The road to the Academy is less a thoroughfare and more a processional of paranoia. Every intersecting block bristles with forgotten warnings, and the manmade rivers of variance hum below the disintegrating surface as if the city itself is alive and waiting for your failure. You keep your head down. You keep a mitten on your right hand, despite the morning's sticky heat, because you will never not be worried that the glow under your skin might bleed out between your fingers and become a beacon for every scavenger and headhunter between here and the east towers.
The entrance to the Academy is a memory you inherited from someone smarter, richer, possibly even magical—an hourglass of inseparable old and new: the original stairwell, blackened by centuries of weather and war, now fused at the apex to an arc of glass and fiber that throws rainbows at your squinting eyes. The security node flares as soon as you step inside, but the badge is barely necessary; the artifact in your pack has a frequency all its own, and the scanners seem eager to make a project of you.
You almost trip on the last stair, which is either a design flaw or an initiation rite. The grand antechamber unspools in front of you, vaulting up into a geometry that gives oxygen to every rumor you've ever heard about the Sky Architects. Even the air weighs more here. The old pillars are stitched with veins of active ley, their blue and gold traceries crawling in restless Morse. The floors are imported basalt, each tile inscribed with an in-joke or threat in a language nobody speaks out loud anymore.
You stand to one side, trying to look forgettable. No such luck. Every movement of every student, every staffer, every wandering echo of a custodian's cleaning drone is choreographed for maximum intimidation. Some of them catch your eye for a split second, then look away as if you're the dangerous one.
Professor Evergreen—Arden, as his official file styled him, though you would never be able to say that to his face—materializes at the far end of the gallery. You think you see him scan the crowd until he's pinpointed your exact position, but it's equally possible he sensed you before you even entered the building. He gestures with a single, half-rotated palm: follow, but don't dawdle or draw more attention than you have already. You're fast on his heels, your body performing a hundred micro-adjustments to maintain the correct student-professor distance.
He doesn't talk in the corridors. He leads you across an internal skybridge that links two towers—one always in shadow, the other blazing with intrusive sunlight. The first thing you notice when you step inside: the air is cold in the expensive way, so dry it feels like a vacuum. The second thing: the windows are smartglass, with embedded runes vibrating along their edges, probably to keep prying eyes (or psychic probes) out.
He sets a brisk pace up a spiral staircase, then veers into a locked corridor lined with doors, each one charmed to mute sound and ward against accidents. He ushers you into the third room on the left, sealing the door with a triple tap. The chamber is a hybrid—a classic lecture hall small enough for two, dominated by a single wooden table and a display wall that doubles as a blackboard and a threat. Every surface is scoured to aseptic clarity, every chair bolted and weighted a thumb's width further apart than you'd like.
The Prof slides into the larger chair, aligns a stylus with the edge of the table, and finally addresses you. "You brought it." Not a question, but neither is it permission.
You nod and unspool the artifact from your satchel, careful not to touch it with your bare skin. It looks less menacing under the institutional lamps: just a cloudy crystal, cracked in three places, cradle-shaped as if waiting for something to hatch. A faint ring of condensation forms wherever it touches the air.
He leans forward with surgical intent, his gaze narrowing. "Describe the sensation. From first contact to now."
You do your best. The high pitch behind your teeth, the way your skin switches polarity depending on the time of day, the dreams you don't want to think about again. As you speak, the Professor taps out notations on the table; each keystroke creates a ripple in the display wall, which scrolls with simulations and diagrams so fast your vision tears at the speed.
He's not impressed with your metaphors, but he's not uninterested either. "Most initial exposures result in catastrophic feedback. You stabilized instead. Why do you think that is?"
You don't know, except you suspect it's less about you and more about the artifact matching a pattern it liked. You say something like that, and it earns a twitch at the corner of his mouth. A smile, maybe, or the start of one.
"The literature on Soul Resonance is sparse," he says, linking the word with a gesture to a glowing entry on the wall. You flinch. The phrase has come up before, in the late-night message boards, always as a joke or a threat. You wonder if he's going to tell you it's a myth.
Instead: "Every so often, an individual shows hyper-resonance with objects from the Nexus. That's what you are now. You will be hounded for it, envied for it, and possibly killed if you're not careful." He leans back, the black in his eyes flexing wider. "But you'll change everything, if you live through the first year."
You process that in silence, resisting the urge to cradle your glowing hand or make a joke about what you were expecting to do after graduation.
He cracks the room's window a centimeter, letting in a sliver of the ordinary world. When he speaks this time, it's lower, more rapid-fire. "Have you attempted channeling?" He reaches into a drawer, withdraws a small metal cube the size of a matchbox, and sets it on the table between you.
You shake your head, hoping he doesn't notice the lie. He absolutely notices, but says nothing.
"Try it," he says. "With the scar. Just focus and let it happen."
You don't question instructions from someone whose academic citations outnumber your bad habits. You press your palm to the cube.
At first nothing. Then the room shifts minutely, as if every solid had decided to become liquid for the space of a breath. The cube floats, rises half a finger off the wood, and a pulse of blue arcs through the scar on your palm, out through the metal, and back into the table in an endless loop.
You almost drop it, but you don't. Instead, you find yourself wanting another, harder, sharper hit of whatever that was. The cube lands with a clack, and the scar on your palm subsides to its regular simmer.
Evergreen studies you for a moment, then produces a thin, almost sardonic smile. "You don't need to control it," he says. "You just need to know what it is, and what it isn't."
He spends the next ten minutes mapping your frequencies. He holds a prismatic lens to your face; he asks you to recite a string of numbers backwards; he runs a small buzzing wand along the length of your hand and asks you what color you see. With every test, you feel the awareness in your blood ratchet higher, as if you're being upgraded in real time.
He logs the results, then sits back in the chair and regards you with what might be described as camaraderie, if either of you had any idea how to express that without irony or awkwardness. "Your pattern is unique," he says, tapping his own index finger. "Full spectrum, multi-vector. The odds of that are greater than the odds of you being here in the first place."
You stare at your right hand, now tingling all the way to the wrist.
He types something final into his slate and instructs: "No one can know. Not yet. You say nothing about what you've done or felt. Not to colleagues, not even to the administrative gremlins." He waits for you to nod, then continues. "Training schedule will be doubled. Triple, if I get what I want. You report direct to me."
You swallow, aware that your new life has already begun and is accelerating out of your control.
He stands, preparing to leave. Before he goes, he turns back to you. "One more thing," he says, voice almost a whisper despite the soundproofing of the room. "If you sense it—I mean, the resonance between yourself and another—never, ever ignore it."
You nod, absorbing the weight of that.
He studies you for a moment longer. "Most of your peers will want to understand you. Don't let them."
You watch his back as he walks out and realize you're going to have to learn to live with uncertainty as your only constant. You gather your things, repacking the artifact, and feel it pulse like a small heartbeat as you exit the old stone hall and descend back into the city.
Somewhere between the exit and the fractured geometry of campus, you realize you're no longer worried about the scar or the artifact or even the label he put on you. You're worried about what you'll do when you meet another like you.
Because you know, viscerally and without reason, that you will. And that they'll recognize you before you recognize yourself.