Ten minutes later, the fog was no longer around our ankles. It was at waist height.
It was impossible to ignore now, yet no one else seemed to react to it. They just hunched lower over their desks, writing faster, their faces pale and sweaty. The scratching of the pencils grew louder, more frantic, sounding less like writing and more like clawing.
Another student collapsed in the front row. Then another near the exit.
"Heatstroke," the proctors chanted in unison. "Focus. Calculate. Produce."
The fog rose to chest level.
I couldn't see the exits anymore. The walls of the gym were fading, replaced by a swirling wall of gray and green mist. The reality of 2008 was dissolving, replaced by the Vice Principal’s twisted domain.
I looked at Elara.
She had stopped writing. She was looking around, her eyes wide. She rubbed them, blinked, and looked again.
She sees it, I realized. Her spiritual sensitivity is spiking.
Elara stood up, her chair screeching. "Is... is anyone else seeing this?"
"Sit down, Ms. Vance," a proctor hissed, emerging from the fog. But this wasn't a man in a suit anymore.
To me, the proctor looked like a walking bundle of red marking pens held together by barbed wire. His fingers were long, sharp styluses dripping with red ink.
Elara screamed.
To her, he probably just looked distorted, like a funhouse mirror reflection, but it was enough. She backed away, knocking over her desk.
"Ren!" she called out, her voice trembling. She didn't look at the teachers. She looked straight at me.
I didn't hesitate. I vaulted over my desk, ignoring the "Code of Conduct" and the laws of physics.
"I'm here!" I shouted, kicking a folding chair out of my way.
I reached her just as the fog swallowed the rest of the room. We were isolated. The hundreds of other students were gone, hidden behind a wall of impenetrable smog. It was just me, Elara, and the Red Pen Monster.
"What is happening?" Elara whispered, clutching my arm. Her nails dug into my skin. "Ren, why does Mr. Henderson have... claws?"
"That's not Henderson," I said, positioning myself between her and the entity. "That’s a grade-obsessed nightmare. Stay behind me."
The entity lunged.
It slashed its red-ink claws through the air. I shoved Elara backward and ducked. The claws missed my face by an inch, slashing through the exam table behind me. The wood hissed and dissolved where the ink touched it.
"Failure," the entity gurgled. "Correction required."
"I accept the zero!" I yelled. "I'll take the GED!"
It swiped again. This time, I didn't have room to dodge.
I needed a weapon. But I couldn't punch a spirit, and I didn't have any more paper towels to write stock tips on. I needed something bigger. Something that could disrupt the entire environment.
This was a "Spiritual Audit." The Vice Principal was using the pressure of the exam to crush the students' wills. The system relied on stability. It relied on everyone following the rules, staying in their rows, and being afraid.
The opposite of stability is a crash.
I grabbed Elara’s hand. "Do you trust me?"
She looked at the monster, then at me. "You're a delinquent who talks to himself, but you're currently the only thing not trying to stab me. So, yes!"
"Good answer."
I closed my eyes and reached into the "Stock Market Soul." I didn't look for a specific stock this time. I looked for a feeling. I reached for the memory of September 2008. The collapse of Lehman Brothers. The housing bubble bursting. The terrifying, beautiful chaos of a system shattering under its own weight.
I gathered all that panic, all that volatility, and pulled it into my chest.
Ability: Market Crash Impact.
"Short sell!" I roared.
I slammed my fist onto the gym floor.
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Closing Note：I’m stuck on a plot point! Help me decide the Heroine's next move on our Discord: unplot_joshua.
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