The air in the lower lecture atrium was heavier than expected.
Not warm. Not stale. Just… *tense*. Like the stone walls held their breath between every footstep. Thirty students filed into the tiered room in pairs or singles. No one spoke loudly. No one laughed.
They were here to learn **aura**.
And everyone had something to prove.
Atlas took a seat in the second row from the back. Not hidden, but far enough to see everyone else. From here, he could study body language, which students leaned forward, which ones slouched. Who shifted their weight. Who kept their hands too close to their belt where a blade might be.
*Same room. Different battlefield.*
The instructor entered precisely on the hour.
She was tall, cloaked in navy robes with silver trim and an insignia Atlas didn't recognize—three concentric circles surrounding a single downward point. She wore no sword. No armor. Her hair was pulled tightly back, and her eyes scanned the room without blinking.
"I am Magistra Ven," she said. Her voice was soft, but sharp. "You are here because the Academy believes you may one day survive on the same battlefield as a true wielder of aura."
A pause. Then:
"Most of you won't."
A few students straightened in their seats.
Ven paced once before the instructor's dais and stopped beside a circular sigil embedded in the stone floor.
"Today is not theory. Not lineage discussion. Not your noble family's favorite aura story," she said, bored already. "Today is *breath*. Today is *control*."
She tapped the floor. The sigil glowed faintly.
"Who here thinks aura is just energy?"
A few hands.
She ignored them.
"Aura," she said, "is the resonance of the body, the mind, and the will. It is not mana. It is not fire. It is not light. It is *you*. Amplified."
She pointed to a blond boy near the front. "You. What's your name?"
"Jorran Valreigh, House Valreigh."
"What kind of aura trait does your house manifest?"
Jorran straightened. "Steel Thread. It reinforces nerve response speed by 60% under pressure and creates overlapping afterimages."
"Do you know what that trait *costs* your body?"
"…No, Magistra."
Ven nodded once. "Tearing. Seizures. Organ erosion if maintained too long. And your father still uses it, doesn't he?"
"Yes."
"Then he's either brave or already dying."
Silence.
Ven turned slowly to the rest of the class.
"*Power is not a gift. It's a wager.* You offer your body. You offer your discipline. And if the aura agrees, it gives you something in return. Sometimes strength. Sometimes speed. Sometimes control."
She looked to the back row.
"Sometimes madness."
Atlas didn't flinch.
He felt her eyes leave him only after an extra beat.
---
They moved next into the practice hall connected by a low archway. The ceiling opened partially, revealing strips of sky. Training rings were marked with wax-drawn boundaries.
"First years do not spar yet," Ven said. "But you will learn how to *project*. Stand in a line."
Atlas moved into position with the others. To his right, Arin Drossel rolled his shoulders and grinned sideways at him. "Nervous?"
"No."
"Good. Then I don't have to feel bad for showing off."
Atlas ignored him.
To his left, a girl with golden skin and raven-black hair braided down her spine stood perfectly still, hands at her sides. **Serenya Vaelcrest.** She hadn't even looked at him.
Ven raised her hand.
"Center your breath in your chest. Lower your diaphragm. Feel the tension in your limbs. Not your muscles—the *nerves*. That is where aura lives."
Atlas closed his eyes.
He reached inward.
At first, he felt nothing.
Then—faint—there it was. A *pull*. Not warmth, not fire. Something more like static. Like pressure behind glass. It curled around his ribs, his chest, the tips of his fingers.
*There you are,* he thought.
He tried to move it.
The aura resisted.
Then surged.
His body shuddered once. The breath caught in his throat.
He gritted his teeth. Forced the energy outward.
A flicker of light shimmered along his forearm. Faint. Almost invisible—but there.
He opened his eyes.
Around him, a dozen students were struggling. Aura manifested in different ways:
- Light shimmering around the skin
- Whispers of heat or cold along the arms
- A low vibration across the floor
- One boy began to weep involuntarily—*his aura responded through emotional dissonance*
Arin's hands sparked. Actual sparks. Small, uncontrolled arcs of static that fizzled into the air.
"Oops," he said.
Ven walked the line like a blade unsheathed.
When she reached Atlas, she paused.
"Interesting flow," she murmured.
"What kind of trait is it?" he asked quietly.
She tilted her head.
"Suppression-type. But it fights you. Your channels are resisting. You're not in harmony yet."
"Can I change that?"
"No," she said simply. "You have to *earn* it."
She walked on.
---
After class, Arin caught up with him at the outer fountain near the obsidian wall.
"That was wild," he said. "My whole hand went numb."
"You lost control."
"I *found* chaos," Arin grinned. "It's the same thing with worse marketing."
Atlas crouched by the fountain edge and dipped his fingers into the water.
"What does 'suppression-type' mean?" he asked.
Arin leaned down beside him.
"Depends on what part of you gets amplified," he said. "Some people get traits that boost aggression. Others enhance reaction, movement, elemental output. Suppression-types are usually defensive. Or… weird."
"Weird?"
"Like—manipulating timing. Perception. Rhythm. Aura that doesn't add power, but *removes it* from others."
Atlas thought of the way the shadow in his white realm moved. Of how it countered *too perfectly*. Of how the Second Fang wasn't built to overwhelm, but to interrupt.
He stood up.
"I need a library," he said.
---
The Academy archives sat beneath the south hall—down two levels of spiral stair and into a curved subterranean vault carved into the mountain base.
Atlas moved through shelves in silence.
Hundreds of books. Most on lineage technique. Sword law. Channeling paths.
He found a narrow text near the back. Worn, hand-bound. Title almost faded.
> *Reactive Traits and the Delay Principle*
He sat and read for hours.
Aura wasn't just power.
It was **intention made physical**.
When aura ignited, it didn't *obey* the body—it mirrored the state of the soul.
A fighter who panicked? His aura would distort.
A duelist who hesitated? Her aura would fragment.
But someone who moved with full commitment—
—their aura would flow.
Some traits amplified this. Others fought it. **Suppression-types**, in particular, *absorbed* ambient tension. They stilled the flow around them.
*Like silence between strikes.*
*Like the breath before a scream.*
Atlas felt it settle into him.
His aura didn't push forward.
It pulled everything else *back*.
A slowing field.
A pause.
A...
**Fang.**
---
That night, in his dorm, Atlas sat cross-legged again beneath the dim lamp.
He entered the white realm.
The crack had spread further.
The shadow didn't move.
But something behind it now did.
A shape in the distance.
Not human.
Not a memory.
Waiting.