The headmaster's voice finally stopped.
For a second, the silence held, thick and heavy. A collective breath.
And then the room just… exploded.
It wasn't one sound, but a thousand. The grinding scrape of a hundred chairs on cold stone. The excited shouts of students finding their friends. An explosion of conversation that swallowed the silence whole. The gray and blue uniforms were a wild blur as everyone got up and rushed toward the back of the auditorium. The uncontrolled chaos of a thousand desperate teenagers had replaced the ritual.
Where are they heading? Kairen felt a knot of panic twist in his gut.
A teacher's voice broke through the noise with a single resounding pitch of arcane power. cut through the noise. "All first-year students, please consult the notice board in the main hall for your class assignments!"
Oh, no. The board. The big one at the back. That's it. That's the destination for this stampede. Kairen was going to be completely absorbed. He was a piece of driftwood, powerless against the throng, which was a crushing wave. The air was thin and heated, and someone's elbow penetrated his back. His arms were immobile. The suffocation of it all, a different kind of terror than the one with the axe, but just as real.
Then, a hand on his shoulder. Solid. Heavy. Grounding.
It was Dain.
"Stick close!" Near Kairen's ear, Dain roared, his voice a happy rumble. He had remained motionless, a rock amidst the torrent of corpses. He anchored them by placing a balancing hand on Kairen's shoulder and another on Ilya's. "Just a friendly mob," he shouted, a wide, easy grin on his face. "Happens every year, I bet!"
He just started walking. He didn't push. He didn't shove. He just… moved. And the students, even the older, tougher ones, parted around his massive frame. Near Kairen's ear, Dain roared, his voice a happy rumble. He had remained motionless, a rock amid a mass of bodies. He anchored them by placing a balancing hand on Kairen's shoulder and another on Ilya's. He wasn't suffocating.
"Come on!" he yelled, and they finally broke through the throng to the notice board.
The wall was covered in long lists of names. Kairen's stomach, which had been in his throat, plummeted to his shoes.
Dain found his name right away. Of course he did. His thick finger stabbed at the top list, the one under a bold, silver 'Class A'. "YES! I got it! Dain Ragnor, Class A!" He roared with triumph, and a few students glared. He didn't even notice. "My grandma's going to bake me a victory cake!"
Ilya was just as fast. She found her name on the same list, her face calm, unreadable. A tiny, pleased smile touched her lips. "Me too." Of course.
He couldn't take the anticipation on their faces as they both gazed at him. Against his ribs, his heart beat furiously. His hands were cold.
Kairen's eyes blurred as he tried to read the Class A list. So many names. A... B... C... He tried to find a name with a Z. Nothing. He felt sick inside his stomach. The terrible, icy feeling had returned. He knew it. Why would he be on this list? He was the dud. The charity case. The boy who refused the crystal. They weren't going to put him in the top class. He was probably in F. Class F for Failure. The thought felt heavy and certain.
The words were lodged in his throat, right there. You guys go on ahead, I'll find my name later. But his mouth was a desert. He couldn't admit it. Not yet. So he just kept staring at the list, willing the letters to rearrange themselves.
They didn't.
He felt the sting of it. This was where he got left behind. He took a step back, ready to just disappear into the crowd. Better to vanish than to have them see his name on the last list.
"Are you sure? Look again!" Dain said, seeing the defeat in Kairen's face. His voice was a solid thing, full of an unshakeable confidence. "My grandma says you always gotta look twice for lost things! Sometimes they're right in front of you!"
One more time. A cold, thin sliver of hope.
He forced himself to start from the bottom. His finger traced the parchment, trembling just above the paper. He read each name. Vance, Elara… Underhill, Marcus… Thorne, Alistair… He crawled up the list, and with every name that wasn't his, the thin sliver of hope cracked. He got all the way back to the top. Nothing. The hope shattered completely.
And then he saw it.
It wasn't in the main list at all. It was at the very end, scrawled under the last name like a last-second thought. A forgotten detail.
Kairen Zephyrwind.
He stared at it. He read it again. And again. It was his name. Under the 'Class A' heading.
No. This had to be a mistake.
But it was his name. It was really there.
Kairen almost collapsed on the floor from the sheer joy of release.His body collapsed with a shaking gasp, a breath he didn't know he was holding. A large, foolish, uncontrolled smile got across his face, and he was powerless to stop it.
When Dain saw his expression, he burst out laughing.. "NO WAY! We're all in the same class!" He slapped Kairen's back, hard, with a joy so pure it almost hurt. Kairen stumbled forward, coughing, but the grin stayed. For one single, brilliant second, the ache inside him was gone. He was just happy.
"This is going to be amazing!" Dain yelled. "The three of us, taking the academy by storm!"
"Indeed," Ilya said, the hint of amusement in her silver eyes as Kairen tried to catch his breath. "It will be… interesting."
"The Class A room is on the third floor, North Wing!" Dain announced, already leading the way. "Let's leave before the best seats are gone!"
The hallways here were quieter, vast and echoing. Paintings lined the walls, and the people in them watched them. Their eyes followed him. It was unsettling. One of them, a pinched-faced woman in black, actually sniffed as Dain walked by.
"She does that to everyone," he whispered. "Thinks our shoes are dirty." The absurdity of it made Kairen laugh, a real, honest sound.
They passed a fountain where the water flowed up into a bowl. How did that even work?
"I bet they teach us how to do that!" Dain said, pointing at it like an excited kid.
Ilya didn't even look up from a small pamphlet she was reading. "That's a basic hydro-stasis charm. It's in the second-year textbook."
Of course it is. She knew everything.
They got on these stairs that moved by themselves, spiraling upward. "My grandma says a moving staircase is just a lazy man's mountain!" Dain declared happily. "Saves on boot leather!"
"It is a standard kinetic rune array, Dain," Ilya said, her voice flat. "It consumes more ambient energy than walking. In a crisis, it would be the first thing to shut down."
"See? Walking is better! Grandma's always right!"
The air got weird up here. It felt charged, tingly. The wing-mark on Kairen's back began to feel warm, a faint, comforting heat that spread across his shoulder blades. It wasn't burning, just… present.
They found the door. Polished dark wood, with the silver letters 'Class A' etched into it. His palms were sweaty again. Dain didn't hesitate. He just shoved it open.
And then… Kairen stopped.
The room was silent. Empty. And breathtaking.
There were huge sheets of smooth glass from floor to ceiling, and he made his way to one of the windows. They didn't look out over the school. They looked out at the sky. There were islands—green, lush islands with trees and waterfalls—just floating in the clouds. Small birds fly amongst them, their wings shining. Its sheer absurdity made his brain feel joyful.
The desks were a rich, dark wood. The blackboard was a piece of smooth, black rock that had faint, silvery lights dancing inside it, like trapped stars.
This was his classroom. His classroom had floating islands outside the window. This was insane.
They found some empty seats near the back and sat down. Kairen couldn't stop staring. For a single, precious minute, he forgot about the sick feeling, about his name, about the crystal, about everything. He was just watching a tiny waterfall spill from the edge of a floating island and disappear into a cloud below.
Dain gave him a big, goofy grin. Ilya nodded to him in a tiny, barely noticeable way.
And a shaky sense of trust began to grow inside his chest. Maybe… maybe he was a student here after all. His stomach knot started to relax. He felt… okay. For the first time all day, He thought he might be able to pull this off for the first time all day.
And then the feeling went cold. Like a sudden draft of arctic air.
Before he saw him, he sensed him. The room's invisible change, the way the air became heavier after being light, was infused with a familiar yet dangerous force.
He was here.
Kaelan Brightblade. He was walking right down the aisle, right for them, his two goons trailing behind him.
He stopped at Kairen's desk. Right next to him.
And that smile spread across his face. The one that meant he was about to be cruel.
"Well..well, look what we have here," he said, his voice a low, mocking hum.
And just like that, the floating islands, the hope, the promise of it all… it was all gone.