The Great Hall of Revelation was not what Kael expected.
He had imagined a sterile chamber of white stone and glowing crystals, a clinic for magical dissection. Instead, he stood in a vaulted, ancient theater carved from a single, massive geode. Walls of jagged amethyst and citrine refracted the light of a hundred floating witch lamps into a kaleidoscope that danced across the faces of two hundred silent applicants. The air hummed with a deep, resonant frequency that made his teeth ache and his own mana stir restlessly in response.
They stood in a vast circle around a central dais, upon which sat the Lens of Aethelred a disc of polished, milky crystal as large as a millstone, carved with runes so old they seemed less like language and more like the scars of creation itself.
Archmage Valerius, a man whose white beard flowed over robes of midnight blue, stood beside it. His voice, amplified by nothing but pure acoustics and authority, filled the cavernous space.
"You come from many nations. Many races. Many stations." His eyes, grey as winter sky, swept over them. "Today, those distinctions are irrelevant. The Lens does not see your name, your house, or your coin. It sees only the truth written in your soul at the moment of your birth. The truth of your potential."
A murmur ran through the crowd. Kael felt it a cocktail of fear, anticipation, and naked ambition. To his left, Dominic stood like a statue of weathered oak, his face impassive, but Kael saw the minute tightening of his jaw. To his right, a few rows ahead, he caught a flash of vibrant red curls. Ellora. She was chewing her lip, her usually cheerful face pale.
"The ceremony is simple," Valerius continued. "You will approach the Lens, place your hands upon it, and channel the barest trickle of your mana. The Lens will resonate. It will illuminate the pathways fate has granted you, your Mana Veins. Their color, their clarity, will be seen by all. This is not a judgment. It is a revelation. Let it guide your path within these walls."
'He says it's not a judgment,' Kael thought, feeling the weight of hundreds of gazes already calculating, comparing, but everyone here knows it's the first, and greatest, verdict.
The ceremony began. One by one, names were called. Applicants stepped forward, touched the crystal, and their bodies bloomed with inner light.
A beastfolk girl's skin lit up with the steady, common glow of Red Veins. She wilted slightly, but held her head high. A slender elven boy revealed clean, bright Bronze, drawing nods of respect. Then came a daughter of a minor knightly house. The light that pulsed under her skin was a dull, murky red, flickering uncertainly. Weak Red, bordering on White. A choked sob escaped her as she retreated, the social death sentence pronounced.
The atmosphere grew heavier with each revelation. The hierarchy was being physically, visibly carved into the air.
Then, a name cut through the tension.
"Corvin of House Hale."
The sharp-faced noble sauntered forward, a practiced smirk on his lips. He placed his hands on the Lens with theatrical confidence. The crystal hummed, and light surged beneath his skin a solid, respectable Bronze. The smirk tightened. It was good, but not exceptional. Not the Silver his house might have hoped for. The whispers that followed him were not of awe, but of recalculation. His eyes, scanning the crowd, glinted with a new, simmering resentment. Bronze was a credential, but in this company, it was a throne forever out of reach. Kael saw the fury burning beneath Corvin's composed mask, and knew, with cold certainty, that fury would seek a target.
"Justin Evan Valore."
A different kind of whisper followed Justin as he walked forward, softer, curious. He moved with his usual unassuming grace. When his hands met the crystal, the light that answered was not a flare, but a sunrise.
A beautiful, luminous Silver light emanated from his core, tracing elegant, strong pathways along his arms and neck. It was the color of moonlight on still water, pure, noble, and potent. A collective, soft inhale swept the hall. This was the promise of a true High Noble. Justin blinked, looking at his own glowing arms with modest surprise, then returned to his place, ignoring the stares. His humility in the face of such a revelation spoke louder than any boast.
"Sophia Vlad Skynyrd."
She strode forward, a queen claiming her throne. The Lens responded to her touch with a violent, commanding flash. The veins that lit within her were not silver, but a deep, royal Purple. They pulsed with arrogant power, a lattice of amethyst fire beneath her skin. The message was undeniable, genius, legacy, supremacy. She removed her hands, casting a cool, sweeping glance over the assembly as if confirming what they already knew, before returning to a knot of admiring peers.
The bar had been set. Purple and Silver were the peaks. Everything else was the slope below.
"Dominic Vale."
The whispers turned to outright murmurs. A commoner, called so late? Dominic's walk to the dais was a study in contained dignity. He ignored the stares, placed his work roughened hands on the crystal, and closed his eyes.
For a second, nothing. Then, a light burst forth so bright and true it made the previous Silver seem tarnished.
It was Silver. But not just Silver. It was a perfect, brilliant, metallic silver, like a freshly forged blade. It shone with a clarity and density that seemed to reject the very air of prejudice around him. It was the Silver of undeniable, unconcealable, sacrilegious talent.
The hall erupted.
"Impossible!"
"A commoner?!"
"The Lens must be flawed!"
"Cheat! He must have cheated!"
Everyone was shocked beyond belief as they stared at Dominic with their jaws half open.
Archmage Valerius's eyes widened a fraction, the first crack in his impassivity. He stared at Dominic, then at the Lens, his mind visibly racing. Corvin's face was a mask of pure, undiluted hatred.
Dominic opened his eyes, looked at the light coursing through his own body, and then back at the crowd. His face showed no triumph, only a weary, grim acceptance. He had known. And he knew what it would cost. He returned to his place, the stunned silence parting before him like a sea.
The Archmage took a long breath to restore order. The final name echoed in the hush.
"Kael Osborn."
Every eye, still wide from Dominic's revelation, now swiveled to him. He felt the weight of them the curiosity, the resentment, the expectation of another shocking spectacle. He walked forward, his boots silent on the gemstone floor. He could feel Vaelthryx, a coiled, watchful presence in his mind, utterly still.
He placed his hands on the Lens. The crystal was cool, singing with the accumulated echoes of a hundred other souls.
"Just a trickle," he told himself. He let the smallest thread of his awareness, of the power that was always humming just beneath his skin, flow into the stone.
The Lens did not glow.
It screamed.
A soundless, psychic shriek tore through the hall. The witch lamps flickered and died. The colored light from the geode walls was swallowed by an encroaching shadow that spread from the dais.
Then, Kael's body ignited.
But not with a color. Not with Purple, Silver, or Red.
From his heart, a furious, living Gold erupted, the gold of celestial suns, of divine judgment. It tore through his veins with terrifying brilliance. But chasing it, entwined with it, smothering it, was a Black so absolute it seemed to drink the light around it, the black of primordial voids, of broken oaths, of dragon's blood older than mountains.
Black and Gold.
They swirled together in a chaotic, beautiful, terrifying helix beneath his skin, fighting and fusing, a cosmic battle made flesh. The light did not illuminate him; it made him a window into a collision of realms.
The Lens of Aethelred, which had assessed generations, emitted a sharp CRACK . A fissure split on its surface.
Kael snatched his hands away as if burned. The alien light within him faded, leaving only the afterimage seared into the retinas of every soul present.
The silence was absolute. Profound. Terrified.
Archmage Valerius stared, not at Kael, but at the cracked Lens, his face ashen white. This was not a classification. This was an ontological crisis.
No one spoke. No one accused him of cheating. They just stared, their minds unable to process what they had witnessed. He was not a high talent. He was not a low talent. He was an anomaly. A question mark written in forbidden colors.
Kael turned and walked back to his place. The crowd did not part for him. They recoiled.
The ceremony was over. But the revelation had only just begun.