The lecture amphitheater felt like a held breath—tiered stone seats surrounded a low central dais carved with sigils that pulsed faintly every few seconds. Cadets filled the chamber in cohort formations, robes crisp, weapons sheathed. No instructor yet.
Then a sound—not boots, not an alert. A hum.
Instructor Hekima "Echo Guardian" stepped into the space, barefoot.
Her footsteps didn't echo, but the room quieted all the same.
No introduction. Just a glance—steady, measured—as she rotated a small obsidian sphere in one hand. It emitted soft chimes only the Hybrids flinched at.
"Your ancestors called them blessings. Your governments called them anomalies," she said. "But the world calls them what they are: portals."
She let the sphere drop—it hovered, midair, and pulsed once.
"Today's lesson is not about how they opened. It's about what broke when they did."
She gestured. A three-dimensional resonance map unfolded midair, slowly rotating—a web of leylines, shimmering continent overlays, and glyphs that quivered at known tear-points.
"Before the Convergence, you lived on a sphere of borders. Politics. Flags. That world died the day the first Echo Pulse cracked open the sky and sang through your bones."
Sarika Moyo leaned forward slightly, visibly tense. Kai noticed how her fingertips unconsciously traced weather glyphs on her palm.
"Let's talk about who holds power now. The world didn't fracture—it harmonized into Orders."
The map flared and six sigils emerged:
A calligraphic serpent flickering in shifting script—Dune-Inkers.Stormcloud spirals curling around a matriarch's gaze—Rainmothers.A skeletal double-raven—Echobinders.A burning spiral etched in quartz and steel—Qi-Forged.A shifting box of force vectors and syllabic cubes—Thoughtshapers.A cascade of fading glyphs into mirrored obsidian—Glyphseers.
She paused at the center of the map.
"And then there's the seventh. You. The program that was never meant to awaken."
Eyes flicked toward the Hybrid row.
Kai didn't blink.
"You were designed, not summoned. Activated—not chosen. And for that, the world doesn't know what to do with you."
Instructor Hekima lifted her hand and the orb brightened—flashing through three resonance tones that left streaks across the air.
"There are three types of portals, cadets."
She pointed with her chin.
"Stable. Anchored. Surrounded by rituals or technology. The one beneath this academy breathes once every thirty days. Do not make it sing faster."
The orb rotated again.
"Wild. Unanchored. Emotionally volatile. They appear during resonance peaks—battlefields, funerals, births. They do not care who you are. Only what you feel."
A final flash.
"Dead. Sealed. Silent. But never truly gone. Cast magic too close to one, and it may echo back… wrong."
Izel's pen scratched faster across her notes, her scroll emitting faint heat from overloaded glyphwork. She looked distracted—not by fear, but by recognition. Like something in her remembered what Hekima said.
A hum coursed through the chamber again.
"The portals are not gates. They are questions. And each time one opens, it asks what kind of world you're willing to bleed for."
She didn't smile. Didn't bow.
"Dismissed."
The orb vanished. The room breathed again.
Kai exhaled slowly.
No magic had been cast.
But the air felt louder.