[Celestial Academy — Days 12 to 15]

---

[Summoning Room — Old Building — Day 12 — 2:00 AM]

Alex returned alone.

Deliberately — he woke at two, verified that the corridor had no coverage during the hours Kira had mapped, and went.

The summoning room.

The circle on the floor.

He sat in the center.

Where he had stood at eighteen with three years of academy behind him and the certainty that this day would change everything.

Fragment 1 recognized the place.

Fragment 4 as well — quieter, more observing than recognizing.

Alex looked at the circle.

*Ms. Walsh used to say that summoning was the moment where the mage and the world recognized each other. That the companion wasn’t assigned — it was found.*

He had remembered it during the Ceremony.

He had said it quietly while everyone laughed at the empty circle.

And then the circle hadn’t been empty.

Only no one saw it that way except Alex.

*How long were you here, Grim?*

The question didn’t need an answer. Grim wasn’t there — almost a kilometer away, at the Academy’s perimeter, because he couldn’t enter.

But Fragment 1 was there.

And Fragment 1 remembered.

Alex stood up.

He looked at the circle one more time.

He left.

---

[Academy Garden — Day 13 — 3:00 PM]

The bearer of Fragment 6 reached the perimeter.

Not the outer garden — farther. The campus boundary where the Academy’s jurisdiction became ambiguous.

Grim appeared there to meet her.

The two of them at the edge of the campus — the skeleton with crimson flames and the girl with the student backpack and the eyes that had something beneath the normal color when the light hit just right.

"Questions," said the girl. She took out the paper. "I took notes."

**"Good."**

"First: F6 has a passive effect radius of approximately three meters under normal conditions. Does that vary with the magical environment?"

**"It varies. A high‑density magical environment expands the radius. A low‑density environment contracts it."**

The girl noted it down.

"Second: the entropy effect on magical systems — is it reversible if Fragment 6 withdraws from the radius?"

**"It depends on the degree of entropy applied. Minor effects are reversible. Advanced effects are not."**

She noted it down.

"Third: Fragment 6 speaks sometimes." She said it with the naturalness with which she described the weather. "What it says doesn’t always make sense to me. Is that normal?"

**"Fragments speak from their function. Fragment 6 speaks from Entropy — from the end of things. For a bearer who is still learning to read that language, the meaning comes later."**

"How much later?"

**"It depends on how much you listen."**

The girl noted it down.

She closed the paper.

"One more. It’s not on the list."

**"Yes."**

"Did the original Harvester want to be fragmented?"

Grim didn’t answer immediately.

His crimson flames still.

**"No."**

"What he felt when he was fragmented — is it still in you?"

**"Yes."**

The girl looked at him.

"Does it hurt?"

**"Not exactly."** His flames. **"It’s like remembering something that shouldn’t have been forgotten. It doesn’t hurt. But the desire for revenge is there."**

The girl nodded.

She put away the paper.

"Tomorrow I have more questions."

**"I’ll be here."**

She left.

Grim watched her walk away.

*F6 chose well.*

He didn’t say it out loud.

But it was what the Harvester’s memories confirmed — Entropy needed a bearer who treated the end of things as data, not as tragedy. Someone who could look at inevitable decay without being paralyzed.

The girl with the student backpack and the chronologically organized notes was exactly that.

**But... Fragment 1... why did it choose Alex?**

**Even being part of the Fragment myself, I can’t understand it. But I’m glad it was him... Grim is a good name.**

He looked at the school building and then returned to the circle.

---

[Tracking Class — Day 14]

The magical tracking instructor — the same one who had asked Kira *who are you really?* — didn’t ask that question again in class.

What he did was different.

Every day since then, the day’s exercise had a variant that no normal student could complete with [Predator’s Sense] suppressed.

But that Kira could complete anyway.

Because [Predator’s Sense] wasn’t suppressed — only her ears were invisible.

And the instructor, who had been teaching tracking for thirty years, had detected on the first day that Kira’s skill came from something the visual suppression enchantment didn’t affect.

The Day 14 exercise: identify the exact position of five objects hidden around the campus using only passive energy signature. Time limit: one hour.

Kira took twelve minutes.

The second fastest student took forty‑three.

The instructor didn’t comment on the time.

He just made a note.

Kira didn’t ask what he was noting.

But she saw it.

And she reported it to the team that night.

"The instructor is building a file," she said.

"Problem?" asked Alex.

"I don’t know yet." Kira.

"But if what he’s trying to do is determine my real level, in another week he’ll have enough to report an inconsistency with my documents."

"How much more time do we need?"

Maya from the map: "Fragment 5 chooses when it chooses. We don’t control that timeline."

"We control what we can control." Alex. "Does the instructor have a connection to the Temple?"

Kira had verified it.

"Not directly. And although in a way they already know we’re here, not everyone is part of Father Agustín’s inner circle."

"But Agustín has escorts in every tracking class since he arrived. Whatever the instructor reports reaches Agustín."

The team processed that.

"How many more days can we maintain the cover," said Raven. Not as a question.

"It depends on Fragment 5," said Alex.

Alex looked at the Academy map.

"We continue."

---

[Library — Day 15 — Afternoon]

Maya found something.

Not in the book he was reading — in a marginal note by someone who had read that book fifty years ago and had written, in small handwriting at the bottom margin of page 347:

*"F5 does not choose the strongest. It chooses the most necessary."*

No signature. No additional context.

Just that.

The boy looked at it for a moment.

He copied it.

He went to find Alex.

---

Alex read the note.

He looked at Maya.

"Where did you find this?"

"Advanced summoning theory book. Third floor, north shelf, fourth volume." Maya. "The handwriting in the margin is different from the rest of the book’s notes — more recent. Approximately fifty years old according to the ink type."

"Who wrote it?"

"I don’t know." The boy. "But they knew about Fragment 5."

Alex looked at the note again. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

*The most necessary.*

Not the strongest. Not the most compatible.

The most necessary.

He looked at Maya in front of him.

Maya looked back.

Without fully understanding why Alex was looking at her like that.

Alex put away the note.

"Thank you."

The boy nodded.

He returned to the library.