Chapter 19 Kristen
The study space was slick and glassy, modern in that sterile, buzz‑of‑student‑life way that tried to look inviting but felt like a showroom for productivity. I dropped into a couch cushion and tried to look casual with my digital textbook open on my lap, but I was about as good at pretending to study as I was at, say, running a marathon in heels. The space hummed with students moving between outlets and pages, charging devices and ideas with equal intensity, and I felt acutely aware of every seat I chose, every glance that passed over me as though I was a glitch in the system rather than one of its users.
Anna sat across from me, coffee in hand and eyes darting over her own screen like she half expected danger to lurk in the text. She was sipping that coffee with an alertness that looked far too keen for someone “relaxing,” and every now and then she’d lift her gaze just a hair too long, tracking people walking past us like their movements held secret signals only she could decode. I tried highlighting a passage about biotheric amplification, whatever the hell that was, but my mind kept drifting to how genuinely weaponized everyone here seemed. Every kid looked like they were carved from danger, polished to kill or charm or vanish on command.
“Everyone here seems weaponized,” I muttered, staring at the back of someone’s perfectly aligned backpack as if it held the answer to existence.
Anna didn’t even look up from her coffee when she said, “Well, yeah. You don’t get in unless you’ve got something.”
I blinked down at the textbook in my lap again, pretending to highlight a paragraph even though I couldn’t tell if I was marking meaning or just random words. “Something. Right.”
She gave me a half‑smile that was more amused curiosity than commiseration, and then she tapped her screen like she was switching channels in her head, ready for my answer whenever I finally gave one. We sat there in that sleek room, two mismatched students among a sea of kids who all seemed to belong to secret tiers I couldn’t see yet. The air buzzed with electricity and caffeine and something else I couldn’t name.
Anna eventually put her tablet down and looked at me properly, not in a passing glance but full attention, the kind that was a little unnerving and a little friendly at the same time. “So,” she said, “what are you then? Because powers aren’t optional here.”
I tried to shrug, but it felt like lifting lead. “I don’t have one. Not that I know of.” I sounded too casual, like I was confessing I didn’t have a favorite color. Not having a power at Phoenix felt like showing up to a knife fight with a damn spoon. “I only got in because my dad enrolled me before he died. I didn’t even know about it until afterward.”
Anna raised a brow, eyes narrowing just a fraction, sharper than it needed to be for someone listening to a random anecdote. “They don’t just let you in here. Even legacy kids have to be marked.”
I blinked. “Marked?”
She leaned back, crossing her arms like she was about to delineate a whole damn taxonomy. “Okay. So — sigils. Think of them like… magical tattoos meets social brands. Everyone gets one. Eventually.” Her grin was mischievous, like she was about to name football teams or something equally official. “There are three: Leos, Ares, Caprons.”
“Wait,” I said, the word escaping sharp. “Aries? Like the zodiac?”
Anna laughed, but it was more of a snort than amusement. “No, dork. It’s Ares — without the I. God of war. Very stabby.”
I let out a dry breath, feeling simultaneously stupid and enlightened. “Great. War gods. Perfect.”
She tapped her fingers on the table as if she were painting the mythology in the air. “Leo is the lion sigil, dominant and rare. Usually destructive or manipulative powers. Fire channelers, mind‑benders, gravity shifters — people who rewrite other people’s day without asking.”
I pictured a lion on a resume and tried not to flinch.
Then she shifted her tablet and pointed at another scribble on the screen. “Ares — sword sigil. Enforcers. Telekinetics who punch heavier than they lift. Heat resistance. Enhanced reaction time. Usually the mid‑tier combat types. Useful if things get real.”
“Mid‑tier combat,” I echoed like it was an actual job category.
“Then there’s Capron.” Her lip curled when she said it, like she was delivering punchline and insult in the same breath. “Sheep sigil. Passive or niche abilities. Taste duplicators. Bird callers. People who can read barcodes by touch. One girl could taste‑test anything and tell you every ingredient in it. Know what that got her?”
I waited, genuinely curious.
“Lunch monitor,” Anna said with all the reverence of a eulogy.
I blinked at her, then burst out laughing. Not because it was funny exactly, but because between the weapons, the powers, and the cataloging of people like they were types of cereal, I felt like I was standing on the edge of a joke I didn’t yet understand.
But then something passed outside the study room window and cut through the humor like a blade.
A group walked by, and they didn’t make noise — not a footstep too loud, not a whisper, not even the sway of clothing against skin. They moved almost like a single organism, pristine posture, eyes forward, and the moment they passed, conversations dipped and looks followed them like static lingering in the air.
“Clarissa Jenkins,” Anna said in a low voice, as if she’d known I’d noticed before I did. “Leo of Leos. Queen of all of them. Don’t engage. Don’t even think near her.”
I watched as the girl in obsidian eyeliner and perfect posture walked with two silent others flanking her. It was like watching a hallway owe them money, just as Anna had said. Clarissa didn’t look mean. She looked entitled in a way that would make statues stand up straighter in respect or in fear. The faintest glow traced her waistband — a sigil, unmistakable and faintly luminescent like a badge of unchallenged authority.
I felt tiny.
And not in the soft way of someone who needed a boost. In the sharp, hollow way of someone still trying to figure out why she was allowed on the field at all.
Anna watched my face and didn’t look surprised when I didn’t speak. It was like she’d seen that expression on everyone who’d walked into Phoenix thinking the world would treat them like normal people.
“You’ll be called in by the Dean soon,” she said, leaning back again. “Usually within the first two weeks.”
“Called in?” I echoed, because my brain was trying to catch up with itself.
“Yeah,” she said with a nod that made it sound inevitable. “Then they brand you. And then we figure out if you’re dangerous… or decorative.”
There was a twist in her voice on that last word that made me both laugh and wince at the same time. Because decorative sounded like a compliment until you realized it meant you were harmless. And here, harmless wasn’t good. Harmless was invisible. Harmless was ignored. Harmless was what I was beginning to feel like.
I forced a chuckle. “Great. So what, I spin in a circle and a tattoo pops up? Then I fly or shoot fire?”
Anna shook her head with a grin that was all irony. “No idea how it actually works. Some people feel a tingling. Some just show up with the mark. Some get called in multiple times before anything sticks.”
I glanced down at my lap, where the textbook lay open like a flimsy shield. And for the first time that day, the humor that had cracked through my frustration earlier seeped back in, tentative but real. I let out a slow breath and looked over my shoulder at the group still gliding down the hallway like they owned every square inch of floor space.
“What if I’m neither,” I said, half to myself, half to Anna.
“What do you mean,” she asked, eyes narrowing with interest.
I exhaled slowly, feeling that hum in my chest again — tension, curiosity, fear, maybe something like hope. “What if I’m not dangerous, and I’m definitely not decorative. Then what?”
Anna studied my face for a beat longer than felt casual. Then she grinned, the kind that was slightly wicked and entirely honest. “Then you’re interesting. And interesting people tend to make their own categories.”
I didn’t know if that was meant to comfort me or rile me up, but either way, I felt a spark in my stomach. Not fear. Not defeat. Something closer to the first real tickle of belonging — not because I was like everyone, but because maybe I was something else entirely.
And as I sat there in that slick, buzzing room, surrounded by kids who wore their potential like tattoos and power, I didn’t know what category I’d fall into.
But for the first time since Phoenix swallowed me whole, I wasn’t afraid to find out.