My Infinite System.

Two years passed.

Not slowly. Not quickly. The way time moves when you’re too busy to notice it slipping through your fingers.

Finn stopped counting the days. There was no point. Every morning looked the same—grey light through the window, the smell of Lucian’s tea, Mira already waiting in the courtyard with her staff and her stubborn silence. The routine had become a heartbeat. Steady. Reliable. Unstoppable.

He didn’t remember when he’d first punched through stone. It happened during a drill. Lucian had conjured a wall of compressed earth, the kind that would take a team of mages an hour to break. Finn hit it. His fist went through. Not because of magic—because of muscle, bone, and the supplements Lucian had been feeding him for months.

Mira had stared at the hole. Then at Finn. Then back at the hole.

”That’s not normal,” she said.

”Nothing about us is normal.”

She couldn’t argue.

---

The sound barrier broke on a Tuesday.

Finn had been running. Just running. Lucian had timed him, standing at the edge of the training ground with a stopwatch that didn’t tick. Finn’s feet left the ground. The air cracked. A shockwave rippled outward, kicking up dust, shattering a window in the alchemy wing.

He stopped. Looked back. The distance between him and Lucian was the length of a football field. He’d covered it in less than a second.

”How fast?” he asked.

”Fast enough.”

”That’s not a number.”

”It’s not a number you need to know.”

Lucian pocketed the stopwatch and walked away. Finn stood in the middle of the shattered courtyard, breathing normally, heart calm, and wondered when he’d stopped being human.

---

Mira’s magical abilities grew differently.

Not loud. Not explosive. Subtle. The way water wears down stone. She could feel the emotional residue of anyone who’d passed through a space in the last week. She could track a target across the city without line of sight, following the threads of connection that bound people to places.

Lucian taught her to weaponize it.

”Fear is a thread,” he said. ”So is anger. So is despair. Find the thread. Pull it.”

She learned to make enemies hesitate. To make them doubt. To make them feel the weight of every bad decision they’d ever made, all at once. It wasn’t magic in the traditional sense. It was deeper. Older. The kind of power that made people forget why they were fighting.

”They’re not nukes,” Finn said once, watching Mira dismantle a training construct without touching it. ”They’re something else.”

”Nukes?” Lucian raised an eyebrow.

”Figure of speech.”

”Interesting figure.”

---

Dorian Ashford appeared in their courtyard on a rainy afternoon.

He stood at the entrance, his dark blue coat soaked through, his silver buttons dull. His hair was plastered to his forehead. He looked like a drowned cat. An expensive drowned cat.

”I’m not here to fight,” he said.

Finn lowered his fists. Mira kept her hand on her staff.

”Then why are you here?” Finn asked.

”My father wants me to learn from your teacher.” Dorian’s voice was flat. ”He thinks it’ll make me stronger. He thinks I can become like you.”

”Can you?”

Dorian was quiet for a moment. Then he shook his head. ”No. I don’t think anyone can.”

Lucian appeared in the doorway. He looked at Dorian. Dorian looked at him.

”No,” Lucian said.

”I didn’t ask.”

”You were about to.”

Dorian’s jaw tightened. ”My father will make things difficult if you refuse.”

”Your father is irrelevant.”

”To you, maybe. To me, he’s the difference between a future and a firing squad.” Dorian stepped forward, water dripping from his sleeves. ”I’m not asking for your training. I’m asking for proximity. Let me stay. Let me watch. I won’t interfere.”

Lucian studied him. The silence stretched.

”Finn,” Lucian said.

”Yeah?”

”He’s your problem.”

Lucian turned and walked back inside.

Finn looked at Dorian. Dorian looked at Finn. Mira looked at both of them.

”This is weird,” Mira said.

”Shut up,” Finn and Dorian said at the same time.

---

Dorian stayed.

He didn’t train with them—not at first. He sat on the edge of the courtyard during their sessions, taking notes, watching, learning. He asked questions when Lucian wasn’t around. He borrowed their books. He practiced on his own, in the hours before dawn, when no one else was awake.

He was good. Smart. Talented. Two affinities—fire and air—and he’d mastered both to a level that would have made him the top of his class.

But compared to Finn and Mira, he was a candle next to a bonfire.

”You’re not slow,” Mira told him one night. They were on the roof, the three of them, looking at the moon. ”You’re just normal. And normal looks slow next to us.”

Dorian didn’t argue. He couldn’t. He’d seen Finn punch through a wall of enchanted steel. He’d seen Mira make a master-level combat instructor weep with guilt over a mistake he’d made twenty years ago.

”What are you?” he asked.

”Lucian’s students,” Finn said.

”That’s not an answer.”

”It’s the only one you’re getting.”

---

Dorian became a fixture.

Not quite a friend—not at first. He was too proud, too aware of his bloodline, too conscious of the gap between what he was and what he could have been. But pride fades. Familiarity grows. Weeks turned into months. The months turned into a year.

He stopped flinching when Finn moved too fast. Stopped staring when Mira read his thoughts. Started bringing food to their late-night study sessions. Started laughing at Finn’s terrible jokes. Started defending Mira when other students whispered about the ”null who got lucky.”

”You’re not null,” Dorian said once, after a particularly nasty comment from a noble’s daughter. ”You’re the most dangerous person in this building.”

Mira smiled. It was a small smile. Tired. ”That’s not a compliment.”

”It’s not an insult either.”

---

Lucian never warmed to Dorian.

Not coldly. Not cruelly. He simply didn’t engage. Dorian could sit in the courtyard for hours, could take all the notes, could ask all the questions. Lucian treated him like furniture. Present. Unimportant.

”He doesn’t like me,” Dorian said.

”He doesn’t like anyone,” Finn replied.

”He likes you.”

”He tolerates me. There’s a difference.”

Dorian wasn’t convinced. But he stayed anyway. Because where else could he go? His father’s house was a battlefield. The Academy was a cage. Here, in the shadow of the outsider and his impossible students, he felt something he’d never felt before.

Alive.

---

The night of the harvest festival, they sat on the roof again.

The moon was full. The city was loud. Music drifted up from the streets, laughter, the clink of glasses. Below them, ordinary people celebrated ordinary lives.

”You ever think about leaving?” Dorian asked. ”Just... going somewhere else. Somewhere no one knows your name.”

Finn shook his head. ”My name’s all I have.”

Mira was quiet. Then she said, ”I used to dream about it. When I was alone. Before Finn. Before Lucian. I’d imagine a place where no one expected anything from me.”

”What changed?”

”I realized expecting something isn’t the same as demanding something.” She looked at him. ”Lucian expects us to be strong. He doesn’t demand it. He just... believes we can be.”

Dorian absorbed that. He looked at his hands. They were soft. Noble’s hands. He’d never worked a day in his life.

”Must be nice,” he said. ”Having someone believe in you.”

Finn put a hand on his shoulder. ”You have us.”

Dorian didn’t answer. But he didn’t pull away.

---

Lucian watched from the window.

Not the roof—he never joined them up there. That was their space. Their ritual. He stayed below, invisible, listening to their voices drift down through the night.

Finn’s laugh. Mira’s soft hum. Dorian’s sharp, surprised chuckle.

He thought about Evelyn. About the family he’d lost. About the new one forming in front of him without his permission.

He didn’t know if that was a good thing.

But he didn’t stop it either.