Chapter 54: Latent or Dishonest
They met Eon in a room that had already survived it.
The hall was slightly older than the rest of the Academy - a long nave ribbed in stone and braced with veins of dull luminite, each vein cased in glass that had been etched with warnings no one bothered to translate anymore. The floor was a mosaic of dark plates crosshatched with shallow channels, all of it sloped toward copper grates as if the room preferred its accidents tidy. In the walls, broad panels of black material sat between columns like patient tombstones.
Kori leaned against the rear pillar with her arms folded and her expression on her default mischief. She didn’t announce herself. She didn’t need to. The eight felt her like a laugh waiting to happen.
At the front stood a small, old woman with a staff that did not need introduction. Her spine was straight enough to insult gravity. Her hair was a silver crown she refused to wear like one. She tapped the staff once. The sound didn’t echo. It obeyed.
"Welcome! Names, I already know them" she went on, the words smooth as stones polished by an unfriendly river. "You are here to fail. Cleanly. We will clap for good failures. Bad failures break the room. The room breaks back."
Esen raised a hand. Hikari kicked his ankle.
The old woman looked at the twins on Raizen’s back and then at the blades the others wore. Her eyes slowed over Hikari’s staff, then paused at Keahi’s sword as if the steel had muttered something rude.
"Do not push" she said. "Do not imagine fireworks unless your bones know explosion. Eon is not a wish. It is what lives between heartbeat and intention. Humans make it - your body is a factory. Luminite sings it - your weapons are translators. Most of you will be tone-deaf. Today you will learn to be politely deaf."
A strip of floor at the center awakened with a polite glow.
"One at a time" she said. "Arms-length between pride and embarrassment. The walls will eat anything you throw wrong. Try not to feed them."
Esen whispered to Raizen, "That’s a dare."
"That’s a warning" Hikari whispered back.
"Arashi" the old woman called, as if she’d heard all of it. "Make something besides poses."
Arashi stepped into the circle as if onto a stage he hadn’t booked but improved by being on. He drew a slender practice blade, nothing ornate, and set himself like a sentence that knew where the comma belonged. He breathed once, then again, then traced a small, exact motion - a line through air, a turn, the suggestion of a cut.
A filament-thin flicker ran along his blade and died in the first thumb-width.
The old woman tilted her head. "Pretty" she said. "Pretty is not current. But your usual weapon isn’t a blade..."
Arashi inclined his head without apology and stepped back, eyes narrowed the way he looked at architecture.
"Lynea."
Lynea moved into place with the intelligence of neat handwriting. She cupped her fragments as if measuring them, then grounded her feet in a way that would have made Kori nod. She made them levitate in front of her, an Eon connection itself, but not Eon output. Then she tried once - nothing - and didn’t try again immediately. Instead she adjusted her stance by a nail’s width, rolled her shoulders back until they stacked, and whispered something at her own wrist.
A faint shimmer skated the flat of her fragments and stopped obediently at the one point.
The old woman’s mouth twitched. "Measure. Then commit."
"Feris."
Feris smiled at the floor like she’d been waiting for it to reveal a secret. She didn’t raise her blade at first. She hummed - a low, steady tone that felt like a coin spun on wood - and then lifted the weapon through that hum and out of it.
Air rucked - a tiny shiver you would have missed if the sigil plates hadn’t answered with a sympathetic blink. No light. No drama. A pulse that was here then gone.
"An omen" Feris murmured, pleased.
"An impulse" the old woman corrected. "Omen later. Current now."
"Esen."
Esen rolled his shoulders as if loosening jokes. "Stand back" he said, grinning at the room. "I have a plan and it’s bad."
He set his feet too wide, realized it, narrowed them - and then did the thing he always did: committed. He snapped his palms together, sank his weight, and shoved a brutally honest packet of intent forward.
The shockwave was enthusiastic, powerful but completely mis-aimed.
The nearest black wall panel drank it like a saint, ripples chasing themselves across the soot surface until they sighed out at the edges. A gust of hot air slapped Esen in the back of the head. His hair made an argument with itself and lost.
The hall laughed - a good laugh, relieved and delighted. Kori’s knuckles covered her mouth. The old woman tapped her staff to settle the walls.
"Bleed" she said, crisp. "You did not set one. The room will save you. The room does not love you." She narrowed her eyes. "Again. Less theater."
Esen swallowed, nodded, and on the second try he made a gentler pulse that went where he asked it to and died on his hand instead of in the walls. He hissed through his teeth and shook out his fingers.
"Feel that" the old woman said. "That is the price. Pay small first."
"Keahi."
Keahi stepped into the circle with her shoulders square and her mouth careful. The hall changed temperature in anticipation without asking anyone’s permission. She drew her sword.
Pink light answered like a word arriving at last.
It came not as a flare but as a living border along the steel, a line of flame that lifted clear of the metal and then wrapped it like a ribbon. The color wasn’t pretty. It was correct. Heat breathed outward in a small, respectful wave. The black wall panels did not stir. The old woman’s hands tightened on her staff.
The eight went silent. So did the room.
Keahi stood in that halo and didn’t look at anyone. She breathed once and let the flame thin, as if she was easing a child back into bed. The line settled. The sword became a sword again.
"Who taught you" the old woman asked softly.
Keahi’s throat worked. "My family" she said. "We hunted Nyx. Our flame is... ours." She glanced down at the weapon. "This blade belonged to my grandmother. We carry it. It carries us back."
Hikari looked at her the way a person looks at a secret that decided to be a friend. Arashi’s spine did that small, approving straightening he saved for new facts about the world that pleased him. Esen whispered "pink fire" twice as if trying the words on his tongue.
The old woman nodded, a small bow returned. "Birthright" she said. "And training." She pointed the staff at Keahi’s elbow. "Two errors you think no one sees. Fix them."
Keahi’s cheeks warmed in a way no flame could cause. "Yes, ma’am" she said.
"Hikari."
Hikari stepped forward with her staff like she’d been born with it and only recently named it.
Blue woke.
It began as a thin pulse at the core of the staff, then ran in clean lines along channels carved so discreetly you’d miss them at a glance. Geometries unfolded - circles nested in grids, arcs that met their partners with a click you could almost hear. Light stitched forward, paused, changed mind, and then found its proper route. When Hikari lifted the staff, the light lifted with it, obedient as a well-tailored sleeve.
She didn’t throw anything. She didn’t summon shapes to impress anyone. She let the staff hum once like a tuning fork that had finally heard the note it was made for and then damped it with a hand.
The old woman’s eyes softened a fragment. "Good" she said. "Don’t get too proud."
Hikari nodded, breath steady, face a little flushed with the effort of not blushing.
"Ichiro."
Ichiro did not draw a weapon because he didn’t carry one. He stepped into the circle and set his palm on the floor, fingers spread, as if reading braille no one else could feel. For a second nothing happened.
Then the thing that wasn’t nothing happened, so small it made you doubt your eyes. A ring of dust lifted around his hand as if the floor had inhaled. Pebbles on the far edge of the circle ticked, not rolling but reconsidering the concept. A crack no wider than a thread closed by half and decided to stay that way.
The old woman’s pupils tightened. "Again" she said.
Ichiro obliged, and this time a tremor ran from palm to wrist to elbow, tripped at the shoulder, and vanished into posture. The floor didn’t move. Ichiro stepped away with the exact same calm he’d walked in with.
The old woman looked at Kori. Kori looked like a person who had just remembered a bet. No one spoke.
"Raizen" the old woman said.
He had been quiet all morning, a silence made of two things - respect and a secret. He stepped into the ring, drew one twin blade, and let the other rest in its sheath. Kori’s earlier voice lived in his hands - don’t pull, invite. Grain, resonance, bleed. Don’t lie. Don’t cheapen.
He tried not to remember that night.
He set his breath low, found the map of joints and weight, and thought not of the dash or the crowd, not of the door or the speed. He thought of the vow that had no witnesses. I arrive. I hold. I take the hit.
Nothing happened.
He adjusted. He softened his grip until he could feel the blade’s balance. He pictured a note traveling a string and stopping where he told it to stop. He meant it.
A whisper of static nipped his knuckles and then behaved like static always behaves - it embarrassed him and left.
The old woman’s face did not change. "Again."
He tried again, the kind of try that isn’t harder so much as more honest. The room stayed a room. The walls stayed black. The blade stayed steel.
The old woman’s staff touched the floor once, and the glow in the circle died.
"Latent" she said, as if reading a label he couldn’t. "Or dishonest. We will find out which."
Kori’s eyes found his. There was no tease in them, no rescue either. She winked - not encouragement, not apology. Agreement. Later.
"Break" the old woman said. "Ten breaths. Then you will all fail smaller."
They filed to the edges where the copper water spouts fed basins. Esen wet his hair to punish it for earlier. Lynea was already sketching her stance in the air with two fingers. Feris leaned against the wall panel and felt it purr under her shoulder blade, delighted to be fed. Hikari sat, staff across her lap, tracing a small circle with her thumb on the wood. Keahi rested her blade point on the floor and let the last ghost of flame lick the air, more breath than fire. Arashi stared at the black wall and said something polite to it under his breath.
Raizen stood with his back to a column and tried not to look like a person with a secret. The twins rested light against his hip, as if they weighed the same as they had yesterday and every day before. He could almost feel the place in his palm where a spark had lived in the ruin. Almost. He closed his eyes for the length of one of the old woman’s breaths. When he opened them, Hikari was looking at him.
"You’ll get it" she said, simply.
"Obviously" he said, and for once the word was mostly for himself.
"Again" the old woman called. "Different circle. New humiliation."
They spent the next hour failing in better ways. Arashi found a steadier flicker and stopped trying to make it pretty. Lynea shortened a motion and got double the response - she didn’t smile. Feris learned to pulse without humming and looked personally offended by how well it worked. Esen made a shockwave that went forward this time - small, deliberate, and promptly swallowed by the wall to his visible relief. Hikari played the staff’s lines like strings, barely there and correct. Keahi’s pink flame agreed to be thinner and therefore meaner; the old woman approved it with a frown. Ichiro touched the floor once more and the dust didn’t dare move but thought about it.
Raizen produced nothing at all in a way that felt like a choice he hadn’t meant to make.
At dismissal the old woman planted her staff and let the room’s glow fade. "No one died" she said. "Annoying, but acceptable. You will eat, you will not practice in the hallway, you will not attempt romance with a wall. I am aware of all your tendencies."
She turned her back and lifted a slate from the lectern. Her chalk wrote in a tight, uncompromising hand as if the chalk were the one that needed to prove something.
Kori had drifted near enough to read and far enough to pretend she hadn’t. The old woman didn’t look up.
"Your handwriting still scares people" Kori murmured.
"It should" the old woman said.
The eight filtered toward the doors in a loose knot. Students in the corridor tried not to stare and failed. The air outside the Eon hall felt thinner, safer, less interested in making decisions. Esen bumped Raizen’s shoulder with his own.
"Good mysterious silence today" Esen said brightly. "Very avant-garde. I rate your performance five out of four brooding poets."
Raizen huffed something that almost counted as a laugh. "I’ll invoice you for the tickets."
Hikari touched her staff to his blade as they walked - a small clink. "We’ll practice together" she said.
Keahi, cheeks still pink from pink that had not been shame, fell in on his other side. "You asked" she said, eyes forward. "About the sword."
"You don’t have to tell me" He said.
"I want to" she answered, surprising herself and him both. "My family hunted Nyx for generations. Quite far away. Our flame is... different. This blade belonged to my grandmother. When I was little, she let me hold the sheath and nothing more. When she died, the sword kind of picked me." Keahi shrugged, small. "Or I picked it and lied to myself. Either way, it burns. I’m trying not to disappoint it. That’s why I came to Neoshima in the first place"
"You aren’t dissapointing" Hikari said, with the certainty of a person who could spot lies in posture.
Arashi drifted backward, walking like a diplomat. "We will pretend we are not relieved Hikari produced runes and Keahi produced a new color" he said dryly. "We will also pretend Raizen did not brood on purpose."
"I didn’t" Raizen said.
Lynea caught up, flipping through her notes as if time obeyed her. "We need to schedule hand strength and breath work alongside class" she announced. "Capacity before speed. The professor’s notes agree - indirectly, but they agree."
Esen pointed at the black panels receding behind them. "I am going to have recurring nightmares about those walls."
"They saved you" Feris said, amused.
"Exactly" he answered. "I don’t like being rescued by interior design."
They turned into the main passage where the light ran generous and red banners softened the edges of stone. The noise of the Academy returned - papers, footsteps, somebody arguing cheerfully about the ethics of traps. The eight moved with the subtle gravity of a small star. People orbited, sometimes collided, sometimes fell in and pretended they hadn’t.
At the back, the old woman watched them go. She set the slate down, lifted her staff, and tapped it once. The room settled for the day, as if tucking itself in.
"Latent or Dishonest... What in the world was that dash then...? Pure determination? Pressure? Or... A memory, perhaps?"
Kori lingered one heartbeat longer in the doorway and glanced over her shoulder. She met the old woman’s eyes and gave the smallest nod.
Outside, Raizen let his hand rest on the twin at his hip. The metal didn’t hum, not here. But in the skin of his palm lived the memory of a spark - not an achievement, just a pronunciation he’d gotten right once. He didn’t speak about the night. He didn’t have to. The work would say it for him when it could. Maybe the ruins were the only thing that allowed him...
Ahead, the long window threw back their reflections for a step, and in the glass an upper-corridor figure paused to watch - not moving, not hiding, simply present. By the time Raizen blinked to look straight, the pane offered him the hall behind and nothing else.
"Lunch" Kori said from nowhere, falling into step like she’d been there all along. "And after that, the part where we pretend not to practice in the hallway, obviously."
"Obviously" Esen said.
"Obviously" Hikari echoed.
Raizen kept quiet and walked with them into the noise, his vow and his empty blade both heavier than they had been that morning, and somehow, better for it.