I Choose the Skills Everyone Else Rejects

The three figures stood between Nate and the awakening chamber.

He could still see the room behind them. Officials crowded around Ethan, while Mara was led toward a secured exit with two military officers. Doctors moved between the remaining candidates, and cameras continued turning above the platform.

No one reacted to the dead standing in front of him.

The first figure stepped forward.

The chamber vanished.

Nate found himself on the roof of a damaged building, looking down at streets filled with smoke and overturned vehicles. Something struck the defensive wall in the distance, shaking dust from the map table beneath his hands.

They were not his hands.

A dozen voices fought for space in the communication device at his ear.

"Third Unit is falling back."

"We lost the eastern stairwell."

"General, the south gate won’t hold."

The woman whose body he occupied studied the glowing map. Red marks pushed through the city while blue ones disappeared one by one.

She measured what remained in a glance: the soldiers still standing, the distance between each squad, the civilians trapped near the eastern district and the time left before the enemy reached them.

A wounded officer waited beside her.

"We can reinforce the south gate."

"No."

"If it falls—"

"It will fall." Her voice did not rise. "Withdraw Third Unit through Market Street. Collapse the western bridge after they cross. The south gate holds for four more minutes."

"There are still soldiers there."

"I know."

The decision hurt. Nate felt that much inside her chest. It simply did not slow her.

She gave the order, and the vision ended before he saw what happened to the soldiers at the gate.

LYRA DANE

GENERAL OF THE SEVENTH DEFENSIVE ARMY

Nate knew the name. Every military program taught the defense of Calderon City, where Lyra’s decisions had saved most of the population at a terrible cost.

The second figure moved forward.

Nate sat cross-legged in a quiet room, inside the body of an old man. Pale energy traveled beneath his skin in a slow loop.

He had practiced circulation for two years, but this was nothing like the exercises taught at the regional center. The flow never struck a tense muscle or collected inside a joint. Each part of the body accepted exactly what it needed before passing the rest onward.

A slight pressure formed beneath the right shoulder.

The old man noticed it immediately.

He slowed his breathing and divided the current into two narrow streams. They passed around the blockage, loosened it without pain, then merged again.

Nate had spent years forcing energy through his body. This man controlled every part of it.

ORREN VALE

FOUNDER OF THE VALE CIRCUIT METHOD

Nate had studied his books. Every preparation center used a simplified version of Orren’s exercises.

Choosing him would be safe. His guidance could prevent the kind of mistake that ruined an Awakened’s future.

Then the third figure stepped forward.

Nate expected another battlefield.

Instead, cold stone pressed against bare feet.

Morning mist covered an empty training yard surrounded by trees. The man whose body Nate occupied was taller than him, with uneven hair, a scar across his jaw and plain clothes worn thin at the elbows.

Rovan Hest looked nothing like his statues.

The Last Hunter rolled each ankle slowly, bent his knees and shifted his weight between his hips. It looked like the beginning of an ordinary warm-up.

Then energy entered his feet.

The current rose through his ankles and calves as the joints moved. It followed the body rather than forcing it.

Rovan stepped forward. His weight moved into the hip, the waist turned and the shoulder followed. One hand cut through the air in a short strike.

There was no sudden display of power. The movement was dangerous because nothing interrupted it.

He repeated the sequence, first slowly and then at speed. A step became a turn, the turn dropped beneath an invisible attack, and his rear foot carried him several meters before Nate understood that he had accelerated.

Rovan returned to the beginning.

With each repetition, he changed something small: the height of a shoulder, the turn of a hip, the tension around one knee. He continued alone in the empty yard while the rest of the world slept.

When the vision ended, all three figures stood before Nate again.

Lyra offered command. Orren offered control. Rovan had shown him an exercise Nate had seen a hundred times, yet his body still remembered how different it felt.

The first two had left schools, manuals and generations of students behind them. Nate could study Lyra’s battles in any military library. He could buy Orren’s beginner methods for less than the cost of a train ticket.

Rovan had founded nothing.

Most records of his training had vanished after his final expedition. The few methods released to the public had been altered after people injured themselves trying to copy him.

Orren Vale could still be studied through books.

Rovan could only be learned from Rovan.

Nate chose him.

Lyra and Orren faded. Rovan remained for a moment, watching the empty space ahead of him, and then the awakening chamber returned.

Only a few seconds seemed to have passed.

A doctor stood in front of Nate with a scanner in her hand.

"Mr. Calder?"

He blinked. "Yes?"

"You stopped responding. Follow me."

She led him into a small examination room where two technicians waited beside a circular scanner. Before the door closed, Nate caught one last glimpse of Ethan through the officials surrounding him. Mara was already gone.

He sat beneath the scanner.

Pale light gathered over his Core, showing Posthumous Disciple as a bright point near its center. Body Memory hovered beyond the active structure, dark and inaccessible.

One technician enlarged the readings.

"His manifestation is stable. Strong activity in the motor-memory regions."

The doctor looked at Nate. "Did your Class give you its name?"

Path Reclaimer waited behind his thoughts.

If he spoke the truth, every official surrounding Ethan would soon know about a Class that preserved Skills meant to disappear. Even Rovan’s name would attract questions.

He remembered a Variant Class from theory lessons. Rare enough to explain the failed scan, but known well enough to avoid immediate panic.

"Kinetic Recall."

The technician found it in the database.

"Physical-learning Variant. Records observed movement and improves reproduction through repetition."

"That sounds right," Nate said.

"And your first Skill?"

"Deep Imitation."

The technician frowned. "That Skill isn’t listed in the previous records."

"Variant Classes don’t always produce the same Skills," the doctor said. She kept her attention on Nate. "What did you experience?"

"Three demonstrations. I chose one, and the Skill showed me a movement exercise."

"Did it identify the person?"

Nate allowed himself a short hesitation.

"No."

The doctor entered the information.

PROVISIONAL CLASS: KINETIC RECALL

ROOT SKILL: DEEP IMITATION

STATUS: STABLE — FURTHER TESTING REQUIRED

His first official record as an Awakened was a lie.

"You should avoid using the Skill without supervision," the doctor said. "Your mind may understand movements your body cannot perform."

"I understand."

Her expression suggested otherwise, but she handed him a temporary medical card and let him leave.

His parents were waiting in the public hall.

His mother stood as soon as she saw him.

"What happened?"

"I awakened. The Array couldn’t identify it at first."

She read the card he gave her.

"Kinetic Recall. Physical learning?"

"Something like that."

"That is not an explanation."

"They’re still testing it."

His father came closer. "Can he still attend the academy?"

"The admission review will decide."

His father squeezed his shoulder. "Then we deal with the review."

Nate looked toward the secured corridor.

"Where’s Ethan?"

"They moved his family upstairs," his mother said. "Mara was taken through another exit."

The screens above them were already showing the ceremony. Ethan beneath FIRST BANNER. Mara beneath LAST STANDARD. Old paintings of Aldren Marr and Serah Vale filled the background.

THE KINGDOM’S HEROES RETURN TOGETHER

His father looked at the restaurant bags they had brought.

"I suppose dinner is off."

"We can still eat together," his mother said.

Nate watched Ethan’s face appear on every screen.

"Yeah. Let’s go home."

They ate at the kitchen table without Ethan’s family. His parents tried to keep the conversation ordinary. Nate left the temporary medical card beside his plate.

At ten, Ethan finally sent a message.

They won’t let me leave. I’m sorry. Are you okay?

Nate typed three answers before choosing one.

I awakened. Kinetic Recall. We’re still taking that train.

The reply came almost immediately.

Of course we are.

Nate locked his bedroom door and pushed his desk against the wall.

When he focused on Posthumous Disciple, the training yard returned. He felt cold stone beneath Rovan’s feet as the hunter loosened his ankles, bent his knees and guided energy through each relaxed joint.

Nate watched once, then tried it himself.

His ankle stopped halfway through the rotation. His hip tightened, and the energy gathered painfully beneath his knee. He lost his balance and struck the side of the bed.

Rovan had made it look easy.

Nate stood again.

On the fifth attempt, he completed the ankle rotation without forcing it. On the ninth, the current reached his hip before breaking apart.

His legs shook, but he returned to the starting position.

This time, he shortened the movement to fit his own body. The current traveled from his foot through the ankle, knee and hip. His shoulder relaxed a fraction too late, yet the motion carried him across the narrow space beside his bed with a smoothness he had never achieved during preparation.

The movement was still too slow to impress an instructor, but Nate had never moved that smoothly before.

He went back to the beginning.

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