9. The New Stalker Has Dead Eyes

The field was pale with early dawn light, the grass frosted with dew that looked like crushed glass. The world smelled of damp earth and cold air.

Arion rolled his shoulders lazily, the joints popping in the silence. He exhaled a cloud of white mist. “Teacher Sophia is late.”

A breeze passed through the grass, rustling the leaves of the nearby trees. Then— It stopped.

Not gradually. Not like a wind dying down naturally. It stopped instantly. The leaves froze in mid-sway. The mist hung suspended. The birds that had been chirping seconds ago were silenced, as if a heavy blanket had been thrown over the world.

Arion frowned slightly, his hand pausing mid-stretch. “…That’s odd.”

A presence. It wasn't loud, like Exousia’s fiery temper. It wasn't heavy, like the Principal’s oppressive authority. It was just… there. Absolute. Inescapable. Like the sudden realization that you are in deep water.

He turned.

She stood several meters away. He hadn’t heard footsteps. She had simply manifested in the blind spot of his attention. Her short, grey hair was unmoving, even though the wind had been blowing seconds ago. Her uniform was pristine, the buttons gleaming dully in the low light. She stood with her arms at her sides, perfectly relaxed, yet radiating a terrifying readiness.

Her eyes were white. Blind. But they were fixed unerringly on him. And in the center of each pale iris— A slow, turning whirlpool.

They locked eyes. The world vanished.

—

The Vision

Water. Endless. Cold.

Arion stood waist-deep in a vast ocean under a white, sunless sky. The Academy was gone. The field was gone. There was no sound but the distant, rhythmic crashing of waves that didn't exist.

Pressure coiled around his mind. It wasn't crushing, like a physical weight. It was hydrostatic pressure. It squeezed from every direction at once, seeking a crack, a flaw, a way in. It was Testing.

He looked down at his reflection in the dark water. It did not move when he did. The reflection stared back with empty white eyes.

He smiled faintly, though his lips felt numb. “…Again?”

The ocean did not respond. The girl was nowhere to be seen, yet she was everywhere. She was the water. The sky tilted. The horizon bent inward like a closing eye, warping the perspective of the world.

The pressure increased. He felt the pull this time—deeper than before. It wasn't trying to drown him. It was trying to measure his depth. It wanted to know where the bottom was. His thoughts slowed. Not forcibly. Just… compressed. Stripped of unnecessary noise.

He exhaled. And stepped forward.

The water did not ripple. Physics here obeyed will, not mass. He didn't fight the ocean. He didn't try to part it or boil it. He simply refused to be moved by it.

I am here, his presence said. You are there.

The ocean split faintly around him. Not violently. Not with power. Just refusal. The pressure pushed, and he did not yield.

CRACK.

The sound was sharp, like a glacier fracturing. The horizon cracked. Like glass under quiet stress.

—

Reality

The field returned in a rush of sensory input. Wind resumed, whipping Arion’s hair across his forehead. Grass moved, the frozen leaves finally completing their sway.

The girl still stood where she had been. There was no change in her posture. No heavy breathing. No visible effort. But her whirlpool pupils had tightened slightly. The rotation was faster.

“…You stabilized,” she said calmly. Her voice was flat, devoid of surprise.

Arion blinked once, dispelling the lingering image of the white sky. “…You dragged me again.”

“Yes.”

“That’s rude. Most people start with ‘Hello’.”

She tilted her head the slightest degree. It was the movement of a bird watching a worm. “You were louder today.”

“With my mouth?”

“No.” She tapped her own chest. “Inside. The vibration.”

Silence stretched between them. Arion felt a headache forming behind his eyes—the aftereffect of a mental clash. He rubbed the back of his neck. “That ocean thing. Is that your hobby? Or do you just hate dry land?”

“It is reflex,” she stated.

“That’s worse. You should get that checked.”

Her gaze lowered briefly to his hand. To the left one. The silver ring. The whirlpool in her eye rotated once. Slow. Analyzing.

“…Restricted,” she murmured.

Arion stopped rubbing his neck. His eyes narrowed slightly. “Everyone keeps saying that.”

“You do not know.”

“No. I don’t.”

A pause. She looked back up at his face. “You are incomplete.”

“That’s harsh,” Arion laughed, though the sound was dry. “I like to think I’m a work in progress.”

“It is not insult,” she said. “It is an outline. A circle with a break.”

She stepped one pace closer. She was still outside arm’s reach, maintaining a perfect combat distance. “When it loosens,” she said evenly, “you will be different.”

He blinked. “It loosens? It does that?”

She did not answer. Her attention snapped to the right. Footsteps approached from behind. Fast, rhythmic clicking.

Sophia.

The girl’s gaze shifted away immediately. The ocean feeling vanished completely, sucked back into her like a tide retreating. By the time Sophia crested the hill and arrived at the field, the grey-haired girl had already stepped back. Neutral. Uninvolved. Just another student.

“Arion!” Sophia called out, slightly breathless, clutching a thermos. She slowed as she saw the other figure. “Were you speaking to someone?”

Arion glanced at the girl. She was looking at a tree now, as if she had never seen him in her life. “Yeah. We were discussing weather patterns.”

Sophia followed his gaze. She froze. “…Oh.” Recognition flashed across her face. And wariness. “The Student Representative.”

The girl inclined her head slightly to Sophia.

No smile.

No introduction.

No acknowledgement of the mental battle that had just taken place. Then, she turned and walked away. Her steps were silent, fading into the tree line without another word.

Sophia exhaled softly, her shoulders dropping. “…Be careful around her, Arion.”

“Why? She seems… quiet.”

“She is the Student Representative. The absolute authority among the students.” Sophia looked at him seriously. “She doesn’t lose. Ever.”

Arion looked at the space where the ocean had been. He could still feel the cold dampness on his skin, the memory of that crushing pressure. Then he looked at his ring. The silver band felt tighter than usual.

“…Neither do I,” he said casually.

But his fingers lingered on the silver band longer than before, wondering just what, exactly, was waiting to be loosened.

The room was sparse. No decorations. No personal clutter. Just a bed, a desk, and a wall of meticulously organized books on magical theory. Silence filled the space like a physical substance.

The girl stood near the window, her hands clasped loosely behind her back. Her white eyes looked down at the courtyard below. Students were moving between buildings like ants following a pheromone trail.

Laughing.

Gossiping.

Worrying about exams.

Normal.

Predictable.

Her expression did not change. It rarely did. To her, the world was a series of equations, and most people were simple arithmetic. But she replayed the earlier encounter in the field.

When their eyes met, her ability had activated automatically. It always did. It was a reflex, like breathing. Her perception dragged anyone who made eye contact into her mental domain.

Most students reacted the same way inside the ocean. They panicked. Their thoughts scattered like frightened fish. Some tried to attack the water with fire or lightning, which was futile. Some froze, their minds shutting down under the hydrostatic pressure of her will.

Arion did none of that.

He didn’t resist directly. He didn’t collapse. He stabilized.

That was… unusual. It was like dropping a stone into the water and watching it refuse to sink.

She recalled the sensation of the pressure increasing. She had pushed harder, testing his depth. Normally, a mind would fracture. But the mana around him had tightened. Not violently. Not explosively. It adjusted. As if a governor valve had snapped shut to correct the pressure before instability could occur.

She focused on that specific detail. It wasn’t raw mental fortitude. It wasn’t brute force. It felt… regulated. Engineered.

Her eyes lowered slightly as she accessed the memory. The silver ring on his left hand. When her pressure increased, the ring had reacted a fraction of a second before he did. It had pulsed. A subtle contraction of mana.

He didn’t even seem aware of it.

“…So he doesn’t know,” she muttered quietly to the empty room.

The conclusion formed in her mind with the clarity of a mathematical proof.

The stability is artificial. If the ring is removed, the result of the equation changes.

She did not feel threatened.

Threat implies fear.

She did not feel excited.

Excitement implies uncertainty.

She simply identified a variable.

Arion was not behaving like a normal first-year student.

He wasn’t stronger than her.

No student was.

But he wasn’t ordinary either.

He was a puzzle box that someone had locked from the inside.

She turned away from the window, her movement precise.

There would be more chances to observe.

Her face remained calm. No emotion. Just a quiet decision.

For now, she would watch. She sat at her desk and opened a blank file. She dipped her quill in ink.

Name: Arion.

Status: Anomaly.

Action: Monitor.