The return from the Shattered Spire was a blur of teleportation nausea, blinding daylight, and the deafening silence of the Grand Transit Hall. The euphoria of passing the true test evaporated the moment their boots touched polished marble instead of ancient scale.
They stood in a ragged cluster Kael, Justin, Dominic, Ellora, Daniel, and Sora, who clung to the group like a shadow. Around them, other candidates materialized. Some were triumphant, many were shell shocked, and a significant number were missing entirely washed out by the Spire's ruthless logic.
The air was thick with the buzz of frantic recounting, sobs of relief, and the sharp, acidic tang of failure.
Before anyone could speak, a deep, resonant gong sounded. At the far end of the hall, a massive slab of polished Obsidian set into the wall began to glow. Runes shimmered across its surface, resolving into lines of script. The Preliminary Ranking Board.
A hush fell.
The names appeared not alphabetically, but in order of overall performance evaluation. The top twenty were bathed in a soft silver light.
1. Sophia Vlad Skynyrd. A murmur of unsurprised respect.
2. Lisa Ambrose Tempest. A quieter, more awed whisper.
Names of other elite nobles followed.
Then, around rank 12, the script shimmered and turned a distinct, controversial bronze instead of silver.
12. Justin Evan Valore.
15. Kael Osborn.
18. Dominic Vale.
A scandalized ripple went through the hall. Commoners and disgraced nobles in the top twenty? An anomaly in the top twenty? The whispers turned venomous.
Ellora's name appeared at 28, glowing with a steady bronze light, a fantastic placement for a commoner. Daniel was a ghost at 35. And Sora…
Her name flickered at 48, the script around it unstable, glitching between bronze and red, as if the evaluation matrix couldn't decide what to do with her chaotic signature.
Corvin's name was nowhere in the top fifty. He stood across the hall, his face a pale, rigid mask of pure hatred, his eyes drilling into Kael.
"Well," Dominic said, staring at his own name on the legendary board. "That's a target."
Justin's smile was tight. "We earned it."
"That's what makes it a target," Dominic replied.
The grim spectacle of the rankings was immediately followed by the brisk, administrative cruelty of housing assignments.
A senior student with a clipboard and a permanently bored expression began calling names and pointing to one of three grand archways leading out of the Transit Hall. Above each archway, glowing runes stated their purpose:
Arch of gilded fires: gold & purple veins.
Arch of silver streams: silver & bronze veins.
Arch of ember hearth: red & white veins. Provisional.
The segregation was as elegant as it was brutal.
Sophia's name was called; she led her cohort through the Arch of Gilded Fires without a backward glance. Lisa Ambrose Tempest followed, a solitary, elegant figure moving toward the same arch.
Names were called in clusters. Most nobles went to Gilded Fires or Silver Streams. Commoners, almost exclusively, were directed to the Arch of Ember Hearth.
Then came the disruptions.
"Justin Evan Valore. Silver Streams."
No surprise. He gave his new friends an apologetic look before heading toward the middle arch.
"Dominic Vale."
The bored student looked at his clipboard, frowned, tapped it, then shrugged. "Silver Streams."
A murmur ran through the commoner crowd. Dominic's face remained impassive, but his knuckles whitened slightly on his pack strap. Being elevated didn't feel like honor; it felt like being thrown into a gilded cage of wolves. He shot a last glance at Kael 'see you on the other side of the fancy walls' and trudged through the Silver arch.
"Ellora Campbell. Ember Hearth."
Ellora bit her lip, gave a small, brave smile to Justin's retreating back, and moved toward the humblest arch with her commoner friends.
"Daniel Frost Bane. Silver Streams." Another flicker of surprise. Daniel simply melted into the appropriate shadow near the Silver arch.
"Sora Aster Valeric." The student's frown deepened. He conferred with a floating crystal that shimmered with data. "Provisional assignment. Ember Hearth. Hazard wing."
Sora flinched but seemed almost relieved to be with Ellora. She scurried after her.
The senior student with the clipboard arrived at the last, problematic name. He stared at it, then at Kael, with the look of someone finding a live scorpion in his paperwork.
"Kael Osborn." He announced the name like a diagnosis. "Vein reading: Unclassifiable. Attribute reading: Unclassifiable. Rank: Provisional top-twenty. Division: Special Research." He looked up, gesturing with his quill at the three glowing arches. "The housing matrix requires a vein color for sorting. You don't have one it recognizes. You're a system error. So..." He shrugged, a gesture of pure bureaucratic abdication. "Pick one."
A new, deeper silence fell over the hall. This wasn't just sorting; it was a public loyalty test disguised as logistics.
Pick Gilded Fires? He'd be a beggar at a king's feast, torn apart by the Sophias and Corvins within an hour.
Pick Ember Hearth? It would be a political statement the "anomaly" siding with the lowest ranks. It might offer safety in numbers, but it would also mark him as a permanent outsider, a leader of the unwanted.
Pick Silver Streams? It was the home of true talents like Justin… and now, Dominic. It was the borderland. The place where merit, birth, and chaos sometimes mixed.
Kael's eyes found Dominic, who had paused at the Silver Arch, watching. Dominic gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head of don't be an idiot, but his expression wasn't warning him away. It was assessing the tactical nightmare.
Kael thought of the Spire. Of fighting back to back. Of dry commentary in the face of falling stone. He thought of cold, lonely rooms and the whispering of faculty in some isolated "Annex."
He looked the bored student in the eye. "Silver Streams."
A wave of gasps and muttered outrage swept through the nobles waiting by that arch. The student blinked, then scribbled on his clipboard with a vindictive flourish. "Fine. Silver Streams. Room 7B." He said the room number like a curse.
Dominic closed his eyes for a second, a martyr to inevitable drama. Then he turned and walked through the arch, Kael following a step behind, feeling the heat of a hundred hostile stares on his back.
Silver Streams Dormitory – Room 7B
The room was a lesson in modest luxury. It wasn't the gilded opulence of the higher dorms, but it was clean, spacious, and well appointed. Two sturdy oak beds with thick blankets, two desks by a window overlooking a training yard, a shared bookshelf, and a private washing alcove. It was, by Kael's orphanage standards, a palace.
Dominic had already claimed the bed by the window. He was unpacking his meager belongings a few spare tunics, a whetstone, a book on foundational earth magics with economical precision. He didn't look up as Kael entered.
"You realize," Dominic said, placing his whetstone on the desk with a definitive tap, "that by picking this arch, you didn't choose a dorm. You declared war on the social order of this entire wing."
"well I didn't see a 'war' arch," Kael mumbled, dropping his own thin pack on the other bed.
"It's implied." Dominic finally looked at him. "They put you with me for a reason. Either they think I can 'handle' you, or they're hoping we'll neutralize each other. Or both."
He walked over and tapped the doorframe. A faint silver rune glowed briefly. "Sound dampening. Standard for Silver rooms. So at least our neighbors won't hear me yelling at you when your weird magic turns my boots into tadpoles or something."
Despite himself, Kael snorted. "I don't think I can do that."
"Give it time," Dominic said, deadpan. "I have faith in your capacity for chaotic innovation." He nodded to the other bed. "Get settled. Lights out is enforced. Tomorrow, the real work starts. And just so you know," he added, fixing Kael with a flat stare, "if you start glowing or whispering to dragons in your sleep, I'm not above throwing a pillow at you."
It wasn't friendly. But it was an agreement. A pact of shared space. For two people who trusted no one, it was a start.
Two Days Later: First Official Day
The Academy was a city unto itself, and they were its newest, most controversial citizens. Division placements had been posted: Justin to the Martial Division. Dominic, to everyone's shock (and his own grim satisfaction), also to Martial. Ellora to Summoning. Daniel to Esoteric & Subtle Arts. Sora, after much debate by the faculty, was placed in Arcane Studies with a special "hazard" designation.
Kael's placement was a single line of stark, ominous text: "Special Research Track – Arcane Division. Advisor: Archmage Valerius. (See Lord Malakai for supplemental practical instruction.)" It was less a division and more a quarantine.
Their first shared class was Mana Theory & Ascension Fundamentals, held in a steep, cold amphitheater of grey stone. The instructor was not a kindly scholar. He was Commander Brys, a man built like a fortress, with a scar cutting through his short-cropped beard and eyes the color of flint. He wore the simple, functional robes of a battle-mage, not an academic.
"Sit," he barked, and two hundred initiates sat.
He didn't welcome them. He didn't congratulate them. He glared.
"You faced a Guardian Golem in your trial," he began, his voice like grinding stone. "Some of you are patting yourselves on the back for surviving. Some of you are even proud of 'defeating' it."
A holographic schematic of the Golem, identical to the one they'd fought, flickered to life above the lectern. Brys pointed a thick finger at it.
"This construct was rated Tier III, Rank 1. True Awakened." He let the words hang. "Its mana capacity was approximately thirty times that of a standard Awakened mage. A single blow from its fist contained enough kinetic energy to pulverize Star Grade armaments." His flinty eyes scanned the room, landing like physical weights on Dominic, then Kael. "You did not defeat it. You outmaneuvered a simple minded guardian. You used tricks, teamwork, and in one notable case," his gaze fixed on Kael, "a conceptual anomaly that has yet to be properly classified."
He leaned forward on the lectern. "If that Golem had been piloted by a hostile Ascendant-tier mage, or programmed for true lethality, you would currently be smears of organic paste decorating the Spire's foundation. Your survival was a pedagogical tool, not an accomplishment."
The room was utterly silent. The pride from the rankings evaporated, replaced by a cold, sinking feeling.
"Your goal at Lorri's Arch," Brys continued, "is to climb. From Awakened," he said, as if it were a disease, "to Adept. To learn to channel your power without blowing your own hands off. A select few of you might, by graduation, touch the lower ranks of Ascendant. That is the ceiling of this institution. Dominion is for legends, monsters, and the dead. Remember your place. Remember the gap."
He then launched into a brutal, no nonsense lecture on mana density equations and vein strain thresholds. It was terrifying. It was also the first real, tangible framework of power any of them had received.
Kael tried to take notes. He really did. But the equations swam, and his mind kept drifting back to the feeling of the Golem's binding matrix unraveling. "Was that a Tier III effect? A Tier V one? What tier is 'unmaking'?"
At the end of the lecture, Brys assigned their first practical exercise. "Tomorrow, in Controlled Environment Three. You will manifest and sustain a single, stable sphere of water above your palm. No larger than an apple. No fluctuations. Purity and control. That is all." He said it like he was ordering them to defuse a bomb.
As they filed out, the tension broke into nervous chatter. Justin was already trying to reassure a panicked Ellora. "It's just water! You summon spirits! Water will be easy!"
"Spirits have personalities! Water just… sits there!" Ellora wailed softly.
Dominic fell into step beside Kael, who was staring blankly at his notes, which contained a surprisingly good doodle of a sad looking golem and the words 'organic paste.'
"Cheer up," Dominic said, deadpan. "At least you're not being asked to make water. You'll probably accidentally summon a philosophical ocean that questions the meaning of moisture."
Kael groaned. "Don't give it ideas."