Laia stood on the highest pedestal, her scuffed academy robes hanging loose on her shoulders, and fought the urge to fidget. To her left stood Murong Xue, regal and unflappable in silk robes of ivory, every inch the imperial princess. To her right stood Soren Shaw, sharp-featured and smiling, the picture of poised noble ambition. Both kept glancing sidelong at her, their eyes bright with curiosity and calculation, and Laia's skin crawled. She knew that look. That was the look of people who wanted something from you—alliances, patronage, secrets, all the messy political entanglements she'd spent three years at the academy carefully avoiding.
Great, she thought, gluing her gaze to a crack in the marble floor. Now I've got two of the most powerful students in the empire breathing down my neck. Just what I needed.
Headmaster Corvin stepped forward to deliver the closing address, his deep voice rolling through the hall without amplification. He spoke of resilience, of logistics, of lessons that would serve them far better on the frontier than any flashy battle spell. Laia nodded along, only half listening, her eyes fixed on the velvet cushion being carried out before the pedestals. Resting on it were an ornate steel shield inlaid with frost runes, a stack of gilded oracle cards, and a heavy medallion on a silver chain.
Not a single glint of divine crystal anywhere.
Her chest gave a dull, familiar ache. Second place got ten thousand crystals. Third got five thousand. Eighth place got a respectable ten thousand too, for that matter. And first place? A fancy shield she couldn't sell, a set of support cards she didn't strictly need, a medal, and an apprenticeship with a War God.
Useful, technically. Prestigious, certainly. But none of it paid the realm maintenance fees. None of it bought new seed stock or forge fuel or the essence refills her core burned through every month.
When the ceremony broke up, Lyra Voss darted through the dispersing crowd and skidded to a stop in front of her, her eyes bright with barely contained excitement.
"Laia! That was—you were incredible! I had no idea the tunnel rats were yours. No wonder you always told me not to waste food." She paused, tilting her head. "Wait, are you alright? You look… upset."
Laia sighed, slumping back against a marble pillar.
"I won," she said, flat as dry bread. "First place. Zero divine crystals. Not one."
Lyra blinked. She glanced down at the small spatial pouch clutched in her own hand—eighth place, ten thousand crystals, plain and unglamorous, just cold hard currency. She'd been thrilled about it five minutes ago. Now she felt faintly guilty.
"…Oh," she said, quietly.
She'd never met anyone who looked less happy about winning a national tournament. Top students were supposed to preen, and boast, and talk about glory and advancement. Laia looked like someone had just emptied her coin purse and run off.
Well, Lyra thought, tucking her own pouch out of sight. Geniuses are weird. I respect it.
High up in the headmaster's private tower, far above the noise of the crowd, two old men stood before a glowing scrying stone replaying the tournament's final months at double speed.
Corvin traced a finger along the score readout burned into the stone's surface: 105,000 points for first place. Barely 40,000 each for second and third. The gap was staggering.
"She did not even deploy her core clans," he said, shaking his head. "The Soulbane legions. The abyssal-touched forces. We banned them from the arena, and she still won by more than double. This is not ordinary talent."
From the shadows at the back of the room, Lord Thorne stepped forward. He was a tall, gaunt man with a pale scar slashing across his left cheek, clad in plain unadorned plate armor scuffed with the wear of a hundred border campaigns. He looked less like a legendary War God and more like a retired sergeant who'd seen too much.
"Ordinary talent doesn't win a free-for-all by napping and eating pastries," he grunted. "I'll give her that much. But winning a student tournament is one thing. Surviving the Abyss is another."
Corvin turned, his brow furrowed.
"So you will take her on as your apprentice?"
"For one year," Thorne said, his voice rough as gravel. "One year. If she can awaken true Abyss Resistance in her subjects in that time—not scrolls, not trinkets, not borrowed essence—then she is worth the trouble. Then I will tell her the secret of the western marches. If she cannot?"
He shrugged, his gaze hard as flint.
"Then the secret dies with me. Better that than hand it to someone who'll get herself and her whole command killed on their first tour. Skill with tunnels and grain sacks is all well and good. Out there? You need to look the Abyss in the eye and not flinch. You need to not let it get into your bones."
Corvin nodded slowly. He did not argue. He knew better than to argue with Thorne about the Abyss. The old soldier had lost too many good men to the corruption to be lenient.
"One year," he said. "Fair enough."
Back in the student dormitories, Laia flopped face-down onto her narrow straw mattress, the champion's medallion clinking against the wooden nightstand.
She'd spent the walk back running the numbers in her head. The shield was technically valuable, but academy-awarded artifacts were strictly regulated; selling one carried a hefty fine and possible expulsion. The oracle cards were useful for army support, but they didn't translate directly into coin. The apprenticeship was impressive on paper, but there had been no mention of a stipend anywhere on the reward parchment.
"Maybe he pays his apprentices," she mumbled into her pillow. "Fingers crossed."
She rolled onto her back and stared up at the cracked plaster ceiling. Tomorrow she was supposed to report to the old western training grounds at dawn to meet her new master. Tomorrow her apprenticeship would begin.
She had no idea about the trial. No idea about the secret. No idea that the hardest year of her life was about to start, and that it would have nothing to do with tournament strategy or supply line raids.
All she knew was that she still didn't have her ten thousand crystals.
And that, more than anything else, was downright criminal.
Somewhere below her window, the academy stray hound Rusty yawned and curled up tighter for the night. Somewhere deep in her divine realm, her subjects celebrated late into the night, singing drinking songs and stacking sacks of grain high. Somewhere in the tower above, two old men plotted a year of brutal training.
Laia closed her eyes.
Tomorrow, she thought. I'll worry about it tomorrow.
And for now, that was enough.