Kael stood at the edge of the training platform, staring into the simulated war zone unfolding below.
The arena had been transformed again—this time into a high-altitude cliff range littered with broken drones, snapped cables, and unstable platforms that swayed in the wind. Below was a fifty-meter drop into a synthetic gravity well.
The lesson for the day was simple:
Power isn't just what you have. It's how you survive when it's all you've got.
At least, that's what Instructor Vale had said as he activated the terrain controls and told the cadets to scatter.
Now, Kael crouched behind a broken satellite dish, trying to get a read on the enemy drones. His HUD flickered, tracking movement across the ridge. His squad was split up—Dane had been lured away by a diversion, and Lira was maintaining a sniper's perch. Renna was… somewhere, probably blending into shadows like a ghost.
Kael exhaled slowly.
Adapt. Adjust. Control the tempo.
That had become his mantra lately. But the truth was, something inside him still itched. Still questioned.
What was the limit to this ability of his?
How much more could he evolve? How much more could he endure before the system—the world—decided he wasn't allowed to exist anymore?
He clenched his fists.
They'll try to erase me, just like they did my family. But not this time. I'm still here. I'm still learning.
I won't break. I'll grow.
The simulation flared.
Two combat drones launched from the lower ridges, scanning, arming themselves with sonic batons and short-range stun grenades. They locked onto Kael's location instantly.
He sprinted from cover, narrowly dodging a plasma burst that melted through the dish behind him. The edge of the cliff loomed ahead—no way down without getting boxed in.
Too predictable. They want me to run. Herd me. Corner me.
He slid behind a jutting steel pillar and waited. Breath steady. Eyes sharp.
The first drone hovered past.
Kael burst from hiding and leapt onto its hull. His fingers found purchase in the metal grooves just below its rotor. He wrenched the panel open, jammed his boot into the stabilization core, and kicked hard.
The drone spun out of control, slamming into the cliff wall before falling into the abyss.
The second drone rotated, targeting him with a warning beep.
Kael dropped into a roll, grabbed a loose fragment of the satellite dish, and hurled it like a discus. It struck the drone's lens dead-on, cracking the sensor and sending it into a reboot loop.
Improvisation, he thought. Adaptation isn't just reacting—it's creating options.
A voice crackled through his comms.
"Three down, one to go. You good?" Lira.
"Still breathing," Kael replied.
"Figures. You always are."
After the exercise, they regrouped at the lower platform. The sun simulation dimmed as the environment reset.
Dane sat on a metal crate, wiping sweat from his brow. "This place is trying to kill us. Which probably means it's working."
Renna leaned against a broken drone. "If it kills us, it means we weren't worth keeping."
Lira tossed Kael a hydration vial. "You burned more calories than the rest of us combined. Again."
He caught it, twisting off the cap with one hand.
"I don't feel tired," he said. "Not really."
"That's not normal," Lira said bluntly.
Kael stared at the sky simulation above, watching clouds drift across the artificial dome.
"I don't know what normal is anymore."
He wasn't being dramatic. He meant it. Normal was what you experienced when you could rest. When you had something to lose. Kael had grown up without a single anchor to the world. No parents. No house. No inheritance.
Only momentum. And a whisper in his blood, always urging him forward.
Back in the training halls, Instructor Vale stood before a long digital display of student profiles. Names, ranks, growth trends. Kael's file was still blank under "ability classification."
"Today's lesson," Vale said, turning to face the class, "is about the illusion of control."
He pressed a button on his datapad. A bar graph appeared. "Most of you believe your ability is the reason you survive. That it gives you control. But let me ask you this—what happens when that control is taken away?"
He pointed to a highlighted name: Juno Farris – B-Rank, Force Amplification.
"She relied on brute strength. Crushed her enemies in single blows. Then one day, she met someone faster. She panicked. Hesitated. Lost."
Vale tapped the screen. "Died in her third-year field mission."
Another name appeared: Kel Ridan – A-Rank, Reactive Teleportation.
"Brilliant ability. Could escape any danger. Until he was tricked into teleporting into a kill zone."
Tap. "Dead."
A pause. Then Kael's file lit up.
"Then we have our Unranked anomaly. No visible ability. No classification. Yet surviving simulations faster than most A-ranks. Why?"
He looked at Kael directly.
"Answer the class."
Kael rose slowly. The room's eyes locked onto him.
He considered his words carefully.
"Because I don't rely on what I have. I rely on what I can become."
Vale smiled faintly. "Very good. The rest of you, take note. The most dangerous cadets aren't the ones with raw power."
He turned away.
"They're the ones who keep changing. Even when the system tells them they shouldn't."
Later that night, Kael sat in his bunk, alone.
The room was dimly lit, the dull hum of generators vibrating softly through the walls. His body ached, but not like fatigue. It was more like… tension. Readiness.
Like he was always on the verge of something.
He stared at the cracked pendant in his hand.
House Vire. Genetic hazard. Evolution under duress. Self-adaptive growth.
His fingers tightened around it.
They tried to erase you.
He could feel the voices of doubt creeping in—doubt the system had buried in him since childhood.
You don't belong here.You don't have a family.You don't have a future.You're Unranked.
But he'd seen the fear in Vale's eyes. The curiosity in Elsyn's. The suspicion in Ryce's.
They didn't understand him.
And that made them afraid.
Not of who he was.
But of who he was becoming.
Kael thought of the fights. The simulations. The way his body responded faster now. How every battle taught him something new—not just about others, but about himself.
He knew now that his power wasn't a blessing.
It was a reckoning.
He didn't level the playing field.
He rewrote it.
And as long as he kept surviving—kept pushing forward—nothing could stop what he was turning into.
He stood and approached the dorm window. Outside, beyond the perimeter lights and the drones patrolling the skies, he saw the glimmering towers of the elite sector—where the noble houses trained, where S-ranks were groomed like royalty.
That world had no place for him.
But he wasn't going to wait for permission.
One day, he thought, I'll walk into that tower not as a guest… but as a storm they can't contain.
Not for revenge. Not even for legacy.
But because someone has to break the system that broke people like me.
And he would start with every single rank they tried to use as a leash.