Chapter 5: Breaking the Record
They gave us one hundred minutes.
One hundred minutes to unravel a tactical formation meant to simulate a real battlefield scenario—three enemy units, two terrain shifts, and one collapsing bridge.
On paper, it sounded simple.
In practice, it was a test designed to break you. The formation adjusted in real time. Enemy movements were semi-randomized. The terrain altered based on your choices, like a breathing organism reacting to fear. And every wrong turn triggered a consequence—supply cuts, reinforcement delays, civilian casualties.
It wasn't about winning.
It was about deciding what could be lost.
I finished in forty-three.
And I didn't even realize I'd broken the record.
---
The test was part of the Inter-Wing Strategy Exhibition—an annual event hosted by the West Wing to showcase strategic intelligence and leadership aptitude. It was meant to identify future generals, not dreamers.
Normally, only third-years and above were allowed to compete. But this year, they opened it to anyone who passed the tactical theory prerequisite.
I passed by a margin of two points.
Just barely.
And honestly, I almost didn't go.
I had my reasons.
Too many eyes. Too many expectations I couldn't meet, and too many failures I hadn't yet learned how to wear properly. The idea of competing in front of seniors who'd studied under real battle masters felt… foolish.
But Baoyu, hope gods bless his stubborn optimism, wouldn't let it go.
"You stare at maps the way others stare at sword manuals," he said one evening, tossing me a rolled scroll of ancient flank maneuvers from the Zhou Conquest. "If you don't at least try, I'll drag you there myself. In chains if I have to."
He grinned, but his eyes were serious.
So I signed up.
I passed by a margin of two points.
Most expected me to fail.
They didn't say it to my face, but I heard it in the way they asked "You?" when they saw my name on the list. I saw it in the subtle raise of eyebrows, the sideways glances, the half-hidden smirks of senior students leaning against the corridor walls like statues of polished lineage.
And some… didn't notice me at all.
Not out of cruelty, just irrelevance. A nobody from nowhere. A boy with second-hand boots and no clan badge on his robes.
A name no one had bothered to remember.
But that was fine.
Names, I was beginning to learn, meant less than patterns.
And patterns… I could see clearer than most.
---
We entered a chamber called the Silent Dome.
True to its name, silence fell like a curtain the moment the doors closed. No murmurs. No footsteps. Even the rustle of fabric felt muffled, as if the air itself refused to carry sound. The walls curved overhead in a perfect arc, inscribed with faint lines of ancient formation scripts—dead languages used only by military scholars and rune-callers. But my eyes barely noticed them. My focus was pulled inward, toward the center of the room.
A single soul-crystal pulsed atop an obsidian pedestal. Blue-white light radiated in slow, deliberate pulses—tha-thump, like a heartbeat not quite human. The light refracted into countless threads that hovered in midair, weaving and dancing until they resolved into translucent battlefield projections in front of each student.
No sound.
No clocks.
No distractions.
Just time—unmarked and immeasurable—and the quiet pressure of being watched without being seen.
The test began.
The goal was straightforward in theory: Save a trapped envoy, maneuver allied units through unfamiliar terrain, disable the enemy formation, and retreat before the canyon bridge collapsed.
Four objectives.
All of them urgent.
None of them forgiving.
I stared at the projected map.
And something in me… clicked.
Not a sudden jolt. More like a subtle realignment, like an old compass needle sliding back into true north. I wasn't thinking in the conventional sense. I wasn't weighing options, crunching numbers, or analyzing probability trees like the textbooks taught us.
I remembered.
Not in the literal sense—this wasn't deja vu, and I knew I hadn't seen this scenario before.
It was more like recognition.
A kind of intuitive certainty. Like watching the unfolding of a memory that never belonged to me, yet fit perfectly into the shape of my mind. I saw the wind currents shift across the simulated cliffs before the code adjusted for weather. I anticipated the enemy flanker's timing three rounds before the algorithm generated the unit.
And the bridge—
I saw the fault line before it cracked. Knew the exact second the eastern tension cable would snap. Knew that if I moved my forward unit one step left instead of two forward, the collapse would lag by just enough to buy me twelve seconds. Enough for the envoy to make it out.
I wasn't strategizing.
I was recalling something that had never happened.
My hands moved before my thoughts did. Each command I issued felt more like transcription than decision. I wasn't creating a strategy—I was tracing the shape of it, like a calligrapher tracing ink along a character he's known since childhood.
At some point, I leaned in so close to the screen I didn't notice the ache in my neck. My fingers hovered just above the etched glass, trembling slightly from the strain of stillness. Breath shallow. Eyes dry. Time slipping away in that timeless space.
I didn't hear anyone else. Didn't care how fast—or slow—they were.
I was completely inside the pattern.
I don't know what my face looked like. Probably blank. Cold, even. Not because I was calm—but because I was somewhere else. Not in the Dome. Not in the Academy. But on that canyon edge with wind whipping dust in my eyes and the faint scent of burning rope in the air.
When the crystal dimmed, I blinked like waking from a dream.
The projection flickered out. The room returned to stillness.
And then ....
"Candidate 041. Simulation complete."
The proctor's voice echoed, monotone, across the chamber.
I hadn't realized I'd finished.
I hadn't realized I was the first.
---
When I stepped out of the dome, the world felt… slower.
Not quieter—the Dome had been the purest silence I'd ever known. But slower, like the outside air didn't quite know how to move around me anymore. The filtered light of the corridor seemed too soft, too real. I blinked several times, as if I needed to reassemble the pieces of the present moment just to make sense of where I was.
The door hissed shut behind me.
And then came the silence—not the still, focused kind from inside, but the awkward, uneven kind. The kind that clings to a room when something unusual has just happened, and no one knows how to speak about it.
A few students lingered near the benches, eyes flicking toward me, then away. Some were still inside, their simulations running. A handful paced in place, muttering tactical calculations to themselves, hands twitching in practiced formation gestures.
But the attention found me all the same.
Not directly. Not with applause or questions or congratulations.
It was more subtle. More pointed.
Like I had disrupted a rhythm I wasn't meant to be part of.
One of the instructors—a tall man with a sand-colored robe and the insignia of a West Wing strategist embroidered in silver thread, was staring at me. Not in judgment. Not in suspicion.
In confusion.
His brow furrowed. Eyes locked on mine, but not seeing me—not the surface of me. He was staring past that, like he was trying to fit me into a mental pattern that no longer made sense. His lips parted slightly, as if the words came unbidden, barely louder than a breath.
"He learns like he remembers…"
The sentence hung in the air like smoke.
Not meant for me.
But I heard it anyway.
I should've turned. Should've asked what he meant.
Instead, I kept walking.
Expression still blank. Posture still straight.
Inside, my chest was tight—not from pride, but from a quiet, gnawing tension I couldn't name.
Because he wasn't wrong.
I did learn like I remembered.
But remembered what, exactly?
That part… I still didn't understand.
---
I made it halfway down the corridor when I heard footsteps quicken behind me.
Not rushed. Not alarmed.
Deliberate.
A soft, metallic click of boots over polished stone. Then a voice—quiet, firm, laced with restrained curiosity.
"Li Tianhe."
I turned.
Another instructor this time—Master Xu, the lead observer of the Inter-Wing Strategy Exhibition. He was older than the others, with streaks of iron-gray in his hair and a face lined not by time, but by discipline. His eyes were narrow and unreadable, like twin calligraphy strokes drawn in ink that refused to fade.
He didn't smile. Didn't blink.
Just asked:
"Where did you learn to read formation flow signatures?"
I hesitated. "…I didn't."
A pause. He tilted his head slightly.
"Then how did you preempt the leftward collapse on the second ridge? The crystal doesn't display that weakness until minute seventy."
My pulse ticked upward. I hadn't even reached minute fifty.
"I just… saw it," I said.
It sounded foolish the moment it left my mouth. Naïve. Like a lie made by someone too clever to be honest.
But Master Xu didn't scoff. He didn't even react.
He studied me for a moment longer, as though peering not at my answers, but at the gaps between them.
Then he nodded. Once. Almost reluctantly.
"Go."
Just that. No explanation. No dismissal. No praise.
I did as told.
As I walked toward the open-air colonnade that bordered the training complex, I heard a door close behind me, followed by low voices. They thought I was out of earshot.
They were wrong.
"It's not cheating," one said.
"No… it's not intuition either," replied another. "He sees the pattern like it's already played out."
"Like a memory," came Master Xu's voice. "But of what?"
I didn't wait to hear more.
Baoyu found me sitting beneath the fire-plume tree near the South Garden, where the scent of ironbark and sweet plum drifted in gentle spring currents.
He had a pouch of hawthorn candy and a face full of smirk.
"You're not going to tell me what just happened in there, are you?"
I didn't answer right away.
He flopped down beside me anyway, unwrapping one of the candies and tossing it into his mouth.
"You broke it, didn't you?"
I looked at him. "Broke what?"
"The test."
He grinned, mouth half-full. "They're talking about you like you summoned a war general from the spirit realm and had him take the test for you."
I gave a soft breath of laughter. It surprised even me.
"I didn't do anything. I just… followed the thread."
Baoyu's expression shifted. Not mocking now. Curious. Concerned, even.
"What kind of thread?"
I looked up at the sky—wide, pale blue, framed by the reaching arms of the fire-plume branches.
"I don't know," I said softly. "But it keeps pulling me forward."
I just nodded.
I didn't know what to feel. Only that… something wasn't normal.
And I wasn't sure if it was mine to claim.
---
That night, Head Scholar Ru summoned me.
He was an old man with eyes like deep ink—still, unreadable.
He poured tea for both of us. The fragrance was unfamiliar. Mountain chrysanthemum, maybe.
"You've studied war formations before?" he asked.
I shook my head. "Only scrolls. Mostly broken copies."
"Your solutions included deviations not in any handbook. Creative anomalies. Predictive routing through weather interference. And a sacrifice that allowed all survivors to escape. No first-year has ever accounted for weather."
"I… just saw the pattern," I replied.
He nodded once, slow. "You think in echoes."
I blinked. "What do you mean?"
"Some minds solve problems. Others remember answers they were never taught." He looked through me. "Tell me, Tianhe—do you ever dream of places you've never been?"
I hesitated.
"All the time."
---
After that, things changed.
Teachers watched me more closely. I was moved into advanced strategic classes. Some students began speaking to me with politeness, not mockery. Others kept their distance.
Zhao Ren didn't say anything.
But I caught him watching me during drills, eyes narrowed, jaw clenched.
I wasn't his punching bag anymore.
I was a variable.
---
A week later, I returned to the Silent Dome.
This time, I didn't take a test.
I just stood in the center, alone, and closed my eyes.
The hum of the soul-crystal pulsed against my skin. I touched the stone, and for a moment, I saw images not from this life—flashes of banners, drums, thunder rolling over hills, and a voice shouting commands in a language I didn't know… yet understood.
When I opened my eyes, the dome was silent.
But something had shifted inside me.
A current.
A thread.
Something old.
---
That night, I sat by the Moon Pond again. The wind barely stirred the surface, and the stars trembled in its reflection like they, too, were unsure of their place in the world.
The pendant in my hand had grown warm again, the way it always did when my thoughts returned to her. My mother. Raraswati of the Western Court. The woman they once called sky-touched and soul-wild. The woman who had disappeared like a myth when I was still too young to understand why.
She used to hum to me in a language no one else spoke.
Not quite Sundanese. Not quite court dialect. It was a patchwork of places she'd once lived, words that had weathered across generations like wind-smoothed stones. I didn't know their meanings back then, not exactly. But I remembered the way they felt. And the way her voice wove them into meaning.
"The river forgets nothing," she used to sing, fingertips gently combing through my hair. "It carries even what no one remembers it lost."
I never thought much of those songs growing up. I thought they were just her way of softening the night. But lately… they sang louder.
Like the water in the Moon Pond itself was humming her tune back at me.
Maybe I wasn't just learning.
Maybe I was *remembering*.
But if that were true… what had I forgotten?
And why?
---
I sat back, resting against the cold stone that rimmed the pond, staring up through the open sky above the scholar's gardens. They called this place the *Listening Court*. A spot shielded from palace noise, where young advisors came to "refine their minds." But I didn't come here to refine anything.
I came to *ask*.
Even if the questions had no clear answer.
Like: Why had the strategy exam felt so… familiar?
Why did the tactical terrain unfold in my mind before it formed on the soul-crystal screen?
And why did I know the collapse point of the bridge three seconds before the simulation itself rendered it?
What part of me had moved my hands before my thoughts did?
The phrase returned again—uninvited, but persistent:
"He learns like he remembers…"
What did that even mean?
---
I pulled the pendant closer. It was small—round, silver-etched, lined with a blue crystal that never dulled. My mother never told me where it came from. Only that it had been passed down for "a long, long time" and that I was never to give it away.
She'd say, "It's not an object, Tianhe. It's a promise. You just haven't remembered it yet."
What kind of promise was that?
To whom?
And why could I still hear her voice, after all these years, clearer than any book I'd ever read?
---
When I was ten, I asked her why she didn't like court festivals.
She'd laughed—soft, but tired. "Because most people dance with their feet, Tianhe. But some of us dance with our bones. And the music they play here… doesn't match the rhythm I remember."
I didn't understand it then. I barely understood it now.
But tonight, by the pond, I began to suspect she had never really been speaking in metaphors. At least not entirely.
---
A light breeze brushed the reeds. Somewhere in the distance, a night bird called—three notes, rising, like a question that refused to become a statement.
And suddenly, I saw her again.
Not as a memory, but as a feeling.
A woman with sky-colored eyes, standing on the balcony of our old villa in the Western district. One hand raised to the wind. Listening.
Back then I thought she was just admiring the clouds.
But now I wonder if she was listening to something I couldn't hear.
To something older than language.
---
I think about what she used to say about Pajajaran. Not the kingdom that fell centuries ago, but the memory of it. How she spoke of it as if it still breathed, just beneath the skin of the present.
"They didn't need books," she would say, tucking the blanket around my shoulders. "They had resonance. They didn't predict—they remembered forward. They didn't command the sky. They listened for where it ached."
I never knew if those stories were history or poetry.
But lately, I'd started to suspect there was a reason no one else remembered them.
Maybe they weren't allowed to.
---
The water stilled completely now, reflecting the moon as a perfect circle. A second pendant. A mirror to the one in my hand.
And I realized something.
Maybe this was never about rebellion, or tests, or titles. Maybe it wasn't about the Empire at all.
Maybe it was about memory. The kind buried too deep to recognize… until something cracks.
And when it does?
You don't feel it like a scream.
You feel it like a return.
---
I don't know how long I sat there.
Maybe minutes. Maybe hours.
But by the time I rose, the sky had shifted. The moon had lowered behind the garden wall. The pendant had cooled in my hand again, quiet.
But something in me had changed.
I didn't have the answers. Not yet.
But I had a new kind of question now.
Not the kind you solve on a map.
Not even the kind you ask a teacher.
This one came from somewhere else.
From river-beds that remember names long washed away.
From wind-paths that never forgot the voices of those who once knew how to listen.
From a mother who left without saying goodbye… but left behind a language I was just beginning to understand.
---
That night, I sat by the Moon Pond again, the pendant warm in my hand. I remembered Ma's lullabies, songs about rivers that carried memories, and birds that never forgot their way home.
Maybe I wasn't just learning.
Maybe… I was remembering.
And if so,
What had I forgotten?
---