The principal's eyes widened. He did not answer the question immediately.

  He studied Caelan in silence, fingers resting lightly against the rim of his glass. The ticking of something unseen filled the space between them, slow and deliberate.

  He then chuckled softly.

  "An eighth mark?" he repeated, as if tasting the idea.

  He leaned back in his chair.

  "History is full of things people insist once existed," he said calmly. "Lost continents, forgotten gods, perfect empires."

  His eyes met Caelan's, smiling at him, as if he was pretending.

  "Most of them are simply explanations after the fact."

  Caelan did not respond.

  The principal continued unhurried.

  "The Dominion recognises seven fractal marks because seven are stable, steady, and useful. Seven can be measured, taught, and studied."

  He paused.

  "If there was an eighth," he added lightly, "it would either be so insignificant it failed to matter… or so unstable that erasing it would be mercy."

  He stood up, smoothing his robes.

  "But no," he said. "There is no eighth mark recorded in our archives."

  He lied.

  He walked forward and stopped at the door.

  Caelan looked at him, his body unbothered. He breathed softly. It was clear. They were hiding something. But for what purpose?

  "And Mr Merrow," he added without looking back,

  "Curiosity is not a crime here. Only insistence is."

  The door opened, the principal signalling Caelan to leave with his hand.

  This was enough for him to figure out what was happening.

  Caelan smiled warmly at the principal.

  "So sorry to trouble you, sir. It has been a pleasure talking to you," he said as he bowed in front of him.

  The principal didn't reply.

  Seeing the principal's body language, Caelan swiftly walked out the door without wasting any more time.

  The door slammed closed behind him.

  Interesting. Although the principal didn't reveal the truth, his facial expressions and speech gave Caelan everything. His eyes widened when he heard the question, and then silence. If there was clearly no eighth fractal mark, he would have said so jokingly immediately. However, he didn't. This confirmed Caelan's suspicions. There was indeed an eighth fractal mark, however he still didn't know what it was yet.

  He returned to his dorm and fell into his bed, exhausted. He gathered his thoughts. What did he know so far? He knew he didn't have a deformity, and that he was lied to. Either they knew, or they themselves were clueless at the orphanage. If they knew and didn't speak out due to punishment, this meant the mark was highly forbidden, and a threat to the empire.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  He relaxed his body and looked around the room. The itch was not from a deformity, but originating from the mark itself. And what was the hole in his back? The mark's true pattern? And why was his branch mark embedded on his back? These questions made his brain hurt. However, his curiosity drove him. This was exactly what he was after when he joined the academy, though he did not expect this.

  When he conducted the test previously, his mark responded to organised structure and division. He had to conduct the test again.

  He got up from his bed. He no longer felt any itch.

  He got pieces of paper, and on each one he traced the branch mark, river mark, spiral mark, and the Ember mark. He tested them by placing them on his back to see a response.

  Nothing. No pain, no relief. He was the same as before.

  It seemed like an impossible result.

  The mark wasn't responding at all.

  It responded before? Why not now? Maybe it didn't respond to organised structure, but something else?

  Caelan once again gathered his thoughts.

  "What if I stopped defining it?" he thought to himself.

  What if the mark did not react to pattern structures, but structures themselves?

  He sat on a chair and closed his eyes. Instead of focusing on pattern, he focused on space. He focused on the distance between his breath, the silence between thoughts, and the gap between his heartbeat and his awareness.

  At that moment, the walls appeared to spread out. The room felt deeper, his body slightly… offset. The mark had responded. It was the same moment that happened during class.

  Caelan opened his eyes, a smile on his face. He had finally figured it out. The mark did not respond to patterns, but to space and environment itself. It adapts, changes based on the environment and the user's internal conflict. It was like a separate living being, a parasite residing in his body.

  He thought deeper. So the relief he got last time from tracing the branch mark, he thought wrong. He initially thought it was because the mark responded to structure and growth. However, the mark was responding to the environment around him. During that time, Caelan was in deep pain, and he wanted the itch to go away badly. It seemed as if the mark responded to his internal turmoil, giving him relief. The different patterns escalating pain, that was the mark's way of affirming his experiential nature to further drive his curiosity.

  In the class, the environment was chaotic. Caelan was panicking, more than ever before. The room was loud, hellish, and heavily disordered, with the space around them constantly changing as students practiced bringing the power of their marks out. Caelan's mark responded to this, as if it felt threatened.

  He sighed, kneeling back on his chair. But that still didn't solve the mystery of what his mark truly was. The branch mark on his back was fake, but how did it occur?

  He then realised something. Fractal marks usually reacted to pattern. He reacted to intent and the surroundings. This changed everything. It was also true for his branch mark. His branch wasn't ordinary. It wasn't stable. The patterns kept changing. They were never immobile like a normal mark. It only reacted when it was either near high authority, or when Caelan was in turmoil. Was it trying to hide itself? From what?

  This line of questioning wasn't going to get him anywhere. He grabbed the books from the shelves. He had read these books a thousand times and hadn't noticed anything peculiar. But now, he was reading with intent.

  He skimmed through the chapters:

  "Total Symmetry"

  "Complete Recursion"

  "Pattern Geometry"

  When he looked closer, it seemed as if the books themselves were incomplete, as if something was missing. Indexes seemed to be skipped, footnotes cut. He then found a diagram.

  The diagram, complex, hard to describe in shape, was of all the seven fractal marks merged together, to signify the union.

  The description read:

  "During that great day, when the gods gifted humanity the power of recursion, they bestowed these seven fractal marks, for us to use with precaution."

  The mark instantly responded with a small itch and repeating pain on Caelan's back. He grunted, as if his back was being stung by a bee.

  "So you react to this, huh?" he thought out loud.

  Once again, he wasn't sure what it meant. Somehow, in some way, it was related to the rest of the marks, but also different from the rest.

  Caelan put the book down. He stared at the ceiling. He was closer to solving this mystery, but still quite far away.

  But one thing was certain. He wasn't normal like the rest, and he had to use that to his advantage somehow. The world he was born in had mysteries beyond his imagination. What else were they trying to hide?

  Suddenly, his door banged. He heard a loud voice.

  "Come out, brat! Face us!" they screamed.

  It was the first year students that were enrolled with him.