The students walked back to the classroom in silence. The corridor felt heavier than before, as if the air itself remembered Gustav’s presence. Their steps were slower, less certain. Whatever confidence they had gained from awakening their Vitria was now mixed with unease. Gustav was different from Kenji. Kenji was forceful, but predictable. Gustav was calm in a way that felt dangerous. That calm followed them into the room.

They took their seats one by one. No one rushed. No one spoke. Chairs shifted softly against the floor. Eyes stayed forward. The room settled into a tense stillness.

Gustav stood at the front, observing them with quiet interest.

“Relax,” he said. “This session is not about you.”

A few students lifted their heads slightly.

“Kenji’s lessons are about your Vitria. Your limits. Your survival,” he continued. “Mine is not.”

He paused, then smiled faintly.

“Although I will say, I can feel all of you now. Your Vitria is… present. It fills the room. Quite vibrant, actually.”
He glanced around slowly.
“And unfortunately for me, I can no longer read your thoughts.”

There was a brief silence.

“It is much too quiet now,” he added, almost disappointed. “I had grown fond of the noise.”

Some of the tension shifted. Not gone but altered.

Gustav straightened.

“My role is simple,” he said. “I am here to explain where you are. What Xacodia is. And how you came to stand within it.”

The room sharpened instantly.

“This is not a training session. This is not preparation for combat. This is history. Structure. Context.”

He looked at them carefully.

“And it is also the only class you will ever have with me.”

That sentence landed heavier than expected.

“When this session ends,” Gustav continued, “I will no longer be your teacher.”

No explanation followed. Only certainty.

Xin raised his hand, hesitation visible in his posture.

“What are these sessions for, exactly?” he asked. “And what happens after?”

Gustav turned his attention to him without surprise, as if he had been expecting the question.

“You will have three sessions with Kenji,” he said calmly, “and one test. You will have two sessions with Sofia, followed by the Choosing Ceremony. And you will have only this single session with me.”

The room remained silent as he continued.

“My role is not to shape your power. It is to explain the history behind it. To explain where you are, and why your existence here is not accidental.”

Malinda leaned forward slightly.

“So… if we have questions for you later? Or if we just want to talk?” she asked.

Gustav smiled faintly.

“Of course you can see me,” he replied. “I am in charge of the Academy. My office is here. You are not cut off from me after this session. I simply will not be teaching you again.”

Levon listened quietly. His mind returned to the question he had wanted to ask in the auditorium before Gustav had interrupted him. The more he considered it, the more he felt it was not something to be spoken in front of everyone. Whatever Gustav was, whatever he knew, that question required privacy. He decided to wait. To meet him alone.

Gustav clasped his hands lightly.

“Before we begin,” he said, “does anyone have a question?”

Zachery straightened in his seat almost immediately.

“I’m an Amplifier,” he announced, pride clear in his voice. “What about you? What ability class are you?”

Xin’s face tightened in irritation.
Marziah rolled her eyes without even trying to hide it. Neither of them seemed impressed.

Gustav looked at Zachery and smiled.

“Congratulations,” he said. “Amplifiers are… formidable.”

Then he tilted his head slightly.

“As for my own class, I do not feel like sharing it just yet. And honestly, it is nothing special.”

Warda lifted her hand slowly.

“You summoned creatures earlier today at the cafeteria,” she said. “Are you an Invoker?”

Her voice carried something more than curiosity. She had discovered her own class only moments ago, and now she was searching for meaning, for guidance, for someone who might understand what was happening to her.

Gustav studied her for a moment.

“Smart observation,” he said. “But no. I am not an Invoker.”

She waited.

He did not continue.

“And I will not answer any further questions about what class I belong to,” he added.

There was a pause. Then Gustav continued.

“The universe did not begin naturally,” he said. “It began when the gate was opened.”

He looked at them carefully, as if measuring how much they could take.

“Beyond the bounds of the universe exists raw Vitria. It has no structure. No order. No shape. It is infinite and unstable. It does not follow space, time, or causality, because those things do not exist there.”

The room was completely silent.

“The Mother opened a passage to it. That passage was the gate.”

He lifted his hand slightly.

“When the gate was opened, Vitria rushed in violently. Not slowly. Not carefully. It was forced into a place that was not prepared to hold it. The pressure was immense. The impact was catastrophic.”

Several students tensed.

“That impact was the explosion that formed the universe as you know it today.”

He let that sink in.

“Reality was not created by design. It was created by necessity. Space, matter, time, and causality did not appear because someone wanted them to exist. They appeared because Vitria needed something to contain it.”

His voice stayed calm.

“Vitria could not exist in raw form inside nothingness. It required structure. And so structure was forced into existence.”

He lowered his hand.

“The universe is not the origin of Vitria. The universe is what happened when Vitria needed a place to exist

The room was frozen in shock.
No one spoke at first. Some students looked lost, others disturbed. A few stared at the floor, as if the ground itself had shifted beneath them. The idea that the universe was not born, but forced into existence, unsettled something deep and instinctive.

Levon felt it too. But his reaction was different.

He raised his head.

“How do you know?”

The question was simple, but it carried weight.

Deep down, Levon believed that if any place could hold the truth about the origin of the universe, it would be Xacodia. From the moment he arrived, everything here had proven itself to be beyond human understanding. Yet what Gustav described still felt wrong to him. It sounded too similar to the creation myths back on Earth. Different names, different imagery, but the same structure. A story meant to replace uncertainty.

Zachery leaned forward.

“Anoir created the universe,” he said confidently. “He is the god of the heavens and the earth.”

Levon turned to him sharply.

“There are no gods,” he said, irritation clear in his voice. “Stop with this primitive way of thinking.”

Then he turned back to Gustav.

“But what he said still makes sense in one way. What is the difference between this Anoir and the Mother you mentioned? They sound like the same thing to me. Pure myth, just with different names.”

Parvati spoke next, her voice steady.

“The universe was created through an explosion that formed everything. That is a fact.”

“Yes,” Levon agreed immediately. “Exactly. So can we stop saying that someone created it?”

Zachery looked back at him.

“Then who caused the explosion?”

Levon met his gaze.

“There is no who. And I do not know what caused it. I do not know what existed before it either.”

Zachery smirked slightly.

“You mean you do not know. But I do. It was Anoir.”

Levon sighed. Then he pointed toward Zachery without looking away from Gustav.

“So tell me,” he said, “what is the difference between the two gods?”

Gustav raised his hand slightly.

“Calm down,” he said. “Let me answer.”

The room settled, though the tension did not leave. It only became quieter.

He looked directly at Levon.

“The difference is simple,” Gustav said. “The Mother is real. And she is here. In Xacodia. Right now.”

The words should have caused an uproar.
They did not.

The students did not react the way they should have. Not because the statement was small, but because they did not yet understand what the Mother truly meant. The name still held no weight for them. They could not grasp her role, nor how central she was to the existence of everything they stood in.

Gustav continued.

“The Mother exists at the center pillar of Xacodia, on its highest floor. That pillar is not symbolic. It is structural. It is what holds Xacodia together.”

His voice hardened slightly.

“If that pillar were to fall, Xacodia would collapse. Literally.”

A few students shifted uneasily.

“It does not matter whether you believe this or not,” Gustav said. “With time, you will know it. And you will accept it.”

He paused.

“And whatever you believed before this moment is not true. Not partially. Not metaphorically. It is entirely wrong. This is the ultimate truth of the universe.”

Levon crossed his arms. His jaw tightened. He clearly disapproved, but he did not challenge it. Not yet.

Gustav turned back to the room.

“No one but the Mother knows what form Vitria takes beyond the gate. What exists there cannot be described by anything we understand. But I am certain of one thing.”

He lifted his gaze.

“The Mother came from the other side. She is made of the same infinity that exists beyond the gate. That alone tells you the scale of what lies there.”

Then he continued, his tone steady.

“The universe is surrounded by an impenetrable wall. It encloses it completely. Too high to pass over. Too deep to go beneath.”

Marziah frowned.

“You are saying our universe has edges?”

Parvati followed immediately.

“With the scale you described, we should be able to see those walls.”

Gustav did not answer right away. Instead, he shifted the frame of the question.

“They are not located in space,” he said. “They are what allow space to exist.”

Silence fell.

“You do not see the walls for the same reason a fish does not see the shape of the ocean,” he continued. “You measure what is inside containment, not the containment itself.”

He looked at them slowly.

“Your instruments were designed to study matter, not limits.”

The implication was sharp and unavoidable.

Science had never been built to detect prison bars.