Nawick Arc (Chapters 1-5)
"War, it has plagued humanity since the beginning of time. The evolution of humans to powers made it much bloodier. However, one man stopped the cycle, he stormed in, separating the nations like quarrelling toddlers. Peace was established, however these nations grew with grudges. The man died, and his peace along with him.
My nation fell first. My soul is forever stained by what I witnessed on that day.
It is only a matter of time until the curse of war consumes the world again. I cannot let that happen. I have a family to protect. They will likely outlive me, and so my solution to war must do the same. It's a big task, but hey, someone has to do it."
The principal lowers the letter.
Across the table, a boy with green hair sits with his hands on his knees, listening like someone who had written every word himself and was enjoying hearing it read aloud. Which was exactly the case.
"Given my crucial mission and beautiful demonstration of combat skills," the principal continues, "I ask that you upgrade me to the Elite school."
He sets the paper down.
"Not this again, Moto."
"Please sir." Moto sits forward. "I am at the top of my class. There is nothing more to learn here."
"You are a big fish in a small pond."
"That's why I'm here."
Mr. Sonu folds his hands. He has the patient expression of a man who has had this conversation before and expects to have it again. "That school trains students for war. Your fighting ability would mean nothing against people who can rain lightning on you from a hundred feet away. You're asking me to send you to your grave."
"I'll train harder. I'll do whatever it takes, just give me a chance. Please."
"I have had enough of these appeals." His voice doesn't rise. It doesn't need to. "And these stories of yours. Your powers are no different from the rest of your peers. This is a self defence school. It exists to protect students like you."
The gleam goes out of Moto's eyes slowly, like a light being turned down rather than switched off. "They're not fake."
Mr. Sonu looks at him for a moment. Then he picks up his pen.
"If you believe you are so different," he says, "come back when you can dodge lightning. Maybe then I will consider your request." He does not look up again. "You are dismissed."
Moto opens the door.
In the hallway, a boy with ginger hair is waiting to be called in. He walks past without looking at Moto — the straight-ahead focus of someone determined to take up exactly the right amount of space. Their eyes meet for a moment, nothing more than that, and then the door shuts between them.
Sheu is leaning against the wall where he'd left her.
She takes one look at his face. "That bad?"
Moto exhales — long, slow, the kind that carries something with it. "Back to class."
The classroom had the particular quality of a room that knew it wasn't anyone's final destination. Chairs that creaked when you shifted. A window that stuck. A board with old chalk dust in the corners that nobody had fully erased. Students came here and left and the room stayed exactly as it was.
Moto dropped into his seat. Sheu settled beside him.
"You should have let me check your letters," she said. "We both know I'm the better writer."
"I know."
"You always say that. You still won't let me read them."
He didn't answer that one.
She let it sit for a moment, then: "Drake's been at this longer than you and they still won't move him."
"Drake goes there and shouts at them."
"At least he — wait." She looked at him. "No, that's you who writes something. He just shouts."
"Exactly." Moto leaned back in the creaking chair. "Next time I won't need a letter anyway. He said if I can dodge lightning, he'll consider it."
Sheu stared at him. "He's telling you to go away."
"Too bad for him."
The door opened.
Their instructor walked in with the ginger-haired boy beside her. He moved through the room the way he'd moved through the hallway — quietly, taking only the space he needed, eyes straight ahead.
"Settle down." She didn't need to raise her voice. "New student. You'll get acquainted in time. For now —" her eyes crossed the room and landed on Moto, "— spar. You're up."
Moto was already standing.
The new kid looked at him for the first time. It was the look you give something you have not decided to worry about yet.
They moved to the centre. Students pulled chairs back.
Moto moved first — reading the stance, picking the opening, committing cleanly. His form was good. His timing was good. He let the smoke rise from his skin as he closed in, the grey cloud thickening between them.
At least his smoke is good cover.
He found what he thought was an opening. Went for it.
The punch landed.
And something was wrong with it.
Not the impact itself but what came inside it — a hum that started low and built fast, from somewhere behind his ears straight through to the centre of his skull. Then a crack, sharp inside the dull of it. The smoke swallowed the flash before anyone could see it clearly. The room tilted. The ground came up. Moto was on his back with the smoke thinning above him and the inside of his jaw tasting like copper.
He stayed there.
Silence.
He pushed himself up. His legs held. He crossed the room and extended his hand and the boy shook it without expression.
Sheu's match came next.
Drake was already planted at the centre like he'd been there all morning — arms folded, radiating the specific confidence of someone who believed the room existed for him.
He stomped once. The ground shuddered. Sheu lurched sideways, caught off guard — and that, for anyone watching, looked like most of it.
She had wind at her fingertips and she didn't reach for it. Drake was her cousin, yes — but more than that, his transfer appeal was hanging by a thread, and she understood without needing to be told that putting him down in front of a new student on his first day would take whatever slim chance he had left and finish it. So she took the hit and lost, and kept what she knew to herself.
"I should be in a higher-ranking school," Drake said, to no one and everyone.
In the corner, with her fist half-raised and her eyes wide with the effort of willing Moto not to look too hard at what had just happened, Sheu said nothing.
After, they walked out into the afternoon together.
Shelton was at the gate.
Not waiting the way parents wait. Just standing, hands easy at his sides, like he happened to be there. He was a broad man with dark skin and blue eyes — the same blue as his daughter's — and on his right hand a ring caught the light, a pristine blue gem set deep in the band, something you wouldn't expect on a commoner. The name SHELTON engraved along its side.
He looked at Moto's face and read it without asking.
He fell into step beside them, clapping Moto once on the shoulder as he did — the easy warmth of a man who had made a decision about someone years ago and never revisited it.
After a while he crouched to tie his shoe and waved them ahead.
They reached the front door — unlocked, something warm on the stove — and found him already in his chair, shoes perfectly tied.
Sheu looked at him.
He turned a page.
She looked at Moto.
Moto looked at her.
Shelton set the paper down and without looking up reached beside the chair and held out a wrapped meal in Moto's direction. Not offered. Just held out, the way you hand something to someone who belongs in the room.
Moto took it.
"Drake just goes there and shouts," Shelton said, to the middle distance. "Every time."
Sheu looked away.
Something settled in the room — warm, unhurried. Shelton picked his paper back up.
"Go on then," he said. "Nice evening. Don't waste it in here."
They sat outside on the low wall while the light changed.
"I didn't think you'd lose," Sheu said.
"Me neither." Moto rubbed the back of his arm. "Something about his punch was weird. Felt like lightning struck me."
She glanced at him sideways. "Excuses."
"You're one to talk."
She didn't answer. But the corner of her mouth moved.
Inside, through the window, the lamp in Shelton's corner came on. He didn't call them back in.
They stayed until the air cooled, and then Sheu went inside and Moto walked home alone.
The alley wasn't what people expected. No rubbish, no smell. Just narrow and quiet, tucked between buildings like the city had agreed to forget about it.
Moto exhaled.
The smoke poured out of him slow and dense, and from every corner things scattered. He worked through his forms in the grey haze, unhurried, until his breathing settled and the buzz in his jaw finally went quiet.
Above, Sheu's window glowed.
He didn't look up. She didn't call down.
Later he pulled himself onto the roof, pillow under one arm, and lay back against the tiles. The city noise dropped away. Stars, where the clouds let them through.
"I lost today," he said quietly, to the space beside him that was empty. He watched the gap in the clouds where something dim and persistent was trying to be a star. "But don't worry, Amber. I'll get stronger." A pause. "Strong enough to protect you from what's coming."
The wind moved once across the roof and settled.
He stayed until the cold got into his back, and then he stayed a little longer, because sleep was for people who hadn't promised anything yet.
He spotted Najo the next morning — or rather, the ginger hair spotted itself, bright and out of place in a courtyard full of students who all seemed to know each other.
"That guy never talks to anyone," Moto murmured, leaning slightly toward Sheu.
"So leave him alone," Sheu said, which was when Moto walked over.
Najo saw him coming and his expression settled into something flat and closed. He turned to go — and then he saw Sheu standing behind Moto, and he went very still for just a moment before he quickened his pace.
Moto's grin spread slowly.
He pestered him for the better part of the morning.
"You got a lucky shot on me," he said, falling into step beside him. "There's no way you're actually stronger."
Najo said nothing.
"Arm wrestle."
Nothing.
"Come on."
Eventually Najo stopped walking.
They squared up at one of the courtyard tables. Moto was winning — he could feel it, the small grind of advantage, Najo's arm giving — and then the crackle came.
This time there was no smoke to swallow it.
The flash cracked across the table — sharp, yellow-white, visible — and the shock fired up through Moto's hand and his arm buckled and the back of his hand hit the wood.
He sat there blinking.
Around them, the murmuring had already started. Low at first. Then building. Students turning, pointing, the sound spreading outward through the courtyard the way fire moves when it finds something dry.
Lightning. Here. A lightning user wasting years in a school like this.
The murmuring swelled. Najo looked at the crowd forming, then at Moto, then at nothing in particular — and then he was moving fast through the archway and gone before anyone thought to follow.
Moto looked down at the table.
The scorch mark was still smoking.
Far away, at a table built for many and occupied by none, a tall man received word between courses.
A lightning user. A low-level school. Exposed in the open courtyard — the flash visible, unmistakeable, already drawing attention.
He picked up his fork. Let the current crawl along the tines until the air above his plate shimmered. Turned the meat once.
Set the fork down.
He called for his men.