around him wasn’t empty.

  It had weight.

  Aiden’s skin prickled.

  His corruption responded like a dog recognizing a scent.

  The man smiled, friendly enough to be a blade.

  “You’re not hard to find alone,” he said in smooth English.

  Aiden didn’t move.

  He didn’t reach for mana.

  He didn’t let his face change.

  Because the academy had taught him one truth in a single week:

  If someone walked into your space like they belonged there, they usually did.

  The man’s gaze flicked to Aiden’s wrist.

  Not to the uniform.

  Not to the crest.

  To something under the skin.

  His smile widened by a fraction.

  “Don’t worry,” he said softly. “I’m not here to report you.

  “I’m here because someone like you shouldn’t have to pretend you’re alone.”

  Aiden’s stomach tightened.

  The words were wrong.

  Too intimate.

  Too precise.

  He forced his voice out, quiet and controlled.

  “Who are you?”

  The man’s eyes gleamed with something that wasn’t human warmth.

  “A friend,” he said. “If you’re wise.”

  “And a disaster,” he added, almost kindly, “if you’re not.”

  Aiden felt the trap close—not around his body, but around his choices.

  The man leaned forward, voice dropping beneath the music.

  “I can smell what you are,” he said.

  Aiden kept breathing.

  He kept his hands on the table.

  He kept the corruption down where it belonged.

  The man’s smile stayed in place.

  “Relax,” he murmured. “If you’d made a contract with me, you’d already know my name.”

  He watched Aiden like he could taste the answer.

  “But you have made one,” he said softly. “Care to share?”

  He didn’t wait.

  “Or were you saving your curiosity for Ji-Min Lee?” he asked, casual as small talk. “Why were you following her?”

  Aiden’s pulse spiked.

  “I wasn’t,” he said.

  Varrik’s eyes stayed gentle.

  “Of course,” he murmured. “Hard to admit with your history.”

  He leaned back as if the conversation bored him.

  “Don’t worry. I’m playing hard to get with her,” he added lightly. “It keeps people polite. It keeps them hungry.”

  His smile showed teeth for the first time.

  “But I’ve already made plans. When she’s ready to stop pretending, she’ll sign.”

  His smile didn’t change, but something in it settled as if Aiden’s pulse had answered for him.

  Then he spoke a word with quiet confidence, like a title that mattered.

  “Varrik,” he said.

  The name sat between them like a lit match.

  Aiden’s mind flashed back to the Corruption Studies lecture.

  CONTROL.

  Aiden’s throat went dry.

  Varrik tilted his head, studying him.

  “I’m going to offer you something,” he said.

  His gaze flicked—quick, practiced—to the academy crest, then back to Aiden’s eyes.

  “Power,” he said, like it was a simple fact. “More of it. Cleaner. Easier to hold.”

  “Baekho doesn’t put uniforms on accidents. It puts them on investments.”

  Aiden’s fingers tightened on the glass.

  Outside, Seoul’s wards hummed beneath the city like a heartbeat.

  Inside, the music kept playing like nothing in the world was about to change.

  And Aiden understood, with cold clarity, that his first week at Baekho hadn’t been the beginning.

  It had been the funnel.

  This was the mouth of it.