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Chapter 1: Stars Beyond the Glass

The last thing Alex remembered was the deafening silence, as still as a void , quite as it can be , no matter what he do he can't escape from it .

The thing is he can't even move , but he can under stand one thing clear , that is everything is blurring, right infront of his eyes, and he can't do anything about it

No alarms. No final words. Just the cold weightlessness of the emergency pod failing to ignite, the hull cracking like glass around him, and then—

Darkness.

Then heat.

Then light.

---

When he opened his eyes again, the world smelled of antiseptic and ozone. Not the metallic bite of war-torn ships, but the artificial cleanliness of a high-grade medical ward. A soft chime rang somewhere near his ear, and a blue light scanned over his vision.

> [Patient: Julien Deton]

[Age: 17]

[Medical Status: STABILIZED]

[Neural Sync: 98.4% — Integration Acceptable]

[Memory Sync Initiated...]

Alex sat up with a gasp, lungs aching, chest heaving.

No, not Alex.

Julien.

His hands were smaller. His body leaner. His hair brushed over his forehead, longer than he ever kept it. And when he caught his reflection in the mirrored glass of the medical panel ,he was shocked to see —it was a stranger’s face staring back.

Soft-featured. Wide-eyed. Too young.

He don't know what else but it's for sore...

He'd transmigrated.

---

> "Julien Deton, you’ve been cleared for release. Your belongings are waiting in Bay 3. Your guardian pension has been transferred. Please report to the Capital Card maker Institute within 72 hours."

The voice was automated, clinical. But it struck deep. Because Julien remembered—he remembered—the desperate dream this boy clung to.

Card maker.

In this empire, where mechas ruled war and blood bought status, there existed a rare few who could weave arcana into physical form—cards imbued with power, used to summon, shield, attack, or enhance. Those who succeeded became nobles, or power brokers. Or, if they were lucky...

Owned by a Marshal.

---

And that was how Julien—once Alex—found himself standing in front of the Imperial Capital, clutching a worn bag with barely enough credits to afford a protein bar, staring up at the sprawling city like it might swallow him whole.

What he didn’t know—what no one had told him—was that just one sector away, a war-battered man stood drenched in blood in a training hangar, breathing hard in the shattered cockpit of a crimson mecha, grinning like a wolf.

Marshal Veldaric Hill.

The Mad Dog of the Empire. The one they said couldn't be controlled.

He was reviewing combat footage, bored. Until the screen flickered—and a civilian profile popped up. A fluke. A flicker. A registration anomaly, maybe.

But it caught his attention.

A young boy, barely grown, with a blank medical record and high arcana sensitivity. Transferred into the capital with no support, no backing, no allies. Just a dream.

Julien Deton.

Veldaric smiled, slow and sharp.

“Found you.”

---

To be continued...

---

Chapter 2: The Institute That Eats Its Own

The gates of the Capital Cardmaker Institute were taller than most city buildings, gleaming with prismatic runes that shimmered in the sunlight. They looked like they belonged to a temple, not a school.

Julien stood before them, bag slung over one shoulder, throat dry.

He knew the institute was prestigious. He knew only those with high enough arcana potential or political leverage got in. But he also knew something else—this Julien had no one. Just the pension left from his parents’ deaths and the faint signature of arcana humming in his blood.

"Scan complete," a female voice chimed. A drone hovered above him. "Julien Deton. Admitted under Sector 4 hardship grant. Dormitory assigned. Please proceed to Orientation Hall 3C."

Sector 4.

Translation: bottom rung. Scholarship case. No backing. No sponsor. A good target.

Inside the campus, everything was too bright and sharp. Elegant towers curved into the sky, connected by floating walkways. Students moved in coordinated flows, uniforms in shades of gold, navy, and crimson. Julien passed a group in black—combat class, he realized—laughing as they tossed charged cards back and forth like they were toys.

A younger girl brushed past him and paused.

"Hey. You’re the Sector 4 admit?"

Julien blinked. “Uh. Yeah?”

She snorted. “Good luck. You’ll need it.”

And just like that, she vanished into the crowd.

The Orientation Hall smelled like old stone and ozone. Rows of students were seated already, arranged by class tier. Julien spotted a few other scholarship kids—most looked scared or bitter. He found an empty seat near the edge and sat quickly, trying not to meet anyone’s eyes.

At the front, a projection shimmered into being—a man with pale skin and an iridescent cloak, eyes like violet fire.

“Welcome, initiates,” he said. “I am Arch-Tier Professor Ryell. Here, you will learn to bind energy into form. Shape chaos into structure. The first law of Cardmaking is this: What you forge is who you are. And power—true power—has a cost.”

Julien listened, half-entranced, half-wary. His fingers itched to touch a card.

After orientation, students were ushered into dorm assignments. Julien’s room was small but clean—two bunks, one terminal, no roommate yet. He dropped his bag and immediately checked the starting supplies: one basic card template, a tuner, and a cheap stabilizer wand.

Not enough to impress anyone. Barely enough to practice.

He was too focused on inspecting the materials to notice the figure that passed by the door. Too distracted to catch the brief flicker of movement before the terminal buzzed violently.

ERROR: Mana contamination detected.

Julien backed away, heart slamming.

The card template in his hand—pristine seconds ago—was now cracked. Someone had cursed it. Quietly. Subtly. A delay-trigger hex meant to explode during tuning. If he’d used it—

He would’ve been disqualified. Or worse.

His breath came fast, ragged. Someone had already marked him.

And they knew what they were doing.

Later that night, alone in his dorm, Julien held the ruined template and thought about the dream he still clung to—about crafting cards that could shape fate, about standing on a battlefield beside the empire’s best, not cowering in their shadow.

He wasn’t going to quit.

They’d have to do better than sabotage to break him.

What he didn’t know was that in a shadowed control room, a man with silver eyes had already flagged his student profile for observation.

Veldaric Hill had a taste for unpolished weapons.

And he was hungry.

Chapter 3: Predator’s Mark

Word count: ~620

Veldaric Hill didn’t trust quiet nights.

They meant someone was hiding something—or bleeding to death quietly.

He sat in the command chair of the Leviathan-class warship Thornshade, bare-chested, bruised, sweat streaking the curve of his spine. Around him, holo-screens glowed faint blue, flickering with battle reports and logistics he barely read anymore. He didn’t care about balance sheets. He cared about kill ratios.

And now… he cared about a file.

A single civilian profile, flickering in the bottom left corner of his combat feed. He hadn’t meant to open it. It had flashed during a transmission test from the Capital Institute’s arcanet. Random. Accidental. But once he saw it—he couldn’t stop looking.

Julien Deton.

Seventeen. No family. No clan. No record prior to age sixteen except an emergency healing log from a minor border planet explosion.

That alone would’ve made Veldaric suspicious.

But it wasn’t the boy’s blank history that interested him.

It was the arcana sync rate: 98.4%.

Higher than any civilian should’ve had.

Higher than most war mages.

Veldaric tapped the screen. Zoomed in on the boy’s photo. The ID image was poorly lit—flat lighting, cheap uniform—but the features were clear. Soft mouth. Defiant tilt to the jaw. Tired eyes that didn’t belong on a seventeen-year-old.

He didn’t look like a soldier.

But he didn’t look like prey either.

“Hill,” came a voice over comms. “Another riot broke out in Sector Twelve. Shall we dispatch a squad?”

“Let them fight,” Veldaric muttered. “Weak blood should burn itself out.”

The aide hesitated. “Understood, sir.”

He cut the comms and stood. The room tilted slightly—his last fight had cracked two ribs, but he ignored the pain. Pain meant nothing. Only instinct.

And Veldaric's instinct was roaring.

---

He made his way to the ship’s command sanctum, a dark dome where only his private data feed operated. From here, he could watch anyone in the Empire—provided he had access.

And Veldaric always had access.

“Show me Julien Deton,” he ordered.

The feed jumped to life. A grainy cam outside Dorm Hall 4B flickered on. There he was: Julien. Alone. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, fiddling with a burned card template, his hands trembling but determined. The boy had discovered the sabotage—but hadn’t reported it. Interesting.

Smart, Veldaric thought. Paranoid. Good.

He’d expected Julien to cry. Or panic. Or flee.

Instead, the boy carefully scraped away the ruined card matrix and began re-etching the frame by hand, using nothing but a basic wand and a stabilizer barely worth ten credits.

“He’s not supposed to know how to do that,” Veldaric muttered.

No freshman would. No untrained child could.

Unless he’d been something else. Before.

Veldaric leaned back, silver eyes gleaming.

“He’s hiding something.”

---

Later, in the training arena, Veldaric ripped a training drone in half with his bare hands. Metal shrieked as the simulation died. Sparks rained down on him. His men stood back, wisely silent.

“Bring me the registration logs for all Sector 4 initiates,” he said.

“Yes, Marshal,” came the voice. No questions.

He wasn’t going to touch Julien.

Not yet.

But he was going to get close.

And when he did, he’d strip the lies from that soft-looking body and find out what he was.

Because something in Julien Deton didn’t belong in the world of schools and rules.

Something in him belonged to war.

And Veldaric always claimed what belonged on the battlefield.

---

To be continued…