The cafeteria roared like a festival market. Laughter ricocheted off stone arches; trays clattered; steam rose from vats of stew and baskets of fresh bread. Wads, Liora, and Klyden shuffled forward with the queue, shoulders brushing strangers and friends alike as lines bent and reformed like currents in a river.
"Extra rice," Klyden told the server with a grin that could start a second sun. The mound on his plate turned architectural.
Liora collected sausage and crisp greens, the practiced ease of a veteran raider selecting only what she'd actually eat. Wads took his usual—plain rice, salted vegetables, broth—food that didn't argue with his senses.
They wove through a maze of tables. Klyden led, whistling off-key, then cut left with sudden certainty and dropped into a seat like the chair had been reserved for him since birth.
Across from him, Keiya lifted her gaze. The glare she flicked sideways could have seared paint. "You," she said, each syllable a pebble skittering down cold marble.
Klyden cheerfully stabbed rice. "Me," he agreed.
"You have an entire wing of open seats."
"Those chairs don't have you," Klyden said, already eating. "And your lectures have fewer calories than this stew, so balance."
Keiya inhaled as if bracing to extinguish a wildfire. "Every day, you astonish me in new and regrettable ways."
Liora snorted and slid into the opposite bench. Wads sat beside her because there was nowhere else to go that wouldn't be a retreat. He set his tray down, glanced at the swirl of bodies around them—upper-years in dark coats, first-years in looser collars, everyone thrumming with the same coiled anticipation—and focused back in as Klyden started blabbing.
"Alright, Wads," Klyden said around a heroic forkful, "explain the thing from earlier. The combo chart. The… what-d'you-call-it… mash-up meaning."
"You mean combined ranks," Wads replied, deadpan.
"Right! That. Layman's terms. Preferably Klyden terms."
Liora propped her cheek on her fist, amused. Keiya angled her head just enough to listen while pretending not to.
Wads obliged, voice low and even. "Think of the combat track as lanes. Archeo is raw physical supremacy—speed, technique, endurance. Macheo is arcane technique and control. They aren't opposites, just different weights on a scale."
Klyden blinked. "And Diety?"
"A letter for your innate magical aptitude—how quickly your mind and mana solve problems." Wads lifted his spoon. "So if someone's Archeo with a Diety Q: they're extremely strong and skilled physically, but their magical logic is average. They'll dominate a brawl, but in a high-magic or puzzle fight, they'll struggle."
"Ah," Klyden said, nodding so hard his hair almost shed sunlight. "Like me when Keiya throws six suns at my face."
Keiya didn't look up. "She throws only two. Yet you squeal as though seven."
Liora laughed into her water.
"And Macheo with Diety XX?" Wads continued. "Not the absolute strongest physically, but their magical insight is extraordinary. If the field tilts toward mana, strategy, or layered spells, they become terrifying. They can make a stronger opponent chase ghosts."
Klyden pointed his spoon. "So you're saying, if I'm a battering ram, they're the labyrinth."
"More like the architect of it."
"I prefer rams," Klyden decided, then shoveled more rice.
"I'm excited for the event," Liora said, spearing a sausage and biting cleanly.
"Whaf evef?" Klyden asked, mouth industriously full.
"You don't know?" Liora lifted a brow. "Top ten first-years against sophomores."
Klyden froze, cheeks still rounded with rice. "Whuf? Seryosly?" He swallowed like a drowning man finding air. Then: "Ohh, I'm excited!"
Keiya stared at him like he'd confessed to enjoying being on fire. "How do the two of you understand each other?" She flicked a glance at Wads. "Only an idiot deciphers another."
Klyden set down his spoon with melodramatic care. "Who's the idiot?"
"You," Keiya said.
He grinned wider. "Fair."
Liora kicked his shin under the table. "Eat before you combust."
Klyden yelped—then laughed at himself—and the four of them settled into a rhythm of clatter and chatter that almost felt normal.
It broke when a voice rolled through the hall—hoarse, distant, magically amplified from nowhere and everywhere at once.
"Students of Zheno," the Grandmaster intoned, "I am unable to meet you today, but the announcement stands."
Above every table, translucent panels snapped into existence with a crystalline clank, casting floating light across faces. Names and brackets unfurled in elegant silver script, arena assignments splitting like veins across a map. The cafeteria quieted, a thousand eyes tipping upward.
"…duels shall be held across multiple arenas," the voice continued. "All years may attend. Matchups are balanced for parity. Train wisely."
Lists scrolled. Wads scanned automatically, measuring cadence, noting patterns. Then another panel bloomed—ten names in careful order.
Top 10 Sophomores
Alaric Veynar
Seraphine d'Artois
Cassian Volterrani
Isolde Falkenrath
Benedictus Marrowe
Lyra von Heissen
Edric Blackmoore
Thalassa Corvane
Gideon Ashcroft
Evelina Petrovna
"Who are these?" Klyden asked, baffled, a single grain of rice stuck comically in his lower cheek.
"I don't know most," Liora admitted, "but one is familiar." Her red-and-green gaze narrowed. "Alaric Veynar."
"Who's that?" Klyden tilted his head.
"Strong. Famous in their year," Liora said, then drank. "People say he's already flirting with the level of Her Highness."
Klyden whistled, then winced as Keiya's eyes slid his way.
Around them, voices rose—bets, boasts, anxieties braided into a single living rope. Magic boards blinked out with a final crystalline shiver. The air felt thinner, like the entire Academy had inhaled and forgotten to exhale.
Wads sat back. The noise fell away from him, muffled by a different pulse—the slow, steady thud of focus. Excitement gathered low in his spine, cold and bright. He wanted pressure. He wanted the cliff edge. He wanted a foe that would make the world narrow to a single knife-point again.
Aetherial Eclipse wouldn't answer him on command. He had tried—hours, days—chasing that same horizon, and it refused to rise. Maybe it needed the fall. Maybe it needed true danger. Maybe it simply didn't care what he wanted.
He realized he'd been staring at the empty air when Liora's laugh pulled him back. Across the table, Klyden was offering Keiya half a roll, presenting it like a rare jewel.
"For you, a delicacy."
"It is bread," Keiya said, appalled.
"A very round one," Klyden said, wiggling it.
"That does not improve its pedigree." She pushed it back with one finger. "Stop pestering me while I am digesting."
"Your Majesty of Flames," Klyden whispered, "accept this humble tribute—"
She stood, smoothing her tunic, and bowed her head briefly to Wads and Liora. "Excuse me." To Klyden, only a narrowed eye as she gathered her tray and departed with crisp, noble efficiency.
Klyden watched her go, then chuckled and drained his water. "She likes me."
Liora coughed. "Like a rash."
Wads sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. The hall had returned to itself—loud, bright, hungry. But beneath the noise ran a new current, invisible as a rip tide tugging at the ankles of every student in the room.
Three days.
---
Night cooled the Academy to a whisper. Windows went dark one by one; the fountains in the courtyards kept their quiet conversations with the moon. In the dormitory, Keiya's breath was slow and even, the rise and fall of blankets steady. Wads sat on the edge of his bed, sleeplessness fizzing behind his eyes like a static storm. He slid on his boots, lifted his cloak, and left without a sound.
The garden found him as it always did—down a narrow corridor, past a door most assumed was locked. It opened onto another world. The scent met him first: damp earth, night-blooming jasmine, green things breathing. Lantern moths drifted from shadow to shadow. A thin rill of water threaded through stones and under arching ferns, a silver ribbon under moonlight.
He walked the gravel path slowly, palms brushing leaves, letting his mind unspool. A blue lily drew his eye—a single flower set in a crescent of glossy leaves, its petals layered like a star, color so deep it seemed to drink the light.
He tilted his head, compelled. The feeling rose again—familiarity that wasn't memory, belonging that wasn't earned. He reached out and touched the petal with two fingers.
The locket at his throat pulsed once, hard, a cold shock spreading through his chest. Pain followed—sharp, immediate. His breath stuttered. He stumbled, one hand flying to the chain beneath his shirt.
Blur smeared his vision. A pressure, heavy and absolute, closed around his skull, and behind his eyes a door swung open on a gale.
Images hit him—too close, too bright, too fast. A corridor of marble not like Zheno's, a hand pale and warm in his own, a voice calling through water. He tried to grab at one thread; it dissolved. He couldn't breathe right. He went to his knees, hand braced in the gravel, mouth dragging at the air.
He'd had headaches before—hometown nights, stray nightmares—but never like this. This made the world tilt.
A voice, inside the storm. A girl's. Far and near at once.
W—?
What—?
Wuther, she mouthed, and the name tore through him like a bell.
His breath crashed back in ragged waves. He stared at the ground until the pale stones sharpened into shapes again. Sweat cooled on his spine. He dragged a palm across his forehead and leaned back to sit fully, back against a low hedge, breathing until the panic receded.
"Wuther…?" he whispered, tasting the syllables, trying to anchor them to something that wasn't there.
A rustle to his right. He reached for focus without moving, letting the garden draw lines around the intruder—steps soft, weight balanced on the balls of the feet, not a novice. He turned his head.
Moonlight fell across a young man standing a few paces away. Ash-brown hair cropped close; storm-gray eyes watching with clear, wary concern. A thin scar ran down the left eye, keeping the lid in a permanent, almost-lazy squint. He wore the Academy uniform neat and unadorned, the cut suiting a body built for efficiency rather than display.
"I'm sorry," the stranger said, hands half-raised as if to show he carried no threat. His voice was gentle, the kind that didn't rush. "Are you alright?"
Wads studied him, measuring more than looking. Power. Quiet and tightly held. The air around him thinned by presence alone. This man is strong as hell.
Wads's mouth parted before he caught it. "Yes," he said, and his voice came out steady. "I am."
The young man nodded, relief passing over his features in a small, honest wave. "I was just walking. Saw you—" He gestured vaguely toward the ground. "—and thought maybe you needed… I don't know. Water? A longer bench?" He smiled, sheepish, not quite meeting Wads's eyes out of courtesy rather than fear.
He hesitated, then extended a hand.
"My name's Alaric," he said. "From the House of Veynar, South."
Moonlight snagged on the edges of his smile. Somewhere in the distance, a bell marked the late hour. The garden held its breath.
Wads looked at the offered palm, at the quiet strength behind it, at the duel-shaped future waiting three days away like a cliff in fog.
He reached up.