Caelan Veyr sat in his office on the top floor and read Selene’s spar report for the third time.

The report was thorough. Energy output readings, strike-by-strike breakdown, formation-ward data showing the pressure levels both students had generated. She had included her own observations in a separate section at the bottom, written in the clipped, careful language she used when she wanted to say more than she was allowed to.

He set the tablet down and looked out the window at the East Annex. The sun was going down. The ward-glow on the annex walls was just starting to show against the dimming sky. Somewhere inside that building, seven students were going about their evening routines without knowing that their principal was sitting in his office thinking very carefully about one of them.

— • —

The spar data was interesting. Kaelen Voss had performed exactly as expected — strong, disciplined, cold, with the dense energy output that generations of Voss resources produced. His ceiling was high for Germination stage, and he had used most of it. The boy was everything House Voss had built him to be.

Ren Valis was the problem. Or the opportunity, depending on how Caelan chose to look at it.

His output during the spar had exceeded his assessment data by roughly forty percent. That alone was unusual — students didn’t hide forty percent of their energy for weeks and then release it in a controlled spar. But the more interesting number was buried deeper in Selene’s data. His energy quality during the fight had been measured by the formation wards, and the readings showed a foundation density that was significantly above the theoretical maximum for peak Germination.

Selene had flagged it with a note: Foundation quality exceeds known Germination parameters. Unable to explain without additional data. Recommend continued observation.

Caelan almost smiled. Continued observation. Selene was very good at what she did, but she was working with incomplete information. She could see that Ren’s foundation was impossible. She just didn’t know why.

Caelan did.

— • —

He pulled up a file on his tablet that was not stored on the school’s system. It lived on a private, Alliance-encrypted device that he kept in his desk drawer and used for exactly three ongoing matters. The Valis file was the oldest of the three.

The file contained everything the Alliance had on the Valis bloodline. Most of it was old — records going back generations, tracing the family’s history from a minor noble house in Rose Country to something much larger and much more dangerous. The early records showed a family of moderately talented Plant-pathway cultivators. Good, but not exceptional. Respected, but not feared.

Then came Aldric.

Aldric Valis. Ren’s great-great-grandfather. The man who had changed everything about the family’s trajectory in a single generation. He had started as a talented but unremarkable Bloodline Plant Lord. By the time he disappeared from the public record, he was Tier 4 Peak — a level of power that put him in the same conversation as public know national-level protectors and Alliance council members.

The official record said he had died during a classified Alliance operation. The real record, which lived on Caelan’s encrypted device, said something very different.

Aldric Valis was alive. Sealed in a higher realm. Serving as the living anchor of a containment formation that held back a threat the Alliance had been quietly managing for decades. He had chosen to stay. He was still holding the line. And everything the Alliance did regarding the Valis bloodline was shaped by that single, classified fact.

— • —

Caelan closed the file and leaned back in his chair.

The connection between Aldric and Ren was the thing that kept him up at night. Not because Ren was dangerous — Caelan agreed with Selene on that point. The boy was protective, careful, and genuinely kind underneath all the hiding. He was not a threat to anyone in that building.

The problem was what he might become.

Aldric’s talent had been unremarkable at Germination stage. Average foundation. Normal growth rate. Nothing in his early records suggested he would become the single most powerful Valis in the family’s history. The explosion of talent had come later, at Sprout and beyond, as if something in the bloodline had been sleeping and woke up once it reached a certain threshold. (A/N: NOT SYSTEM)

Ren’s foundation at Germination was already beyond what Aldric’s had been at the same stage. Significantly beyond. Whatever had made Aldric extraordinary was showing up in his great-grandson earlier and stronger. And if the pattern held — if Ren’s growth followed the same curve that Aldric’s had — then the quiet student hiding in a sealed classroom was going to become something that the Alliance, House Voss, and several other interested parties would need to have serious conversations about.

Caelan looked at the framed photograph on his desk. Face-down, as always. He picked it up, looked at it for a moment, then set it back.

He had made promises. To people who trusted him. To keep the Valis boy safe until he was strong enough to make his own choices. To shield him from the political machinery that would try to use him or destroy him once the bloodline showed its full potential. To give him time.

The spar had accelerated the timeline. Ren had shown too much. Kaelen had seen it. Selene had measured it. House Voss would hear about it. And once the Voss elders connected what Kaelen reported to the old entries in their family archives — the ones marked do not underestimate — the conversations would start. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

— • —

Caelan made three decisions.

First: he would increase the security classification on the special class. The annex wards were already Alliance-grade, but he would request an upgrade to restrict who could access the training-hall data. The spar readings needed to stay inside the building.

Second: he would talk to Selene again. She needed more information — not everything, but enough to understand that protecting Ren was not optional. She was already doing it instinctively. He needed to make it explicit.

Third: he would move up the next phase of field training. The corruption zone had been good for Ren’s growth, but the controlled school environment was becoming a cage. Ren was growing too fast for a classroom to contain, and every day he spent sandbagging in drills was a day he fell further behind his real potential. He needed space to grow without hiding. That meant getting him out of Orien sooner than planned.

Caelan picked up his tablet and started drafting messages. His face was calm, his posture relaxed, his expression carrying the easy, unhurried look of a man who had all the time in the world.

Underneath it, his mind was moving very fast.

The Valis bloodline was waking up. The boy didn’t know it yet. The people watching him didn’t fully understand it yet. But Caelan did, because he had read Aldric’s file cover to cover and he knew what came after the sleeping phase.

What came after was remarkable. And dangerous. And very, very hard to hide.