Banners of the empire fluttered high above the grand marble rotunda of the Holy Academy. Beneath them gathered hundreds of new initiates. Some were restless, some perhaps eager for what the Orientation offers; all proudly wearing the academy's ceremonial garb: a white-collared shirt, golden buttons, and navy-blue coats stitched with their faction's insignia. They each bore scarves or badges that signified their alignment—Radiant Choir, Elven Ivy, Nobles of Grace, Azure Lances, and lastly, the Celestial Accords. Some students, foreigners to the Land, even wore subtle charms from the borderless factions in the outer provinces.
And then there was Damien Everwinter.
He stood in the middle of the formation, trying to blend in with the cheer and ambition of those standing beside him. He couldn't quite feel like he was a part of it all. His scarf bore the mark of the Celestial Accord, but it hung on him like a borrowed necklace, waiting to be returned to its rightful owner.
This place, this school—this shining hallroom—was a world away from Gravenreach, the sunless town where dreams sagged under the weight of dust and survival. There, orientation meant a priest preaching about scripture in a decaying shrine, and school was a cold bench, a blank slate, and empty rooms. Laughter was rare. The children's futures were static. Teachers spoke like mourners.
Here, voices chimed like bells.
"Welcome to the first year ceremony!"
A cheery herald declared, prompting a soft stir across the polished hall.
"Today marks the beginning of what you could describe as THE beginning of all beginnings. For you are now a student of the holiest place in the whole empire, the Académie de l'Aube Sanctifiée. Now, without any further-ado, I present to you the man who you will be blessed to study under for the next few years."
Gasps echoed faintly as an elderly figure ascended its final steps.
The Headmaster had arrived.
He was draped in layered ivory robes adorned with silver embroidery that caught every flicker of light. His long, silver beard, braided into three neat strands, swung lightly as he walked. Placed upon his head was an ancient diadem, etched with angelic glyphs. It was an artifact, one that was whispered to, from the battlefield of the Seraphim Gates, gifted to the very first headmaster of this institute by Archangel Gabriel himself.
His voice, when it rang, was both warm and nerve-wreckingly cold.
"New flames of Solence," he began speaking upon stepping foot in the podium. He raised a palm over the sea of heads.
"May the light you carry never flicker in the wind of doubt."
The room lay silent.
"I am Headmaster Voltaire Thorncrown," he continued. "And as of this day, you have been crowned as the scholars of our empire."
With a proud look around the hallroom, he continues,
"Your bloodlines, your fates, your beliefs—they converge here not to compete, but to be redefined. Be it by fire, by wit or by announcing your title as a martyr to the land, make sure to etch your names in the ballroom of history."
An admiring gaze from a select few followed. Others felt a pressure they had to live up to, be it from themselves or for their family.
After sharing some more complimentary greetings to those that passed the entrance exams, he paused briefly before shifting tone.
"You may hear rumors in the weeks to come. Tales of unrest beyond the southern gate. Of infernal sightings. Even breaches in the Witherflow. Let me tell you this—"
His voice lowered.
"Rumor is a treacherous teacher. It inflicts doubt inside you. Believe only what your eyes survive."
With that, he stepped back, and the students quietly processed his words. Damien glanced around. Some looked unaffected, others visibly tense. The teachers wore mild, polite smiles—yet their eyes lingered too long on one another.
Then, the headmaster raised his hand once more.
"Now, allow me to introduce this school year's First Year Representative, Crown Prince Nicholas Ravenhear!. May he come forth and address his fellow scholars."
There was a moment of expectancy. All eyes turned to the entrance, a grand door waiting to be opened.
But the hinges on it did not turn.
Whispers floated like mist. Students craned their necks. Teachers looked into each other's eyes as if the most unexpected had happened.
One instructor cleared his throat and began whispering something to a colleague, when suddenly, the great brass doors slammed open. Their echo cracked the murmuring in the room like thunder against the gilded towers.
A boy stumbled in, panting heavily.
His face was pale. His hands trembled as he pointed behind him.
"They—they were attacked!" he cried, voice hoarse. "Nicholas—Prince Nicholas and his envoys—they've been ambushed!"
Gasps erupted like a wave through the hall. A stunned silence clung to the ceremonial hall as the pale student's scream echoed into stillness.
Then a large crash interrupted the chaos hurrying throughout the room like the tide in moonlit nights.
The stained glass window posed on the eastern side of the upper veranda shattered into a kaleidoscope of color. Shards spun through the air like crystalline confetti. A gust of wind, unnaturally cold, howled inside the arena, carrying with it the scent of sulfur and storm.
And from the air, he stepped forward.
His slick-back ashes hair contrasted heavily with the wine-dark cloak he was draped in. He landed onto the podium floor with a dancer's grace, and once he was on the stage, he gave a deep, theatrical bow towards the students.
"My lord, as I promised to you," he said with venomous charm, "the performance begins here."
In a heartbeat, Mirane Rosewood, with a stern-face rose from her seat. Without a word, she flung her hand toward the intruder.
"I call upon the Fifth Circle: Spirit of the Gilded Falcon!"
The air was showered with gold. A sphere of runes spun around her, circling one another in a series of five perfect spirals. Then, it erupted upward, into the form of a towering golden falcon—a bird carrying the flow of a knight, clad in flame-etched wings, wielding a certain glow in its eyes that shimmered like dawn. It lunged forward, its spear piercing straight at the man's chest.
A grand explosion was heard from even the far quarters of the Academia.
A translucent shield snapped into existence around him at the very last second, absorbing the impact in a thunderclap of sparkles. The podium cracked beneath him. Dust spiraled upward. Then in silence, he stood up.
And laughed.
Not just any laugh—in a slow, mocking chortle, he laughed knowing that they'd just played one of their best cards and it was, to him, a child's trick.
"Oh, how predictable," he said, eyes glowing faintly red. "The holy ones always attack before they listen. What happened to mercy? What happened to diplomacy?" He spun slowly, arms raised. "You preach peace from pulpits then hurl spears at those who speak."
He continued,
"Nothing you divine folks shine upon this Jester's barrier will cause its flaws to be shown."
Mirane lowered her hand, and so did the rest of the Leaders. They knew his words weren't just a facade.
His eyes landed on Damien, and for a brief moment, something akin to recognition flickered in them.
Then he spoke again, this time louder, with his voice cracking a hoarse throat.
"Let it be known," he announced, "from this day forward, none of you are safe. And I do mean none of you. Not even your most noble peers will know peace. Not within these walls. Not within your dreams. The day of reckoning is almost here, and I'll make sure you bear witness to his arrival."
Murmurs surged. The faculty looked to one another, unsure. Even the headmaster stood frozen.
He switched his gaze to Valen, and smiled as if he had just come across a precious trinket worth a thousand dimes.
"The Sainted Child, yes" he spat the words like venom, "I assure you, dear prophecy bringer, your precious golden empire will watch helplessly as the Lord returns—not to cleanse, but to devour."
He turned to the crowd. "You celebrate justice. You believe in divine rule. But look beneath this city's skin. There is rot—old rot, holy rot. Look around you, people. What did Noblesse Oblige even stand for again?"
A brave voice spoke out from within the back. Kevin Kutzlan, "Are you from the lesser colonies then?"
"Did I give you permission to speak or are you chattering monkeys always assuming that you have a right to interrupt whoever you want?"
He raises his arms, and with an annoyed expression,
"That does it. Now you've put me in a bad mood."
Gasps. A few students took a step back. A girl behind Damien began to pray.
"Let's set some examples, shall we?"
As soon as he uttered those words and took a step towards an unphased Valen, a streak of light shined around him suddenly.
Rows upon rows of glyphs began forming midair, encircling and branding themselves on the intruder's shield like clockwork. Their geometry pulsed with power, fractal logic folding into divine syntax. His framework wavered.
The intruder's smile dropped.
"No—no no no!"
He raised his arms, and chanted furiously,
"Circle of the Seventh Flame, bound by name and law, I summon thee: Infernal Pride, punish me with blood—-"
Damien's eyes widened.
A Seventh Circle chant? By a mere intruder from the colonies?
The air grew heavy, pressed down like deep ocean. Very few individuals in the empire were said to have the spiritual bandwidth and glyphic intelligence to invoke anything at the seventh level.
But before the chant could finish, the air grew thin—and the glyphs around him vanished.
It wasn't a spell failing. It was as if some system had cancelled his authority.
The intruder recoiled. "This is why I never trust intel from him!"
He glanced toward the grand entrance—his eyes bloodshot.
There, bathing in light coming through from the broken windows, Orion stepped forward. Silent. Controlled. Radiant in his ivory tunic, a faint glow of Solence coiling around his fingers like threads of liquid gold.
"Goddamnit!" the intruder screamed. "No one told me he would be here!"
Orion did not speak. He did not raise his voice.
He simply lifted a single hand, palm open.
The Seventh Circle chant shook, then collapsed entirely. Their glyph formations disappeared into thin air shortly after.
With a snap of his fingers, golden shackles appeared midair and clamped the intruder's limbs. The man roared, struggling—but the light that held him was absolute. The Solence the crowd were now cheering for was not just any Solence— it was pure, unblemished, and refined to its most perfect essence.
The man dropped to his knees, screaming in agony. He was now a prisoner of radiance.
All around them, the academy sighed a breath of relief. And Damien understood one thing clearly.
This wasn't just a suppression. It was a message.
History's Greatest Sage was now standing in front of him. And as far as Solence is concerned, his word was law.
The chains hissed as they coiled tighter, gleaming with a golden light too pure for even the shadows to touch.
And yet—
The man only smiled.
Shackled, brought to his knees, he lifted his head and met Orion's gaze with gleeful mockery.
"You really are here," he whispered. "Then there's no better subject to test this on."
Orion's eyes narrowed. He took one deliberate step forward.
"Test what?"
The man chuckled. Not like someone caught. Like someone arrived.
His voice dropped to a whisper, almost reverent.
"The threshold."
Then—
The room turned red.
Not blood, not flame. Something deeper. Like the fabric of reality itself had been rewritten.
A pulse rippled across the chamber like a heartbeat from hell. Light bled from the cathedral walls. The stained glass that hadn't yet shattered cracked down the middle, and the divine murals above began to peel, as if rejecting the world they'd once sanctified.
And Orion's chains—
—disappeared.
Not broken.
Erased.
The air that was once full of unfiltered Solence now had an empty void within it. A dead spot in the flow. No glyph could exist there. No divine current ran through it. A place where God's law faltered.
Orion stepped back, clenching his fist forward. Golden glyphs began to bloom around him, circles of complex algebraic light spiraling out from his knuckles.
He was already trying to rewrite the flow of mana itself.
But it was too late.
The man was gone.
Not vanished — removed, like a page torn clean from scripture.
A silence followed, loud and awful.
Then—
Damien didn't realize it until the heat in his chest made his lungs ache, as if his body had forgotten what normal was supposed to feel like.
He'd seen power of an unimaginable magnitude before. But this?
Orion hadn't even spoken.
The man had summoned a Seventh Circle glyph — and Orion cancelled it with lesser power. And yet even he couldn't prevent what had just happened.
What kind of force could erase Solence?
Damien's hands were trembling. He hid them under his robe.
There's more to this place. More to the Church. To the glyphs. To Solence itself.
The Saints. The prophecy. The endless hymns about purity and light.
All of it's hollow if someone can do that.
If someone can rip the light out of a god's own cathedral...
Orion turned to the crowd. His gaze passed over them like judgment.
"We'll investigate this further in due time. Everyone, please have a guild leader accompany you in groups," he said simply.
No one spoke. Not even the angels watching from the high balconies.
Damien lowered his head.
But his thoughts didn't quiet.
Not anymore.