NOVEL WEB Chapter 5: Chapter 4: Twenty Unknowns
Dae had never seen light like this.
It wasn't just bright it shimmered like it was alive, flowing across the mirrored floors in soft, rippling hues. Warm, cold, shifting from gold to indigo, like the room itself was breathing.
He blinked.
His body felt… off.
Smaller. Lighter. Like something had been rewound or compressed inside him.
He reached up to touch his face, expecting to feel skin.
What he felt was himself but not exactly the way he remembered it.
"Resynced to your root self."
The man's words echoed again in his head.
Whatever they did to him it hadn't just been cosmetic. He could feel it in his bones, in his blood. Like his body remembered something his mind couldn't.
...…
The woman in the black uniform led him down a narrow corridor.
No introductions.
No small talk.
Just footfalls echoing like drumbeats in a cathedral.
When the corridor ended, Dae stepped into a chamber that might've been a classroom in a different world but here, it was something else entirely.
The ceiling arched like a cathedral, the walls were glass, and beyond them, he could see the ocean alive and vast, teeming with creatures he didn't recognize. Jellyfish the size of houses. Serpents that shimmered in spirals. Towering silhouettes with limbs like sails.
And within the glass room… twenty chairs arranged in a circle.
Each one filled.
Nineteen students.
And Dae made twenty.
The moment he stepped in, heads turned.
....
He didn't speak.
He didn't sit.
He stood by the entrance like an intruder who had accidentally wandered into someone else's story.
He could feel it in the way their eyes settled on him. Judging. Measuring.
Some curious.
Some threatened.
A few indifferent.
A tall boy with ash-blond hair arms crossed and looking bored let out a loud yawn. "Finally. We were beginning to think number twenty got eaten by the dome whale."
A few chuckles.
The girl floating two chairs to his left literally floating barely acknowledged him. Her hair drifted weightlessly around her face, her black eyes blank but alert. She was petite, cloaked in a deep gray cape, and never touched the ground. Dae could feel the air bend faintly around her.
Next to her sat a wheat-skinned boy with sharp features, calm posture, and a gaze like a scalpel quiet, calculating, already writing something in a notebook.
And beyond them, near the front, a muscular guy with snow-pale hair and the kind of build that looked like he could lift the chair he was sitting on and everyone else with it.
Their uniforms were similar all black robes clasped at the front with strange, shining beads. Each bead pulsed a different color. Dae's own cloak, clasped with the black ring * Kairoth* was still unfamiliar on his shoulders, like wearing someone else's skin.
He didn't move until she the woman who brought him whispered just one word.
"Go."
.....
Dae walked to the last empty seat.
He didn't expect applause, and he didn't get any.
He sat quietly.
No one welcomed him.
No one asked his name.
But somehow… he felt like he'd been here before.
Or should've.
...…
The room dimmed.
Without warning, a figure appeared at the center of the circle projected like a mirage.
A man in a dark suit, but not quite human. His face was too perfect, too smooth. His eyes glowed faintly, like molten silver.
"Welcome, unknowns," he said, his voice deep and smooth, like stone soaked in water. "Welcome to Blackridge Academy."
A low hum vibrated through the floor.
"You are here because you are forgotten," he continued. "Unlisted. Untraceable. And more importantly. dangerous."
A boy near the edge laughed under his breath.
"Some of you were taken by force," the figure said, his voice softening. "Others… were sold. A few simply vanished. But one truth binds you all."
He paused.
"You no longer exist in the world above."
Dae's throat tightened.
He didn't need the reminder.
"And yet, you exist here."
A panel on the floor lit up in front of each student.
Symbols rose. Floating lines of text none of them could read. Dae's panel showed something familiar his name, and beneath it, a strange pulsing word: Resonance: 93%.
"Your abilities," the man said, "have not surfaced yet. But they will. This academy exists to guide you through that emergence."
The floating girl shifted, her eyes narrowing.
"All powers are tied to a source," the man continued. "For some, it is element. For others, emotion. For a very rare few… it is something more."
Dae didn't dare look at his ring.
"Your mission is simple," the voice said. "Find what powers you. Master it. Or die trying."
A silence followed. Cold. Heavy.
Then the figure vanished.
.....
Lights flared to life again. And now, standing at the front of the room not a projection, but real was her.
The woman.
The one who brought him here.
But now she wore a cloak of deep black, stitched with a symbol that shimmered: a sun, split in half.
"I'm Sera vale," she said. "You will address me as Instructor Sera. Or just Sera, if you prefer to lose teeth."
A few laughs. Mostly awkward ones.
Sera's mouth didn't twitch.
"This academy has rules," she continued. "You will live by them. Or be removed. There is no debate. There is no leniency."
She turned, gesturing behind her. A long display shimmered to life, showing the names of each student and then grouping them.
"Room assignments are locked. These aren't requests. You'll survive each other or you won't."
She flicked her wrist. A holographic board appeared. Names grouped. Dae's eyes scanned fast.
Dae's name flashed near the bottom grouped with three others.
Room B7 – Dae, Kio, An, rae
He blinked.
He turned his head slightly.
Kio.. the muscular, pale-haired guy.. caught his eye and gave him a nod. Confident. Maybe too confident.
An.. the quiet one with the notebook merely turned a page.
Rae.. The floating girl met his eyes. For just a second. Then looked away.
Dae swallowed.
Roommates.
Great.
.....
Sera clapped her hands once.
The room's floor panels retracted.
"Come," she said. "Let me show you where you're going to die. metaphorically."
Another awkward laugh from somewhere near the front. This time, she smirked.
Dae stood with the others.
They followed her out into the corridor a winding hall of glass that led deeper into the dome.
As they walked, they passed more students. Some stared. Some flinched away.
Dae noticed something: every student they passed wore the same cape with a bead. But the color of each bead… it pulsed differently.
One was ice-blue. Another fire-red. One shimmered gold. Another hissed like smoke.
Dae glanced down at his.
Still black.
Still cold.
Still Kairoth.
...….
The dorm wing was sleek and strange.
Glass tunnels. Humming walls. Everything glowed.
The hallway split.
They've reached a branching hallway.
Sera stopped.
"To the left your dorms. You'll find your rooms by name. Don't swap beds. Don't trade. Don't snore."
A boy at the back grinned. "Or what?"
"Or I'll toss you into the ocean," Sera said sweetly. "And let the dome decide."
He shut up instantly.
"To the right," she continued, "is the atrium. Training ground. Meditation space. Arena. Also: where most of you will vomit during power awakening."
A boy near the back raised a hand. "Wait. Gender separation or…?"
"Nope," Sera said without turning. "This isn't high school. You were paired based on compatibility, not chromosomes."
"Cool," someone muttered.
Sera ignored it. "Orientation is tomorrow. Do not be late."
Then she turned and walked away.
Just like that.
Leaving them in a silent forked hallway.
....
Dae followed the others toward the dorms.
As they passed through another corridor, his fingers brushed the wall.
It shimmered under his touch.
Like it remembered him.
When they reached their room, he paused.
The door slid open.
Inside: a surprisingly spacious chamber four beds, four desks, soft golden lighting, and a massive glass panel that looked out into the ocean.
A whale drifted past.
Kio walked in, dropped his duffel bag on the bed closest to the window, and flopped down. "I could get used to this."
An walked to the farthest bed, sat, and started unpacking nothing but a single book and a pen.
Dae hesitated.
He took the middle one.
And Rea?
She hovered near the ceiling.
Then slowly drifted downward and landed—softly—on the bed across from Dae's.
She didn't speak.
Didn't even sit.
She just stared out the glass wall.
Her reflection flickered in the curved panel.
It looked more like a ghost than a girl.
...…..
No one spoke for a while.
It wasn't hostile. Just unfamiliar.
But somehow, Dae didn't feel as alone as he did at home.
Which was… terrifying in its own right.
...….
He lay in bed that night, the blue of the ocean painting his ceiling in shadows.
His ring rested on his finger.
Still.
Quiet.
He could feel it pulsing faintly.
A heartbeat of something older than he could imagine.
A memory whispered in the back of his mind.
A name.
An.
He looked across the room.
At the boy scribbling silently in his notebook.
And he didn't know why but he wanted to speak.
Just once.
So he did.
"…You write a lot," he said.
An looked up, unfazed.
"I forget less that way."
Dae nodded slowly.
Kio snored like a chainsaw wrapped in a pillow.
Rea floated slightly above her bed, hair drifting like she was underwater.
And for the first time since arriving maybe the first time in years Dae felt something strange.
Not comfort.
But possibility.
...….
[To Be Continued in Chapter 5: "Welcome to the End of the World"]
✦ AUTHOR'S LOG > BLACKRIDGE ARCHIVE EXCERPT 04-A ✦
Subject: "The Root Self" Phenomenon
Filed by: [REDACTED] | Reviewed by: Pix (Memory partially scrambled)
Status: Speculative
The term "resynced to your root self" is not a metaphor. It refers to a controversial procedure used only on high-risk gene carriers, especially those with origin-class resonance (like Dae).
This protocol doesn't merely adjust the body. It attempts to align the subject with the purest version of themselves, removing external influence, trauma-layering, or memory contamination.
In theory, it pulls them closer to what they should have been.
In practice?
No one really agrees.
Some call it a reset. Others call it… a theft.
Pix's Note:
"I've seen subjects walk out of sync… eyes wide, hearts hollow, as if their soul had been flattened into a more manageable shape. Dae wasn't erased. But what was removed to make room…? That's the question we don't ask."
-><-
✦ AUTHOR'S LOG > BLACKRIDGE ARCHIVE EXCERPT 04-B ✦
Filed by: [REDACTED] | Access Reviewed by: Pix
Status: Declassified (Low Threat Level)
SUBJECT: Dorm Assignments & Compatibility Protocol
Dorms at Blackridge Academy are not divided by gender. Pairings are determined by deeper markers: aura frequency, resonance potential, and shared trauma layers.
Room B7 was not a coincidence.
• Subject Dae: Emotional instability, unknown core origin, Kairoth selected
• Subject An: Memory-type resonance, suppressed trauma clusters
• Subject Kio: Physical tank, stabilizing aura, zero emotional filter
• Subject Rea: Gravity/floatation core, affinity with silence and suppression
Their compatibility score exceeded 94.6%.
It is unclear whether this was fate, programming, or something else.
Pix's Note:
"I've seen dorms implode from personality mismatches. But these four? They're dangerous in the quietest way. Especially her. Rea doesn't just float. She observes. And Dae… he's starting to remember things he was never supposed to."
End Transmission.
-><-