Towan stared at his bandaged leg, the master’s words echoing in his mind. He’d leaped to 100% like a fool, ignoring every lesson.

  The infirmary’s afternoon light slanted through the windows, painting the walls in amber stripes that trembled with the rustle of Towan’s sheets as he hastily tucked Rheon’s vial beneath his pillow. The movement sent a jolt of pain through his bandaged leg, and he bit back a hiss just as the door swung open.

  Alira burst in first, her energy crackling like summer lightning. “LOOK WHO’S ALIVE!”

  Sylra lingered in the doorway, her sharp eyes sweeping the room—the rumpled sheets, Towan’s white-knuckled grip on the pillow, the faint indigo glow seeping through the linen. Her lips quirked, but she said nothing.

  “We crossed Elliot in the hall,”“He mentioned you were… enough for visitors.”

  Towan’s ears burned. Sylra’s gaze lingered on his bandaged leg, her usual aloofness softened by something almost like concern. He hated both.

  “That was AMAZING!”“You looked like a comet! Silver aura, boom! Rheon flying like a ragdoll! Do you know how many betting pools you just wrecked?”

  “Alira,”“the healers said his eardrums are still fragile.”

  “Oh. Right.”“But seriously—breaking Rheon’s ? That’s going in the academy chronicles. Maybe even the town drunk’s ballads.”

  Towan blinked. “Wait, his arm actually…?”

  “Shattered,”“Indigo Essentia isn’t just for show. Healers said it was a clean fracture—impressive, given his… durability.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  A beat passed. Somewhere down the hall, a door slammed, and Towan’s hand drifted unconsciously to the hidden vial.

  “You outsmarted him,”“Used his own predictability against him. Most students just flail at him and hope.”

  Alira snorted. “Most students don’t have a death wish. Or a brother who’s a walking Essentia calculator.”

  “Hey,”“It was worth it to wipe that smug look off his—”

  The vial pulsed beneath the pillow, sudden and ice-cold. Towan stiffened, his grin faltering.

  Sylra’s eyes narrowed. “You alright?”

  “Peachy,”“Just… tired.”

  “Right!”“We’ll leave you to your ‘tiredness.’ But you owe me details later. the details.”

  As they turned to leave, Sylra paused at the door. “Oh, and Towan?”“Next time, check your corners. Wasted energy makes for pretty auras… and pretty targets.”

  The door clicked shut.

  Towan exhaled, retrieving the vial. The indigo Essentia swirled violently now, as if agitated by Sylra’s parting words—or her suspicion.

  Towan stared at the vial, its iridescent liquid swirling like captured storm clouds. The indigo Essentia pulsed faintly, threads of silver light flickering within— familiar, yet warped by an undercurrent of frost.

  “All right,”“Let’s drink this thing… It’s supposed to help. Right?”

  The liquid hit his tongue, cold and electric, like winter lightning. It slithered down his throat, spreading tendrils of numbness that burst into a thousand pinpricks of heat as it reached his stomach. Towan gasped, fingers clawing at the sheets as the Essentia inside him.

  The energy surged through his meridians, a glacial river carving paths through scorched earth. His injured leg ignited—not with pain, but with a paradoxical as the Essentia knitted fractured bone and mended shredded channels. He watched, half-horrified, as the bandages over his calf darkened with expelled toxins, the skin beneath glowing faintly indigo.

  “Huh,”“Feels like… someone’s stitching me back together with frozen thread.”

  The relief was undeniable. The constant throb in his leg dulled to a whisper, his Essentia channels humming with alien vitality. But beneath the surface, something —a lingering coldness pooling in his dantian, subtle and patient.

  Across the room, the empty vial trembled on the nightstand. A wisp of indigo smoke curled from its mouth, shaping itself into a serpentine coil before dissolving into the dusk-lit air.