The moment Lyle touched the phrase, the Codex vanished from sight—not collapsed, not faded, but disappeared into silence.
The room felt colder.
Sharper.
Not dangerous… just aware.
Like something else had entered it.
And he hadn't opened the door.
A quiet pulse ran down his spine.
Then across his skin.
Like ink spreading beneath the surface—his own mana twisted, curled, then settled, threading deeper into muscle, blood, and thought.
The room looked the same.
But it wasn't.
He looked the same.
But he wasn't.
The Codex reappeared, its glyphs dimmed but focused.
> [Arcai Ethos: "Deceive to Survive" Integrated]
[Your mana no longer reflects your true capacity to external scans.]
[Passive Glyph Adaptation: ON]
[Cognitive Bluff Field: Calibrating...]
Lyle breathed in slowly.
And nothing changed.
No bright light. No thunder. No drama.
Just a stillness.
A silence that let him breathe for the first time since unlocking the Core.
---
The next morning, his routine resumed.
But everything was different.
When he stood in line for drills, his mana signature showed as just slightly below average.
The instructors stopped watching him.
When he cast during support rounds, his glyphs shimmered just a bit off. Not enough to raise alarms—just enough to be forgettable.
And when one of the other cadets—a fire-user named Clenn—tried to mock his results, Lyle smiled quietly, bowed, and made the flame in Clenn's glove misfire just enough to singe his own sleeve.
Nobody saw it happen.
Nobody even questioned it.
And that was the point.
---
Later, in the evening session beneath Tower V, Asterion handed him a broken spellscroll.
Lyle barely glanced at it before twisting the formation, layering a false pattern on top of the real one—making it look like a harmless trap rune.
It wasn't.
It turned into a pressure mine.
Asterion raised a brow as it detonated in a puff of shadow and displaced air.
"You've already started lying with your power," he said.
Lyle shrugged. "I'm just telling the truth… differently."
"Good," Asterion muttered. "Now tell it harder."
---
That night, Lyle lay in bed staring at the ceiling.
The black iron ring sat on the nightstand, still unworn.
But the power it unlocked was already changing him.
And for the first time since his parents vanished…
He felt like he wasn't just surviving.
He was hunting.