Chapter 169: Cold War

The victory in the Arena Sector did not bring peace. It brought a heavy, suffocating silence.

Vane walked down the central spine of the Academy’s academic wing. The corridor was crowded with students moving between lectures, a river of grey and silver uniforms.

Then he stepped into the light of the atrium.

The noise died.

The reaction was immediate. A group of Second Year students stood near the lockers, wearing the double-silver trim of the upperclassmen. They had been laughing a moment ago. When they saw Vane, the laughter cut off as if someone had severed a wire.

They didn’t jeer. They didn’t block his path. They didn’t try to shoulder-check him as they had done at the start of the semester.

They moved.

They pressed themselves against the marble walls. They averted their eyes. They created a ten-foot radius of empty space around him. It was the way a herd of deer reacted to a wolf walking through a meadow. They weren’t attacking. They were hoping he wasn’t hungry.

Vane kept walking. His boots clicked rhythmically against the stone.

He felt the gazes on his back. They were heavy with resentment. He had broken Garret in front of the entire cohort. He had taken their strongest tank and dismantled him like a faulty toy. The illusion of seniority had been shattered.

The Second Years had realized they couldn’t beat him in a fair fight. So they had switched tactics.

They were freezing him out.

It was a social embargo. No one spoke to him. No one sat near him or his squad in the refectory. The older students who ran the equipment cages suddenly “couldn’t find” his reservations. The alchemy labs were always “booked” when Isole tried to enter.

It was petty. It was bureaucratic. It was effective.

Vane turned the corner toward the library. He needed to research the anatomical weak points of the new construct models General Kael had mentioned.

A figure blocked his path.

It wasn’t a Second Year.

It was Anastasia.

The Princess stood in the center of the hallway. Her arms were crossed. Her violet eyes were narrowing in a glare that could have frozen a volcano. She looked immaculate as always. Her uniform was pressed to a razor’s edge. Her golden hair was pinned back with diamonds.

She looked furious.

“You are a blunt instrument,” Anastasia said.

There was no greeting. Her voice was sharp.

Vane stopped. “Princess.”

“Do not ’Princess’ me,” she snapped. “Do you know what happened this morning? I attempted to enter the Solarium for my morning tea. The Solarium is a shared space. It is open to all high-ranking students.”

She took a step forward. The air around her shimmered with heat.

“The door was locked. The Second Year prefects claimed it was under ’renovation’. They closed it. They closed the entire East Wing relaxation sector.”

Vane looked at her. “That sounds like a logistics problem.”

“It is a retaliation problem,” Anastasia hissed. “They are terrified of you. But they cannot hurt you. So they are lashing out at the rest of us. They are closing ranks. They are trying to make the First Years miserable by denying us the privileges of our station.”

She poked him in the chest. Her finger was hot against his uniform.

“I do not care about your feud with Garret. Break his legs. Break his arms. I do not care. But when your violence interrupts my morning routine, it becomes my problem.”

“What do you want me to do?” Vane asked. “Apologize?”

Anastasia scoffed. The sound was filled with aristocratic disdain.

“An apology is an admission of guilt. An Aurelia does not apologize to failure.”

She smoothed her uniform. She regained her composure instantly. The fury vanished, replaced by a cold, calculating arrogance.

“I have already handled it. I sent a message to the Board of Governors. My relative sits on the oversight committee. I informed them that the Second Year prefects are abusing their administrative power to hinder the development of high-potential assets.”

She smiled. It was not a nice smile.

“The Solarium will be open by noon. The equipment cages will be unlocked. The embargo is broken.”

She looked at Vane with critical eyes.

“I am not doing this for you, Vane. I am doing it because I refuse to let a pack of frightened mediocrities inconvenience me. You handle the fighting. I will handle the politics. Just make sure you do not lose. If you lose after causing this much trouble, I will be very annoyed.”

She turned on her heel and walked away. Her golden hair swayed with the perfect rhythm of her stride.

Vane watched her go.

He shook his head. Anastasia was a headache, but she was a useful headache. She was fighting the same war, just on a different front.

He didn’t go to the library. The conversation had ruined his mood for reading.

He needed to clear his head. He needed silence.

He turned toward the lower levels. He headed for the Void Chambers.

The Void Chambers were a series of isolation cells built into the bedrock of the floating island. They were designed for deep meditation. The walls were lined with mana-dampening lead to prevent sensory overload. It was the quietest place in Zenith.

Vane swiped his ID at the heavy iron door of Chamber 4.

The light turned green. The door groaned open.

He stepped inside.

The room was dark. The only light came from a single, dim orb floating in the center of the ceiling. The air was cold and still. The floor was a smooth expanse of polished obsidian suspended over a pool of liquid mana.

Vane stopped.

The room wasn’t empty.

Someone was sitting in the corner alcove, nestled into a pile of velvet cushions that looked entirely out of place in the austere chamber.

It was Nyx.

The Rank 1 of the Second Year. The girl who had collapsed the floor under Kaelen just for being too loud.

She was small. Her lavender hair was a messy curtain around her pale face. She wore the standard uniform, but she wore it like pajamas. It was loose, unbuttoned at the collar, and wrinkled. She looked less like a Sentinel and more like a cat that had found a sunbeam.

Vane felt a shiver run through his [Usurper] Authority. It wasn’t fear. It was recognition. It was the hunter in him acknowledging another apex predator in the tall grass.

Nyx opened one eye. It was a deep violet vortex that seemed to swallow the light.

“You’re back,” she whispered. Her voice was slow, syrupy with sleep.

Vane stood by the door. “Is the floor going to disappear again?”

“Only if you stomp,” Nyx murmured. She closed her eye again, snuggling deeper into the cushions. “You walk quieter than the bronze one. He walked like he was trying to hurt the stone.”

Vane stepped into the room. He moved carefully. He remembered the [Logic Fracture]—the way space had warped when he tried to approach her last time.

“I thought the Second Years were boycotting us,” Vane said.

Nyx let out a long, dramatic sigh. She shifted on her cushions.

“They are noisy,” she murmured. “Running around. Locking doors. Making threats. It’s exhausting. I came here to sleep because the dorms smell like fear and cheap cologne.”

She waved a hand lazily.

A ripple of violet energy moved through the room. It wasn’t an attack. It was a displacement. The air pressure dropped. The sound of the distant mana pumps faded into absolute nothingness.

“You broke the iron boy,” Nyx said. It was a statement, not a question.

“He broke himself,” Vane replied.

“He was rigid,” Nyx agreed. “Iron breaks if you hit it right. He thinks being hard makes him strong. He doesn’t understand that reality is soft.”

She opened both eyes this time. She looked at Vane. Her gaze wasn’t magical or omniscient. It was just heavy. It felt like sinking into deep water.

“You aren’t rigid,” she observed. She tilted her head, watching him. “You feel… sticky. Your mana pulls at things. It’s interesting.”

Vane stiffened. The [Silver Fang] hummed beneath his skin. He didn’t like being analyzed, especially not by someone who looked like she was half-asleep. But the pull was there. The sheer density of her EX-Rank [Dreamscape] Authority called to the empty sockets in his soul.

“Is that a problem?” Vane asked.

“Not for me,” Nyx said. She yawned, covering her mouth with a long sleeve. “But don’t pull too hard in here. The mana in the center is unfiltered. If you try to grab it all, it’ll burn your hands.”

She pointed a languid finger at the center of the room.

“Sit. If you’re going to be here, you might as well be quiet. Maybe the burn will quiet down that clicking sound you make.”

Vane looked at the center platform. The mana there was dense. It rose from the liquid pool in visible waves of blue heat.

He looked back at Nyx. She had already closed her eyes. She appeared to be asleep again.

He walked to the center. He sat down on the obsidian.

The heat hit him instantly. It was a pure, raw injection of magical energy. It seared his channels. It was painful. It was exactly what he needed to harden his core.

Vane closed his eyes. He began to cycle his mana.

He was in the shark tank. But at least the shark in the corner was too lazy to bite him.

For now.

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