Chapter 3: The Abstract Phobia

Chapter 3: The Abstract Phobia

The weight of every eye in the cavernous hall pressed down on Kaelen. Instructor Vex’s question hung in the air, sharp and heavy as a guillotine’s blade. “Explain yourself.”

“I… I don’t know,” Kaelen stammered, the words feeling like sandpaper in his throat. How could he explain a feeling? A sudden, intuitive knowledge of where not to be? “There was a… a warning. In my head. It just told me to move.”

A ripple of snickers went through the assembled initiates. Jaxon, the hulking brute with the predator’s smirk, let out a loud, mocking laugh. “A warning in his head! He’s not a weapon, he’s just crazy.”

Vex’s stony expression didn’t change, but her eyes hardened into chips of ice. “Luck is not a skill, Vance. A ‘feeling’ will not save you from a Fear-Eater. You are on a razor’s edge. Do not give me a reason to push you.”

She turned her back on him, a clear and brutal dismissal. The message was clear: he hadn’t been purged, but he was on probation. He was a rounding error, a potential failure she was already preparing to erase. The familiar, cold dread of that word—failure—wrapped around his lungs, making it hard to breathe.

Their next lesson took place in a different chamber, this one circular and white, ringed by an upper level of darkened observation glass. Vex called it the Phobos Chamber. It was sterile, clinical, and felt like an arena where specimens were dissected.

“Fear is raw, chaotic energy,” Vex lectured, her voice echoing in the stark, white space. “The System provides an interface, but you must provide the will. Your phobia is the key, the specific frequency that unlocks your potential. Today, you will learn to give it form. Your task is simple: Manifestation.”

She gestured to the center of the room. “Focus on your deepest fear. Feel it. Let it consume you. Then, channel that energy into a physical object. A weapon. A shield. Anything. Begin.”

A low murmur of concentration filled the chamber. For the others, the process seemed almost instinctive. A lanky boy with a severe fear of snakes, Ophidiophobia, gritted his teeth. A shimmering, green, scale-like tendril, crackling with energy, coiled out from his forearm like a whip. A girl whose file must have screamed Acrophobia gasped as a controlled vortex of wind swirled around her feet, lifting her an inch off the ground.

Then there was Jaxon. He closed his eyes and let out a low growl, his knuckles turning white. His Arachnophobia was a potent fuel. With a sickening sound of cracking chitin, sharp, black, dagger-like protrusions, like the tips of a spider's legs, slid out from between his fingers. He flexed his hands, a cruel smile spreading across his face as he admired his new, organic claws.

Kaelen watched them, a knot of ice forming in his stomach. He closed his eyes and tried to do as he was told. He focused on his fear. Atychiphobia. Fear of failure.

But what did that look like?

He tried to picture a failing grade, the big red ‘F’ on a test paper. Nothing happened. He tried to summon the crushing weight of his sister’s disappointment. His chest tightened, but no shield formed around him. He thought of Vex’s cold eyes, the red lights on the pods of the purged students, the taste of ash in his mouth. He felt the fear, felt the familiar spiral of anxiety and self-doubt begin, but it was an internal storm. It had no external expression. Nothing manifested.

“Having trouble, Vance?” Jaxon sneered, his voice dripping with contempt. He stalked over, flexing his new spider-claws. “Can’t even fail properly, can you? What’s your power, huh? Profuse sweating?”

Kaelen ignored him, squeezing his eyes shut tighter, his fists clenched so hard his nails dug into his palms. Come on. Anything. A little knife. A rock. A piece of string. The System remained silent in his vision. He was the only one who couldn't do it. The weakest link. The failure. The title Jaxon had given him was sticking.

Vex watched from the side, her arms crossed. Her silence was more damning than any insult. She wasn’t angry. She was just… unimpressed. She was watching a faulty component fail its diagnostic, ready to be discarded.

“This is pathetic,” she finally announced, her voice cutting through Kaelen’s desperate concentration. “An abstract phobia requires a stronger will, a more focused mind. If you cannot provide it, you are useless.”

She gestured, and a panel in the wall slid open. A dozen small, silver spheres, training drones, zipped into the room, hovering at head height.

“New objective,” Vex said, her tone leaving no room for negotiation. “Each of you will destroy one drone. They will fire low-intensity energy pellets. They will not kill you, but they will hurt. It is an excellent motivator.”

Jaxon grinned and stepped forward. “My pleasure.” A drone locked onto him and fired a bright yellow pellet. With a blur of motion, he swung his arm, and one of his chitinous blades sliced the pellet in half before shattering the drone itself in a shower of sparks.

One by one, the others took their turns. The snake-whip cracked a drone out of the air. The girl with the wind power created a focused blast that sent her target spinning into a wall.

Soon, only one drone was left. And it was heading for Kaelen.

His heart hammered against his ribs. This was it. A direct, simple test with a clear pass/fail condition. He couldn't dodge this time. He had to manifest something. He had to succeed.

The drone’s single red optic fixed on him. It whirred, charging its weapon. He could feel the stares of everyone in the room, could practically hear their thoughts. He’s going to get hit. The useless one. The failure.

He was going to fail. The certainty of it was absolute, a tidal wave of despair that washed away every other thought. The drone fired.

In that infinitesimal moment, as the yellow pellet streaked towards his chest, his mind broke. All attempts to create, to manifest, to force a power into existence, evaporated. His entire consciousness, his very soul, recoiled from the impending impact, from the pain, from the humiliation, from the failure. His desire wasn't to make a shield or a sword. It was simpler. More fundamental.

The pellet cannot hit me.

He didn't know how. He didn't care how. It just… couldn't.

And then, the universe complied.

With a loud bang and a fizz of sparks, a drone on the other side of the room—one Jaxon had already destroyed—violently short-circuited. Its wrecked chassis convulsed, its weapon discharging a final, stray pellet. The shot was wild, a complete misfire, arcing randomly across the room.

It traveled on a perfect, impossible trajectory.

Halfway between Kaelen and his drone, the two yellow pellets collided in mid-air. There was a sharp CRACK, a brilliant flash of light, and both projectiles annihilated each other in a puff of ozone.

Silence descended upon the Phobos Chamber.

Jaxon stared, his jaw slack. “What the… That’s the luckiest…”

Lyra, the girl with the pink-streaked hair, wasn’t laughing. She tilted her head, her brow furrowed in intense concentration, as if she were running a complex equation in her mind.

Instructor Vex’s eyes narrowed. “Again,” she commanded, her voice sharp. A new drone detached from the wall and flew towards Kaelen. “Another one-in-a-million fluke, Vance?”

The new drone fired. Once again, Kaelen’s mind screamed the same desperate command. Don’t let it hit me. I can’t fail this.

This time, a light panel on the ceiling directly above the drone flickered violently. With a metallic groan, a single screw, vibrated loose by the machinery, dropped. It fell a distance of twenty feet, a tiny speck of metal against the vastness of the chamber.

It struck the drone’s energy emitter at the exact microsecond the pellet was fired.

The yellow bolt of energy, its trajectory altered by a single, minuscule degree, shot past Kaelen’s ear with a high-pitched whine and slammed into the wall behind him, leaving a blackened scorch mark.

Two impossible accidents. Two statistical miracles, back to back.

It wasn't luck. Kaelen looked at his hands, which hadn't moved. He hadn't created anything. He had changed things. He had bent the world around him just enough to avoid the failure condition.

A blue text box materialized in his vision, shimmering with a new, profound understanding.

[ATYCHIPHOBIA -> ABILITY REFINED] [SKILL IDENTIFIED: [PATH TO VICTORY]] [DESCRIPTION: MANIPULATE PROBABILITY TO ENSURE A CHOSEN OUTCOME.]

He slowly lifted his gaze from his hands and met Instructor Vex’s stare across the room. The contempt was gone from her eyes. It had been replaced by something far more terrifying. A cold, calculating, predatory focus. He had survived. He hadn't failed.

But in her eyes, he could see that his problems were just beginning. He was no longer a useless specimen. He was an anomaly. And the Obsidian Academy had special ways of dissecting anomalies.