The trio scrambled off the transport ship, their boots hitting the dock with a synchronized thud before they bolted toward the teaching block. Skylar was a whirlwind of frantic energy, her voice a constant whip of encouragement—mostly directed at Leo.
At one point, she looked ready to literally hoist him over her shoulder and carry him if it meant shaving seconds off their time.
Skylar lived and breathed for the approval of the professors. Despite being her grandfather's favorite, she had never been placed on the official shortlist for the Sterling family succession. Her grandfather doted on her with a specific intent: he wanted her to remain a refined, quiet girl, far removed from the grim reality of a life spent among venomous insects. To ensure this, he had explicitly forbidden her from participating in the family's darker cultivation methods.
But Skylar was possessed by a fierce streak of stubbornness. What she lacked in raw, innate talent, she made up for with sheer, bloody-minded persistence. She was painfully aware that if she could just play the part of the "quiet lady," her looks alone would ensure she wasn't shunned by the boys her age. Instead, she chose the path of the pariah, trading popularity for power.
Leo was her polar opposite. He moved with a languid yawn, his feet dragging as if he had lead bricks strapped to his soles. While Leo was intellectually sharp, he was a realist about his own strengths. To him, memorizing endless scrolls of complex incantations was a waste of time. He preferred to burn his energy on the basics—physical conditioning, explosive speed, and raw durability. Master a handful of versatile spells, pair them with a solid Focus, and he could improvise a combat style that worked for him.
Against the odds, the three of them managed to slide into the Spirit Beast class just as the session began.
The professor, Sybil Whimsy, was a woman who could command twenty spirit beasts simultaneously without breaking a sweat. Her physical flexibility was unsettling, bordering on the supernatural, and her martial prowess was legendary. Though she looked gaunt now, twenty years ago during the "Great Night" riots of the Sanctuary, she had single-handedly slaughtered over a dozen high-ranking insurgents.
The memory of her beast-like combat stance, her blood-maddened roars, and the terrifying visage she presented when bathed in gore had earned her a chilling moniker: "Blood-Lust Sybil."
In the Sanctuary, power was strictly quantified. Psionics were ranked from P1 to P10, with Headmaster Cassian sitting at the absolute peak. Every three years, an evaluation—the Origin Trials—offered a chance for promotion. Two decades ago, Sybil had already been certified as a P6 operative.
Watching her now, however, the "madness" of the legends seemed to have simmered down into a jittery eccentricity. Behind thick, black-rimmed glasses, her eyes were a roadmap of burst red capillaries. Her hair was a chaotic bird's nest of tangles. When she spoke, her voice was high-pitched and sharp, carrying an underlying tremor like sandpaper on glass.
"Listen up, children!" she barked, her fingers drumming a frantic, staccato beat against the wooden desk. "Spirit beasts are not the tail-wagging pets you kept in the Mortal World!" She rapped a piece of chalk against the blackboard, where a dizzyingly complex circular array had been drawn.
"Today, we use Gold-Bugs as our toll. We are learning to manifest control over Scout Lizards. These are small bipeds that walk on their hind legs—perfect for navigating tight spaces and scouting paths." She paused, her eyes darting across the room. "From the previous lectures, who can tell me the three core elements of beast manipulation?"
"Soulforce, Incantations, and a Contract Medium!" several students chanted in unison.
"Correct." Sybil poked the chalk tip hard against the key points on the board. "Control requires the Incantation and the Soulforce. Soulforce acts as the bridge; its magnitude determines how long you can maintain the link. For higher-tier beasts, a physical Contract Medium is mandatory."
She held up a Gold-Bug; its dark metallic carapace shimmered with a dull bronze luster under the harsh classroom lights. "Gold-Bugs are the favorite snack of the Scout Lizard."
She placed the bug beside a small lizard, traced a glowing blue rune onto her own palm, and aimed it at the creature. A burst of brilliant blue light erupted from her hand. The lizard's oversized eyes—designed for perfect clarity in total darkness—began to spin in frantic circles as its tiny body writhed. A moment later, a matching blue rune flickered onto the lizard's back, and it instantly fell still.
"When the rune appears, the link is established," Sybil nodded. "Now, try it yourselves. And don't forget to feed them. Don't expect them to work for nothing."
Ethan, Skylar, and Leo were seated together. Ethan leaned back, whispering to Skylar, "Is your family's secret art like this?"
"Not really," Skylar murmured, a flicker of pride crossing her face. "Our arts don't need incantations. We use blood as the sacrifice and ingest specialized medicines. We have to live with the creatures for years to build the bond. This classroom technique only works on Spirit Beasts, but our family's secret arts... they work on any animal."
She paused, then added a technical detail. "There's a difference between a Spirit Beast and a normal animal in the Sanctuary. Spirit Beasts possess their own Soulforce; some even have 'Active Abilities.' Think of it like a video call—both sides need a network connection for it to work."
Leo, meanwhile, was slumped over the desk, his brain turning to mush. His routine of early morning training and late-night drills was finally catching up to him, and the lack of a nap had left him running on fumes.
"Alright, your turn," Sybil said, a twitchy, nervous smile creeping onto her face. "Remember, maintaining a beast burns your Soulforce continuously. If you don't want to be drained dry, measure your own worth before you commit."
The Class Rep, Simon Graves, carried a crate around the room, handing out Gold-Bugs and lizards. When he reached Ethan, he offered a mild, encouraging smile. "Here you go, Ethan."
Ethan studied him. Simon was lean, roughly Ethan's height, with deep brown hair and a pair of vintage, round-framed glasses—the kind that looked like a family heirloom passed down from a grandfather. He had the kind, gentle face of an "old soul," and he seemed almost shy when he spoke. Ethan mentally filed him away as someone easy to get along with.
Ethan took his lizard and began tracing the rune on his palm. His lines were shaky and crooked, a far cry from the professor's precision. He stared at the lizard and took a deep, stabilizing breath.
He imagined his energy as a thin, weighted cloak draped over his skin. He visualized that power circulating—head to toe, toe to head—in a continuous loop. Gradually, the imagined weight grew heavier, the flow accelerated, and he funneled it all into his palm.
A soft blue light flickered in his hand. On the lizard's back, the rune manifested. Success.
Compared to his disastrous failure in the previous class, this was his first official victory in manifesting Soulforce. He knew he owed this breakthrough to the simplified control methods Leo and Skylar had hammered into his head during the boat ride back.
"It actually worked! I did it, Leo," Ethan said, nudging Leo with his elbow. Leo blinked, looking stunned. It had taken him an entire afternoon to master that level of control.
"Go on then, fight me," Leo grinned wickedly, commanding his own lizard to ram into Ethan's, a playful retaliation for the elbow nudge. Ethan grinned back, mentally ordering his lizard to counter-attack.
He realized that as long as he held the thought in his mind, the lizard obeyed. However, the control had physical limits. He tried to command the lizard to perform a one-handed backflip and kick back, but the little creature's scrawny front claws buckled under the weight of its own chubby lower body.
"Get back in there, stop causing trouble," Skylar whispered. The small snake in her sleeve had caught the scent of prey and poked its head out. She hissed a low command, and after a lingering look at the Gold-Bugs, the snake reluctantly slithered back into hiding.
Ethan watched her and reached a silent conclusion: he would never learn her family's arts. The idea of carrying venomous reptiles on his person 24/7 was a hard pass. He didn't want to be a walking terrarium.
As the class ended, Ethan reviewed the day's progress. He felt like he was finally finding the "frequency." He could now dial his Soulforce flow up or down with relative ease. Yet, he noticed a distinct difference—this controlled flow felt nothing like the violent, searing heat that occasionally flared in his gut. I'll figure it out later, he thought. For the first time, he felt a spark of genuine confidence regarding the soul fusion ritual in a month's time.
In the Sanctuary, class lengths were at the whim of the professor. Today, they had only sat through two sessions, a schedule Ethan found luxuriously easy compared to the grind of the Mortal World.
After class, the three headed for the cafeteria. It was a sleek, modern facility where students picked their ingredients at a buffet-style counter before heading to designated seating zones. The cleaning crew consisted entirely of wooden puppets. Compared to Luca, these puppets were primitive—they moved in simple, repetitive patterns and were incapable of speech.
That evening, Leo was a blur of excitement as he helped Ethan move into his dorm. Ethan didn't have much—just some basic necessities and a few changes of clothes Nyx had bought for him. It only took one trip. Ethan felt a prickle of nerves; this was his first time ever sharing a room with a peer.
Leo's room wasn't exactly a pigsty, but it screamed "athlete." There were pull-up bars, scattered sandbags, and old manga magazines strewn about. It was cluttered, but clean. Ethan sighed in relief; it was a paradise compared to his damp, cramped attic in Brooklyn.
The dormitory heating was also cranked up to an absurd degree. The air was sweltering, like mid-summer. As soon as they entered, Leo whipped off his shirt, revealing sharply defined abs and the rugged muscle contours of someone who trained relentlessly.
"Let's see what you're packing, roommate," Leo joked, reaching out to playfully yank at Ethan's shirt. The two began to wrestle and mess around, but their rowdiness was cut short by a sharp, urgent pounding on the door.
Finch, the dorm warden, stood in the doorway. Behind him were several men wearing featureless masks.
"Leo and Ethan," one of the masked men said, his voice cold and flat. "You need to come with us for questioning."
"Questioning? Who the hell are you guys?" Leo snapped. He had never seen these people at the Academy and took an immediate dislike to the masks.
"It's alright, just a routine check," Finch cut in quickly, his voice laced with forced calm. "I'm sure you're both good students. Don't worry too much. These are the Vigils—the Sanctuary's law enforcement."
Finch looked at Ethan, a shadow of genuine concern in his eyes. He didn't know the boy well, but years of watching students had given him a gut feeling that these two weren't the "troublemaking" type.
"The boy you burned this afternoon—Caleb Flood—has fallen into a deep coma," Finch explained softly. "The school doctors found a potent toxin in his blood. He's in critical condition."