Calia's office was smaller than Ryker expected shelves crammed with medical texts, dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, and a single wooden desk cluttered with vials and parchment. She gestured for him to sit.
Ryker remained standing.
"You agreed to fight Zayne Corvus," Calia said flatly. "In one month. In front of the entire academy."
"He didn't give me much choice."
"You could have walked away."
"And let him beat innocent students?" Ryker met her gaze. "No."
Calia studied him for a long moment. "The Ryker Vale I knew would've said the same thing. But that Ryker had mana. You don't."
"Then I'll figure something out."
"Figure something out?" Calia's voice rose. "Zayne is ranked in the top 200 students. He can reinforce his body with mana, enhance his speed, his strength. You can't even circulate basic energy anymore."
Ryker said nothing. Calia sighed and pulled a rolled parchment from her desk. "This is Zayne's combat record. Seventeen official duels. Seventeen wins. His shortest match lasted eight seconds."
She tossed it to Ryker. He caught it without looking.
Calia's eyes narrowed. "Your reflexes are intact."
"Muscle memory, probably."
"Muscle memory doesn't explain how you solved that advanced equation in Yolanda's class." Calia crossed her arms. "The old Ryker could barely manage basic arithmetic. You did it in under thirty seconds without hesitation."
Ryker shrugged. "Maybe amnesia reset something."
"Or maybe," Calia said quietly, "you're not who you claim to be."
The air between them grew tense.
Ryker held her gaze, unflinching. "If I'm not Ryker Vale, then who am I?"
"That's what I intend to find out." Calia moved to the window, looking out over the academy grounds. "But for now, you need to survive. Which means training. Starting tomorrow at dawn."
"Training for what? You said I can't use mana."
"No." Calia turned back. "I said you can't circulate mana. That doesn't mean you're helpless." She pulled a wooden training sword from behind her desk and tossed it to him. "Catch."
Ryker caught it one-handed.
The moment his fingers wrapped around the hilt, the wood groaned.
Calia froze.
Ryker looked down. Thin black veins spread from his grip, creeping into the grain like ink through water. The wood didn't burn it withered, turning gray and brittle.
He released it immediately.
The veins faded, but the damage remained a perfect handprint of decay on the polished surface.
"What..." Calia stepped closer, examining the sword. "What did you do?"
"I don't know."
"Don't lie to me."
"I'm not." Ryker's voice was sharp. "I don't know what that was."
Calia lifted the sword carefully, running her fingers over the decayed wood. "This isn't mana corruption. It's something else. Something that consumes."
[System Notification: Devourer Protocol partially active. Warning: Unstable manifestation detected.]
Ryker's jaw tightened. Not now.
Calia set the sword down and pulled out a small notebook, scribbling rapidly. "We need to run tests. Blood work, mana resonance scans"
"No."
She looked up. "Excuse me?"
"No tests." Ryker's tone left no room for argument. "Whatever this is, I'll figure it out on my own."
"You could be dying"
"I'm not dying." Ryker turned toward the door. "If you want to help me survive Zayne, teach me to fight without mana. Otherwise, I'll manage."
He left before she could respond.
The corridor outside was empty, torches casting dancing shadows on stone walls.
Ryker exhaled slowly, pressing a hand to his chest where the cold presence pulsed like a second heartbeat.
What am I becoming?
Footsteps echoed behind him.
"Ryker!"
He turned to find Aurora Lysander approaching, silver eyes sharp and calculating. Behind her, two other elite students hung back, watching with barely concealed curiosity.
"We need to talk," Aurora said.
"About?"
"Your duel with Zayne." She stopped an arm's length away. "You can't win."
"So I've been told."
"Then why accept?" Aurora's gaze was penetrating. "The old Ryker would've fought him immediately. You agreed to wait a month. That's not recklessness that's strategy."
Ryker said nothing.
Aurora stepped closer, voice dropping. "In Professor Yolanda's class, you solved a problem the old Ryker couldn't have touched. During the evaluation, I saw what you did to that sword. And right now..." She tilted her head. "You're standing perfectly balanced, weight distributed like a trained fighter. But you claim to have amnesia."
"Your point?"
"My point," Aurora said softly, "is that whoever you are, you're not the Ryker Vale who died three months ago."
Ryker's expression didn't change. "Careful. Accusations like that could get complicated."
"I'm not accusing you of anything." Aurora's smile was cold. "I'm observing. There's a difference."
One of her companions stepped forward a tall boy with sharp features. "Aurora, we should go."
"In a moment." She didn't break eye contact with Ryker. "I'll be watching your training. If you're planning something interesting, I want to see it."
"And if I'm not?"
"Then Zayne will kill you in eight seconds, and I'll have wasted my time." Aurora turned to leave, then paused. "Oh, and Ryker? Whatever happened to you in those three months... some of us are very interested in finding out."
She walked away, her companions following.
Ryker watched them disappear around a corner.
[System Notification: Hostile observation detected. Threat level: Medium. Recommendation: Eliminate witnesses.]
No, Ryker thought firmly. I'm not killing students.
[Alternative detected: Demonstrate overwhelming power to discourage investigation.]
That's the opposite of staying low-key.
[Query: Define "low-key" when host has already accepted public combat challenge.]
Ryker had no answer for that.
He continued toward the dormitories, mind racing. Aurora was right he couldn't win against Zayne with conventional methods. But conventional methods weren't all he had.
The question was: how much of this power could he use without revealing what he was?
His hand drifted to his chest again, feeling the cold pulse beneath his ribs.
One month, he thought. I have one month to figure out what I am and how to control it.
As he rounded a corner, he nearly collided with someone.
"Sorry" Ryker started.
The words died in his throat.
The man before him wore the robes of a senior professor, but his face was hidden beneath a deep hood. More importantly, the air around him felt wrong liike standing too close to a frozen lake in winter.
The hooded figure tilted his head, studying Ryker.
"Interesting," the man said, voice like gravel. "Very interesting indeed."
"Who are you?"
"Someone who's been waiting a very long time." The figure reached out slowly, not threatening, but deliberate. "May I?"
Before Ryker could respond, the man's hand pressed against his chest directly over where the cold presence pulsed. The reaction was immediate.
The presence surged, violent and hungry, slamming against the inside of Ryker's ribs like a caged animal. The temperature plummeted, frost spread across the stone floor in a perfect circle around them.
The hooded figure jerked his hand back, stumbling.
"Impossible," he whispered. "It's awake. Fully awake."
"What are you talking about?" Ryker demanded.
The figure backed away, hand trembling. "You shouldn't exist. The ritual was lost. The seals were absolute." He looked up, and for just a moment, Ryker caught a glimpse of ancient, terrified eyes beneath the hood. "What are you?"
"I asked you first."
The figure shook his head. "You'll find out soon enough. They all will." He turned and walked away rapidly, frost crunching under his feet.
"Wait—"
But the man had already vanished around a corner, moving impossibly fast.
Ryker stood alone in the corridor, breath misting in the lingering cold.
[System Notification: Unknown entity detected. Classification: ERROR. Threat level: UNKNOWN.]
[WARNING: Entity possessed knowledge of Devourer Protocol. Security breach possible.]
Ryker's hands clenched into fists.
What the hell was that?
His legs felt weak suddenly. The surge of power had taken something from him energy he didn't know he'd been using.
He made it to his dormitory room and collapsed onto the bed as consciousness faded, his last thought was of the hooded figure's words:
"You shouldn't exist."
Far above the academy, on a tower visible only to those who knew where to look, two cloaked figures stood in the darkness.
"The professor made contact," the first said.
"And?"
"He confirmed it. The vessel isn't just occupied it's bonded. Whatever came through isn't possessing the body. It is the body now."
A long silence.
"Then we're past the point of extraction," the second figure said quietly. "If we try to remove it..."
"The host dies. Permanently this time."
"Do we report this to the Conclave?"
"Not yet." The first figure's hood turned toward the dormitory where Ryker slept. "Let's see what it does with the power. If it can be controlled, it might be useful. If not..."
"If not, we eliminate it before it becomes unstoppable."
"Agreed."
The two figures melted back into shadow, leaving only the sound of wind across stone.
Below, in his dormitory room, Ryker dreamed of darkness and hunger and a voice that whispered:
"Thirty days. Then you'll understand everything."