Night fell gently over the Black Academy.
No alarms rang.
No mana flares lit the sky.
No prayers were whispered to keep darkness away.
The city did not fear the night.
Lucien walked alone.
Stone paths—uneven but solid—stretched beneath his feet. Lanterns burned with controlled flames, shielded from wind, positioned to reduce shadows rather than banish them. The design was intentional. Everything here was intentional.
To his left, beneath a simple wooden awning, a group of goblin children sat cross-legged, slate boards balanced on their knees. A cobalt apprentice leaned over one of them, tail swaying gently as he corrected the angle of a drawn line.
"No magic," the child complained quietly, voice small but stubborn.
The cobalt smiled—small, patient, tired.
"No shortcuts."
Lucien paused long enough to listen.
Then he moved on.
At the guard post near the western wall, two beastkin stood watch.
Their armor was plain. No enchantments shimmered across the metal. No runes reinforced the leather beneath. They relied on layered plating, overlapping joints, and training that emphasized endurance over bursts of power.
One guard—broad-shouldered, fur streaked with gray—noticed Lucien and straightened.
"Professor," he said respectfully.
Lucien nodded in return.
"Anything unusual?"
"Just the wind," the guard replied. "And distant lights. Far beyond the forest."
Lucien already knew.
Observers never slept anymore.
He continued walking.
The Healing House was still lit.
Inside, Miko and two assistants scrubbed tools in boiled water, movements slow with exhaustion but precise. Cloth strips hung drying in careful rows. The scent of alcohol stung the air.
No incantations.
No mana circles.
Just repetition.
Lucien watched from the doorway.
Every motion in that room was something the world insisted **should not work**.
And yet it did.
He stepped back outside and looked over the city.
From above, the Black Academy was nothing impressive.
No towering spires.
No floating crystals.
No divine monuments.
Just stone, wood, and order.
And people—monsters—living longer than they ever had.
The world called them lesser.
Lucien finally understood why.
It wasn't fear of violence.
It was fear of comparison.
If beings without mana could build cities, then mana was no longer destiny.
If beings without mana could heal, then divine favor was no longer proof.
If beings without mana could organize, educate, and defend themselves—
Then the hierarchy the world was built upon was a lie.
Lucien closed his eyes.
"They will never accept us," he thought.
Not because we are dangerous.
But because we prove they were never chosen.
The realization settled heavily in his chest.
Not anger.
Clarity.
He had asked the wrong question all this time.
Not How do we coexist?
But—
How does a civilization survive when its existence is a crime?
Peace required recognition.
Recognition required superiority.
And superiority was the one thing the world would never grant the manaless.
Lucien exhaled slowly.
This was not a misunderstanding.
This was **erasure in preparation**.
Somewhere beyond the forest, maps were being redrawn.
Zones labeled restricted.
Settlements marked anomalous.
Ideas quietly labeled dangerous.
Lucien looked back at the city.
Children studying by torchlight.
Guards watching without blessings.
Doctors cleaning tools with cracked hands.
All of it built by those the world called inferior.
"I won't ask you to disappear," Lucien whispered—to the city, to the night, to the world itself.
"And I won't beg to exist."
For the first time since being born in this world, Lucien stopped thinking like a survivor.
And began thinking like a historian.
Not of what was.
But of what must endure.
Survivors wrote how they survived.
Historians wrote what must be true.
Maybe in history his name would become the bringer of calamity.
Maybe they would call him the first heretic, the contaminant, the boy who taught monsters to think.
Who cares?
He would be happy to bear it.
If it meant the Black Academy endured.
If it meant children could grow up learning symbols instead of kneeling to runes.
If it meant Miko could heal without hating the hands that helped him.
If it meant Luna could speak without fear.
Then let them write whatever they wanted.
He would write the truth in stone.
And stone remembered.
Lucien turned away from the horizon.
The city slept.
The wall stood.
And in the quiet, something new took root inside him—not rage, not despair.
Resolve.
The world had decided the manaless must not exist.
So he would make sure they could not be ignored.