The morning after the announcement felt no different.
The sun burned just as harshly. The streets echoed with the same tired voices. The stones beneath Kaien's feet were still warm and cracked, still stained with ash and grime from the day before. Nothing looked changed.
But something was.
It sat in the air. Pressed against the backs of people's necks. A kind of awareness that hadn't been there before. A silence between words. A look held a moment too long.
The Selection Trials had awakened something in the slums. Not hope. That was too fragile. It was something sharper. Hungrier.
Kaien moved through the alleys with practiced ease, delivering herbs to an apothecary in the river quarter. He kept his head low. Watched his steps. Took longer routes where the streets were less crowded.
The streets near the inner walls had become louder. People argued about eligibility. Rumors spread like wildfire. Someone claimed to have already seen a scout from Astraeus. Another claimed Hollowspire had sent something worse than a scout.
Kaien ignored all of it.
He didn't belong in those conversations.
At least, he told himself that.
By midday, he found himself near the old canal, sitting on a stone ledge overlooking the dried-out trench below. A bridge arched overhead, barely holding its weight. Ivy crept up the walls on both sides.
This was one of the few places in the Outer Ring where it was quiet.
Rin found him there.
He didn't speak at first. Just tossed down a waterskin and sat beside him.
They passed a few minutes in silence.
"Still planning to stay out of it?" Rin asked eventually.
Kaien didn't answer right away.
"I don't know what I'd even be stepping into."
"You've seen the Selection before. You know how it goes."
Kaien nodded slowly. "I've seen the ones who don't make it. I've seen the ones who make it and come back broken."
"Yeah," Rin said. "Me too."
They sat a little longer. Wind stirred the ivy. A bell rang faintly in the distance, marking the end of the midday watch.
"You felt it, didn't you?" Rin asked quietly.
Kaien didn't move.
"The day before yesterday. Something happened. You felt it."
Kaien looked ahead, eyes on the cracks in the stone trench.
"I don't know what I felt."
"Maybe," Rin said, standing up and brushing dust from his hands. "But maybe the Selection isn't just about proving something to them. Maybe it's about finding out what's already inside you."
Kaien didn't respond.
Rin walked away, leaving only the wind and the faint sound of water dripping somewhere far below.
Kaien sat until the sun began to shift. Then he stood, turned away from the bridge, and walked home with the feeling that something unseen was walking with him.