Aster knows something is wrong the moment they walk into the courtyard and the sergeant isn’t there.

  No barking. No looming silhouette. No sense of impending disciplinary homicide hanging in the air like a badly filed grievance. Just rows of students standing in neat, nervous clusters and a woman at the center of it all who looks like she has never raised her voice in her life and could still end wars by making eye contact.

  Aster slows, eyes flicking around. “Where’s the sergeant?”

  Musa adjusts his uniform, unbothered. “Different day, different focus.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Combat’s too big for one teacher,” Musa says. “Sparring and Scripture application is the sergeant. Glyph combat’s handled by Master Ruun. Astral kinetics rotates. And today—” he gestures towards the woman at the front “—Astral Barrier control, by Miss Hecca.”

  Aster studies her.

  She is painfully pale. Not the dramatic, aristocratic pale—this is the kind of pallor that suggests the sun personally wronged her at some point and she has never forgiven it. Her hair is pitch black, straight, immaculate, falling like a deliberate line across her shoulders. Her eyes are darker still, not void-black, but the deep, reflective kind that makes you uncomfortably aware of your own outline.

  She stands perfectly still, hands folded behind her back, watching the class the way a mortician watches a waiting room.

  Aster grimaces. “So let me get this straight.”

  Musa sighs. He knows what’s coming.

  “First,” Aster says, ticking it off on his fingers, “I have to dissolve my bio-field just to gain access to the Astral Plane,” he continues. “Which is apparently my body’s natural defence system.”

  He raises a second finger.

  “Now I’m told I need to build a replacement for it from scratch. Using magic. Lectures and definitely homework.”

  He squints at the air, as if the logic might be hiding there.

  “What’s the point?”

  Musa stops walking and looks at Aster the way one looks at a man who has just attempted to eat soup with a fork and is now blaming the soup.

  “You don’t think having a shield barrier is an important component of combat?”

  “I think,” Aster says carefully, “that being told to unlearn my body’s built-in survival instinct so I can relearn it later with diagrams feels suspiciously like a scam.”

  “The bio-field isn’t a shield,” Musa says. “It’s a cage.”

  Aster frowns.

  “It’s a passive field generated by the body,” Musa continues. “Biological. Automatic. It keeps the Astral Plane out by refusing to interface with it at all. Think of it like a firewall that blocks the entire internet.”

  “That sounds… good,” Aster says, thinking about how better the world would have been if the internet was never invented.

  “It is,” Musa agrees. “If your goal is to stay offline forever.”

  “But the moment you step into the Astral Plane, that firewall has to come down. Otherwise, the Astral OS can’t read you, and you can’t read it. No flow. No interaction. No cultivation.”

  Aster’s mouth tightens. “So, I’m practically naked right now?”

  “Exposed,” Musa corrects. “Which is why people used to die screaming in their sleep before we managed to build a replacement.”

  Comforting.

  “The Astral Barrier,” Musa goes on, “is not part of your body. It’s something you learn to run.”

  He gestures vaguely, like he’s shaping clay in the air.

  “It’s an active construct,” Musa says. “Built from resonant Aether circulating through your Vessel. Not something you have—something you maintain. It flexes as your flow flexes. Thickens where pressure hits. Thins where it doesn’t need to be. If your control wavers, it weakens. If you panic, it fractures.”

  Aster tilts his head. “So it’s…?”

  “Closer to Antivirus,” Musa says. “Instead of a Firewall. It scans every interaction in real time—filters hostile influence, bleeds off excess intent, rejects anything that tries to overwrite you, or at least tries to.”

  He meets Aster’s eyes.

  “It lets the Astral Plane touch you without letting it claim you.”

  Aster considers this.

  “…Why not just keep both?”

  Musa’s mouth twitches. Almost a smile.

  “Because the bio-field is shaped through your biological function,” he says, “while the Astral Barrier only exists because of Aether flow, which you can only access through absorption through your gates. Meaning they are contradictory in nature. You can’t simultaneously be blocked from the internet while running a program specifically made to work with the internet.”

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  Aster opens his mouth.

  Closes it.

  “So,” he says slowly, “I dismantle my natural protection, replace it with a handcrafted forcefield powered by vibes and personal responsibility—”

  “—Aether Flow,” Musa cuts in.

  “—and if I mess it up—”

  “You lose the only thing that actually keeps you from dying immediately when facing an actual threat,” Musa finishes.

  Aster opens his mouth.

  Closes it.

  “…Immediately?”

  Before Musa can answer, a shadow falls across them. Miss Hecca has moved and is now standing far closer than either of them noticed.

  “Musa,” she says.

  Her voice is soft. Calm. The kind of calm that makes Aster’s spine itch.

  “Yes, Miss Hecca,” Musa replies instantly.

  “You’ve been selected for Advanced Combat,” she continues. “You’ve been identified as being part of the top twenty in this year’s cohort. You and the others will be doing private tutoring alongside the Sergeant during all your following combat class hours. I’ll be hosting your barrier work independently in your free periods.”

  Musa blinks. Then straightens. “Understood.”

  “He’s waiting in room 234B,” she adds. “Sequa Wing.”

  Musa looks at Aster, uncertainty flickering across his face. “I—”

  “Don’t worry,” Miss Hecca says smoothly, already turning away from him. “I’ll help Aster catch up with the rest regarding his Astral Barrier.”

  Aster’s stomach drops.

  “Go,” she adds. “Before the sergeant returns and chews you a new hole.”

  Musa hesitates just long enough to look guilty, then gives Aster an apologetic half-smile and heads off at a near-jog, leaving Aster with the unfamiliar teacher.

  Up close, her eyes are unsettling—not because they’re cruel, but because they are two black pools that seem to swallow his silhouette and filter out all his characteristics, leaving only a blank outline.

  “Elchen,” she says. Not a question.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Aster replies, because his instincts have finally learned something.

  “You’ve been without your bio-field for just over a month,” she says.

  Aster stiffens. “That’s… public knowledge now?”

  “It shows,” she says. “You leak.”

  He looks down at himself instinctively. “I—what?”

  “Your Vessel is unshielded,” Miss Hecca continues calmly. “Your Aether channels are exposed to the ambient Astral Environment. Your gates help to draw in Aether, but without the barrier, it just leaks out over time. You have been compensating with tension and instinct.”

  A pause.

  “Sloppy instinct.”

  Aster exhales through his nose. “Great. I always want my trauma to be measurable.”

  She gestures. And suddenly Aster feels it—her barrier flaring briefly into existence. Not visible, not solid, but present. Like standing inside the faint pull of a magnet. The air presses. Space tightens.

  “This,” she continues, “is an Astral analogue of a bio-field. A structured flow of Aether cycling through your channels, looping around your Vessel, creating a stabilized magnetic gradient.”

  Aster’s brow furrows. “Magnetic.”

  “Not literal magnetism,” she says. “Conceptual. Your Aether flow establishes polarity—inside and out. Incoming force is redirected, dispersed, or absorbed depending on strength and stability.”

  She steps closer and taps two fingers lightly against his chest. The touch sends a faint, unpleasant shiver through his bones, like she brushes something deeper than skin.

  “Your Astral Vessel is threaded with Aether channels,” she says. “Six primary Hues, running in parallel lattices. Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Plant, Lightning.”

  “You forgot Spirit.”

  “No,” she says. “Spirit is the axis. Not the participant.”

  That… feels ominous.

  “Right now,” she continues, “your channels are active but discordant. You’ve been using them like separate tools. Pulling one at a time. For a barrier, they must move together.”

  She raises a hand, fingers spreading slightly. “In harmony.”

  Aster’s stomach sinks. “I’m bad at harmony.”

  “Yes,” she agrees. “That’s why we’ll have to carve it into you.”

  Aster winces.

  “Elchen,” she says, loud enough to carry over the murmurs and hums of the rest of the class as everyone turns to him. “You will work with me. The rest of you will observe.”

  “To the front.”

  Aster makes his way to the front of the class, hands at his sides, trying not to look like a lab rat who has learned too late what the maze is for.

  She gestures for him to stop. “Good. Stay there. I want everyone to look closely, because you, Elchen, are going to show them something they cannot read from books or learn from theory alone.”

  He frowns. “Me?”

  “Yes. You.” Her black eyes glint like ink in water. “Spirit Typing is unique. Primordial. The framework of your Vessel, your Hues, your Typing provides a rare glimpse into the universal template that makes up its design. A framework through which others can better understand their own elemental typing if grasped and applied correctly.”

  She traces the air with one pale finger, slow and precise, as though drawing invisible connections between colours only she can see. “Each elemental typing contains a mapping of every other type. A Hue is a fractal of the primal element it is derived from. It is, simultaneously, its own element and a lens onto another. Spirit Typing expresses the elemental laws in their most direct form,” she continues. “Water flows. Fire gives power. Earth stabilizes. Wind settles. Lightning moves. Plant binds. No metaphor. No distortion. Just pure law.”

  She turns slightly, gesturing to a student on the left. He wears dark brown-red cuffs—an Earth Typing.

  “Earth Typing,” Miss Hecca says, “is made up of six Hues: Rock, Magma, Sand, Crystal, Metal, and Radiation.”

  Miss Hecca’s voice cuts cleanly through the class. “A corresponding elemental law shapes each Hue. Metal flows. Not because it is Water, but because it obeys the law of Water—Flow. Rock stabilizes. Magma is power. Sand settles. Radiation moves. Crystal binds.”

  Aster follows along instinctively, his mind lining them up.

  Rock—Earth.

  Magma—Fire.

  Sand—Air.

  Crystal—Plant.

  Metal—Water.

  Radiation—Lightning.

  Oh.

  She finally looks at Aster.

  “In Elchen, those same laws exist without translation.”

  Something in his chest shifts uncomfortably.

  “When he balances Flow,” she says, “you are not watching Metal or Tide. You are watching the law of Flow itself. When he stabilizes, you are seeing Stability without disguise. His Spirit Typing strips the element away and leaves him with only the rules.”

  Aster swallows.

  So it isn’t that he has more. It’s that he has less in the way.

  “The rest of you,” Miss Hecca says, turning back to the class, “must perform this same balancing act through your own Typing. Each correction he makes corresponds to the very nature of a law your typing possess. Metal does not Flow the way Spirit does. Rock does not Stabilize the way Spirit does. But the law is identical that govern them. You apply it to your own nature. If you cannot see yourself in this, the fault is not the system. It is your own lack of attention.”

  It clicks then—quietly, unpleasantly, like realizing you’ve been looking at a map upside down.

  They aren’t learning from him.

  They are learning through him.

  Aster feels exposed in a way armour can’t fix.

  Aster stares straight ahead, heat creeping up his neck.

  She turns back to him.

  “An Astral Barrier is formed through resonant circulation,” she says, “balanced through your Vessel’s channels.”

  Her hand traces a slow spiral in the air.

  “Your elemental Hues do not naturally agree. Left unchecked, they behave like diverging currents colliding in a narrow channel. Turbulence. Damage. Collapse.”

  Aster swallows. That sounds uncomfortably familiar.

  “To create a barrier,” Miss Hecca continues, “you must learn to balance these contradictory energies by tuning your Gates.”