The bell that shattered the pre-dawn silence wasn't a sound. It was a physical force, a wave of concussive mana that vibrated through the floor of Silver Streams Dormitory, rattling teeth in skulls.
Kael jolted upright, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs. The remnants of a dream golden eyes in the dark, a voice whispering "Unmake them" evaporated into the chill air.
"By the bleeding veins," Dominic groaned from the adjacent bed, not moving. "They could just send a prefect. They have to weaponize the wake up call."
"Principle one," Kael mumbled, fumbling for his academy uniform. "Disorientation is the first tool of conditioning." He'd read it in the introductory manual. Experiencing it was different. The mana in the air still hummed with aggressive intent, making his own Primordial veins thrum in a low, warning echo.
Five minutes later, they were among a stream of groggy, half-fastened first years spilling onto the central training grounds, the Astral Plaza. The sky was a bruised purple, bleeding into watery gold at the horizon. The air bit with frost.
Commander Arcturus Brys awaited them.
He was a monument of a man, carved from shadow and iron. His uniform was pristine black, devoid of rank insignia, but the aura he exuded was a tangible pressure a Archmage might that made the lungs tighten and the soul feel small. His eyes, the color of slagged steel, swept over the assembling students like a general surveying a disappointing battlefield.
"You are soft," his voice boomed, no amplification magic needed. It was the crack of a glacier calving. "You are mana-saturated children playing with concepts you think you understand. Your veins are gifts you have done nothing to earn. Today, you begin earning them. You will run. You will channel. You will hold. You will break. And you will do it until the sun clears the Spire's peak. Move."
No further explanation. The ground beneath their feet shimmered, and a circuit of shimmering, painful light a track of forced mana conduction etched itself into the stone in a one kilometer loop around the plaza.
"Channel your primary attribute into the track! Sustain it! Lag, and it burns! Fall, and you start over! RUN!"
The herd surged forward. Chaos.
Kael pushed mana into his feet, not sure what to channel. Primordial Sovereign meant everything. He chose reinforcement, a basic strengthening. The track glowed a neutral white under his boots, accepting it.
Around him, the sensory storm erupted.
Justin was a streak of silver light, sword magic propelling him with elegant, cutting grace. Ellora, pale but determined, had a faint spirit-wisp swirling around her, soaking the track's demand. Daniel was a blur of shadows, the track sizzling with dark energy where he touched it.
But others faltered. A red veined boy stumbled, his fire mana sputtering. The track flared crimson under him. He screamed a short, sharp sound of genuine agony as his boot sole smoked. The smell of burnt rubber and seared flesh cut through the cold air.
"Consequences!" Brys roared, striding the interior. "Mana exhaustion is not a theory! It is failure! Your body is your first and last instrument! FAIL IT AT YOUR PERIL!"
Kael's lungs burned. The track wasn't just physical. It siphoned. It felt like running through thickening syrup while blood was being drawn from his veins. He saw Dominic, jaw clenched, earth mana making his steps heavy but inexorable, each footfall cracking the stone slightly.
Sophia Vlad Skynyrd passed him, a bolt of purple tinged lightning. Her thunder magic crackled, making Kael's hair stand on end. She didn't look strained. She looked furious at the indignity. "Out of my way, commoner," she hissed, the ozone smell of her power left in her wake.
On the third lap, the track changed. Mana barriers, shimmering walls of force, erupted at random intervals. Students had to blast through or dodge.
"ADAPT!" Brys bellowed.
Kael saw a wall of shimmering water appear before him. He panicked, fumbling for a spell. His mind, sleep deprived and straining, offered nothing coherent. He tried to summon a gust of wind.
Instead, he understood the wall.
It was a construct of ordered, fluid mana particles, held in a lattice. His Primordial instinct reacted not with creation, but with deconstruction. He raised a hand, not casting, but suggesting.
Unmake.
The wall didn't shatter. It unraveled. The water mana dissipated into a harmless, cool mist that washed over him. He passed through the gap, stunned.
Ahead, Corvin Hale, his bronze veins pulsing with effort, was struggling to melt an earth barrier. He saw Kael pass effortlessly. His eyes, red rimmed with exhaustion, filled with pure, venomous hatred.
The drill escalated. Sprints became lunges under hails of conjured gravel. Sustained channeling holds while Brys's Archmage rank aura pressed down on them, a weight that made bones creak. Partner exercises where failure meant your partner took a concussive mana pulse to the chest.
Kael saw Ellora take a hit for a stumbling commoner girl. She flew back three feet, the breath knocked out of her, her spirit wisp screeching in protest. Justin was there in an instant, pulling her up, his face a mask of protective fury.
Daniel moved like a ghost, never taking a direct hit, using shadows to dissipate force. Dominic simply absorbed the punishment, reinforcing his body until his nose bled a thin, silvery trickle a sign of capillary rupture from over channeling.
Kael's world narrowed to the burn in his muscles, the hollow ache in his mana veins, the metallic taste of blood in his mouth from biting his tongue. He wasn't the fastest or the strongest. But he was enduring. And when barriers appeared, he unmade them. A bind of vines? It withered to dust at his touch. A cage of light? It fractured into harmless luminescent motes.
Each time, it cost him. Not mana, exactly. A deeper fatigue. A cold spot in his core, as if he'd scraped away a piece of reality itself.
Finally, as the sun's first true ray gilded the peak of the Shattered Spire in the distance, Brys called a halt.
Half the cohort was on their knees. Some were vomiting. A few were unconscious, being attended by hovering, silent med drones.
Kael stood, trembling, sweat and condensation plastering his hair to his forehead. He met Brys's gaze across the field.
The Commander's steel eyes lingered on him for a half-second longer than anyone else. A flicker of something not approval. Assessment. Recognition of an anomaly.
Brys didn't dismiss them. He let the silence stretch, filled with the sound of ragged, pained breath.
"You think you're training to be mages?" His voice was lower now, but it carried the same finality. "You're not. You are learning to be Ascendants. You will live and die by the Twelve Rungs. Know them. Fear them. Aspire to them."
He took a step, and his Archmage rank aura descended again, not as a crushing blow, but as an immovable truth.
"Awakened." He spat the word like an epithet. "Where you stand now. Infants who have just opened their eyes. Most of you will die here. Your only job is to not be most of you."
A wave of his hand. The spent mana conducting track flickered.
"Initiate. The first true step. You will learn to shape your attribute into something resembling a spell. By year's end, the worthy among you will reach this. The unworthy will be gone."
He paused, his gaze sweeping over Sophia, Justin, the few still standing tall. "Ascendant. True control. True power. This is the Academy's minimum standard for graduation. To be an Ascendant is to be a force your home village will whisper about. This is what you will earn, or you will leave in a box."
The silence was absolute. Even the wind seemed to still.
"What comes after?" A grim, almost hungry smile touched his lips. "Archmage. Paragon. Sovereign." He said his own rank with a weight that made the air shudder. "At these ranks, you do not fight for credits. You fight for nations. For ideologies. You become a pillar of the world... or the hammer that shatters it."
His eyes, like slagged steel, found Kael's again, then Dominic's, Justin's, Sophia's. A chilling promise.
"And beyond? Demigod. Divinity. Celestial. Primordial. Eternal." He listed the mythic tiers with the reverence of a priest naming distant, uncaring gods. "The names of those who have shaped reality itself. Do not waste your thoughts on them. Your only thought is the next step. The next rung. The next breath."
He let the scale of the journey sink into their exhaustion addled brains.
"MOVE! Dismissed! First meal in twenty. First class in one. You are all pathetic. You will be less pathetic tomorrow."
The collective release of breath was a sob.
The infirmary was a sterile, white lit haven of quiet hums and the scent of antiseptic and mending herbs. Kael's body felt like one giant bruise.
He sat on the edge of a cot, guzzling a nutrient-rich, vile tasting potion a drone had provided, when the door hissed open.
Lisa Ambrose Tempest entered. Her half-elf features were serene, her emerald eyes fixed on a data slate. She wore a form fitting white and blue researcher's coat over her uniform.
"Kael Osborn. Your 47 minute session begins now. Follow me." Her voice was calm, melodic, utterly devoid of the morning's brutality.
She led him to an adjacent, sealed chamber. It was circular, the walls lined with dark, mana absorbent panels. In the center was a simple metal chair facing a complex array of crystalline lenses, arcane circles etched into the floor, and hovering sensors.
"Sit. The session is observational and minimally invasive. I will monitor your mana flow, vein resonance, and attribute response to standardized stimuli. You will answer my questions with precision. Do you consent?"
Kael nodded, too tired to argue. "Yes."
"Verbal confirmation required for archival purposes."
"I consent."
"Good." Lisa tapped her slate. The room dimmed. The crystals glowed with soft, polychromatic light. A gentle hum filled the air. "Begin log. Subject: Kael Osborn, First-Year. Primordial Sovereign Affinity, designation Black-Gold Veins. Session One: Baseline Catalyzation."
For the first twenty minutes, it was as clinical as promised. Lisa directed him to channel tiny, specific amounts of mana. She noted the reactions. When he produced a flame, the sensors spiked. A trickle of water made them whirr differently. A gust of wind, a pebble of earth, a spark of lightning each was measured, catalogued.
"Fascinating," she murmured, her eyes darting between him and the slate. "The waveform is perfectly adaptive. No harmonic dissonance. It's as if the mana is not being shaped by you, but is… agreeing with your intent."
She then introduced stimuli. A shard of Fire-Ruby glowed when he neared it. A chunk of Netherite dampened all output. A leaf of Soulmoss quivered.
Then, she brought out a sliver of Violent Purple Quartz.
"This mineral reacts to volatile, high-potency power. Standard reaction is a pulsing glow. Channel any mana near it."
Kael, wary, extended a finger and let a wisp of generic mana touch the air near the quartz.
It didn't glow.
It screamed.
A piercing, psychic shriek filled the chamber. The quartz vibrated violently, then imploded into a fine, inert dust. The lights flickered. Lisa's data-slate blared an alarm she quickly silenced.
Silence, thick and sudden, descended.
Lisa stared at the dust, then at Kael. Her clinical detachment had finally cracked. In her eyes was a blaze of pure, unadulterated revelation. "It wasn't overloaded," she whispered. "It was… nullified. The volatility was unmade."
She looked at him, not as a subject anymore, but as a profound mystery. "What are you, Kael Osborn?"
Before he could formulate a lie, the door to the chamber chimed. A smooth, unnervingly pleasant voice filtered through the intercom.
"Miss Tempest. My apologies for the interruption. I believe you have Kael Osborn with you. Would you be so kind as to send him to my office? His… supplemental instruction begins today."
The voice was cultured, refined, and dripped with a honeyed menace that made Kael's blood run colder than any ice magic.
It was Lord Malakai.
Lord Malakai's office was in a subsidiary tower, a place of quiet shadows and absorbed light. The door slid open without a sound.
The office was a study in curated, unsettling beauty. One wall was a single pane of crystal overlooking the academy. The others held artifacts: globes of swirling liquid, pulsing crystals. In a place of honor, encased in glass, was a large, iridescent dragon scale that prickled against Kael's senses.
Malakai sat behind a desk of polished star-fall obsidian. Handsome, ageless, with silver-touched hair and eyes like deep mercury. He smiled.
"Kael. Please, sit. I trust the dawn drill was… enlightening?"
Kael sat. "It was intense, sir."
"As it should be. Commander Brys understands that power is first a physical truth." Malakai steepled his fingers. "But you, my boy, represent a different truth. A conceptual one. Your power doesn't just shape elements; it questions their right to exist. This is dangerous. To others. To you."
He gestured, and a hologram shimmered to life, showing a chaotic black-gold signature labelled P.S.A. - Subject K.O. "Standard curriculum is a shackle for you. You require supplemental instruction. To understand, and to control."
"What does it involve, sir?"
"Twofold," Malakai said, rising to gaze at the dragon scale. "Theoretical study of forbidden texts on primordial forces. And practical application." He turned, his eyes gleaming. "You will learn to channel your unique output through resonant foci. Artifacts that can withstand it. Starting with this."
He gestured to the scale. The case slid open. The ancient, draconic presence within it swelled, clashing with the silent, screaming dragon pact heritage in Kael's own blood.
"Touch it. Introduce your mana. Let the Primordial greet the Draconic."
Kael's hand trembled as he reached out. Contact.
The world screamed.
Images sky fire, mountain crushing pride, endless flight flooded him. The scale reacted to his sovereign presence not with submission, but with the fury of a supreme lineage challenged. Black gold light erupted from Kael's veins, clashing with the scale's iridescent aura. The air ripped. Something in Kael's core, the dormant pact, writhed.
He was thrown back, arm numb, the scent of ozone and hot metal in his nose. The scale glowed white hot before cooling.
Malakai's eyes were avid with fascination. "Rejection and resonance. The conflict itself is a power source. Again."
It was not training. It was tempered torture. Each touch was a psychic battering ram, a war between two supreme concepts hosted in his fragile flesh. He left an hour later, nauseous, with phantom pains and the haunting certainty that something ancient had been awakened deep within him.
"Remember, Kael," Malakai said as he dismissed him, his voice soft as a razor's edge. "Our conversations are proprietary. The mysteries of the Primordial are for the forge, not for clinical reports. Do we understand each other?"
The unspoken command was absolute: Lie to Lisa.
"Yes, Lord Malakai."
The door slid shut. Kael stood in the light-eating corridor, the afterimage of the dragon scale burning behind his eyes.
He had survived the dawn. He had endured the scalpel. Now, he was bound to the shadow.
Three teachers. Three paths. One soul, stretched between them, beginning to crack.