Kai crossed campus with the slip of paper clenched in one hand.
The morning air was cold against his skin, and the sky still held the pale remains of dawn. Few students were awake this early. A handful of distant figures moved between stone buildings, their footsteps echoing faintly through the quiet.
It should have felt peaceful.
It didn't.
Professor Veyran Kade. Bug Maniac. The one person Holt said could teach him what he needed to know about living subjects.
Kai had spent half the night reviewing his notes. Blood extraction. Insect anatomy. Safe access points. Species differences. Recovery time. The narrow line between taking what was needed and causing real harm.
The knowledge was there.
But it was scattered. Incomplete.
Not enough.
He needed this lecture.
As he passed a small garden courtyard, he slowed.
Insects were everywhere.
More than there should have been.
Beetles crawled across the stone benches. Moths clung motionless to the walls. A cloud of tiny gnats hovered above a patch of flowers, shifting in tight patterns that looked almost deliberate.
Kai stopped for a moment, watching them.
A chill moved down his spine.
Then he forced himself to keep walking.
The lecture hall was smaller than the ones used for theory classes, no more than thirty seats arranged in shallow rising rows. Most were empty. The students who had come were scattered throughout the room, mostly older, mostly Support Track by the look of their uniforms. A few glanced at Kai when he entered, then looked away.
At the front, a man was pinning diagrams to a board.
Professor Veyran Kade was not what Kai had expected.
He wore a pale coat marked with ink stains and darker smudges Kai did not want to identify. His hair was tied back carelessly, with loose strands hanging around his face. His fingers were stained too, as though the marks had soaked into the skin long ago and never quite left.
Everything about him suggested long hours of patient work.
But it was his eyes that held Kai's attention.
Calm. Focused. The kind of eyes that belonged to someone who had spent a lifetime studying things most people ignored and had found them more interesting than people.
Kade did not greet the room. He simply finished arranging the diagrams.
Kai chose a seat near the middle. Good line of sight to the front. Clear view of the exits. He set his notebook on the desk and waited.
When Kade turned to face the room, he did not introduce himself.
He simply began.
"Insect-type Aetherkin are not materials."
His voice was quiet, but it carried easily through the hall.
"If you think of them as resources, you will use them carelessly. You will take before you understand, and in doing so, you will harm the very creature you depend on."
A few students shifted. Kade ignored them.
He moved to the first diagram, a detailed rendering of insect anatomy: circulatory pathways, organ placement, exoskeletal structure.
"To work with a living creature," he said, "you must first understand its body. Where blood flows. Where it can be safely accessed. Where the exoskeleton is weakest." He tapped the board once with a stained finger. "Extraction is not harvesting. It is a controlled exchange, done with restraint, knowledge, and trust."
Kai's attention sharpened at once.
Kade pointed to several places on the diagram. The gaps near joints. The thin membranes between plates. Softer tissue near the abdomen.
"Here. Here. And here. These are viable access points. Elsewhere, you risk structural damage."
Kai's pencil was already moving.
Kade continued through one diagram after another, each more detailed than the last. He explained how a beetle's internal flow differed from a gnat's, how a moth required a different approach than a mosquito, how size and tier affected safe extraction volume.
"A Tier 1 gnat," Kade said, "can safely spare one drop every three weeks. A Tier 1 mosquito, perhaps two. Anything beyond that is not extraction. It is damage."
Kai wrote every word.
Then Kade shifted from anatomy to behavior.
"Before you ever attempt this, you build trust," he said. "Feed the creature. Let it rest. Learn its rhythms. Respond to its distress. If the bond is weak, do nothing. If the creature resists, you stop."
His gaze moved over the room, cool and unblinking.
"They are partners. Not containers to be emptied at your convenience. If you treat them like vessels instead of living beings, they will know. And once that trust is broken, it rarely returns."
Kai thought of the gnat resting in his chest. Thought of the way it had answered him in the finals without hesitation, offering its awareness when he needed it most.
Partners, he thought.
Not resources.
When Kade opened the floor for questions, several students raised their hands immediately.
Most asked about applications. How to preserve extracted blood. How to bind it into a matrix. How long it could remain viable outside the body. Kade answered with the same dry precision he had used throughout the lecture, each response exact and economical.
Kai waited.
He kept his hand down while the others spoke. Listened. Added notes. Let the smaller questions pass.
But the one he needed answered stayed in him like a hooked splinter.
At last, when the room fell quiet, he raised his hand.
Kade's eyes found him at once. "Yes?"
Kai stood. "Professor. You spoke about bonded creatures. About building trust before extraction." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "How do you know when they're ready? When they trust you enough to let you take something from them?"
Kade's expression did not change.
But something in his gaze sharpened.
"You have a bonded insect."
It was not a question. It was a conclusion.
Kai hesitated, then gave the smallest nod.
Kade studied him for a long moment, as if weighing something unseen.
Then he said, "Stay after class."
He moved on to the next question as though nothing unusual had happened.
The remaining students filed out in pairs and small groups, murmuring to one another as they gathered their books. Kai stayed where he was, pulse unsteady, notebook open on the desk in front of him.
At the front of the room, Kade packed away his diagrams and notes into a worn leather satchel.
He did not look up.
"Close the door."
Kai stood and pushed the heavy door shut behind the last student. The latch clicked into place, loud in the empty room.
Kade turned.
"You're the tournament champion," he said. "The one who collapsed after the finals."
Kai said nothing.
Kade's eyes moved over him with a cool, precise sort of attention. "You used a detection ability in that match. A Signal Gnat, if I'm not mistaken."
Kai went still.
"That is your bonded creature, isn't it?" Kade asked. "A Signal Gnat."
Kai's thoughts stumbled over themselves. How could he know that? How could he possibly have seen enough to know it?
Kade seemed not to notice the panic crossing his face.
"That should be impossible," he said, almost to himself. "First-term students do not form working bonds this early. They do not acquire useful creature-based abilities without proper integration. They are meant to build foundations first."
His eyes narrowed.
"And yet you have done it."
He took a step closer.
"How?"
The air changed.
Kai felt it before he understood it.
A crushing pressure settled over the room, sudden and absolute. Kade's cultivation. His real cultivation. Not his quiet authority. Not the strange intensity of the lecture.
Power.
Kai's body reacted before his thoughts could catch up. Every instinct screamed the same thing: danger.
He did not think. He did not plan.
The Bloodcurdle Mosquito appeared beside him.
Bottle-sized. Dark-bodied. Wings thrumming in a blur. Its proboscis angled toward Kade, poised to strike. It hovered between them like a drawn blade, summoned by fear before Kai had consciously chosen to call it.
Kade stopped.
For a moment, he simply stared.
Then the corner of his mouth lifted.
"Well," he said softly.
Kai stood frozen, the mosquito vibrating beside him.
"A Bloodcurdle Mosquito," Kade murmured. "Tier 1. Approximately two hundred and fifty milliliters in size." He tilted his head, studying it with clinical fascination. "Now that is interesting."
Kai forced the words through a dry throat. "Don't come closer."
Kade ignored him.
He took another step.
The pressure deepened.
The mosquito lunged.
Kai felt the strike through the bond. Hunger. Instinct. The sharp, immediate drive to disable a threat before it could act. The proboscis pierced Kade's arm in a quick, precise stab, barely breaking the skin.
Kade did not flinch.
He did not defend himself.
He simply stood there.
Three seconds passed.
Five.
Ten.
His arm lowered slightly. His eyelids flickered once.
Then the weakness passed, and he straightened again as though nothing had happened.
"I see," he murmured. "Ten seconds. Consistent."
Kai stared at him.
Kade looked at the mosquito, still hovering, still tense. "Bloodcurdle Mosquitoes induce temporary paralysis by drawing a small amount of blood. At this size and tier, a ten-second immobilization window is expected."
He gave the slightest nod, more to himself than to Kai.
"The data remains sound."
Kai could barely make his voice work. "You let it attack you."
Kade looked at him then, not angry, not alarmed, only curious. "Of course. How else would I verify the result?"
The pressure vanished.
Kai dragged in a breath so sharp it hurt. His knees nearly buckled. The mosquito hovered uncertainly, still ready for violence, confused by the sudden absence of threat.
Kade raised both hands, palms open.
"Recall your creature," he said. "I will not harm it."
Kai did not move.
"Or you," Kade added.
Still Kai hesitated.
Kade's voice softened by a fraction. "If I intended harm, I would have crushed both of you the moment it appeared."
That, at least, was true.
Kai felt the mosquito's agitation through the bond, its readiness to strike again if he asked. He looked at Kade, at the man who had allowed himself to be attacked simply to confirm a theory.
Then he made a choice.
"Back," he whispered. "Return."
The mosquito resisted for half a beat, reluctant to leave him unguarded. Then it dissolved into light and vanished back into the Hive Core Realm.
Kade watched it disappear with naked fascination.
"Extraordinary," he said.
Kai's legs still felt unsteady. His hands were shaking. But he forced himself upright and met Kade's eyes.
"That," Kade said quietly, "is the wrong question."
He stepped forward again.
"The right question is this: who are you, Kai Entoma?"
Kai's blood ran cold.
Kade began to circle him slowly, like a researcher examining a specimen from every angle. "First-term students do not summon bonded insects. They do not wield abilities they never formally integrated. They do not do what you just did." He stopped in front of Kai. "So tell me. How did you acquire your power?"
Kai's jaw tightened. "I don't know what you mean."
"Don't."
The word struck like a blade.
Kade's eyes hardened for the first time. "Do not insult me with a lie. I have spent forty years studying these creatures. I know what I saw." He leaned in slightly. "That mosquito came from you. So I will ask again. How did you acquire your power?"
Kai said nothing.
Kade's voice dropped lower. Softer.
More dangerous for its calm.
"Then let me simplify this for you. If I discover you are lying to me, I will pull your family down first." His gaze never left Kai's face. "Your mother. Your brothers. Everyone you care about."
A thin smile touched his mouth.
"I will tear them out by the roots."
Something in Kai snapped.
The fear remained. But something rose to meet it, hotter and cleaner and stronger.
"If I survive this," Kai said, his voice low and shaking with rage, "I will kill you."
Kade laughed.
Not mockingly. Not cruelly.
Almost with delight.
"Kill me?" he said. "Look at you. You can barely stand. Your creature is gone. Your hands are shaking."
He spread his arms slightly.
"I am a Tier 7 cultivator. I have spent four decades mastering this field. You are a first-term student who does not even understand his own power."
He stepped closer, close enough that Kai had to fight the urge to recoil.
"In the presence of absolute power, all the things you believe matter become nothing. Rage. Threats. Defiance. Your little mosquito."
His head tilted.
"Before you could ever raise a hand against me, I could strip everything you love from your life. Piece by piece. Until nothing remained."
Kai's vision blurred at the edges.
Not from tears.
From helplessness.
And somewhere beneath that crushing weight, an old memory surfaced. His mother's voice, quiet and tired and certain.
One man's treasure is another man's greed.
Now he understood.
His power was not just a secret.
It was leverage.
A target.
A blade someone else could put to the throat of everyone he loved.
Kade was proof of that.
"You're insane," Kai whispered. "You're a maniac."
Something in Kade's expression eased, though not into kindness. More like recognition.
"Yes," he said. "That is why they call me the Bug Maniac."
Silence stretched between them.
Then Kade's face settled back into composure, as if the entire exchange had been only a brief interruption.
"Now," he said, "let us continue where we left off."