Yellow Jacket

The world still spun through his mind like a dying gyroscope as Vaeliyan stepped off the pad and into a, wait.

Had he been here before?

It was a meadow. Gentle. Still. The grass was soft, uniform. Wind moved like it had been programmed, curling in lazy spirals that brushed just enough across his skin to suggest ease. A meadow like a memory, not like a place. And yet, every step on that grass felt real enough to count.

The rest of Class One arrived behind him in staggered bursts, blinking at the warm golden wash of sunset. It wasn't just light, it was softness, diffused amber bleeding across the sky like the world was finally exhaling. They turned in slow circles, gazing at the shifting hues overhead, like they'd stepped into a dream they didn't remember falling asleep for, one painted in all the colors the Citadel never allowed.

Varnai was the first to say it. He tilted his head, squinting into the too-real sky. "Wasn't this class called Finding Your Inner Monster?"

Lessa rubbed the back of her neck. "Yeah, I thought this would be another torture session disguised as personal development."

Torman flexed his jaw and sniffed the air like it might change. "It still might be."

Roan glanced around uneasily. "Knowing the Citadel? It's probably the most horrifying class. That's why it's last. You don't end a day here with comfort. You end it questioning your life choices."

Then came the footsteps behind them. Slow. Measured. The pad hummed as another body stepped through.

The man who emerged didn't look like he belonged in the meadow. He looked like something that had crawled out of another story entirely and dressed up for the part. Every inch of skin was covered in symmetrical, geometric tattoos designed to resemble scales, each etched with perfect precision.

His eyes weren't human. They might never have been. Reptilian prosthetics or deliberate biomods, no one could tell, but they glimmered like lenses in a predator's skull. Gold slit irises.

Then he smiled, and the illusion of safety cracked a little more. His mouth was full of fine, needle-like teeth, too perfect to be filed, too many to be natural.

And then he spoke.

Not with threat. But with softness.

"Welcome, children. Please, sit. It must have been a hard day. It truly is difficult, what you're been put through."

He gestured to the grass again. An open palm.

"I am Instructor Velrock, and I am here for you. If you need anything, I am at your disposal."

They stared.

Jurpat broke the silence first. "What's the catch?"

Velrock's grin widened, and somehow it didn't feel like a trap. "No catch. I am here to listen. That is all. To listen, and to help you carry what you no longer wish to hold."

Vaeliyan didn't move. He just studied the man. There, behind the tranquility, was recognition.

He'd seen Velrock before. Not long ago. In Imujin's office.

That's what had triggered the strange familiarity. The layout. The angles. The light. This meadow wasn't the same one from earlier... but it was patterned after it. Almost perfectly. Except this one was too consistent. Too serene. The tree placement had symmetry. The shade fell in photogenic lines. Nothing here was out of place.

The meadow with Imujin had been real. Uneven. Honest. A place where birds interrupted the silence and the wind might slap instead of kiss. This was something else. Manufactured safety. Calming by design.

Still...

For the Green?

This was the closest thing to peaceful he had ever seen.

A rare, delicate moment of softness in a world built on knives. Violently enforced perfection, softened just enough to let you breathe... and maybe forget what it cost to get here.

And Velrock, somehow, made it work.

He didn't seem to belong to the Green, not really. He didn't belong to the violence or the war. He simply existed here like a stone at the bottom of a river, untouched, unchanging, and steady no matter how hard the current screamed.

Velrock was, impossibly, kind.

Not soft. Kind. The kind of kind that sat with you in silence when you had nothing left to say. The kind that remembered what you said three weeks ago and brought it up again just to make sure you were okay.

The cadets wouldn't realize it today. But they would.

This would become their favorite class. The one no one missed. The hours they didn't fight. Didn't find a new horror. But learned to breath.

Velrock didn't ask them to. And he didn't let them pretend to be okay when they weren't, either.

He just waited, quiet and sure, until one of them finally cracked open.

And when they did... he didn't judge.

He just listened.

When everyone finally got comfortable, Velrock sat cross-legged in the grass, hands resting calmly on his knees, and spoke with the same patient stillness he always carried. The late sun filtered through the leaves, painting golden light across the meadow like a soft veil.

"So," he asked gently, voice almost blending into the hush of the breeze, "does anyone want to share how they feel about the past two days? This is strictly voluntary. You don't have to say anything if you don't want to."

There was no demand. Just a question, offered like a hand extended across silence.

Vaeliyan turned his gaze to the rest of Class One. Some sat with arms crossed. Some lay in the grass like they weren't sure if they were allowed to let go of their posture. But none of them looked okay. The light in their eyes still flickered, but underneath that was the weight of something newly broken. Or maybe something newly seen.

He could feel it in the way they breathed, just a bit too shallow. In the way they avoided eye contact. In the way they stared into the distance like it might offer an explanation.

This place was not easy to live with.

And it had only been two days.

Two days of drills, tests, screams, horrors, and shock. Two days of watching everything they thought they knew get torn apart and replaced with something raw and weaponized. Some of them still hadn't processed what was happening. Some had processed it too quickly and gone numb.

And now, just before being sent here, Isol had told them the truth:

To the Legion.

There would be no gentle goodbye. No decision waiting in the wings. No transfer request, no safe return to the families that had sent them here under false assumptions. Whatever dreams they once held had been rewritten.

Vaeliyan saw it clearly now. That timing, the truth drop just before this class, was intentional. This session wasn't random. It was placed at the end of the second day for a reason. It was the structured moment to catch the fall.

This class was the breaking room.

The decompression chamber.

The scream-catcher.

They had all been thrown into the fire. Now they were handed a bucket of water and told they could use it however they liked.

He looked over at Velrock, eyes narrowing slightly in curiosity.

"You're a therapist, aren't you?" Vaeliyan asked. The words didn't come out accusatory. More... tired.

Velrock chuckled softly. Not dismissively, warmly. Like he respected the question.

"No," he said. "But it's not the first time I've been asked. I'm a warrior through and through. Born to it. Bled for it. But that doesn't mean I don't see you. Doesn't mean I can't understand. If anything, it helps me understand more deeply. I'm not some clean-souled civilian here to pat you on the shoulder and call that healing."

He shifted his posture, sitting taller now, his spine perfectly straight. Not stiff, centered.

"I'm not here to offer comfort for comfort's sake. That's not my job. I'm here to help you find your center. And when you get there, I'll help you sit across from the monster that lives in it. The thing you'll probably want to pretend isn't there."

His voice didn't sharpen. It deepened. Like something older speaking through him.

"I will never force you to do anything. Ever. But I will ask you to see yourself. All of yourself. I will ask you to hold your own reflection and not look away. And I will not judge you for what you find in it."

He brought his hands up slowly, turning them so that his palms faced inward.

So they could see.

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His nails weren't nails. They weren't cosmetic either. They were retractable claws, sleek, black, organic metal. A perfect fusion of biology and wartech. Deadly. Elegant. Honest.

"I made myself into what I saw deep down," Velrock said. "Not to show off. Not to scare people. To survive. To stop lying. So I could walk beside my cold, unflinching, predatory killer... and not hate him."

There was a pause. Not a dramatic one. Just a pause for breath. For truth.

His gaze found Vaeliyan's again. Locked, but not challenging.

Inviting.

"I felt like a raptor," he said, simply. "So I became one. My soul aligned faster than most because I didn't resist it. I didn't lie to myself. I let it in. I know what my monster is."

He scanned the rest of the class. One by one.

"And I will show you how to find your own."

Velrock exhaled slowly, his hands resting once more on his knees. The claws retracted with a subtle click, vanishing like they were never there. The light was dimming around him, but it didn't dim him. If anything, he seemed more alive in the quiet, like the growing dark agreed with him.

"You all know the change," he said, voice soft and steady. "The one we now call Soul Skills."

He gave a small, amused smile. Not smug. Nostalgic. Like someone remembering a long argument finally won. "It's funny, really. I'd been pushing to get the name changed for years. 'Skill' never quite did it justice. It always felt... wrong. Too mechanical. Too detached. As if it were something added onto you instead of something already inside you. But it was never just a skill. Never just a trick or talent. I always felt it was something deeper, something linked to our center. Our core. Our soul."

He glanced around slowly, meeting eyes where he could, not expecting nods or applause. Just connection.

"When Imujin brought it up again at the entrance exam," he continued, "and Isoldian agreed, Josaphine too, it stopped me cold. Those three had ignored every proposal. Wouldn't even read the drafts. For years, nothing. Then suddenly... they backed it. Fully. Publicly. And the name changed across the board like someone flipped a switch."

He chuckled under his breath, shaking his head. "Soul Skills. It fits better, doesn't it? It names what it is. Not a tool. Not a piece of tech. It's you. Made visible. Made functional in the most real way possible."

Velrock leaned back slightly, elbows resting on his thighs, letting the last traces of sunset settle like dust across the grass. The sky above them burned orange fading to deep purple, the meadow now veiled in amber hush. He didn't raise his voice.

"What we're going to do today is simple. We're just going to sit here. For as long as you want. There's no timer or objective. You don't have to speak. You don't have to move. You don't have to look into the dark corners of your mind... if you're not ready."

He paused.

"But that's where your monster lives."

The air around them had stilled. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.

"And if you want to meet it, truly meet it, you'll have to go there. You will have to sit in its presence. You will have to listen."

His voice dropped lower, not darker, just deeper, more grounded. Like the roots of an old tree reminding you where you stand.

"When you find it... I don't say this metaphorically. If you find it, see it, you will hit the next stage. No matter what stage you're on now. Doesn't matter what the System says. Doesn't matter what your stats read. Doesn't matter what your instructors think you're ready for. Your Soul Skill will evolve."

He let that hang in the air.

Then, quietly:

"But if you don't find it before Stage Five..."

He didn't change tone. He didn't raise volume.

"Without finding who and what you truly are, your Soul Skill will plateau. It'll stagnate. Because it isn't just powered by motion or pain or practice. It's powered by truth. It needs alignment. It needs you."

"You won't be able to advance. Not even a little. You'll hit a wall so hard you'll think the System is broken. But it won't be. You'll be the one stuck. Your Soul Skill will lock. Like a clenched fist with nothing to hold. Because it needs something to hold. It needs to be seen. It needs to be understood. It needs to be accepted."

He paused again, letting the weight of that settle.
"You'll still be able to use your Soul Skill. That won't be taken from you. It'll function. You can swing it like a weapon, call it up when you need it, and pretend it's enough. But it won't grow. It won't deepen. It won't evolve."

He shifted forward again, back into a relaxed, upright posture.

"If you keep avoiding it... the part of you that could become more stays buried. Not because it's gone. But because you refused to dig."

He looked at each cadet again, Rokhan, Lessa, Sylen, Wesley, the twins, even Elian, without judgment, without expectation.

"I'm not saying this to scare you. I'm not warning you. I'm telling you how it is."

He placed one hand over his chest, the claws fully retracted now.

"Your Soul Skill is the clearest mirror you will ever see. You either look into it and face yourself... or you look away and stay exactly where you are."

He wasn't threatening.

He wasn't even instructing.

He was just telling the truth.

And every cadet there knew it.

Velrock's eyes settled on Vaeliyan once again. Steady. Sure. Unblinking. But this time, it held something more. Expectation.

"Show them," he said. His voice was quiet, but the weight behind it was unmistakable. "Sink into your darkness."

Vaeliyan blinked, slow and wary. His jaw clenched for a moment, like he was weighing the ask. "How?"

Velrock didn't hesitate. "Close your eyes."

Vaeliyan hesitated. Just a second. Maybe less. Then he obeyed.

"Empty your mind," Velrock continued, voice low, calm, and certain. "And look."

The meadow fell into a deeper hush. Wind paused. Breath caught. Even the cadets stopped shifting.

"I see you," Velrock said. "And I know you see you as well."

It was the first time he said it with command.

"Look," he said again, and there was steel beneath the stillness. "We both know it's there. No one does what you did without already having a foot in the door."

He leaned in slightly, his voice low but unmistakable.

"Do it."

And Vaeliyan did.

He sank.

Not gently. Not slowly. It was like falling into warm oil, thick and impossible to swim against. He dropped inward, deeper than he'd ever let himself fall, not because he was scared, but because he had never known to look.

And what he saw was horrifyingly beautiful.

There was a corpse-shaped fog stretched like gauze over a horror made of storm. The form was humanoid, but wrong in the way ancient things are wrong, twisting, pulsing, made of violent calm. It didn't look at him. It saw him. The corpse was not dead. The horror was not hiding.

The horror looked directly at him from behind the gauze. And it was him.

The storm had settled. And he recognized it like you recognize your own heartbeat when the room goes quiet.

There was no dissonance. No denial. No hatred at the sight of it. He didn't have to reach for understanding because he always known.

This place wasn't foreign. It had been built inside him, long ago. He'd imagined it before. In dreams. In silences. In moments between strikes. He had shaped this place without knowing. Danced around its borders. Avoided it not from fear, but from apathy. He had known it was there. He just never cared to see it.

Velrock had changed that.

And the thing inside the corpse smiled.

It knew. It had always known.

It wasn't time for the horror to scream. Not here. Not yet. The corpse it wore, the figure made in vaeliyan's image, needed to be the one to rise now. The horror understood. It stepped back.

And then it grew.

The corpse expanded around the storm. It wasn't a shell, It wasn't a lie. It was a skin, a body that had been waiting to be worn with pride. It breathed with the storm's rhythm. It moved because the storm moved. It lived because it shared the storm's heart.

A corpse that wasn't dead.

A horror that wasn't raging.

They were one.

One worn by the other not to deceive, but to exist. It was symbiosis.

A self chosen.

A self sharpened.

The horror did not vanish. It didn't fade. It stepped back like a king stepping off the throne for his avatar to speak. There was trust between the two. Balance.

And in that moment, without warning, the System surged.

A sound like a bell with no source and no metal rang out, not from the sky, but from the air between thoughts.

A notification.

All Around You has answered the call.

It filled the meadow.

The air tightened like it had caught its breath. The grass bent ever so slightly toward Vaeliyan, leaning in as if it could feel gravity shift. The birds in the simulated trees froze. Even the sunlight shifted, just enough to frame him differently, as if the world itself was highlighting a moment.

Every cadet felt it.

It felt like the first gasp of air after a panicked run for your life.

Even Velrock, always calm, closed his eyes. Just for a moment. And inclined his head like a priest in the presence of a truth he didn't have to preach.

Something in the world had changed.

And everyone knew it.

Vaeliyan Verdance— Level 20

Third threshold requirements met

Class: Wake Dancer

Alignment: Green Zone Citizen
Unallocated Stat Points: 0

Strength: 25
Perception: 30
Intelligence: 38
Dexterity: 33
Endurance: 25
Resolve: 35

Vaeliyan's Skills at level 20

Power Strike (Active): A single, focused melee blow delivered with full-body commitment. Designed to break guards, knock targets off balance, or end a fight with clean force. Most effective when delivered from a grounded stance with intent. Requires no charge, no windup, only opportunity.

Pocket Sand (Active): A burst of particulate grit thrown directly at a target's face or optics. Causes immediate disorientation, temporary blindness, and target disruption. Non-lethal. Opens space, ruins focus, and invites mistakes. Taught to those who weren't born faster, just meaner.

Optimized Metabolism (Passive): The body operates with refined internal efficiency. Post-exertion recovery is faster. Heat regulation is cleaner. Breath control holds longer. This isn't regeneration. It's output discipline. The body doesn't burn harder. It just burns better.

Anchored Stance (Passive): Trained for balance and weight control under impact. Reduces stagger, slippage, and recoil disruption. Movement becomes deliberate. Posture resists being broken. This is not strength, it's structure that refuses to fold.

(NEW)Structural Sovereign (Passive)
Evolved from Internal Pressure Equalizer.
The body holds integrity under any force.
Internal pressure is no longer something to manage, it's something to command.
From lungs to joints, from blood vessels to soft tissue, the user's body adjusts before strain arrives.
Altitude, velocity, recoil, impact: irrelevant.
Walks through whiplash environments like they're balanced rooms.
Mid-air, mid-collapse, mid-flash flood: the body does not yield.

(NEW)Vector Lock (Passive)

Evolved from Overdrive Stabilization.
Momentum is no longer a threat.
The nanite scaffolding that forms around the users frame under pressure now does more than brace, it locks movement to intent.
Muscles no longer guard against tearing. They lean into force.
There's no delay between decision and action.
No deceleration when redirection is needed.
The user moves like someone who's already survived the collision.
Full-speed force becomes precision violence.

Vaeliyan's Soul skill – All Around You

Stage Three

Core Effect – Pressure Field

The field builds over time. The longer the user remains still, the faster the pressure intensifies. What begins as a subtle shift becomes a persistent weight. The space tightens. Air feels heavier. Focus degrades. The presence grows without sound or warning.

Passive – Suffocation Drift

The field spreads outward from the user, thinning focus and sharpening discomfort. Oxygen levels remain unchanged, but breathing feels strained. Thought slows. Tension builds. The effect is passive, progressive, and persistent.

Execution Effect – Compression Spike

The user can condense the field instantly, applying a sudden spike of directional pressure. The effect is silent, invisible, and immediate. At close range, it can stagger limbs, break rhythm, or knock weapons off-course. Applied precisely, it can mimic the force of a physical strike.

(NEW)Internal Effect – Permeable Core
The user may now allow external force to pass through the body by redirecting pressure along internal paths. When active, the body no longer absorbs impact as mass, instead, it becomes a conduit.

Blunt strikes, shockwaves, and concussive force are no longer stopped by the body. Pressure is diffused on contact and routed through, allowing the user to remain upright and unbroken regardless of physical trauma.

Punches pass through muscle without tearing it.

Explosions ripple across skin and exit without causing rupture.

Falls, slams, or collisions become transitory.

Known Limitations:

The field strengthens the longer the user remains still. Movement reduces intensity and disrupts edge stability.

Pressure loses coherence with distance from the user.

The Skill does not directly immobilize targets.

Effects are less noticeable to individuals with suppressed emotional response, advanced conditioning, or enhanced respiratory systems.

Does not reduce sharp trauma, piercing attacks, or cutting damage. Only force that relies on internal pressure transfer is negated.

Maintaining permeability requires conscious control. If interrupted, the field defaults to normal behavior.