Gilded Ashes-Chapter 73: Error

"Fortitude column" Alteea explained. "Point your hand into the panel. Give me every single drop of Eon your body can push through it - controlled. The column reads raw Eon output, channel quality, and your dominant trait."

"Trait?" Saffi raised a brow.

"Yes? What kind of question is that? Didn’t you learn in school?"

Arashi and Raizen exchanged a look. It wasn’t their fault they didn’t know.

Alteea sighed. "So, in simple terms: as you know, Eon responds to its user. And its user has a specific strength – strength, speed, you get it."

She glanced at Saffi. "I’m not gonna explain anything, Kori doesn’t pay me for that. Ready?"

Saffi turned her slate tablet on and quickly surfed through some terminals. She stood a half-step back, eyes on everything.

Arashi eyed the machine. "So we just... Blast it?"

"Cleanly" Alteea repeated. "Not the same thing."

Kori folded her arms. "If you wobble, step out. Overexertion here is as stupid as holding back."

"Holding back?" Arashi said, offended. "On a vacation?"

Alteea pointed at Feris. "You first."

Feris blinked. "Me?"

"Why’re you asking questions? Just go, darling!"

Feris stepped into the ring. She set her hand against the panel, rolled her shoulders, and exhaled. Light gathered at the her hand and ran down her fingers - then leapt into the luminite rings inside the pillar. The vertical strip on the column climbed: 690... 700... 710... 718... 720...

724 - STRENGTH

Feris stumbled back a step, palms on her knees. "That stole my breakfast’s energy."

Alteea’s brows lifted. "Seven-twenty-four with half a year of training. Most entrants start around six hundred." She looked pleased, not impressed. Then she nodded at Arashi. "You. Next."

Arashi rolled his shoulder. He didn’t blast. He threaded - a pencil-thin line of Eon leaving his fingertips. The strip climbed in exacting, insultingly even increments: 760... 780... 795... 797... 798... 799.

Chime.

799 - ACCURACY

Arashi stared at the number as if it could be intimidated into rounding up. "Come on. At least eight hundred!"

Keahi made a sympathetic noise that reached her eyes. Hikari covered her mouth, trying not to chuckle.

"It’s beautiful" Esen said, clapping his shoulder. "Infuriatingly precise."

"That does not comfort me" Arashi panted. "But man! Using Eon without our weapons sure is hard!"

"That’s why you have luminite weapons. Without them, you’re deep-fried" Alteea moved on before 799 became a personality trait. "Red hair. You’re up."

Keahi planted her feet in a really stable stance, inhaled, and drove power through her body – only a small flame flicker managing to leave her grip.

The strip climbed and Raizen leaned forward a bit. Keahi’s jaw was clenched. She held her fist closed until the chime came.

813 - HANDLING

Keahi stepped back, cheeks flushed. "Average" she said, lying completely.

"Very average" Arashi echoed, suffering from the fact that she got a slightly higher score than his. "You’re really nothing without your badass claymore, huh?"

"Shut up"

"Esen" Alteea shouted next.

Esen rolled his wrists. The rings on his fingers clicked and settled. He set his fist inside the machine.

"No fair!" Feris protested. "He has rings!"

Esen sighed, then took off the rings on one hand and tried again - shoulders lower. But the line that left his hand was smooth, no flare at the edges, no excess. The numbers rose and stopped.

781 - REFLEX

Esen smiled the way a person smiles when a trick works exactly as planned. "Yea, I’m fine with it." he told the column.

Lynea handed the plush whale back to Feris. Her fragments trembled at her shoulder and slid together into a short line – not a blade, just like a conductor. She hesitated one second, then decided not to use it. She set her bare hand, exhaled, and let the energy through.

The numbers didn’t spike, like everyone else’s. They rose steady, slowly and smoothly, as if the column recognized the shape of her current and knew what to do with it. Numbers climbed without stuttering and stopped on:

865 - ADAPTABILITY

Lynea tilted her head, considering the result. Then nodded once. "Fair."

Raizen was next. He stepped into the ring, hesitating a second before trying. He didn’t care about what the result was, he just wanted this over with. Judging by how the others were panting, it was no easy task.

He shook his head, and finally let Eon run through his body - the way Kori taught him, the way Takeshi taught him after that.

The column’s core spun up and the strip began to climb. Fast. Faster than anyone else’s. The numbers blurred: 700, 750, 800 - still climbing - 820, 860, 900 - and then it slowed, pushing through it - 912... 916.

916 – SPEED

Raizen stepped away from the pillar and tried to act like his hands weren’t shaking.

They were, but he quickly slid them into his pockets before anyone could comment. The column’s hum faded, but the heat in his forearms stayed, like his body hadn’t caught up with the fact that the test was over.

The number 916 proudly sat on the display, and nobody said anything for a few seconds. Then Arashi made a sound that was ninety percent respect and ten percent spite. "Of course you’re speed."

Keahi whistled quietly through her teeth. Hikari’s eyes went wide, bright in a way.

Alteea didn’t smile. She didn’t compliment him. She just stared at the number for a second longer than she had for anyone else.

Saffi shifted on her feet, slate tablet held up in both hands. Her screen wasn’t showing the big number. It was showing the line underneath it - the curve, the stability, the tiny measurements nobody else could see. She whispered something to herself "He’s really stable...", but Alteea apparently heard it. She finally looked away from the display. "Obiously he’s stable! If it wasn’t, he’d be on the floor."

Arashi stared at Raizen’s pockets. "If your hands are shaking, you should stop hiding them. It’s insulting."

Raizen didn’t look at him. "I’m hiding them because they’re tired, something wrong with that?"

"That’s worse" Arashi said with an offended tone, but then nudged Raizen in his ribs "You’re the only one trembling around here, which means you’re the weakest".

Saffi tapped her slate again. Her brows drew together. "The column is still spinning."

They all looked.

The core inside the Fortitude column should have slowed by now. It usually calmed after each read - settled, reset, waited for the next hand.

Instead, the inner lenses were still rotating. Slowly. Like it was re-checking something it didn’t like.

Alteea’s expression changed by a fraction. "It’s fine. Probably detected another signature or something... It happens from time to time"

Saffi didn’t seem convinced. "It’s not doing the normal cooldown..."

Esen raised a hand halfway. Hikari kicked his ankle again, this time without even turning her head.

"Ow" Esen whispered. "I didn’t even say anything."

"You were about to" Hikari whispered back.

"Huh- Wha – How does that even work!?"

Raizen watched Hikari out of the corner of his eye. She’d been relaxed during everyone else’s turn. Focused, but pretty normal.

Now her shoulders were a touch higher.

Alteea’s eyes flicked to her, then back to the column.

"Alright" Alteea said, like she was forcing the room back into routine. "Who wants to go next?"

Before she could finish her sentence, the column’s core rings rotated again, slower, then stopped on their own.

A soft chime sounded - not the result chime. A system indicator.

Saffi’s screen flashed a small line of text that nobody else could see from this angle.

"What’s it saying?" Alteea raised a brow.

She swallowed. "Nothing... It’s just... It’s just recalibrating."

Keahi blinked. "What does that mean?"

Lynea answered, with a slightly sarcastic tone. "It means it thinks somebody touched something that they shouldn’t have."

Alteea’s eyes narrowed a tiny bit, smile still glued to her face. "Alright" she murmured. Then, turning: "You. Girl with the pretty eyes, second one in the entrance exam, yes? You’re next."

Hikari stepped forward, caught off-guard by the "pretty eyes". She shook her hands once, as if shaking off her nervousness. Then, she exhaled quietly.

But the numbers didn’t move.

There was no climb.

The strip didn’t rise. It jumped - all the way to the top in a single instant, like something yanked it from above. No ramp. No buildup. Just one absolute answer. The column’s inner lenses rotated. Rotated again. Recalibrating for something it didn’t expect.

A fresh digit appeared to the left of the number - a digit that didn’t show up for anyone else.

1,000: -

No trait. Just a perfect 1000 followed by an em dash.

For a full second, everyone just stood there, in complete silence.

"Oh, that’s rude" Arashi said, delighted and offended at the same time. "That’s -"

Hikari stood with her hand now lowered, eyes wide, pupils huge. "Is that... Alright?"

The energy drain hit a tiny bit late. Her shoulders dropped and a soft "oh" escaped - the sound of someone whose body just caught up with what it spent.

Alteea’s head tilted. She was impressed and didn’t bother hiding it. "Nice" she said, voice softer than before. "Very nice." She looked at Kori with a meaningful look.

"And last one is...?" Alteea turned to the rail where Ichiro stood with his usual calm. "Let’s see how you’re doing."

Ichiro pushed off the rail and walked to the column, cloak revealing only his head. Unhurried. Steady. He raised his palm and set it inside of the pillar.

Esen frowned. "I don’t see any Eon-"

The column reacted differently to Ichiro. A second core inside the glass spun - one that none of them saw activate before. Not for Feris. Not for Raizen. Not even for Hikari. The vertical strip climbed in a stutter, then smoothed: 820... 840... 851. And beside the number, the machine tried to classify what it was reading, and failed.

851 - HANDLING - ERROR

The word hung next to the trait like a torn page. A thin red bar flickered along the column’s seam and flickered.

"What?" Raizen whispered. He had a number, he had a trait. What was that error?

Alteea’s eyes lost all of their charm immediately. She crossed the distance in three quick steps, the decision already made.

"Alteea" Kori warned. The tone meant "I trust you, but don’t do anything stupid-" 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Too late. Alteea’s hand found the edge of Ichiro’s cloak and pulled hard.

The cloth fell, and the Heart’s white light found what was underneath.

A stone sat in Ichiro’s right shoulder.

Dark yellow - the color of old, polished gold. Not mounted in a harness. Not set in a bracket. It was inside of him. Inside his shoulder. Skin and muscle had grown around the rough facets the way a tree swallows wire over years, flesh taught to make room for something that didn’t belong. From the shard, fine veins of color ran under the skin – a faint copper shimmer that traced down his chest and toward his heart, delicate and unforgiving. The veins flared faintly when the cloak was removed, pulsing a murky gold.

The room that had been full of laughter and competition for the last twenty minutes went completely still.

Feris’s hand found Lynea’s and held it tightly. Esen’s smile was completely gone - replaced by something flat, the face of a person recalculating everything they thought they knew. Keahi’s fingers tightened on her hip. Hikari’s hand drifted to her own shoulder, unconscious - touching the place where Ichiro’s stone sat, as if she could feel it through sympathy alone.

Even Saffi froze completely. Her eyes didn’t leave Ichiro’s shoulder.

Kori shifted in place - half a degree, barely visible, but the people who knew her felt it like a landslide.

"Ichiro" she whispered to herself. That name alone carrying the weight of every question she didn’t ask yet.

Ichiro’s jaw tried to move. Failed. He stared forward at nothing, as if he was listening to a room only he could hear. The veins in his arm pulsed with his heartbeat - slow, steady, alive.

Arashi swallowed. "T- that’s... Luminite."

Alteea’s face changed. The charm was gone. The flirt was gone. What stood in their place was the woman who ran operations for half a continent - the one who measured things for a living and didn’t flinch from what the horrifying measurements showed. "How long?" she asked Ichiro. Not what. She asked how long.

The veins in Ichiro’s arm flickered again. A quiet pulse under skin.

Raizen didn’t hear the next breaths. An old man’s words rose up in his mind, as if he remembered them just at the right time.

Takeshi. A long while ago, leaning in from his chair, whispering:

I have seen people experiment on orphans like they were spare parts, stitching pure luminite into them.

Raizen also remembered him asking more about it. But the only answer he got then was...

The rumors say every test subject died.