Chapter 7: Change

Kairan groaned as his alarm flickered to life, its faint hum digging into his already pounding skull. Another day. Another shift. Another round of whispering eyes and mocking glances. He dragged himself up, rubbing the exhaustion from his face. It had been a week since the Hollow attack. A week since his body had started feeling… wrong.

The moment his feet touched the floor, something shifted.

At first, it was just silence.

Then—the world cracked open.

A flood of noise crashed against his skull, sharp and layered, impossibly distant yet painfully close.

Footsteps. Hundreds of them. Some pacing, some dragging. Some light, others firm. They weren't just from the hallway outside. He could hear people walking on the floors above him.

Breathing. Dozens of rhythms. Some slow and even. Some ragged, restless, filled with frustration or exhaustion.

The hum of electricity. The soft shifting of bedsheets.

A heartbeat.

Not his.

Someone else's.

His pulse quickened, a cold shiver creeping up his spine. His hands instinctively pressed against his ears, but it did nothing.

Then—the other sound came.

Not human. Not Hollow.

A whisper.

Distant. Echoing.

It wasn't words, but it almost was. A distorted, broken thing at the edge of hearing. Something that didn't belong.

Kairan's breath locked in his throat.

The whispering stopped.

The noises of the academy were still there—footsteps, conversations, machinery humming—but the unnatural presence had vanished.

Slowly, his hands lowered from his ears.

His door was unlocked.

Had he forgotten to lock it last night?

He swallowed down the unease and forced himself toward the shower. He wouldn't think about it. It was just stress. Just exhaustion.

He repeated that lie until he almost believed it.

He moved through the halls like a ghost, the weight of a thousand unseen stares pressing against his back.

The whispers hadn't stopped. If anything, they had worsened.

"Did you hear? He survived a Hollow attack."

"That's impossible. Even low-class Hollows don't hesitate."

"Maybe he ran and someone else saved him."

"Then why hasn't the academy explained it? No security footage, no official statement."

"Because they don't care. He's just a janitor."

"Yeah, but he's a janitor that survived."

Kairan gritted his teeth and kept walking, gripping the mop handle tighter. It wasn't the words that got to him. It was the uncertainty behind them. They weren't mocking him. They were afraid of what they didn't understand.

He shouldn't care. He had lived his whole life ignored, dismissed. Why should this be any different?

But the more they whispered, the more the tension in the air coiled around his throat like a noose.

By the time the clock hit 4 PM, he found himself wandering near the training grounds without realizing it. his head was still pounding from the strange sensations. He was supposed to clean the equipment racks, but his attention was drawn to the sparring ring.

Lily stood in the center, facing off against an instructor. Sparks flickered around her hands, crackling and unstable.

"You're hesitating again," the instructor sighed.

"Yeah, well, I'd rather not explode."

Kairan wasn't paying attention to their words.

Rather, he was watching something from inside her. a smoke?

It swirled around Lily, a wild, uncoordinated force.

He felt that something was missing from whatever was ravaging from Lily's body. The smoke moved roughly, uncoordinated and seemingly like it had nowhere to go to. this energy needs an exit, a connection, a shortcut.

Before he even realized it, he muttered, "What if you let it cycle first?"

Lily shot him a glare. "What?"

Kairan hesitated. He hadn't meant to say that out loud.

"You're forcing it all at once," he said, grasping for words that made sense. "What if you… let it flow first? Before launching it?"

The instructor raised an eyebrow. "Try it."

Lily rolled her eyes but adjusted her stance.

She let the energy roll through her instead of forcing it—and the moment clicked.

Her ability flowed cleanly. Effortlessly.

She struck, landed, and for the first time, her kinetic force didn't send her tumbling backward. the energy she released send the instructor to flow back a few metres.

Silence.

She stared at her hands.

The instructor hummed, impressed by the power. "Looks like you found the missing step."

Kairan took a step back. Wait… I didn't actually think that would work.

Lily turned toward him slowly.

"What did you just do?"

Kairan raised his hands. "Nothing."

But she wasn't buying it.

She didn't say anything else, but as she left the training hall giving her classmate a turn, she glanced back at him again, watching him like he was something new.

The instructor lingered too. He didn't say a word—but the way he looked at Kairan made his stomach sink.

"Shit."

Kairan left quickly, trying to ignore the way his senses still felt out of sync. 

This wasn't normal.

For a moment, the energy became visible. 

It wasn't just light or aura. It had a clear structure. A lattice of unseen currents, flowing through each student like circuits in a machine.

Every punch, every movement, every burst of power—he could see the pathways, the inefficiencies, the missing connections.

Not just Lily. Not just one person.

Everyone.

The realization slammed into him like a freight train.

His breath hitched. His chest tightened.

His eyes darted wildly, trying to shut out the overwhelming information flooding his brain. It was too much. Too vivid.

A misstep in a student's footwork. A delayed reaction in someone's energy burst. A tiny inconsistency in the way a high-rank Resonant launched an attack.

He shouldn't be able to see this.

He wasn't a Resonant

The whispers followed him as he fled.

The night dragged on in suffocating silence.

Kairan sat on his cot, head in his hands, heart still beating too fast.

His eyes burned. His skull throbbed. His senses had calmed since earlier, but the aftershocks of whatever had happened in the training hall still lingered.

This wasn't just exhaustion.

This wasn't just paranoia.

Something was happening to him.

And worst of all—he had no idea what.

He forced himself to lie down, squeezing his eyes shut. Sleep. He just needed sleep. He would deal with everything in the morning.

But as his mind drifted, somewhere beyond his perception—

Something was watching...

The office was dimly lit, shelves lined with old data tablets and research logs. Aven Lioris sat at his desk, flipping idly through a holographic display, his expression unreadable.

The instructor hesitated in the doorway before stepping in.

"You wanted reports on anything… unusual," he started. "Something happened today. In the training hall."

Aven didn't look up. "Go on."

"One of the students—Lily Valnera. She was struggling with her kinetic output control. A janitor happened to be there."

Now, Aven glanced up, brow raised. "And?"

The instructor hesitated. "He gave her advice. Seemed random at first. But she followed it, and…" He paused. "She got it perfectly. First try. Like he knew exactly what was missing."

Aven leaned back in his chair, tapping a finger against his temple. "Do you mean THAT janitor?."

The instructor nodded. "Kairan Vaelstrum."

Silence.

Aven exhaled a quiet chuckle, shaking his head. "Interesting."

"Sir, if I may ask… What do you make of it?"

Aven stared at the holographic display, but his mind was already elsewhere.

"I think," he murmured, more to himself than to the instructor, "that I may have just found something very, very fascinating."