Still Falling INTRODUCING ORDER OF THE SILVER CROSS
Seven days in, and Dawn still could not name what was wrong with him. She haunted the rim of every lunch crowd—glances that lasted a beat too long, fingers working a bracelet—and Val clocked it even when he kept his face blank.
The courtyard found her anyway. Unease had sharpened into something she could not swallow. She crossed to his table and started talking like someone who had rehearsed the opener and might still run.
"What are you?"
Val's mouth failed him. No Awakened vocabulary, no safe label—the answer broke apart on the way out, half-syllables and stall.
Dawn tipped her head, half-smiling through the tension. "I'm not that pretty — no need to stutter around her." She had watched him chat up Ashley and Liz just fine—that afternoon reunion on his first day. The tease carried a challenge under it.
Val's eyes went wide. He looked at her properly for the first time: blonde in heavy chaotic waves, blue eyes with ice-water clarity, soft features that stole light from the brick around them.
"Yes, you are beautiful — but I have no idea what you mean. I am Val."
Dawn went still. No comeback came. She turned and walked away without another word.
Behind him, handball smacked the courtyard wall—palms on rubber, boys shouting over lunch noise. One of them loaded a powershot. The scuffed tennis ball tore straight at Val's back while he still faced the empty space where Dawn had been.
Aura caught the motion before sight did. He sidestepped; the ball ghosted through air his ribs had occupied a heartbeat earlier.
Halfway across the yard, Dawn looked back and saw it. Her trap had misfired—and she grinned. Awakened, then. Which house, which association—that question stayed locked behind her teeth.
Wrong pressure rolled in from the north—demon-energy weight on teeth and sinuses, students flinching without knowing why. Val and Dawn swung north with the crowd.
On the path toward the gate, two girls matched the alarm with identical faces and different lines—Mei, jet-black hair cropped short, stance pitched forward and sharp; Xian taller beside her, black hair past her shoulders. Both stared north.
Val pivoted to the faces at his table. "I've got somewhere to go." He was running before anyone could ask where.
North pulled him like a hook in the chest—the first Gate since he had returned, and he would not waste the level-up sitting in a courtyard. The pulse sat at the edge of his senses while he covered the kilometer to open ground outside the school zone.
Dawn left her group without a word, same bearing, church recon in her bones—measure the Gate, report back.
Val hit the threshold first. Dawn arrived on his heels in time to watch him walk straight through.
"VALLLL WAIT…"
The shout shredded on the wind. He was already inside the zone and deaf to it.
She dropped the outside measure and ran after him.
Sand replaced school air—dry tongue, grit under soles, sun drilling through cotton on his shoulders. Twelve Sand Wolves broke the dune line, D-rank grey hides stinking of rank, bodies low and sprinting.
Val charged. Master Aura packed into a blade along his forearm—weight you could trust along the edge. He met the first wave head-on: sand exploding, steel-bright Aura meeting hide and bone, three hard exchanges bleeding into five while his lungs and thighs screamed at Level 1 limits. Bodies piled. The twelfth wolf dropped. The Gate was not finished.
Dawn stepped through the gate mouth and froze at the vista—corpses littering the sand, Val ringed by more than fifty living wolves, a Sand Wolf Leader at the rear with yellow eyes locked on the fight.
F-rank fear locked her joints. Breath turned shallow; her whole body went rigid.
The ring noticed fresh prey. Wolves shifted toward her.
Val whipped around. "Why are you here? Why did you follow me!"
Dawn's mouth opened. Nothing came out.
He bared his teeth and drove forward again—frontal cuts, intercepting a lunge aimed at her, trading blade-work through the pack. One wolf clipped his arm on the way down: teeth skidded off packed Aura, but the shockwave still hammered his forearm—Level 1 flesh had no buffer for it. Pain rattled up the bone; his sleeve split as skin tore from the inside out.
The Leader came last—broader shoulders, charging rush. Val cut low and dropped it. Power flooded him in one brutal clear, Level 1 to Level 6; his knees buckled half a second. A few real bites would still have ended him.
Silence after the last body fell. Val knelt beside Dawn and passed her water, waiting until her hands stopped shaking.
"What level are you?"
"Just reached 6…"
Dawn stared, wordless.
"Why did you follow me?"
Her voice shook as she named the Order of the Silver Cross. She pushed her sleeve up—the Silver Cross Emblem on her left upper arm, zero stars, sword-cross ink bright in desert light.
Val had nothing for that. "Ah right, ok."
He stayed with her until she could stand. They walked out together.
Mei and Xian waited outside, arms crossed.
"Which association do you two belong to?" One of them blocked the path—or they would report illegal gate hunting.
Dawn said nothing. She wanted Val's answer first, which house would own him on paper. Val gave them silence and speed instead, vanishing past the school fence before the twins could grab him.
She lifted her sleeve. The Silver Cross emblem caught light; sword-cross ink, zero stars. The twins looked at each other, looked at her, and stood down. No report filed—the threat had only ever been leverage.
Alone later, she called the Church with a lie to protect him: a Gate near Highschool A, E-rank, already cleared, when the real one had been D-rank. The crush that had sparked at lunch—the flirt, beautiful, the failed What are you?—braided tighter with the gate rescue.
Mei cornered her on the walk back. "Who was that rude guy?" "Why was he like that?"
Dawn's smile turned small and stubborn. "He's a schoolmate." She apologized for Val without him in the room to hear it.
Val walked the rest of the day with the gate still rattling in his ribs. Clearing it had been the easy part. Leaving it—associations, reporting, who got to hunt where—was the mess he could not cut through yet.
When the last bell released him, he was Level 6. The problems were the same ones he had woken with.