Silence ruled the combat arena, broken only by the soft hiss of steam rising from the scorched floor where Kael had stood.

He was still kneeling, breath shallow, eyes wide.

The rest of Class Zero watched him with a mixture of awe and alarm. His body hadn’t moved since the eruption of fire moments ago, but his aura—the violent heat swirling off him—hadn’t fully faded.

Reya took a cautious step closer. “Kael... are you okay?”

He didn’t answer.

Burnout

Vera Kaine approached with slow, heavy steps. “First activation?”

Kael forced himself to look up. “I-I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t thinking. It just—”

“Exploded,” Vera finished, kneeling beside him. She tapped the charred floor, then placed two fingers to his neck. “Your core's unstable. Overclocked instincts. You don’t have control. You survived by accident.”

Kael flinched, but she wasn’t finished.

“Good. Means there’s more.”

She stood and addressed the class.

“That—” she pointed to Kael, “—was a taste of what lies inside each of you. Wild, untamed potential. The academy doesn’t want you to use it. They want you to fail. That’s why you’re here. Class Zero isn’t a stepping stone. It’s a burial ground.”

Her eyes scanned the students like a commander eyeing a half-trained battalion.

“I’m the last instructor who still believes trash can become weapons.”

Back to the Pit

After cleanup, they returned to the underground barracks. The mood had shifted.

Kael sat on the edge of his cot, shirt half-burned, arms bandaged from rapid medical foam.

Tomo tossed him a bottle of water. “You went nuclear, man. That was insane.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Exactly why it was awesome.”

Silas remained silent, sitting cross-legged, letting ghostly shadows swirl in his palms like sleeping snakes.

Reya leaned against a pillar, arms crossed. “That thing you did… it didn’t look like normal fire. It bent. Reality warped. Like something wanted out.”

Kael remembered the voice.

Let me burn.

He shook the thought away.

Vera’s Warning

Later that night, Vera summoned Kael to her office—a rusted bunker filled with broken training relics and faded war banners.

“You’re not from any registered bloodline,” she said without looking up from her desk. “No legacy, no recorded ability. But your soul flared like a Vokari surge.”

Kael frowned. “You think I’m one of them?”

“No. I think you're something worse.”

She tossed him a scorched data pad. It displayed a red symbol—circular, spiraling like a vortex.

“This was on your transfer record. Blacked out from every file except mine. Know what that symbol means?”

Kael shook his head.

“It’s a containment mark. Ancient. Used only on one type of being...”

She leaned in, eyes hard.

“Omega-Tier Hosts.”

The Warning

“Your power didn’t come from you,” Vera said. “It woke up inside you. And if you don’t learn to master it, someone else will use it to open something we can’t close.”

Kael stood slowly, heart racing.

“Why did you accept me?”

Vera chuckled bitterly. “Because you’re not the first. And you won’t be the last.”

She handed him a cracked blade from a shelf—short, jagged, humming faintly.

“Train with this. It’s not for killing others. It’s for stopping yourself—when the fire takes over.”

Kael stared at the weapon, then nodded.

As he left her office, a new kind of fear settled in his chest—not of the Vokari, or the academy...

But of himself.