The worst part about voluntary training wasn't the sweating, or the sore wrists, or even the inevitable damage to one's dignity.
It was the word "voluntary." Because when you're on a school-mandated, character-building retreat, nothing is ever truly optional.
"C'mon," Tarin had said earlier, eyes annoyingly bright. "They've got a private sparring arena by the lake! It's got sigil-infused barriers and everything."
Kael had stared at him with the sort of blank expression normally reserved for tax audits.
"You want to go practice," he said, "during a break… from practice."
Tarin just grinned. "It'll be fun!"
Kael had resisted for as long as he could—which turned out to be exactly fourteen minutes.
The System pinged him with a "Performance Inactivity Warning", which felt like being scolded by a spreadsheet.
So now here he was.
Standing on a polished dueling platform by the glittering lakeside, surrounded by six of the most narratively relevant teenagers in existence.
The "Voluntary Demonstration Zone" looked more like a battlefield showroom.
Smooth stone slabs carved with stabilizing glyphs. Floating arc-lights tuned to adjust based on Core resonance. A few bench golems sat nearby holding enchanted towels and water flasks, like overachieving butlers.
Tarin clapped his hands.
"Okay! Anyone want to start?"
Kael raised one eyebrow.
Tarin blinked. "I meant besides you."
"I wasn't raising my hand. That was a twitch of regret."
Lyssa stepped up first, clearly wanting to get it over with.
She activated her Core with a breath—calm, composed—and the sigil grid beneath her feet lit up.
Module: Lockfield Rune
A pulse expanded outward, and Kael immediately felt his own mana hum dull slightly—like someone had pressed a pillow against his connection.
Mild suppression field. Low radius. High efficiency. I hate how elegant it is.
Then, she flicked her fingers again—no light at all, the no glyphs either, just a slight shift in the air around her.
Module: Pulse-Read
Kael felt a chill at the base of his skull.
Mindcall sub-module. Emotional detection. Low-tier empathic sync. Great. Now she knows I'm bored.
Lyssa gave him the briefest look.
It was smug.
Kael narrowed his eyes and considered developing a module called 'Social Distance.'
Next up was Maelea, who conjured her signature crystal gauntlet—thin synth-weave that hardened over her arm like elegant armor.
"It enhances punch-based spellcasting," she explained. "For channeling force sigils."
She punched a nearby boulder. It cracked.
Kael applauded politely.
"That's going to be useful if the enemy is made of stone and also standing still."
Maelea grinned. "You'd be surprised."
Vellea's module was illusion-based—six mirror shards orbiting her shoulders in lazy arcs, creating brief, flickering afterimages as she moved.
Module: Mirage Walk
"Defensive utility," she said. "Mostly useful when escaping consequences."
Kael gave her a slow nod. "I deeply respect that."
Corvyn didn't demonstrate much—just extended a series of layered runes across the air and snapped them together like puzzle pieces.
"Construct magi-coding," he muttered. "Still calibrating output."
His creation—a floating hand that flipped them all off—was declared "technically impressive but emotionally stunted."
Kael approved.
Then came Kieren.
Kael knew what to expect the moment he saw the shadows curl.
Kieren's Core flared—black mist rising from his skin like slow-burning ink—and he stepped forward with theatrical calm.
Module: Shade Echo
Three silhouettes of himself flickered into being around him—each slightly distorted, slightly offset, and very punchable.
Kael rolled his eyes.
"Shadow clones? Really?"
Kieren smirked. "Tactical diversions. Impossible to tell which is the real me."
Kael pointed to the actual Kieren.
"That one. It's the one trying too hard."
The clones flickered out in a puff of darkness.
Then all eyes turned to Kael.
He held up his hands. "I left my fireballs at home."
Tarin stepped forward, hopeful. "C'mon, Kael. You've got to have something." He attempted to put his arm around Kael's shoulder inevitably being stopped by him.
Kael sighed.
He didn't want to show anything.
But showing nothing was worse.
He raised one hand. His Core flared—quiet, low-frequency, humming with complexity.
No light. Just pressure. The subtle kind that made you question whether your ears were ringing.
He stepped to the side—and disappeared.
Half a heartbeat later, he reappeared five meters to the left.
Module: Phase Skip
A flicker of displacement. A half-second slide across anchored space.
Very efficient, good for a coward like himself
Who doesn't love a good getaway
Tarin blinked. "Wait—was that teleportation?"
"No," Lyssa said before Kael could answer. "It's a frame-step. Between local seconds. Limited range. High-risk if mistimed."
Kael gave her a thin smile. "Five points to House Overanalysis."
He considered stopping there.
But something petty and probably unhealthy bubbled up.
He tapped his bracer.
A line of dull red light pulsed outward, forming a complex rune lattice that hovered midair for half a second.
The Corebreaker Gauntlet, still sealed, glimmered faintly at his wrist.
Kael deactivated it immediately.
A taste. A tease.
Nothing more.
The group stared at him in uneasy silence.
Even Tarin looked mildly unsure.
Kael clapped his hands once.
"Well. That was fun. I'm going back to pretending I don't exist."
They let him walk off without comment.
As he moved toward the edge of the dueling area, Kael felt his Core hum settle back into quiet patterns.
And for just a moment, he let his thoughts drift somewhere colder.
Somewhere darker.
There had been someone Kael knew.
Or someone Kael's original owner knew.
They were a part of House Vire
A name he couldn't remember.
Bright-eyed. Brilliant. Too brilliant.
He'd tried to forge a second module using an unstable relic shard.
The integration failed.
Not instantly.
No, that would've been merciful.
His Core cracked like thin ice under heavy footsteps.
And what crawled out—
Hollow cursed.
The Higher ups in House Vire don't talk about it.
The House called it a "resonance incident."
But Kael had read the reports before they were scrubbed.
Advantages of being a Heir.
The thing that had once been a person tore through half of his family before containment glyphs locked it down.
Even then, it had taken three High levels members of the house and an automated sigil engine to freeze its Core long enough to put it under.
That Core still pulsed, apparently.
Somewhere in a vault beneath the academy.
Kael's own modules were still stable.
For now.
But every time he tapped into the gauntlet… he felt himself hesitate.
Not because he couldn't handle it.
But because it knew what he might become.
He didn't want power at that cost.
He didn't want to become a warning.
But the System's recent report still echoed in his mind.
[NARRATIVE DRIFT: 4.7%][UNKNOWN PATH RESONANCE INCREASING]
He shoved the thoughts away.
Back at the arena, Tarin was trying to explain to Corvyn why throwing animated stone birds at Vellea was "kind of romantic in a weird way."
Lyssa watched Kael with her unreadable eyes.
Kieren brooded in a corner of shadow.
Kael exhaled, muttered:
"Gods help me, I'm in a party."
Then turned and walked toward the edge of the lake.
Tomorrow would bring more "bonding."
Maybe even a team challenge.
And if he was very, very unlucky…
Someone might ask him what he actually wanted out of all this.