The system gave him zero. It had no idea what was sleeping in his coat pocket. Kael showed up to the Bonding Trial with one goal — pass, bond, move forward. He left with an official score of zero. No bond. No companion. No rank. In a world built entirely on the connection between a Tamer and their creature, a zero doesn't just put you at the bottom of the class. It makes you invisible. That night, something came through his window. Small. Quiet. Nothing like anything in the Academy's records. When the scanners swept his room — they found nothing. When the system checked his file — it read empty. Kael decided to keep it that way. He has three problems. The Grand Warden of the entire Pact has an operative watching him. The Academy's restricted archive holds records from three hundred years ago that someone in power tried very hard to bury. And the creature in his pocket — the one no catalog can identify — is carrying something inside it that no one alive has heard in full. Because the species that could have warned the world was silenced before it could finish the sentence. The system didn't just overlook Kael. The system built something that overlooked everyone. Every bond feeds it. Every level. Every skill. Every stat gain. Three hundred years of Tamers. All of it going somewhere. And when the count hits zero — it takes them back.