Elara learned early not to touch anyone.
No one said it out loud. But if someone dropped, you didn't help. If they bled, you stepped around it.
She hadn't understood the rule yet. Her hand moved on instinct—over a wrist gone soft with fracture, over ribs that seized with each breath. The touch let her feel what they had, and she did not.
After enough repeats, the pain began draining into her palms.
But the others weren't grateful or moved. They were confused. A few looked at her differently after—like she was stupid.
Because she was.
There was no reward in healing someone who might kill you later. The Eclipse crowned the last one breathin—no pairs or alliances. But Elara wasn't being noble, she agreed: helping others was foolish. But it gave her a way to experiment.
When Hikari arrived, nothing stood out except his hair. He was just another name on the roster—another Kynenn forced into the next deathmatch.
Elara was sitting on the stairs outside the second-level training hall when she saw him for the first time—the trauma in his face mixed so tightly with the desire for innocence, it was hard to tell which had come first.
He didn't look scared.
He obviously didn't look impressed, either.
Most newcomers cried for at least a week. Letting themselves go. Mourning freedom, family, identity—until the Foundation reshaped them into what the world came to know as all kynenn: brutal husks of warriors, primal beasts indifferent to anything but their own desires.
Not him.
Hikari stood like someone who had already lost too much of who he wanted to be,too much for him to be molded by anything else.
She watched him through drills.
He wasn't the fastest. But he adjusted fast—calmly tracking where he lost. Hikari rarely made the same mistake twice. That alone kept him ahead, especially in a place where instructors didn't really teach.
Hikari didn't need to be taught.
Elara kept scouting him—instinctively. And while others scrambled to fight the ones they could beat, Hikari sought out those with overwhelming power. He picked up what mattered.
Fast.
And he got stronger even faster.
That was rare.
By his second week, Elara had made a point of staying close. She saw what the instructors ignored: Hikari didn't understand takton—the internal rhythm that stabilized energy and made power usable.
He was strong in close combat, but when the Kynenn sparred without restrictions, when powers came into play, he fell behind. His grasp of what he was doing was shallow. Without discipline, it would rip him apart from the inside.
Elara had studied takton for years. She studied relentlessly from the time she learned to read—books, diaries, notes from fights she'd witnessed or sparred in. Because while others were dragged into the Foundation from the outside world—abducted after persecution or loss—Elara had no world before it.
She'd been left on the stone steps as an infant, raised entirely within the Foundation's walls.
It warped her sense of the world. No one told her that some people were simply without—not until she was too old to believe it. And she'd been raised as Kynenn, without actually being one.
But with all that said, she didn't just practice takton. Her endless delusion redefined it. Elara alone may as well have designed systems to guide power she didn't have, just to understand what it should've felt like.
So when Hikari fought, she didn't just see his stance. She saw every misfire. Every pulse out of sync.
In an effort to get closer to him—and to test her own theories—she started acting like something close to a teacher.
Exclusively for Hikari.
"Dude, what are you doing?" Elara asked one day.
Hikari shook his head slightly, defensive immediately. "I'm just doing what they tell me."
"Yeah, but you're treating takton like it's just some raw power."
He looked at her. "…Isn't it?"
"No. takton's not about strength. It's about flow. You don't force it out—you can direct it, but it's gonna move on its own mostly."
"Flow how?"
"So you really have no idea? It's in your blood," she said, genuinely confused how he was even as efficient as he already was. "takton moves with your pulse. So if your breathing's off, or your body's tense, it gets stuck and recirculates. Or it burns too fast, exits without shape, and you gas out."
"So you're saying it's timing?"
"It's more rhythm than timing," she said. "Like… the way a boxer controls their breathing. If you stay calm and keep everything in sync, your manifestations stay clean. Controlled. If not, it leaks or spikes. That's when you lose control."
She continued, "Most people with a high concentration—or a big reserve—burnout before they learn how to use them right."
He exhaled, this time slower. "Makes sense."
"Does it? Or are you just agreeing?"
"I mean… it makes as much sense as it can. This is all new. I never thought about how to use it. It always… just happened the way I wanted."
"You'll see. If you let me teach you."
"Doesn't seem like there's anything better to do."
The conversation went exactly as she expected. Hikari paid attention—at least to certain topics. She could see it in how he moved, how he listened. So Elara positioned herself where she held clear authority. From there, building a connection would be easy.
"Most people only get takton from one of three sources," Elara said. "You either inherit it—that's called Tenkei, the strongest form, and it means you're a descendant of one of the Tenshi. You find an artifact from one. Or you form a contract. No matter what, one of these three connects you to a Tenshi."
Hikari was quiet.
"You already have it," she pressed. "So… Do you know which one it is?"
"…Contract," he muttered.
Elara blinked. "Since it's fire, it's gotta be the fire Tenshi. Kagutsuchi is his name. Do you at least know about Tenshi?"
"Doesn't matter."
His tone was cold. Emotional.
Elara didn't push again.
But she watched the way his jaw clenched—how his eyes dropped to the mat, not in embarrassment, but distance.