The walk back from the eastern sector felt longer than the run out there had.

Vane moved through the shifting borderline where the fog gave way to the manicured perfection of the main campus. The smell of smoke and cold ash clung to his uniform. It was a sharp contrast to the scent of night-blooming jasmine and expensive arcanic ozone that permeated the student districts.

He carried the star-metal spear wrapped in the burnt remnants of a blanket strapped across his back. It wasn't physically heavy. He had lifted far heavier things in the Body Lab. But it felt massive. Every step jarred his spine with the phantom weight of the history it held.

Students were milling about the common greens laughing and complaining about homework tossing casual spells back and forth. A group of second-year Fire-aspects were having a loud argument about the merits of different combustion catalysts.

Yesterday Vane would have skirted the edge of the group ears open for useful gossip ready to perform the role of the harmless lucky rat if noticed.

Today he just walked straight through the middle of the path.

He didn't glare. He didn't posture. He just walked with a monotonous grounded rhythm his eyes fixed on the middle distance. The students parted around him their chatter dying down for a second as he passed. They weren't afraid of him. They still saw a Commoner. But there was something dead in his eyes. It was a lack of reactive energy that made him unsettling to be around.

He reached Villa 1. He let himself in the heavy oak door shutting out the noise of the campus.

He bypassed the luxurious common rooms and the sprawling kitchen heading straight for the basement stairs.

The villa's private training hall was cavernous. It was lined with impact-absorbing runic plating and stocked with equipment worth more than entire city blocks in Oakhaven. It was pristine smelling of cold metal and unused potential. It felt sterile compared to the foggy rooftop where he had spent the last month.

Vane walked to the center of the mats. He unwrapped the spear letting the charred blanket fall to the floor. The star-metal tip gleamed cold and lethal under the magelights. He ran a hand along the ash wood shaft feeling the grain that had rubbed calluses into Senna's hands for five years.

He needed to know.

He hadn't used the Authority on the balcony. The resonance had clicked into place and the knowledge had settled into his soul but he hadn't pulled the trigger. He needed to know if the Usurper had truly taken it all.

He looked around the gym. In the corner was a rack of free weights. He walked over and grabbed a heavy cast-iron plate the kind used for deadlifts.

He walked back to the center of the room. He set the heavy iron disk upright on a training block bracing it so it stood vertically.

He stepped back gripping the spear.

He didn't need to psych himself up. He didn't need to meditate. The Usurper had done its job. The neural pathways were already burned in. The muscle memory wasn't an echo. It was a permanent installation.

He reached into his core. His mana pool was dense and potent. He was an Elite now in every way that mattered.

He found the new shape in his soul. It didn't feel heavy or toxic. It felt like a tool that had always been there waiting to be picked up.

Authority Active: Silver Fang.

It was effortless.

Liquid silver light bled from his hands and crawled up the spear shaft. It moved fast coating the wood and the star-metal tip in the blink of an eye. It wasn't dazzling or chaotic. It was a matte silent silver layer that looked like it had been painted onto reality.

It was the nature of the Absolute Edge.

Vane felt the drain on his mana but it was manageable. It wasn't killing him. It was just fuel for the engine. He had the efficiency of an Expert because he had stolen the mastery of an Expert.

He stepped forward. He didn't use a fancy technique. He just thrust the spear at the iron plate.

He didn't put his full strength behind it. He didn't grunt. He just extended his arm with perfect relaxed mechanics.

Shhhhk.

There was no screech of metal on metal. There was no spark. There was no resistance.

The spear tip didn't punch through the iron. It slid through.

It felt like stabbing water.

The Silver Mana separated the iron atoms effortlessly. The spear passed completely through the thick plate and out the other side the shaft resting in the hole.

Vane stood there holding the spear looking at the impossible geometry of the strike.

He pulled the spear back. It slid out smoothly.

He looked at the hole in the iron plate. It was a perfect circle. The internal edges were mirror-polished glowing faintly red from the molecular friction but the cut was surgical.

He hadn't broken a sweat. He hadn't collapsed.

Vane looked at the silver light coating the spear tip. It hummed quietly a low dangerous vibration that promised to cut anything he pointed it at.

He realized then that he wasn't holding a burden. He was holding a cheat code.

Most Elites were still figuring out how to throw fireballs or harden their skin. He had an Authority that could bypass durability entirely. He had the martial skill of an Expert and the weapon to match it.

He wasn't a pistol firing a cannon shell. He was a man who had just walked into a knife fight carrying a lightsaber.

A cold grim satisfaction settled in his chest.

"Okay," Vane whispered to the empty echoing gym.

He twirled the spear. The silver light left a trailing afterimage in the air. The movement was fluid precise and terrifyingly fast.

He didn't need to struggle to use it. He just needed to decide who to use it on.

He kicked the iron plate aside. Then in the center of the pristine training hall Vane dropped into the low grounded stance of the Argent Horizon. He didn't do it to learn the move. He already knew it. He did it to make the body match the memory.

He began to drill the silver light dancing in the quiet room sharp enough to cut the world.

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