A Wound to Balance

By dawn, the whispers had reached the prayer halls.

Team Seven, the patchwork group from the suppression ring, had beaten formation into shape, then humiliated a team from a higher tier.

The boys didn't brag. They didn't need to. The courtyard did it for them.

Even their silence sounded like proof.

Kaine walked slower that morning. Not from fatigue, but calibration. The girls watching from the archways didn't look away this time. They let their eyes linger. A few smiled.

Not kindly.

They want to know what changed. What I took. What I'll cost.

Brin fell into step beside him.

"They're talking about us now."

"They're talking about outcomes," Kaine said.

"Still counts."

Kaine didn't answer.

Shuri joined them a beat later, bouncing a dried ki fruit from one hand to the other.

"I had two different girls speak to me today. Actual sentences. I feel corrupted."

"No one's interested in you," Brin muttered.

"Not yet."

Rev trailed behind, quiet as usual, gaze flicking to Kaine now and then. Oren didn't speak at all. His left hand was smudged with chalk residue. Glyphwork again. Private.

They were still just boys. But someone had drawn a border around them. They hadn't crossed it.

They'd been pushed across it.

There were no drills scheduled. No notice either.

Just a slip of parchment delivered to the dormitory wall.

A test of insight and endurance.

No sparring. No speech. Just pattern tracing.

Most boys groaned. Some tried to trade out. Team Seven showed up early.

The test took place in a tiered observatory, half-buried in stone and old prayer. One wall was made entirely of lattice-thin threads of char-ink. Ancient recursive glyphs lined every surface: ink, thread, ash, tone.

Each boy was handed a brush. One stroke each.

"You will trace the glyph of convergence," the Matron announced. "Deviation beyond a single arc will mark you unfit for advanced trial combat."

Oren inhaled slowly. "They're measuring resonance comprehension."

"More than that," Kaine said. "They're measuring intention."

The girls sat above in benches of silent judgment. Among them, one stood apart.

She had a braid the colour of dusk-bound blood, twisted sharp against the nape of her neck. Her robes were Lurein grey-red, and her posture was too precise to be casual. She didn't speak. Didn't move. Just watched Kaine trace the glyph like she was logging his rhythm into memory.

I've seen her before, Kaine thought. Same braid. Same silence. Lurein crest pinned at the collar, cadet rank. Matron in the making.

He didn't know her name. But she watched like she already knew his.

Shuri went first.

His brushwork was confident, but careless near the apex. His line drifted into double-pressure.

Rev followed. His curve was almost perfect, but shallow.

Brin's was jagged near the echo spine, forcing a rebalancing spiral.

Oren's was precise, until the end, where he hesitated.

Then Kaine stepped forward.

He didn't hold the brush like the others. Not stiff. Not formal. He let it rest like memory in his hand.

One breath. Two.

Then...

A single stroke.

The ink held.

The Matrons whispered.

The girl in red stood.

By dusk, the test results were posted.

Kaine: perfect arc, high resonance signature. Brin and Rev passed. Oren was placed on evaluation hold. Shuri was marked for supplementary correction.

Brin looked at the paper, then at Kaine. "They're going to start watching us too closely."

"They already are," Kaine replied.

"Then we should give them something to see."

That night, Kaine sat with the others near the old well in the inner courtyard. It wasn't allowed, lights out had passed, but he didn't care.

He was writing.

Not glyphs. Not spirals.

Names.

The others noticed.

"What's that?" Rev asked.

"Unit designations," Kaine murmured.

"Why?"

"Because if they're going to mark us... we should know what we are."

Brin leaned over. "And what are we?"

Kaine looked up.

"Precedent."

He didn't sleep. Not really.

The glyph kept pulling at him. The pattern traced. The Matron's words.

Deviation beyond a single arc will mark you unfit.

But the glyph had no arc. That was the secret.

It was a spiral pretending to be a loop. It bent space, not line.

Kaine stared at the ceiling until his vision began to vibrate.

Then the whisper came.

[Convergence is a wound. Trace it, and you bleed.]

Kaine sat up, heart pounding.

"Alec."

No reply.

[You're listening in the wrong direction.]

What does that mean?

[You're asking the pattern for permission.

Ask it for mercy instead.]

He didn't know if she was real.

He didn't know if he wanted her to be.

The next morning, Shuri didn't show for drills.

Neither did Oren.

Rev said nothing, but the tightness in his eyes was new.

Brin leaned against the wall near Kaine, chewing a fruit stem. "They're separating us."

"Testing reactions," Kaine said.

"Or trying to break the pattern."

"They can't break it."

Brin turned his head. "You sure?"

Kaine didn't answer.

The drills were smaller. More deliberate.

Each boy rotated with a girl from another House. It wasn't practice, it was exposure.

Kaine found himself paired with a Lurein initiate. Her breath control was clean. Her form clinical.

She said nothing.

But her eyes asked everything.

'What's in your spine, boy? What gave you symmetry?'

He gave her nothing.

And still, she stumbled.

That night, Kaine returned to his cot to find Oren waiting.

His hand was bandaged.

"What happened?"

"I hesitated. They made me fix it. With blood."

Kaine stared at him.

"You'll stay with us?"

"They want me somewhere else."

"Do you?"

Oren met his eyes.

"I want to know how the pattern ends."

Kaine nodded once.

That was enough.

But later, as he traced the glyph again by candlelight, Kaine whispered:

Are you still in there?

No reply.

I could use your mind right now.

Nothing.

Then...

[I was always in your spine. You just stopped calling.]

He breathed in.

Long.

Slow.

[You know what comes next.]

I do.

[Then stop pretending you don't.]