Laia pushed open the dormitory door and stepped inside. The room smelled of old parchment and faint jasmine incense, and the bed in the far corner—her bed—was still neatly made, untouched since the start of term. She did not mind. These dorm rooms were meant for wealthy scions to sit and meditate on rule-forces, not for someone like her. She had no structured training, no family techniques to refine. Most of her time went into scribbling oracle scripts and bargaining with her stubborn subjects.
The door swung open again a minute later, and three girls filed in, laughing and chattering. They froze when they saw her, then brightened.
The red-haired one—Seraphina, the unofficial leader of the room—stepped forward first, grinning. "Well, well. Look who finally remembered she has roommates. I was starting to think you'd moved out entirely."
Laia gave a small, polite smile. "Sorry. I've been busy."
"Busy is right," Elara chimed in, setting her satchel down on the nearest desk. "What brings you back today, anyway? We never see you."
Laia sighed, shaking her head. "Necessity, mostly. Life's expensive."
She did not say the real reason: her beat-up old aether-communicator—secondhand, held together with wire and hope—could not access the tournament registration system. She had to use the rune-terminal built into the dorm's common desk.
The Aetheric Nexus linked every deity across the realms. You could wander its endless halls, trade goods at market nodes, or step into purpose-built arenas for kingdom warfare—1v1, 3v3, 5v5, every format you could want. Deliveries went through the Nexus too; you paid, you picked up your goods at a relay node, and that was that. No refunds. No returns. Plenty of fools dropped tens of thousands of crystals on fancy high-grade artifacts that turned out to be nothing but pretty paperweights.
Laia never had to worry about that. She had no crystals to waste. She could not even get a line of credit. Her student loans were still outstanding, even with the scholarship covering tuition. The rest of the costs ate through every scrap she earned. She was so poor the loan sharks would not even bother with her.
The three girls exchanged a look. They had long since given up trying to figure out what their quiet roommate did all day. She was polite, she was tidy, she never caused trouble—and she was never around. It was a little odd, but harmless enough.
Seraphina leaned against the desk, crossing her arms. "Heard you hit Third Rank already. That's insane. Did you ignite your divine spark yet? What's your authority?"
Third Rank was the great threshold. Ignite your spark, and you claimed your first unique divine authority. It was supposed to be a grand, life-changing milestone.
Laia shook her head slowly.
All three girls deflated a little. They had been hoping their quiet roommate would be the first in the year to light her spark—they could have bragged about it for months.
"You signed up for the mock tournament, though, right?" Mara asked, leaning in, her eyes bright.
Laia nodded.
They lit up at once. Seraphina grabbed her hands, squeezing tight with excitement. "You've got to win! Take first place! Let us see what a top-tier divine artifact actually looks like. And if you get Master Thorne's apprenticeship? We'll all be riding your coattails for years."
Laia just smiled and shook her head, a bitter twist settling in her chest.
If they knew the truth—if they knew she was a penniless orphan with a broken D-rank kingdom held together by spit and string—would they still be this excited to talk to her?
She was not cold by nature. Down in her kingdom, she joked and bickered and threw tantrums to get her way. But here, in this academy full of nobles, every step felt like walking on thin ice. One wrong move, one slip of the mask, and everything could come crashing down. So she kept her distance. She was polite, she was quiet, and she never let anyone get too close. Even with Lyra, she kept her guard up.
Mara frowned suddenly, tilting her head. "Wait—did any of you see the updated rules that just posted? They said no trait-bearing subjects are allowed in the tournament. Something about unfair competitive balance."
The other two blinked, then waved it off with snorts.
"Traits? Those are for high-tier special subjects," Seraphina said. "What's that got to do with us? Most of us will never see a single trait in our kingdoms."
They turned back to Laia, grinning—then froze at the look on her face.
Laia had gone very still.
She lifted her wrist, staring at the simple divine bracelet wrapped around it. A faint status readout bloomed in the air above it, visible only to her:
Universal Subject Traits (All Races):
Soulbane
Abysstouched
Void Resistance
She knew Void Resistance, of course. After two hundred years of weekly void tides, her people had built up tolerance the hard way, breathing in mist until it no longer burned. But Soulbane? Abysstouched? She had no idea what those even were.
And every last one of her hundred and fifty thousand subjects had all three. Even the humans. Even the dwarves.
Her heart sank straight through her ribs.
You have got to be kidding me, she thought, bleak and furious. I earned these. Why can't I use them?
She sat down heavily on the edge of her bed, her mind racing.
Did this mean she had to raise entirely new subjects? From scratch?
Creating new life-oracles required divine resonance. Precious, hard-won resonance. And at her rank? Half the time she scribbled a new life script, she got something half-useless. There was no guarantee it would even be sentient, let alone useful in a fight. It might just be another mouth to feed.
This is impossible, she thought. There has to be another way.
Borrowing crystals was the last resort. If she borrowed from anyone—from Lyra, from her roommates—they would know. They would figure out she was the charity case, the poor scholarship student. She could not let that happen. Not when she had worked so hard to blend in. She would find another way.
She sat in silence for a long minute, jaw tight, staring at the stone floor.
There was one option. Risky. Stupidly risky. But it would not cost her a single crystal.
The Forsaken Wastes.
Broken, half-eaten fragments of old, fallen kingdoms, adrift in the raw void. They said the place was littered with relics and forgotten treasures—nothing compared to the Abyss, but valuable all the same. And wild, untamed subjects wandered those shattered lands, too. If she went there, she could catch a few. Bring them back. Train them. Use them for the tournament.
But doubt coiled cold in her stomach.
She had Void Resistance too, same as her subjects. It was why the weekly tides never bothered her much.
Resistance was not immunity.
Out there, in the deep void, surrounded by raw, unfiltered void mist? It could kill her. Easily.
She closed her eyes, taking one slow, steadying breath.
One thousand crystals for thirtieth place. A hundred days of breathing room. No more counting every crystal. No more panicking about running dry.
It was worth the risk.
Wasn't it?