Time slipped away between the fall and the crystal corridors. I lost count of the hours I sat cuffed to the luminescent bench—hunger and thirst fading into a dull ache.
Eventually, she arrived—Captain Arwyn Vale. She moved through the living crystal halls with precise confidence, white hair glinting in the lamplight, a scar like lightning slicing her cheek. Her gray eyes met mine, studying me as a child who had wandered into a place too big to understand.
"Renua Mercer?" she asked, voice calm but firm. "Tell me your age."
I swallowed around the lump in my throat. "Twenty-two."
Her brow lifted. "Twenty-two?"
My pulse hammered. "Back on Earth."
Her lips quirked. "Earth? A country?"
"Another world," I said, voice tight. "Not here, not part of this realm."
A flicker of surprise crossed her features—gone too fast for me to be sure. "Don't mention that again," she warned. "This is Aetherforge. No one needs to know you hail from beyond."
She produced a slender pen-like tool etched with runes and pressed it to my forearm. Filaments pulsed over my skin, tracing unseen paths.
The scanner clicked, then fell silent. She examined the readout.
"Fourteen," she said flatly. "Your body registers fourteen years. Don't lie to me about your own form."
Heat surged through me. "I'm not fourteen. I graduated from college. I had a job lined up."
She tapped the device; the display glowed with my Meridian imprint. "Meridian imprints don't lie. Age here is measured by core development, not memory."
My hands shook. "What happens now?"
She closed her eyes momentarily, as if weighing me against some unseen scale. When she opened them, her gaze was stern and strangely soft, like a teacher confronting a lost child.
"You have no records, no sponsor. You are a foreign ward and a minor. You will remain in Academy custody until your status is resolved. You will not speak of another world. Understood?"
I blinked, the weight of it settling in. Academy custody and forced lessons.
A guard approached with a polished tablet and stylus. She handed it to me.
"Fill in your details: name, declared age, origin, social status. Be precise."
I scrawled: Renua Mercer; fourteen; foreign ward; origin: unknown. My pen trembled.
She took the tablet back without emotion. "Guards will escort you to accommodations. Rest now. At first light, your lessons begin."
She turned and walked away, her robes whispering against the crystal floor.
Moments later, Sierra's hologram flickered to life beside me—sleek, fox-shaped, silent.
Sierra:"Renua—interrogation complete. Detention duration: twenty-one hours. Dimensional transposition probability: ninety-eight point six percent. Assignment: preliminary evaluation at the Academy of Celestial Confluence."
I let out a hollow laugh. Sierra's voice was coldly precise, but to me it was everything.
Fourteen years old. That label echoed in my mind. Back home, I fought to prove I was more than a number. Here, numbers governed every breath.
I pressed my palm to the cool crystal wall and forced myself upright. I would survive their lessons and survive another go around of school. and wait till I'm finally free