The scent of ozone and something metallic, like burnt salt, still clung to Rhysik’s clothes. His muscles hummed, a low vibration of newly integrated matter, the subtle thrum of enhanced systems. The Grimglass Stalker’s essence had woven itself into his very core. He had returned to the student dormitories, the quiet hum of his internal growth a stark contrast to the casual chatter of other recruits. He was cleaning the residue from his combat gauntlets when the summons arrived. The summons brought neither discipline nor commendation. Just a small, almost polite data-slate projected by a hovering automaton: *“Rhysik Volkov. Report to Headmaster Vorlag’s private office, Sector Gamma, forthwith.”* The word ‘forthwith’ signaled danger. Nobody escaped notice within these training tiers, especially after tearing apart an apex beast in a novice biodome. He walked through the gleaming corridors, the polished chrome reflecting his unreadable expression. Mishka, usually a chittering shadow, had wisely remained hidden in his pack, sensing the shift in atmosphere. Tension settled beneath his ribs, familiar as the grip on an iron wrench. He reached the office, a door of dark, polished obsidian. It parted without a sound. The chamber inside was spare, dominated by a single, massive plasteel desk. Behind it sat Zoryana Vostok. She looked up, her expression a cool, predatory calm. Her auburn hair, usually meticulously styled, was pulled back, revealing the sharp lines of her face. A thin, almost invisible scar bisected her left eyebrow, a detail Rhysik hadn't noticed before. Her mouth remained rigid. The room felt pressurized, thin and cold. “Volkov,” she said, her voice a low, melodic hum. “Take a seat.” She gestured toward a solitary steel chair opposite the desk. The director was absent; this was an isolated audience. Rhysik remained upright. “Where is Vorlag?” Zoryana leaned back, her gaze unwavering. “Busy. I handle certain... *special* cases. You are one such case, Volkov.” She paused, letting her words hang. “The Grimglass Stalker. An impressive feat for a slum-rat, even one with your... unusual vitality.” Rhysik felt a flicker of alarm. *Unusual vitality.* It was too specific. He kept his face blank. “I survived.” “Indeed. You always do, don't you?” Her eyes, the color of twilight, seemed to bore into him. “From the alleys of the Sunder to the industrial grinding pits. A survivor.” She picked up a stylus, idly turning it between her fingers. “They say you once worked at the Krovos Forge, near the old arsenic vents. Lost your position after a dispute with a foreman, didn’t you? A certain Taras Zaitsev.” Rhysik’s breath caught. Taras Zaitsev was a ghost from a past he’d tried to bury. A detail nobody in The Crucible could possibly know. He narrowed his eyes. “What is this?” Zoryana ignored the question. “And your sister. Lena. Quite a delicate flower, isn't she? Always demanding care. Always starving for draughts...” Her voice drifted off, letting the threat settle. Her awareness defied logic; it went beyond surveillance into impossible intimacy. Lena. The name was an iron secret kept between him and Mishka, absent from any academy databank or registry beyond the gutter gutters of the Sunder. This was no ordinary rival; she possessed impossible sight. “How do you know that name?” Rhysik’s voice was a low growl, stripped of all pretense of calm. Zoryana smiled then, a small, chilling curve of her lips that didn't reach her eyes. “Let’s just say I have a keen memory. And a deep interest in… anomalies.” She rose and circled the perimeter, boots making no noise on the lacquer. “You’re an anomaly, Volkov. In this place, anomalies are either pulverized or swallowed whole.” She stopped directly in front of him, her gaze locking with his. “Consider this a warning. Or perhaps, an invitation to a game. Your choice.” Rhysik said nothing, his mind racing. She knew. She knew about Lena. This wasn't just about gaining power anymore. This was about survival against an enemy who saw through time, who held his past and his deepest vulnerability like a weapon. [Hostile Threat Acknowledged: Zoryana Vostok. Threat Level: Catastrophic] The text flared across his retina, stark and crimson. The notification was stark, devoid of the usual growth logs, purely an assessment of danger. He turned and left, the obsidian slab sealing shut behind him. He climbed directly toward the grand archive, where tiers of data-stacks stretched into dim rafters. He needed information. Not on pills, not on creatures, but on Zoryana. On whatever power she wielded that allowed her to see into his past. He started with the basics, searching for 'precognition,' 'memory manipulation,' 'temporal anomalies'—anything that hinted at such impossible knowledge. Hours bled into one another. Common metallurgical treaties and historical records offered nothing. He was about to give up, convinced Zoryana’s power was beyond the scope of any recorded science, when a tiny, almost hidden sub-category caught his eye: *“Discredited Theories & Suppressed Research: Consortium Founding Era.”* Curiosity, cold and sharp, overrode his frustration. He accessed the archived data. Most contained rambling hypotheses, yet one fragment, buried beneath forgotten distillation charts, seized his attention. It was an abstract, barely legible, written by a ‘Grand Alchemist Arkady Solon’ – one of the Consortium’s founders. The title: *“Project Chimera: The Petrifying Blight and the Promise of Entropic Immortality.”* The petrifaction was no plague; it was an engineered protocol, an aborted bid for everlasting flesh. Lena's calcifying limbs were the direct result of syndicate arrogance. The log detailed an effort to bind a crystallizing compound to cellular tissue to arrest physical decay. Instead, it converted organic marrow to rigid mineral. The ruling syndicates had buried the catastrophe, rebranding the fallout as a spontaneous contagion to shield their lords.

A Glimpse of the Past