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Aurelia
The city passed by in a wash of color and spelllight, but Aurelia barely noticed.
She sat alone in the back of her private carriage, gaze fixed on the flickering feed of her communicator.
She wasn't nervous.
She was just… anticipating.
The device buzzed softly.
SwordWannabe:You ever get that feeling like something in your real life just glitched?
Her breath caught.
She stared at the message—random, clumsy... but honest.
Him.
He never messaged first. Never talked unless it was to analyze footwork or mock some overhyped tournament champion. Never personal.
And now this.
She tapped her reply.
PrincessFlyer:All the time. Especially lately.
A pause.
SwordWannabe:Weird question. You start school yet?
She hesitated.
He didn't know.
He couldn't know.
But for some reason, her fingers didn't type the practiced lie.
PrincessFlyer:I did.
SwordWannabe:How was it?
She looked out the window. The Verge district flickered past—older buildings, arcane community centers, the pulse of real life beneath the Empire's golden spires.
PrincessFlyer:Strange. Some people were exactly what I expected.
Others… surprised me.
Another pause.
SwordWannabe:Surprises are good. Keeps the blade sharp.
She stared at that message longer than she needed to.
Then, without replying, she tucked the device away as the carriage slowed.
A moment later, she stepped out onto the weathered stone steps of the Central Verge Rec Hall.
No disguise.
No plainset. No projection veil. No fake name.
Just her school uniform, clean but unadorned, and a made-up donation request in her back pocket.
It worked.
Of course it worked.
Ten minutes later, the overworked manager had disappeared into the back offices with a signed ledger crystal and enough funds to keep the place operating for the next six months.
Aurelia stepped quietly into the training hall.
It was louder than she expected—wood-on-wood clacks, laughter, a mana-based safety field flickering over a broken mat. There were too many students for the space. The weapons were old. The uniforms mixed. It felt chaotic.
But the man in the center moved like gravity obeyed him.
Zane.
She slipped into the corner of the room and activated her mana sight.
The world shifted.
Light dimmed. Lines blurred. And then—clarity.
Aurelia almost gasped.
Most people's mana drifted. It spilled from their cores like light through stained glass, shaped only in the moments they cast or shielded.
But Zane's?
It flowed with him.
No delay. No flicker.
It threaded through his limbs, his hips, his shoulders—like tendon. Like breath. He didn't conjure with mana.
He moved with it.
His footwork wasn't just placement—it was propulsion. Redirection. Reinforcement. Every step anchored mana into the floor, bending weight and torque with surgical precision.
It was spellcasting without casting.
She had studied under the greatest swordmasters in the Empire.
And she had never seen this.
Not even in the Crucible Realms.
But that wasn't right.
She had seen him before. Or something close.
The Ashglass Arena. Realm training. Six spars, full contact, rendered through avatar-class simulation. Pain real. Damage scaled. Every profile fine-tuned to mimic the user's stats.
They'd fought hard in there. She remembered every move. Every mistake. Every bruising, glorious second of it.
But this?
This wasn't a reflection.
This wasn't SwordWannabe's avatar.
This was the source.
And it was worse.
The simulation had been power, pressure, tempo. But this… this was instinct. His movements weren't practiced—they were patterned by something deeper. There were no glyphs. No channeling. No spell delay. Not even a shimmer of outward energy.
He wasn't using mana.
He was mana.
She watched him break down a student's attack form, correct their foot alignment, then—without summoning glyphs, without channeling a rune—demonstrate a parry rebound using a directional pulse of kinetic mana.
No wand.
No vocal cue.
No cast time.
Just instinct.
It was like watching a blindfolded dancer invent a new step with every beat—and land it perfectly.
He caught her staring.
Their eyes locked.
He didn't smile.
He didn't flinch.
Just a slight dip of his chin. Professional. Dismissible.
To him, she was just a student.
Maybe a noble.
Nothing more.
And yet, as she held his gaze, her pulse skipped—and something unfamiliar lodged behind her ribs:
Not awe.
Not fear.
Curiosity. And.,.desire…
How did he do that?
She didn't know.
But she wanted to see it again.