[Celestial Academy — Administrative Wing Corridor — 10:23 AM]

The book floated a meter off the ground.

The team had followed it from the old building to here — across the central courtyard, through the secondary corridor, to this point where it had stopped in front of a closed door.

The door opened.

Davan stepped into the corridor because he had heard footsteps. Cael’s second, Inquisitor in training, level 68 — the same contained posture as always, his hand going instinctively to the weapon at his belt when he saw the group at the end of the corridor.

Then he saw the book.

Floating in front of him. Thirty centimeters from his face.

Davan looked at it. The book looked back at him — or so it seemed, because something in F5’s energy oriented itself completely toward him in that moment, with the certainty of something that had been searching for decades and had just found what it needed.

The book landed in his hands.

---

F5 activated.

Not with the violence of F1 when Grim first manifested at the Ceremony. Not with the confusion of F4 when the Heralds’ boy received it without understanding what it was.

With authority.

As if the Fragment recognized in Davan something he himself didn’t know he had — the signature of someone who had spent years carrying out others’ orders without a name of his own, without his own decisions, without anything that was his except loyalty to a chain of command that never asked him what he wanted.

Someone who had lost everything they could have been before knowing what it meant to have something.

Davan’s eyes changed.

Not completely. Just something new in their depths — not violet, not crimson. A color still choosing what to be, like ink dissolving in water without yet deciding where to spread.

Davan looked at the book in his hands.

He looked at the empty corridor behind him. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

He looked at the team at the far end.

"What is this?"

---

No one answered immediately.

*F5,* came Grim’s voice through Death’s Synergy from the Academy’s perimeter. *Dominion. The Harvester needed a Fragment to control what the Core harvested — not souls but wills. Bearers. Creatures. Everything that has hierarchy in the cycle.* A pause. *It chose someone who never had control over anything. So that the Dominion F5 grants does not come from a desire for power, but from having always existed without it.*

Alex took a step toward Davan.

"We need to talk."

Davan stepped back instinctively. His hand still on his weapon. His eyes processing — the team, the book, the energy he felt moving inside him without having invited it.

F5 responded to his confusion.

Not by attacking. Not by expanding. Just by asserting itself — a passive pressure field that extended two meters around Davan and that Alex felt as resistance on the plane between life and death where F4 operated. Like encountering a wall where there shouldn’t be one.

[F5 — Passive Dominion Field — 2m radius]

[Effect: stat suppression on magical presences within radius — 15%]

Alex felt F1 and F4 diminish slightly. Barely perceptible. But present.

*Interesting,* thought the part of him that was still calculating.

"Who are you?" said Davan. His voice more controlled than his eyes. Temple training functioning even though the rest of him didn’t know what to do.

"Exchange students," said Raven from the flank.

Davan looked at her.

"No, you’re not."

"No," admitted Raven.

---

Alex stopped five meters away. Far enough that F5’s field didn’t affect him directly, but close enough to speak without raising his voice.

"I know what you’re holding. I know what you’re feeling right now." He looked directly at him. "I went through the same thing."

Davan looked at Alex’s crimson eyes. The mark visible on his left hand. The physical changes no normal student would have.

"You’re Carter."

"Yes."

"The bearer of Fragment 1." Davan processed that. "The one Father Agustín has been looking for for weeks."

"The same."

Silence in the corridor.

The book in Davan’s hands pulsed once. As if confirming something they both already knew.

"Father Agustín is going to want to know about this," said Davan. Not as a threat. As the only frame of reference he had for the situation.

"I know." Alex didn’t change his tone. "That’s why I need you to hear what I have to say before that happens."

Davan looked at the book. Looked at Alex.

Something in his expression was that of someone who had spent months asking questions no one answered and had just found someone who might have the answers.

He opened his mouth.

---

Footsteps in the corridor.

From the opposite direction — from the administrative wing, from where Agustín had been waiting for Davan to report for his morning summons and he hadn’t arrived.

Four of Agustín’s escorts turned the corner.

They stopped when they saw the scene — the team at the end of the corridor, Davan holding something that glowed with a light none of them had seen before, the eyes of Cael’s second with that color that still hadn’t decided what to be.

The escort closest to Davan: "What’s going on here?"

Davan didn’t answer immediately.

He looked at the escort.

He looked at the book in his hands.

He looked at Alex.

F5 pulsed again — stronger this time, responding to the tension of the moment. The pressure field expanding another meter. The closest escorts stepping back without understanding why.

[F5 — Dominion Field — expanded radius 3m]

[Effect: stat suppression 20% — magical presences within radius]

[Secondary effect: lower‑level creatures feel instinct to submit]

The level‑52 escort closest to Davan went completely still. Without anyone ordering him to.

Davan looked at his own hands.

The highest‑level escort spoke into his communicator. Urgent report. Administrative wing corridor. Anomalous situation.

Kira from her position in the corridor, in a low voice to Alex: "Thirty seconds before more arrive."

Alex looking at Davan.

Davan looking at the book.

*Father Agustín is going to want to know about this.*

But Davan hadn’t moved his feet yet.