The gate guard didn't ask questions.
He took one look at the sealed scroll in Atlas's hand—the Academy crest, the Headmaster's dry seal beneath—and unlatched the iron bar without speaking.
"Two hours," the guard grunted. "Don't stray into the mist road. That path's for freight."
Atlas nodded. He didn't plan to.
Not at first.
---
The air outside the academy had a different taste.
Fewer enchantments. Less containment. It breathed wider. Wilder.
He walked the boundary road that circled the cliffs east of Caer-Etherin, a thin track of rock-paved trail that overlooked the ravines. Shrub-growth clung to the edges. And far below, the cloud valleys boiled slowly in gray waves.
He kept walking. Let the silence settle.
Let the questions come.
*Why does my aura resist?*
He could feel it now—again. That *pull*. That pressure. The way his aura didn't *flow* the way the instructors wanted. It didn't rush to empower his strikes or lace his body with strength. It sat. It lingered. It *waited*.
And when he called it forward, it slowed his blade instead of speeding it.
No.
That wasn't right.
It didn't slow *him*—it slowed everything else.
It didn't empower—it *cleared*.
*Like silence before thunder.*
*Like stillness before a fall.*
His aura was made for one thing:
**To unmake rhythm.**
---
He didn't sense the swordsman until the last five steps.
No aura flare. No shout. No warning. Just the sound of a scabbard being unsheathed and the faint hum of a wind-slick edge cutting air behind him.
Atlas pivoted.
Steel rang.
He blocked. Barely.
The man who stood before him was already pressing again. No emblem. No colors. Robes in deep gray, face hidden behind a shaped half-mask with no eyeholes. A sword in both hands.
Bronze rank.
Atlas felt it immediately—the way the man's aura carried through the air. It rippled. Like sound. Every movement gained momentum, like stepping into a wave. His blade had no pauses, no holds. Just *flow*.
Atlas staggered back.
The next strike came low. Then side. Then up.
He blocked two. Dodged one. The fourth grazed his ribs—tore through fabric, cut skin.
He fell into the Veil Cut stance out of instinct.
The man stopped.
"Not a student," the swordsman said, voice rough but calm. "You're a forger."
Atlas kept his blade low.
"What?"
"You make swords out of lies," the man said. "Out of rejection. Out of pride. You walk outside the Path."
Atlas narrowed his eyes. "You were sent to kill me."
"No," the man said. "I came to offer you release."
He moved again. Faster this time.
Atlas blocked the first two strikes, then retreated—but the third came from a low feint that reversed mid-air and *stabbed*. He tried to twist away—
—but the blade punched through his left shoulder.
He cried out.
Steel slid back out, hot with blood.
He dropped to one knee.
The man stood above him.
"You think invention is the same as truth?" he asked. "You think your broken rhythm is anything but noise?"
Atlas coughed once. Tried to rise. Failed.
The world blurred.
*My aura won't respond…*
Then—
Something shifted.
The pressure inside his body changed. His limbs felt *cold*, then suddenly *empty*—like his aura had stopped resisting.
It wasn't obedience.
It was understanding.
His aura didn't want *more* control.
It wanted *clarity*.
To **cut** what didn't belong.
To remove *noise*, not add to it.
Veil Fang wasn't slow.
It was precise.
Atlas stood.
Bleeding. Limping. But *awake*.
The man raised his blade again.
"Ready to die properly now?"
Atlas stepped forward. Slowly.
The man struck.
Atlas did not dodge.
He turned the blade with half a parry, let the momentum pass, and moved *into* the man's second strike before it could form.
**Inside the wave.**
His aura bloomed.
Not in force.
In absence.
The man's rhythm *vanished*.
Atlas's blade entered from below.
Veil Fang.
One clean arc. Diagonal. Through the collarbone.
Not enough to kill.
But enough to stop.
The man dropped his sword.
Looked up.
And saw Atlas's eyes.
"You learned too late," the man said.
Atlas didn't speak.
He took the hilt in both hands.
Raised it.
Then brought it down in a clean, neck-level strike.
Steel cut through spine.
The man's head fell cleanly from his body.
Blood sprayed in a sharp arc. It hissed on the rocks.
Atlas stood there, blade red, hands shaking.
Not from guilt.
From the clarity of it.
Veil Fang had worked.
His aura had **cleared the world** for one breath.
And in that breath—*the cut was true*.
---
He returned to the academy with his uniform torn, shoulder bandaged, blade cleaned but not polished.
The guard didn't question him.
But the man's eyes lingered a second longer than usual.
---
In his dorm that night, Atlas sat at the desk, hand resting on the sealed envelope he'd never opened—his invitation to the upcoming **Evaluation Duel Week**.
He would enter still Iron-ranked.
But no longer **unrecognized**.
He wasn't just a boy with strange forms.
He was a sword that didn't want to belong.
And now the world would have to decide:
[Cut with him. Or be cut down.]