The countdown burned against the inside of my eyelids.
Every heartbeat sounded like the tick of a detonator.
Two days left before I stopped being me.
Kira paced the Core-Gate chamber, her wrist-band projecting data in frantic bursts. “Drayke’s tapping into every active conduit. He’s feeding the merge with student ranks. The higher the power fluctuations, the faster your integration accelerates.”
“So all this chaos on the surface it’s him farming energy,” I said.
She nodded grimly. “He’s turning the academy into a battery.”
---
We climbed back through the ridge tunnels before dawn. The moment we breached the surface, the air buzzed with tension. Drones patrolled in tight grids; students shouted over half-broken rank readouts.
News flashes screamed across the public boards:
RANKS IN
