Virelia Academy rose like a fortress against the horizon—its walls painted in pristine ivory, its towers stretching toward cloud-split skies. Security drones drifted lazily overhead like curious birds. Students moved in neat lines, uniforms pressed and polished, masks worn more by habit than regulation.
Neo Mojaki stood at the edge of it all.
Not apart. Not quite within.
A transfer student in name, but a ghost in practice.
No one noticed how quietly he moved through the halls. No one remembered him joining conversations. No one recalled if he smiled or frowned. He simply existed between seconds, seen but unregistered—like static between channels.
That was by design.
He memorized routines. He learned names he never said aloud. He mapped the dormitory blueprints in the quiet of his mind, filed teachers' tells, and watched.
Always watched.
---
His room was a narrow slice of structure tucked deep within West Wing Dorm 3B—low-ranking, barely monitored, and exactly where he wanted to be. A single bed. A desk. An outdated screen. No windows.
Neo liked it.
Silence was honest.
He woke at 4:45 a.m. daily. Not for training, not for punishment. Just… because.
By 5:00, he'd already reviewed two new student reports flagged in the academy's weekly transfers. By 5:30, he'd plotted their potential affiliations based on body language from yesterday's cafeteria footage.
He hadn't awakened Echo Step yet.
But it was close.
---
It came to him like a whisper—unseen moments that pulsed strangely when he passed them. A glimpse of a teacher's hesitation. The sound of chalk skipping a beat too soon. The faint shimmer of a student hesitating near the elevator.
Patterns.
Neo didn't see power the way others did. He **heard** its absence. He **felt** the shape of it—how people moved around lies, how silence expanded where truth should be.
And Virelia was full of gaps.
---
The invitation came quietly.
A white envelope, slipped under his door before dawn.
No stamp. No seal. Just three words:
**"Council requests presence."**
Neo stared at it for a long while, expression unreadable. Then he folded it once, set it aflame in a ceramic dish, and opened his closet.
There was no fear in him.
Only calculation.
If the Council had noticed him… then they were already too late.