CHAPTER 204: 204: THE FIRST SEMESTER XXVII

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Fizz inhaled like a trumpet. John spoke first, softer. "Enough," he said. "And not enough to make you brave in the wrong way. Do your count. Do it clean. Don’t get clever."

Rhea added, "And don’t measure yourself by anyone else’s night. Measure by your next breath."

The tight-braid girl nodded too hard, like a person drinking from a river. She dragged her squad away, repeating measures by their breath under her tongue until it sounded like a spell she had always known.

Dorn finished his last cap, slotted the vials into a padded strip, and gave the clearing a last long look. "The jungle will forgive the noise by midday," he said. "It forgives quickly. It forgets slowly."

Yarrow clicked her slate shut. "Here is how this goes," she told Team Lord Fizz. "You bring your cores to the proctor’s post before noon for tally. You eat. You sleep a real hour. You do not play the hero in the same place twice. If you hunt again today, you hunt small and quiet. If you see strangers, you do not assume they are either friendly or competent. If you smell blood, you call for a proctor instead of proving an argument to the wind."

Fizz saluted again with ridiculous gravity. "We obey," he said. "Mostly."

"Enough," Yarrow returned, and let the word be a blessing.

As the gliders lifted —silent, efficient, absolutely convinced they were handsome— murmurs rolled in their wake. Second-years craned for gossip; first-years pretended they hadn’t been afraid to die and weren’t now afraid to be bored. Someone pointed at Fizz’s ribbon and called it adorable in a tone that admitted defeat.

Rhea checked their ties. Ray checked his face and found, to his horror, that the almost-smile had survived the night and didn’t mind daylight. John checked the line in his chest. It hummed. The new measure was closer now, a step away, a hand on the latch.

"Proctor Yarrow," John said, before she swung onto her glider. "One thing."

She paused. "Yes."

"If someone is laying bait on students," he said, careful with the shape of his own anger, "they will try again."

"They will," Yarrow agreed. "And we will be less interesting to them next time by being everywhere they think we are not. You—" her chin flicked to the three of them and the one of him "—be good. Boring. Efficient. That frightens cowards more than prowess."

Fizz cupped a paw to his mouth. "We will be the most terrifyingly boring people you have ever seen," he promised. "We will yawn with excellence."

Yarrow’s mouth twitched once — there, then gone. "See that you do," she said, and stepped onto the glider. Glyphs caught air. The frame rose like a flat thought reconsidered. They were gone through the ironwoods in three heartbeats, leaving the smell of waxed canvas and competence.

Silence returned. The honest kind, now. Birds took up the thread where panic had dropped it and embroidered the morning with unambitious joy.

Ray let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding hostage. "Well," he said.

"Well," Rhea echoed, sheath settling against her thigh.

Fizz turned in a slow, proud circle, ribbon ear fluttering, biscuits entirely gone. "And thus," he declared, "Team Lord Fizz receives official recognition in the form of two hard cookies and a fabric license to be fabulous."

John looked down at his palm, flexed it once, felt the air oblige. "Tally," he said. "Then breakfast. Then... small and quiet." He glanced at Rhea. "Then I take the last ones. Alone."

Rhea’s eyes measured him, then the trees. She nodded. "After soup," she said.

"Said the healer," Fizz added. "And the soup."

They gathered their bags. Ray slung the net of cores over his shoulder and nearly fell over before Rhea took half with a look that did not even have to be a look. John led them toward the proctor post path, feet finding the firm without thinking, ribbon bobbing behind, flame-head muttering something about porridge that would be pancakes if the gods had any mercy.

Behind them, the trampled arc began the slow, private work of being unremarkable again. Above them, the ironwood leaves clicked, gossiping among themselves about boys and bright things and the way trouble always arrives just in time to be late. Far out along the shadowed line, a watcher who had expected to eat news this morning instead swallowed a curse and slid away through brush that did not thank him for the way he bent it.

They did not look back. They had already taken everything the night had to say.

Now the battle is over. The jungle stopped shouting long enough to breathe, and the ground remembered it did not have to shake. Teachers arrived with the calm of people who had missed the worst of it on purpose and were determined to pretend that was strategy. Senior students in wardens’ sashes fanned out to count cores, chalk the kill sites, and ask the kind of sensible questions nobody can answer while their hands still hum.

The counting and the praising and the gentle scolding washed over John the way rain does after a swim. Useful. Real. But not the thing happening inside him. He moved a few paces away to the edge of the clearing where a blackened ironwood threw long morning shade, and he let his breath find its number.

Four in. Four out. Four again.

The line in his chest —his new old compass— vibrated in a register lower than it had yesterday. Not louder. Just deeper, like a song whose bass had finally remembered its own lyrics. He closed his eyes and set his hand, palm up, the way a mason sets a level on a wall to see if a room is honest.

He watched the earlier system notifications again.

[System Notification: Mission complete. Frenzy Counter 50 of 50. Reward engaged. Circle advancement permeability increased.]

The words arrived like they always did, even when the world would not have believed him if he tried to say them out loud. The system spoke in calm ink and kind math. Nobody else saw the sentences hanging in his air; nobody else tasted the cold iron tang that came with them. This was his quiet letter from a teacher who did not use paper.

He did not answer, because there was nothing to answer. He breathed once more and allowed the unlocked door inside him to swing open the last inch.

[System Notification: Advancement available. Begin Circle Three integration.

Estimated duration: short.

Side effects: possible.]

He stood under the ironwood’s shade and let the world pass through him. Heat in the hands. Weight in the sternum. A mild, precise ache unrolling behind the eyes like someone removing old stitches that had done their work and could go. There was no thunder. There was no glow. There was only a change in the way the day held him. As if the air, which had always been polite enough, wanted to be closer.

Fizz floated into the branch’s shadow and peered at his face. He knew better than to talk when John was counting. He did anyway, because he was Fizz. "You have your ’do not poke me, I am rearranging physics’ expression," he whispered, soft enough that only leaves and loyal friends could hear. He could feel it, "Is it happening? Will you rank up now?"

John did not move his head. His voice was low and even. "It is."

Fizz’s ears tipped back with a mix of worry and pride. "Do you need me to hum a hymn? I know six."

"No," John said. "Just be here."

"I am very here," Fizz promised, settling above his shoulder like a small, determined star.

The last tie snapped —not a break, but a release— and the circle inside him tightened and widened at once. The sensation was like pulling a belt one hole inward while the world politely moved out to make room. The line in his chest deepened its pitch and found a sharper edge. He exhaled. The ground under his boots gave a small sigh as dust spiraled, then settled as if it had made a decision.

[System Notification: Advancement complete. Host rank: Circle Three Mage.

Affinity: Void.

New skill acquired: Gravity Pull.

Description: Localized gravitational field centered at host, pulling nearby matter and mana toward focal point. Base radius fifteen meters. Cooldown sixty seconds. Cost four hundred mana.]

A beat later, a second line of text slid under the first, like a footnote that knew it was trouble.

[System Advisory: Skill generates micro empathic field. Use may increase ambient attraction response among compatible observers / opposite sex (mostly with horny women). Effect accumulative with proximity. Manage with caution.]

John’s mouth twitched at the corner. The system could have said the moon may be bright when the sun leaves. It preferred polite surprises.

He did not repeat those words. He never repeated the system’s words. He let them fold into memory the way ink does when you close a book on it.