Instructor Graves was a strict, old-school veteran. He hated arrogant students and valued perfect technique over raw mana output.

During class, he had the students practice the Vanguard Heavy Cleave on reinforced training dummies.

Kaelen stepped up. He completely ignored the proper footwork and just blasted the dummy with his raw B-Rank mana. The dummy shattered. Kaelen looked incredibly smug, expecting praise.

Instructor Graves sighed. "Sloppy. In a real fight against an equal opponent, your terrible balance would get you killed."

Kaelen got defensive and arrogant. He spotted Zen in the crowd and sneered. "Raw power is all that matters, Instructor. Why don’t you let me demonstrate on Arclight? He survived a High E-Rank dungeon, surely he can hold a blocking pad for one of my swings."

Instructor Graves allowed it strictly as a single-strike blocking drill. Zen was given a heavy kinetic-absorption shield. Kaelen was given a wooden training greatsword. It was not a spar, so the rank gap was legally allowed for a demonstration.

Kaelen gripped the wooden sword. He fully intended to channel a hidden burst of B-Rank mana into the blade at the last millisecond to break Zen’s arms and make it look like an accident.

Kaelen charged and swung with devastating force.

Zen didn’t brace. He used his centuries of knowledge of weapon mastery and the Emperor’s Stride to shift his footing by two inches.

As the massive wooden blade came down, Zen casually angled the edge of his shield to strike the exact harmonic weak point of Kaelen’s terrible, unbalanced swing.

Because Zen didn’t block the force, but redirected it, all of Kaelen’s explosive B-Rank momentum violently backfired.

SNAP.

The wooden sword shattered into splinters. The kinetic whiplash violently disarmed Kaelen, lifting his feet off the ground and throwing him flat on his back in the middle of the training mat.

He laid there gasping for air.

The entire class went silent. Zen didn’t use any magic. He didn’t even break a sweat. He just looked down at Kaelen coldly and handed the shield back to the Instructor.

Instructor Graves smirked, looking at Kaelen on the floor. "As I said. Sloppy."

—

The academy day finally ended. Valeria insisted they go straight back to her townhouse so Zen could rest. Once they were inside, she walked Zen to his bedroom.

"Get some sleep, partner," she said sweetly, closing his door.

But Valeria didn’t go to her room.

She walked down the hallway, pressed her hand against a hidden panel on the wall, and stepped into a warded, soundproof panic room.

The sweet, caring expression instantly vanished from her face. She looked like the cold, ruthless Goddess of War once again.

She walked over to a metal table and turned on a high-tech holographic communicator. Four pillars of light shot up into the dark room. The projections of the other four Goddesses flickered to life.

To her left was Nyx, the Spymaster. Her avatar was made of swirling purple data streams. Next to her was The Healer, wearing a pristine white lab coat over a Sanctum Domain uniform. On the right was Lyra, the Grand Mage, holding a staff of pure starlight. And in the center, wearing a crown of golden fire, was The Empress.

The air in the room was instantly toxic. The five women disliked each other, united only by their shared grief and their obsessive love for the dead Emperor.

"We do not have time," The Empress said, her voice echoing with authority. "The Void Singularity... the entity that killed him five hundred years ago... is showing micro-fractures across the globe. We need to prepare our armies."

"I am already tracking it," Nyx said, her purple digital eyes narrowing as she looked directly at Valeria’s hologram. "But my satellites picked up something else yesterday. A massive, unregistered S-Rank anomaly inside District 7. Right in your backyard, Valeria."

Valeria kept her face perfectly blank. She adjusted her cracked glasses. "It was nothing," Valeria lied smoothly. "A group of scavengers set off an unstable magical artifact in the unmapped zone. My Vanguard dealt with it."

Nyx tilted her head, clearly not believing her. "Is that so?"

"Stay out of my territory, Nyx," Valeria warned, her voice dropping into a deadly growl. "I have everything under control."

Valeria ended the connection. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

The holographic projections died. The panic room went dark.

Valeria stood alone, her military bracer casting a faint blue glow across her face. She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a small, leather-bound notebook.

It was old... genuinely old, five centuries old, and the cover was stamped with the Imperial Arclight seal. She had carried it through every war, every political massacre, every sleepless night of the last five hundred years.

She sat down at the metal table and opened it to a fresh page. She wrote the date at the top. Then she began a list.

Observed: Subject uses the Emperor’s Stride with flawless precision. No training program in any of the Five Domains teaches this technique. It was never written down. I taught it to no one. He taught only himself.

Observed: Subject’s mana signature is shattered, fragmented, and suppressed. But the ambient resonance pattern during the Void Breathing pulse was not F-Rank. It was ancient. It was mine. It was his.

Observed: A High E-Rank Blood-Horn Minotaur was found dead with its spine snapped in a way that is physically inconsistent with a "fall." The kinetic angle of the fracture matches a focused downward strike from an opponent standing approximately 170 centimeters tall.

Observed: Subject’s mana density increased overnight without any reported cultivation activity. Core repair of this nature requires significant raw mana intake. He lied about where he was.

Observed: Subject redirected a B-Rank kinetic strike using pure footwork and a blunt training sword. No F-Rank student in Academy history has done this.

She stopped writing.

She looked at the list for a long time. Then, slowly, she closed the notebook and pressed it flat against her chest.

She closed her eyes, and her expression wasn’t the cold, calculated face of the Goddess of War. It was something much more fragile. Much more dangerous.

"I know it’s you," Valeria whispered to the empty room. Her voice was barely a sound. "I have known since the dungeon. Since the moment you slid past that blast wave and the dust caught in your hair and you looked annoyed instead of scared."

She opened her eyes.

"But if I tell you that I know..." She paused, pressing the notebook harder against her chest. "You will run. You will plan. You will find a way to slip out of my hands again, because that is what you always do."

A tear tracked down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away.

"So I will be patient," she whispered. "I will watch. I will wait. And I will let you think you are the one hunting."

She stood up, straightened her uniform, and walked back out into the hallway.

By the time her hand touched the door of his bedroom to check on him, her face was perfectly soft.

Perfectly sweet.

Perfectly terrifying.