Akiko darted through the shadowed alleyways of the dreamscape, breath ragged, heart hammering.

The prize, a glimmering artifact tucked snug in her pack, jingled with each step, a sound that should've thrilled her. Instead, it sent a spike of dread through her chest.

The guards were close. Too close.

She'd barely slipped their net, and the blood on her sleeve, warm and sticky, proved just how narrow the escape had been.

One final leap. She scaled the crumbling rooftop and dropped into a hidden recess, breath catching as the shouts faded behind her. For a moment, she allowed herself a grin.

Another job complete. Another treasure earned. But the silence didn't last.

"You're bleeding again."

Akiko's smile faltered. She turned. And there was Kaede. Arms crossed. Expression a familiar blend of exasperation and concern.

Even in dreams, her sister found her.

"It's not that bad," Akiko muttered, brushing at the wound.

But the blood bloomed darker beneath her fingers, betraying her.

Kaede stepped forward, already glowing with the quiet warmth of healing magic. "You're reckless," she said softly. "You always have been. Hold still."

Akiko scowled but didn't resist as Kaede pressed her hands to the wound. The glow seeped into her skin, warmth replacing pain. The cut closed. Her pride didn't.

"You know," Kaede added, gentler now, "an invisibility spell would've saved you a lot of trouble."

Akiko rolled her eyes. "Complicated spells like that take too long to learn. Even if I could figure one out, I don't have enough mana to hold it more than a few seconds."

Kaede's frown deepened. "If you stuck with the meditation exercises, your pool would grow. Your control too. You'd be surprised what you're capable of. If you actually tried."

And there it was. The lesson tucked inside the care. Akiko had lived this moment once before, remembered the sting of it.

"I don't have time to sit around meditating," she'd snapped then, her younger self sharp and defensive. "I'm just a rogue, Kaede. Not a mage. That's your job."

Kaede had sagged slightly, her disappointment quiet but clear. "You're capable of more than you think," she'd said. "But I can't make you see it if you refuse to try."

She'd demonstrated then. Cast the spell with a flick of her hand, melting into the shadows. A beginner's trick by her standards. A gut punch to Akiko's pride.

When Kaede asked her to try it, she'd failed. Again. And again.

"I can't do it," she'd muttered finally, furious and humiliated. "It's impossible for me."

Kaede's hurt had lingered in the air, unspoken and heavy. That exchange had driven a wedge between them, brief but deep.

And now, in the fragile haze of the dream, Akiko felt it all over again. The shame. The stubbornness. The guilt.

The dreamscape began to fade. Walls crumbling, rooftops softening into blur.

But Kaede's voice remained, gentle and persistent as always:

"You're more than just a rogue, Akiko. One day, you'll see that."

The distant hum of Helios Terminal filtered through the walls of Akiko's quarters, a dull reminder that the world hadn't stopped while she slept. She stirred slowly, her ears twitching at the morning noise, but her eyes remained closed.

The bed, for all its plainness, was warm. And after weeks of cold bunks and microgravity, it felt indulgent.

Her tail curled around her legs, a small instinct she didn't bother hiding here.

A pang pressed into her chest, heavier than Ashara's gravity.

Kaede's voice still echoed in her mind, vivid as if she were right beside her.

Akiko hadn't let herself miss home. Not really. She'd been too busy surviving, improvising, keeping ahead of her lies. But the dream had cracked something open.

Her hand drifted over her tail fur, absently smoothing it while her thoughts churned. Kaede's lessons, ones she'd mocked, ignored, now felt essential.

Back home, instinct and speed had been enough. Here, with mana scarce and consequences high, those old habits weren't going to cut it.

With a long exhale, she pushed herself upright and sat cross-legged on the bed. Eyes closed. Breath slow.

She slipped inward.

Her inner space coalesced around her. A starless void lit by the faint pulse of her mana core, hovering at its center. Diagnostic overlays from Takuto flickered in the periphery, quiet but watchful. She ignored them for now, focusing on the sluggish swirl of energy around the core.

Kaede had described it as a stream. A current to be coaxed, not commanded. Akiko had never resonated with the image. Her magic had always been flame and speed, not stillness.

But she tried. Each breath narrowed her focus. The faint flow thickened, coiling just slightly faster around the core. The glow brightened, barely. Not much. But it was something.

Her thoughts drifted to the spell Kaede had tried to teach her. The one she'd dismissed as impossible: invisibility.

Back then, she'd failed at even the basics. Too slow, too imprecise. The memory still stung.

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This time, she reached for it deliberately.

Her first attempt sputtered. She visualized the light bending around her, cloaking her body, only to have the weave collapse in a fizz of static. A spark of mana flickered into the void and vanished.

New Skill Category Initialized: Mana Obfuscation

Status: Novice (0.4% milestone achieved)

She grimaced. Tried again.

This time, she pushed harder, forcing the threads into alignment. The result was worse. A flare of white-hot light that burst in her mind's eye, blinding her for several seconds.

She growled, more embarrassed than hurt. "Why is this so complicated?"

Takuto's fox-shaped avatar hovered nearby, silent but attentive. She hesitated, then turned toward it.

"Help me," she said quietly. "You've seen how I work. You understand how this world works. Show me how to meet it halfway."

The fox yipped once.

The diagnostic panels around her shifted, lines of mana flow curling into new schematics. Overlays formed: scientific renderings of light behavior, diffraction, polarization, angles of refraction. It looked more like engineering than spellwork.

Akiko leaned in.

"Okay," she murmured. "So it's not just about bending light. I have to match the refraction index… manage polarization... stop backscatter?"

The deeper she studied, the clearer it became. The spell was finesse, not brute-force cloaking. A dance of light particles. One wrong twist and it failed, either leaving shimmer, or worse, causing light to flare violently.

Subskill Progress (Mana Obfuscation): Refraction Control – 1.2% milestone achieved.

System Support: Physical modeling overlays engaged. Wavelength manipulation aligned.

She let out a breathless laugh.

"No wonder I couldn't brute-force it."

Takuto projected new schematics, lines of spectral data blooming across her inner space.

Akiko narrowed her focus.

Infrared light. Body heat. Security here didn't just rely on optics. They tracked thermal emissions, too. It wouldn't be enough to bend visible light; she had to mask her heat signature, or she'd light up on every scan like a flare.

"Just like the cloak," she muttered, recalling the thermal shroud she'd used during her EVA.

Except this time, there was no tech buffer. Just her mana, and whatever discipline she could scrape together.

She wove the spell tighter, smaller. Controlled. Threads of mana wrapped around her simulated body, refracting light and dampening thermal bleed.

It held. For a moment.

Then the heat surged. Trapped beneath the weave, her body temperature spiked. Her HUD blared red warnings as simulated sweat gathered, breath catching sharp in her throat. The spell shattered like glass.

Subskill Acquisition (Mana Obfuscation): Thermal Diffusion Weaving – 3.7% milestone achieved

System Alert: Internal temperature rise exceeds concealment envelope.

She gasped, blinking against the overload. "Too much heat. Not enough time."

Still, it was progress.

Her next attempts focused on balance. Not full invisibility, just distortion. Enough to blur her outline, confuse movement tracking, blend into low-light environments.

Cloaking in motion would come later. Right now, she needed a foothold.

Little by little, the spell took shape. By the end of her session, she'd built something rough. It wouldn't fool a direct spotlight. It wouldn't pass scrutiny in a tight corridor. But in shadows, with noise and distance on her side?

It might be enough.

Applied Spellform Initialized. Classification: Obfuscation Tier I.

She surfaced from her trance slowly, the spell fading from her inner space. Her eyes blinked open to the dim interior of her rented quarters. The filtered air felt cooler than before. Or maybe she was just more aware of it now.

Akiko flexed her fingers.

A faint shimmer rippled along her skin, then vanished.

"It's not perfect," she murmured. "But it's a start."

She let herself fall back in the bed, stretching her arms above her head.

It was time to turn to her true purpose for all of this work.

With a pulse of thought, Takuto shimmered into view on her HUD, tail flicking as it hovered, awaiting instruction.

"Pull up the data Tarek's team left us on the research center," she said, resting her chin on one hand. "Let's see what we're walking into."

The fox yipped. A flurry of images and documents filled her vision: grainy photos, field reports, scattered scans. Akiko's eyes narrowed as she scrolled through them.

The facility in question was tucked into one of Helios Terminal's industrial zones. Stark. Functional. Anonymous by design.

But now? It looked like something had hollowed it out from within. Dust coated every surface. Whole sections of paneling had been torn free, exposing twisted wiring and corroded struts. Machinery left mid-disassembly. Door frames warped like something had forced its way through.

"What a dump," Akiko muttered.

Her instincts prickled.

Tarek's report had only deepened the unease. The recon team had made it inside, briefly. What footage they captured was fractured, the feed cutting in and out like static on a damaged link. Half-seen movement in the dark. Blurry outlines. The hiss of a voice on a loop, repeating in broken syllables no one had been able to decrypt.

Then the signal died. No confrontation. No clean disengagement. Just a panicked withdrawal. The last line of the report said everything:

Not worth the risk. Something's still in there.

This wasn't nearly as clean as Tarek had made it out to be. Investigating an abandoned facility, what a laugh. If only it were that easy.

Akiko paused on a still frame, one of the final shots. A machine tucked in the far corner of the loading bay, partially dismantled. Its exposed core flickered faintly, even through the grain.

Something about it shimmered.

Takuto highlighted the section.

Residual energy signature: consistent with mana.

Akiko exhaled, slow and quiet.

There it was. Proof Ashara wasn't just brushing against the edges of magic. They'd been harnessing it.

She leaned closer, tail flicking once.

But how? She'd only been in this world for a matter of weeks before the Stygian anomaly. It had only been a few months since then. Mana shouldn't have had time to spread, let alone be identified and integrated.

And yet here it was.

"Too fast," she murmured. "Way too fast."

Her mind spun. The Sovereign had investigated the anomaly soon after the Stygian facility went dark.

Could Haven and Ashara have discovered mana simultaneously? Had one faction leaked it to the other? Or, worse, had something else intervened?

She stared at the photo a moment longer, letting the questions swirl. This was bigger than Tarek's assignment. Bigger than recovering lost research. Whatever they'd started here... it wasn't just experimentation.

She tapped the fox avatar again. "Mark the facility on my HUD. I'm scouting it tonight."

The avatar yipped in reply, and a soft waypoint flared to life on her map.

Akiko lingered on the images one last time.

"Whatever is waiting there," she said softly, "I'm going to find it."

She rolled onto her side. Eyes fixed on the Driftknight-issued hardsuit leaning awkwardly against the wall. It had gotten her through reentry.

But now, in the dim light, it looked like a relic. Bulky, blunt, and completely unsuited to the night ahead.

"No offense," she said to the hardsuit, "but you're not exactly subtle."

She stood and stretched, legs adjusting to Ashara's pull. With a sigh, she peeled off the last remnants of civilian gear, padding barefoot to the wall-mounted mirror.

One touch to the device at her neck.

The weave of her true suit shimmered into place, folding across her limbs in smooth, liquid lines. Sleek. Responsive. The material clung like a second skin, designed for movement, not impact. She rolled her shoulders, arms flexing as the fabric mirrored her perfectly.

It fit like memory. Muscle and reflex sliding into place before thought could catch up.

Akiko smiled.

"Much better."

Another thought and a transparent shield flickered to life, wrapping her head in a thin halo of energy. Air inside adjusted instantly, crisp and cool against her skin. The edges caught the room's light with a faint shimmer before settling into near invisibility.

This was a rogue's gear. Her gear.

Her HUD flared to life, and the fox avatar bounded into view with a cheerful digital yip. Its tail flicked once, eager.

Akiko smirked.

"Ready?"

The fox nodded.

She gave the room one last glance. Bare walls, bolted furniture, the weight of waiting behind her.

"Let's see what secrets this place is hiding."

The door hissed open, and she stepped into the hallway's muted glow. It sealed behind her with a soft click.

She didn't look back.

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