The aftermath of the Phantom Rift hung over the Arcanum Academy like a veil of exhaustion. The once-bright hangar now breathed in silence and smoke. Broken Frames lay scattered across the bay floor, their surfaces charred and fractured, their cores dimming like fading stars. Engineers moved among them with quiet urgency, and the air shimmered faintly with residual M.A.N.A. — a reminder of the chaos that had nearly consumed them.
Dalisay Arven stood in the center of it all, her medical unit still flickering with warning lights. Her hands were trembling. The smell of ozone and burnt alloy clung to her pilot suit, but she didn't seem to notice. Around her, rows of wounded cadets waited for stabilization. Some groaned softly inside damaged cockpits, others lay unconscious on the metallic floor, their neural links unstable.
"Ma'am, we're running out of power cells," one of the med-techs called out, voice breaking. "We can't keep their vitals stable for long."
Dalisay looked toward the center of the bay — where her Frame, the Spectra Nova, stood motionless. Its translucent armor pulsed faintly with blue and violet veins, like the surface of a living crystal. The Frame's chestplate was cracked open, its Bio-Core flickering erratically, yet there was still a pulse — faint but steady.
She took a slow breath, resting a trembling hand against its surface. "You can still hear me, can't you?" she whispered.
The core shimmered once in answer.
Around her, the med-teams were collapsing under fatigue. Their healing units had overheated, and their auxiliary drones could no longer draw stable M.A.N.A. from the ambient field. It was as if the Rift had poisoned the very air they breathed.
And yet, when Dalisay reached through her neural link, she could feel something deeper — a current, like a river beneath the chaos.
She sat cross-legged on the cold floor beside the Spectra Nova, closing her eyes. Her palms pressed against the shimmering hull. She focused her breath, remembering the sound of her mother's heartbeat, the warmth of home before the war, and the quiet promise she once made: No one dies if I can help it.
The Frame responded.
Tiny streams of bioluminescent energy crawled across its armor, threading toward her hands. Her neural link flared to life. For an instant, the world around her dissolved into color — a flood of resonant frequencies, each tone carrying the echo of a pilot's life. She could hear them, like voices trapped within the static.
Her pulse began to synchronize.
"Cadet Arven, your levels are spiking!" someone shouted from the control deck. "You're drawing too much M.A.N.A. from the residual field—"
She ignored them. Her consciousness was expanding, her thoughts bleeding into the Frame's living circuits. The Spectra Nova pulsed like a heartbeat beside her, its spectral veins aligning perfectly with her own rhythm.
"Please," she whispered, "just hold on."
A wave of light burst outward.
The ground trembled as spectral tendrils spread from the Spectra Nova's core, reaching toward the wounded Frames nearby. Their dormant reactors flickered, registering a faint signal — healing resonance detected. Energy flowed through damaged conduits, bypassing broken systems, and gently coaxing life back into the silent machines.
On the monitors above, the readings climbed rapidly.
"Resonance recovery — thirty-two percent, forty-five— no, it's still climbing!" a technician exclaimed. "She's stabilizing them through the neural field!"
Inside her mind, Dalisay could see each pilot — their faint lights dimming, flickering like dying stars. But as she reached out through the Frame's pulse, each light brightened, their energy threads reconnecting. She felt their pain, their fear, their heartbeat — and she anchored them, pulling their resonance back into harmony.
Her body trembled. Blood trickled from her nose as the strain deepened. But she refused to stop.
The Spectra Nova began to change.
Its crystalline armor plates flexed, reshaping themselves under the intensity of the Bio-Resonance. Veins of blue and pink energy spread across its limbs, forming luminous sigils that pulsed in rhythm with her heart. The cracked chestplate sealed itself, revealing a new, dual-layer core — two pulsating rings rotating around a bright nucleus of shifting light.
In the observation deck, Commander Varros leaned forward. "Record this. That's a new configuration — I want every reading."
One of the analysts swallowed hard. "Sir… her Frame isn't just adapting. It's evolving."
Down below, the light intensified. Dalisay's neural visor flooded with data she couldn't comprehend — energy fields aligning, life patterns stabilizing. The boundaries between flesh and machine blurred as her consciousness merged fully with the Spectra Nova. She was no longer piloting it; she was it.
A single tear fell down her cheek.
"Stay with me," she murmured, focusing on the faint pulse of a cadet whose vitals had flatlined moments ago. The healing light enveloped his Frame, repairing fractures in both armor and neural circuitry. Slowly, the pilot's chest began to rise again.
All around her, one by one, the wounded began to awaken.
Gasps echoed through the hangar as cadets regained consciousness. Some blinked in confusion; others wept openly when they realized their systems were restored. The light around Dalisay brightened until it painted the walls in shifting colors — violet, turquoise, white — forming what looked like a halo of moving water.
When the surge finally faded, silence followed.
Technicians stared from their stations, speechless. Energy readings stabilized at impossible levels. The monitors displayed a single phrase across multiple feeds: BIO-RESONANCE: STABLE.
Commander Varros broke the silence first. His voice carried through the hangar's speakers, low and steady. "Cadet Arven, you've just redefined the function of the Bio-Core system. Effective immediately, this ability will be classified as a new Resonant discipline."
Dalisay opened her eyes slowly, still kneeling beside the Spectra Nova. Her breath came in shallow bursts, her body drained but alive. The Frame's armor was no longer translucent blue — it now shimmered with a gentle spectrum of light, constantly shifting like living glass. The dual-core heart at its center pulsed in two rhythms — one hers, one its own.
Mateo Reyes entered the hangar, his Aegis Halo still faintly glowing from residual combat charge. He froze when he saw her surrounded by recovered cadets.
"You did this?" he asked softly.
Dalisay smiled faintly, exhaustion weighing down her voice. "We did. Spectra and I."
He walked closer, gazing at the Frame's reconfigured structure. "Then you've given the Academy something worth more than victory."
She tilted her head, confused. "What do you mean?"
Mateo looked at the revived cadets — the ones she had brought back from the edge of death. "You didn't just save them. You restored their resonance. You brought harmony back to chaos. That's more powerful than any weapon."
Her eyes softened. "I didn't mean to make history," she said. "I just couldn't let them fade."
Varros' voice came again through the speakers. "The Academy owes you its survival. From this day, your field will be documented as Bio-Resonance Healing. Expect to see the entire science division knocking on your door by dawn."
She gave a weak laugh, resting her hand on Spectra's armor. The Frame responded with a low, harmonic hum, as if pleased.
But as the others celebrated, she sensed something deeper. Through her link, she could still feel the wounded resonance of the world beyond — the scars left by the Phantom Rift. And in that silent hum of the Frame's heart, she understood: her power wasn't meant for glory, but for balance.
She stood, her reflection shimmering on the crystalline armor. "We'll need more than healing," she whispered. "We'll need understanding."
Spectra's wings unfurled behind her — transparent, flowing like glass ribbons infused with light. They rose and pulsed once, scattering fine motes of spectral energy into the air, bathing the hangar in a warm, living glow.
The technicians fell silent again, staring in awe as fragments of the light drifted down like luminous snow.
Dalisay closed her eyes and breathed deeply. For the first time since the Rift tore their world open, the air felt alive — not mechanical, not artificial, but human.
And in that stillness, as her newly evolved Spectra Nova stood towering above the other Frames, the Academy rediscovered something it had nearly forgotten: hope.