Chapter Three: Class Zero Takes the First Floor

The bell rang. Paper birds flooded the hall. Heat Sight fired instinctively. The hardened flock deflected the beam for three seconds, then softened and burned, filling the hall with smoke. Chen Mo tapped pipes and called out hidden Burnlines. Lin pulsed Rift Sense for fractions of a second, stepping only where space felt thick. “Found you,” Qi Jin said. The floor became a red grid. The visible lines had been decoys. Fire closed around Lin, and a fighter appeared beside him with a fist aimed at his temple. Lin did not dodge. He caught the boy's wrist. He saw the most crucial ten minutes of the boy's life: at eight years old, Blinkstepping through a burning house seven times but failing to reach his sister because smoke blocked his destination.