Chapter 10: Resonance
This week's training glitches didn't just hit Class E3.
"Our sim crashed mid-fight. The whole map collapsed—almost crushed someone."
"Ours tried to load an E-Class danger zone out of nowhere."
Upstairs in the cafeteria, students from several departments huddled around tables, voices hushed but urgent.
"I heard it's just a bug in the core system."
"No way. One of my teammates saw the walls rewrite mid-fight. Like the entire terrain was being overwritten."
"They say it's tied to a Memory Armament."
"For real?"
"Word is, someone in E3 bound to an illegal weapon."
All eyes flicked—briefly—toward Nie Shi.
He didn't respond. He simply drank his water, slow and steady, like none of it mattered.
Xie Ping rolled his eyes. "What, now being good-looking makes you dangerous?"
"Maybe he's illegally handsome," Chu Qing said with a grin.
A few chuckles broke through the tension.
But not all.
Su Xu muttered under her breath, "That wasn't a glitch. That was a full-scale data backlash."
Lin Kui didn't speak. Her fingers traced slow, looping circles on the edge of her tray, over and over.
At a nearby table, Meng Yao bit his straw, his eyes sharp and distant. He wasn't smiling.
He hadn't smiled since this morning.
That afternoon's training was self-directed.
Zhong Lan had been called away for a senior review, and the system granted autonomous access. "Armament proficiency check. Proceed individually." Students dispersed across the training wing.
Lin Kui chose a chamber on the far edge—one with fewer watchers. The air was quieter there, colder. She liked that.
She stood in the center.
The scanner confirmed her sync clearance. [User: Lin Kui]
Armament: Water Mirror
Access Level: Tier 2 Authorized] She raised her hand.
A circular mirror shimmered into existence, hovering just above her palm. The surface rippled like liquid glass.
"Expand mirror. Form shift."
The mirror responded instantly. Its radius stretched, unfolding in arcs, shimmering like glass wings. Small glyphs ran along the edge—mirror protocols engraved into the construct.
Lin Kui held her breath. She focused everything.
Then— [WARNING: Emotional Anchor Unstable.]
[System Imbalance Detected.] The mirror began to tremble.
A transparent pulse burst outward—unseen by the eye, but felt in the chest like a shift in gravity. In the next room, two students stopped mid-movement.
"Did you… remember something just now?"
"I don't know. I just saw—some kind of shadow—"
"I felt cold. Like something watching from inside the wall—"
"Disconnect. Now!"
The room lights flickered. One of their Armaments stuttered—shifting briefly into a different shape before vanishing entirely. Inside her room, Lin Kui dropped the mirror.
It shattered into droplets across the floor, dissolving with a soft hiss.
She fell back against the wall, panting. Her forehead was damp with sweat.
"I… I didn't mean to."
Her voice was thin. Almost guilty.
The door slid open with a whisper.
Nie Shi stood there.
He didn't say anything—just stepped inside like he'd been standing there all along.
"I'm fine," she said quickly, pushing herself upright. "You didn't have to check on me."
"I wasn't checking," he replied, voice flat. "Just passing by."
"…Oh."
Silence stretched between them.
Then: "Thanks, though." And that's when it happened.
The spear moved.
It was faint—barely more than a flicker across the mental plane—but Nie Shi felt it.
A thread of energy stirred in his core. His hand tightened unconsciously. The black spear, even sheathed, responded.
He turned to Lin Kui.
Their eyes met.
And for a moment, the world froze. [WARNING: Unauthorized Resonance Pathway Activated.]
[Forced Interception Initiated…] The thread slipped from him—into her.
His vision blurred. He saw a room.
Dark. Quiet. Dusty light filtering in through thick curtains.
A piano.
A child curled beneath it, knees to chest, humming softly. Her voice shook with the effort to stay in tune.
There was shouting in the distance—louder, rising, falling. She covered her ears and kept humming. Trying to hold the sound together.
She didn't cry.
Just pressed her back into the floor, holding the melody like it was armor. Nie Shi blinked.
The vision snapped. The connection broke.
He staggered slightly, breath catching.
Across from him, Lin Kui looked stunned. Her eyes wide, mouth parted slightly.
"You—" she whispered. "Did you see something?"
He shook his head slowly. "No. Just felt… lightheaded."
She didn't push it. Just turned her gaze away, drawing her knees up.
"You always show up when something happens to me," she murmured.
"It's not intentional," he replied.
"But you still show up."
A pause.
Then he said, more quietly, "I heard you crying."
She froze.
Color flooded her cheeks in an instant.
"I was not—!"
She turned sharply, facing the wall. "You should go. I need to run it again."
He didn't argue. Just nodded once. "Okay."
He left without another word. Outside the training wing, tucked behind a remote terminal, someone else had been watching. Meng Yao stood alone, face bathed in pale screen light.
He watched the logs scroll. Numbers, pulses, overlapping sync charts.
His eyes didn't move.
His finger tapped once, sending a file.
His lips curved—almost like a smile. But there was nothing warm in it. [Memory Armament Resonance: Unauthorized Connection]
[Source: Class E3]
[Linked Users: Lin Kui / Nie Shi]
[Sync Parameters: Irregular Drift] He whispered, "So it's finally begun."
"Just like he said."
He tapped his device again, sending the full logs to a hidden address. [UNAUTHORIZED LINK · FROM UNKNOWN ORIGIN]
[DATA SENT: ARMAMENT RESONANCE / EMOTIONAL ANCHOR LOGS]
[TRANSFER COMPLETE] The system blinked.
He stepped away.
No one noticed him leave. Deep within the system's hidden layers, red text began to crawl across forbidden lines of code. [It's not their fault.] [It's the memory system.] [It's starting to slip.] And somewhere in the dark—
A long-silenced process began to wake up.