Chapter 3, Part 1: The Scent Ward
They walked beneath the guardians of the University: ironwoods that had learned to grow in ruin, their trunks braided around old street lamps, their crowns fused into a green vault that sifted daylight into a chapel's hush. The ranger column set an easy pace—easy for people who had learned to read danger before it lifted its head. Kara matched them, chin up, the small green thread of the charter bracelet still an hour from her wrist but already pulsing inside her like a promise.
KrysKo paced just behind her, silent, listening to the way the earth sounded when people expected safety soon. It was a different quiet than the road's: less teeth, more breath.
Up ahead, the path bowed toward a stone arch. A sigil of braided lines had been carved across its lintel and hammered deep with copper: two strands crossing, joining, holding—the same mark stamped in wax upon Kara's papers. Voices traveled along the stone, some bright with youth, some frayed with work. Somewhere a bell chimed twice, then once. A scholar's code for the hour, carried in bronze and memory.
The auburn-haired ranger with the river-delta scar fell in alongside Kara. "Last warning before the line," she said, not unkindly. "University code: no live steel drawn inside the walls; no loaded arms; and no autonomous constructs operating without sponsor supervision."
Her eyes slid to KrysKo for the last clause.
Kara lifted her palm, steady. "Understood. He's with me."
The ranger's mouth quirked. "Then he's with the rules, too."
KrysKo inclined his head. "I will comply."
They came to a waystation of stone and salvaged glass. Beneath the arch stood a Drakari scentwarden, cowl marked in the latticed pattern of his calling. His eyes were half-lidded, his long nostrils barely moving. Beside him, a frame of polished oak held three small cups of gray ash, a bowl of smokeleaf, a rack of narrow reeds that sang when the wind crossed them.
The scentwarden dipped two fingers into the ash, touched them to his tongue, and hummed low. "Step," he said, his Trade deep and clean. Kara moved first. The Drakari inhaled, slow as tide, as if her story were a scent to be read.
"Road-dust," he said. "Rosemary. Copper from a recent cut." His pupils tightened, then widened by a degree. "Myles line. Admitted."
Kara let out air she hadn't meant to keep.
The warden's gaze slid to KrysKo. The air cooled by something older than weather.
[Advisory: Drakari olfactory net engaged.] [Status: Nonhuman vectors detectable at 89%.] [Recommendation: Deploy scent veil.]
Kara was already moving, quick-fingered. She drew a jar the color of old honey from her satchel and a wand of bundled herbs bound with copper thread.
"Hold still," she murmured.
He did.
She touched spark to bundle. Smoke unfurled: rosemary, backbay myrtle, a pepper-sweet of crushed smokeleaf. With two fingers she dotted salve to his pulse points—throat, wrists, the hollow beneath the scarf. The smoke curled and clung, then softened.
[New compound detected.] [Analyzing volatile profile…] [Result: human-adjacent pheromone mask; botanicals: rosmarinus, myrtle, ash-tallow.] [Action: Modulate micro-sweat excretion to match mask profile.] [Result: olfactory signature shift → 93% human.]
"Breathe in," she said.
He let the system take the rhythm. The faint mineral whisper of alloy heart receded beneath a warm human musk of smoke, fat, herb, and road.
The scentwarden's lids lifted a fraction. He inhaled.
"Human," he said. A beat. "Fatigue, dust, iron." A pause as fine as a blade's edge. "And something else I will not name today." His eyes turned to Kara. "Sponsored?"
"Under Myles charter."
The warden touched the ash, then the arch. "Enter under vow," he said, voice like stone remembering its river. "No hidden steel drawn against scholar or soil."
KrysKo bowed his head. "Under vow."
They stepped beneath the sigil.
Beyond the arch, the University did not rise; it unfolded. Courtyards webbed by herb lines and clotheslines alike. Broken aqueduct learned into gardens. A semicircle of students stood around a Drakari healer as he taught the difference between bruised mint and blackleaf by scent alone. Farther on, a bone-and-bronze automaton creaked under two apprentices' careful hands, heart-stack ticking in an old, stubborn rhythm.
Kara's pace slowed as the place revealed itself: awe on a tight rein. "I've only seen it in drawings," she breathed.
"Stay with your sponsor," called the ranger. "Registration first. Rules talk second. If you're lucky, a meal."
They crossed a cloister where sunlight fell in clean squares and the acoustics made footsteps important. A placard of rules hung at the far wall:
NO LIVE STEEL DRAWN
NO UNAUTHORIZED CONSTRUCTS
NO BLOOD PRICE ON UNIVERSITY STONE
ASK BEFORE YOU TAKE. RETURN MORE THAN YOU BORROW.
Kara's gaze flicked to KrysKo's forearms as if rules might peer through skin.
"I will not deploy the blades here," he said, low. "No one will see them."
"How?" she whispered.
"By not needing them," he said. Then, for her alone: "And by not letting them see me."
He watched the flow of the square—the rangers, the scentwardens, the bronze-knuckled gate. Sightlines, blind corners, mirrored glass angles. He could be a shadow until he chose otherwise.
[Stealth protocol: passive.] [Forearm armatures: safety interlock engaged.] [EM signature: damped to background.]
They registered in a hall of chalk and ledger. A clerk with ink-stained knuckles stamped Kara's paper and tied green thread around her wrist. "Welcome, Myles," she said, expression brightening a degree at the name. "Dorm E. Apprentices' commons at second bell. Herb lab orientation at third." Her eyes measured KrysKo without flinching. "Sponsor?"
"He's with me," Kara said.
"Then he's welcome so long as you keep the vow. Guests sign the book. We enforce what we ask you to keep." She slid a heavy ledger forward, pages foxed by years, the columns filled with names and promises. KrysKo signed. His name sat among thousands that believed paper could hold intention steady.
They were given a cell with a window that looked onto cracked tile and stubborn green. Kara set her satchel on the cot, smoothed the sheet as if it might remember being unwrinkled. KrysKo stood by the window and watched students cross a square in lines that were also stories: a boy with three scrolls and a loaf of bread; a Drakari child with a slate beneath one arm and a lizard under the other; an elder with a walking stick carved with names.
"Close the door?" Kara asked softly.
He did. The click sounded louder in a place that kept its silences clean.
She faced him, the green thread a soft mark of belonging. "You said you'd tell me," she said. "When we were alone." A breath. "Who you are."
He undid the scarf.
"Project KrysKo," he said. The room became a listening glass. "Echo Vault. A long time ago—longer than any clock here knows—your people built me to be a sentinel. Human thought stitched to alien scaffolds. Architect lattice for memory. Ophilim capacitors for speed. Something older at the core. They signed a vow to wake me and a vow to aim me."
Kara went still. Not afraid; learning.
"The EMP came," he said. "They thought it would blind the enemy. It blinded everything. The Vault went dark. The last thing I saw was three guards standing in red light. Then nothing for five centuries."
"Five hundred years," she whispered, like saying the number too loud might offend time.
"I woke to ruin," he said. "The system locks much of what I knew. It lets go by degrees, as if testing whether I'm still the thing they meant to make."
"And the blades?"
"Not all of me is for classrooms," he said. "But I won't use them here."
"Why tell me?"
He thought of the line under the arch. The ink in the vow book. The weight of her sponsor's hand when she pressed smoke into his skin.
"Because you asked," he said. "And because your line keeps old words."
"Thank you," she said, and meant it.
Outside, third bell rang. Students scattered in orderly untidiness.
Kara reached into her satchel and unrolled a narrow length of leather. "Bracers," she said. Simple, dark, with thin backing plates stitched between hides. "Training guards for knife practice. If you wear them, people will think you're cautious. They won't ask why your wrists are… different."
He slid them on. They fit too well.
[Armature disguise: effective.] [Magnetic signature: masked.]
"You'll smell human," she said, humor ghosting her mouth. "You'll look like you've got nothing up your sleeve. And you'll keep your vow."
"I will."
"Good." She tipped her head toward the window. "Welcome to the University, KrysKo."
He looked out again. A student fumbled her slate. Two others pretended they hadn't seen, then went back and helped anyway. Somewhere, someone tuned a stringed instrument until it found the note the room wanted.
For the first time since steam and red light woke his eyes, he felt something he could almost mistake for relief.
[Campus entry: complete.] [Subsystem unlocked: Scent Profile Editor (Human Baseline v1).] [Blades: campus interlock engaged.] [Quest chain updated: University Paths → Attend orientation; secure lab access; maintain cover.]
The leather creaked like a very small door closing politely.
"Let's learn the rules," he said.
"And then," Kara added, eyes bright, "let's break the ones that keep people dying."
He did not smile easily. He did now, quick and precise as a hinge.
The bell rang again. Somewhere inside him, a door moved on its pins.
Continue Reading
KrysKo has told Kara his secret, but he still faces a challenge: proving he is worthy of the University's shelter. Next, read about the high-stakes test in Chapter 3, Part 2: The Trial of Blades Without Blades!