The Anomaly's Path

The pressure did not just fall.

It grew. The cool air of the big room turned into a thick, heavy fog. Standing on the stone platform, the weight of Instructor Morgana’s presence made the space around us feel tight, like the air itself did not want us to breathe.

To my left, Arthur’s hand moved toward the handle of his sword. His gold eyes were sharp, already watching her stance. To my right, Riven was like a tight spring. His fingers twitched near his belt where his two daggers hung.

His gaze was dark, focused, and very competitive.

And me?

My hand rested light on the wrapped handle of Tempest, my katana. Even inside its cover, the blade felt alive, humming a little, like it was reacting to the heavy air filling the room. I kept my other hand deep in my pocket, trying to stop my fingers from shaking.

Fucking hell. I just had to open my mouth.

Down at the desk, Professor Vance cleared the last screens with a quiet wave of his hand. He stepped back, giving Morgana the whole stage. He looked a bit sorry, but mostly glad that her scary attention was no longer on his love life.

Morgana did not take her hands out of her pockets. She did not pull out a weapon. She just looked at the three of us standing in a loose line, her sharp eyes stopping on me for a moment longer than the others.

”Vance just spent the last twenty minutes giving you a nice lecture about Aether,” Morgana said.

”He told you it is the language of reality. He told you it is hidden because your weak human bodies will break if you touch it too early. But none of those book words mean anything until you feel what it actually does to a core.”

She took one step forward. The stone beneath her boot didn’t crack, but my vision momentarily blurred.

”Mana is just water,” Morgana continued, her voice dropping into a low tone.

”You shape it, you throw it, you drown people with it. But a high ranker does not rely on how much water they have. They rely on Intent and Will. Intent is what you mean to do in one single moment. It is the sharp edge behind an action. When I decide to cut you, my body is just catching up to the fact that you are already bleeding.”

She stopped, her posture completely relaxed, yet every instinct in my body was screaming at me.

”...Will is the long war.,” she said, looking between Arthur and Riven.

”It is a command. A Transcendent doesn’t beg the world to change. They tell it how it’s going to be. And Aether? Aether is the invisible rope that carries that command straight to the laws of reality. When a Transcendent pushes their will through Aether, the world obeys because it has no choice.”

She finally pulled her hands out of her pockets.

”You three are some of the strongest students here,” Morgana smiled, ”Let us see if you can handle a tiny piece of the real thing. Come at me. If you can make me move my left foot off this stone tile, you pass.”

Move her foot? I thought. We will be lucky if we do not leave this stage on stretchers.

But I did not have time to complain. The air to my right changed at once.

Riven did not wait.

The pride of the Ashford family, the grandson of a famous Sovereign, was not the type to wait for permission. His core glowed with a cold, quiet power. In a split second, his shadow stretched out under him, rising like dark water to cover his feet.

Swish.

He vanished completely. No trace of power, no push of air. Just a smooth slide into the dark. His style was fast, clean, and deadly, using pure speed rather than raw strength. He was moving through the dark to strike from a hidden angle with his two daggers.

At the same time, a bright flash of white light burst from my left. Arthur drew his sword in one smooth move.

His core was humming, pushing out a glowing, burning light that pushed back against Morgana’s red fog. His Divine Sense was already working, tracking the intent in the room, his face set in that serious, hero look.

”Leo! Help!” Arthur yelled, his boots breaking the stone as he launched himself forward like a gold comet, his sword leaving a trail of pure, bright light.

Help? Bro, I’m trying to survive!

I bit my lip, my mind racing. Having fought an actual Sovereign like my grandfather just yesterday, I wasn’t completely blind to the weight of a Transcendent’s aura.

I knew exactly how this worked.

If I stood still and let her intent wash over me, my joints would lock up before she even swung a fist. My Continuum Bloodline was already humming under my skin, its adaptive resistance working overtime to swallow the worst of her pressure, keeping my body fluid.

Volt Step.

I did not run straight.

Black lightning sparked around my boots with a sharp hiss as I burst to the side, using the fast speed to circle around her blind spot.

_

[Morgana’s POV]

The world slowed down to a boring crawl.

The three academy brats closed the distance, each choosing a completely different path.

My eyes tracked the hero first. Arthur Vale. The boy was very fast, his light power clean and bright, giving off that annoying, clear mark of the Goddess.

The strike coming at my left shoulder from his sword was perfect — good form, heavy, and packed with a lot of raw mana. He had shaped his power into a sharp edge, trying to use the thick strength of his SSS-rank core to cut through my red glow.

But it had no real bite.

It was the strike of a boy who had spent his whole life training in safe, controlled rooms, carrying the heavy, useless guilt of his own worth. There was no true certainty behind his blade. He was swinging because he felt he had to, trying to beat me with a big pool of mana instead of a single command.

Then came the small, tiny ripple in the shadows right behind my right shoulder.

Riven Ashford.

Now this kid was interesting. He had clearly inherited the old man’s skill. He had erased his body, moving through the dark like a real ghost. His two daggers were coming down in a silent, clean cross-cut aimed at the tendons in my neck.

His move was very desperate, driven by a burning, competitive fear that pushed his body way past its limits just to avoid being left in the hero’s shadow. He was not using raw strength. He was trying to sneak past my senses by hiding in the gaps of the room’s light.

...And then there was the mouthy one.

Leo von Celestial.

He was not rushing in like the other two. He was using a very smooth footwork to glide across the floor. His weight shifted perfectly to handle the red pressure I was giving off.

Unlike Arthur and Riven, who were wasting energy trying to fight my power with their own mana, Leo was using his space power to slightly bend the air around his skin, letting my pressure slide off into empty gaps. He was not fighting the mountain. He was moving around it.

Even earlier, during our first spar, I saw it. His sense for combat is sharp, and he reads the flow without thinking. That’s rare.

He has a B-rank core, they said. I find that hard to believe. I don’t think this guy is as simple as he seems. He is a true genius, and he might not even realize it yet. But if it is true that he is still a B-rank core... then I pity him.

He has great potential, but his own body is a cage.

”Too slow,” I said out loud.

I did not use a spell. I did not match their mana. To show true Aether, I just sent out one small pulse of my Intent through the air, wrapping it in the heavy weight of my soul.

Boom!

The show of Aether was not a blast of power. It was a sudden change in the room’s rules.

The unseen wall hit the hero first.

My quiet command that I could not be touched crashed into his body. Arthur’s bright light did not get put out by a stronger power — it just stopped working. The rules of reality within a few feet of me suddenly said that light could not shine or burn.

The gold glow around his sword flickered hard, his Sense clearly telling him that every path forward led to death. His body froze in the air, his muscles locking up as the weight of a real fighter’s will pressed into his chest.

Behind me, the Ashford kid did no better.

The moment his daggers got near my neck, my intent twisted the space around us. Aether carried my command to the rules of the room, and the very shadows he relied on changed. The dark became heavy and solid, turning into wet cement that trapped his arms.

Riven gasped, his pale face turning red as his two blades were held fast by the dark of the room, unable to cut through a wall he could not even see.

Only Leo kept moving, his body flickering as he tried to find a weak spot in the heavy weight of my presence.

_

[Leo’s POV]

Damn it, she is not even moving! I thought, my boots sliding across the stone.

This was the scary truth of Aether that Vance had talked about.

Arthur’s big mana pool and Riven’s shadow powers did not matter because Morgana was not playing by the same rules. She was not using mana to block them. Her Aether was literally telling the light to die and the shadows to harden.

It was a full rewrite of reality.

My core hummed loud. I could feel my bloodline pulling at the loose strands of her presence, turning it into fuel for my own body. If I wanted her to move her foot, normal strikes were useless. I needed to go past her physical guards.

Spatial Slip.

I pulled Tempest, the cold steel singing as it left its cover, wrapping the edge in a thin, crackling coat of black lightning and a small, shaky flicker of Soul Flame — the dark fire given by the Forgotten One that aimed at the very being of a target.

I swung the blade toward her ribs, but mid-swing, I folded the space right in front of the metal.

The blade vanished, skipping past the few feet of air between us and appearing right next to her foot, aiming straight for her left boot.

Morgana’s eyebrows went up a little. Instead of letting the blade hit her boot, she just shifted her will.

The mana in the room seemed to grow dense. A small wave of pure intent burst from her heel. The space fold I had made snapped shut, pushing Tempest back into normal space before the Soul Flame could even touch her.

With a casual flick of her hand, she did not even hit them. She just let the pressure push out by an inch.

Agh!

Arthur and Riven — one an Expert Low, the other an Expert Mid — were thrown back at the same time, their boots scraping deep lines into the stone as they slid across the stage, coughing hard as their mana guards broke.

I managed to stop myself, using Volt Step to jump back and take in the force, my hand on the ground as the wind from her power pushed me back a few feet. Thanks to the Tear of the Drowned King earring on my ear, my wild emotions stayed cold and calm, keeping the hunger of the Soul Flame from eating at my own mind.

Up in the middle rows, the room was dead quiet.

The smug looks on the faces of the nobles were gone. They were looking at Arthur — their unbeatable hero, and Riven, the top student breathing hard on the floor without the teacher even taking her hands out of her pockets.

Morgana looked down at the three of us, her dangerous smile coming back as the thick red fog settled back into a steady, heavy heat around her feet.

”See that? That is the difference between using a spell and telling reality what to do. You three are strong — Expert Low, Expert Mid, Expert Low, but ranks mean nothing against Aether. Until your Will is strong enough to look a Transcendent in the eye without blinking... you are just kids playing with fire.”

She turned her gaze back to me, her eyes shining with clear amusement as I slowly stood up, brushing the stone dust off my pants.

”Now,” Morgana smiled, her voice dripping with a low, dark promise. ”...Who wants to try for round two?”