"Expelled."
The word lands with the soft thud of a guillotine blade. It sucks all the warmth from the kitchen, leaving a sterile, metallic chill.
Nyra is the first to react, her new-found calm shattering into a thousand shards of pure fury.
"That's insane!" she spits, her hand clenching the cheap knife so hard her knuckles are white. "He can't just expel you! You won a sanctioned duel! With a perfect score!"
Lucien, however, understands the poison of academy politics. He shakes his head, a grim, weary look on his face. "He can. And he will. The Audit isn't a competition, it's a tribunal. The board will be his jury, the sponsors will be his witnesses, and the entire student body will be the audience for the execution."
His gaze falls on Caelan. "Holt isn't just taking away your ingredients. He's taking away your narrative. He's going to prove that 'The God of Leftover' is powerless without leftovers."
A strange, quiet focus settles over Caelan. He looks from the single perfect tomato on the saucer to the humble, bubbling pot of bolognese sauce on the stove. Holt sees them as opposites. The pinnacle and the pit.
He is profoundly, fundamentally wrong.
"Perfection isn't an ending," Caelan says, his voice a soft, solid thing in the tense air. "It's just a different starting point. A perfect tomato still has a story. It's just a happy one."
Chef Maillard nods, a deep rumble of approval in his chest. "But can you make a banquet from happy stories? A feast that creates zero waste, with the whole academy watching your every move, waiting for you to fail?" The old man leans forward, his presence filling the small kitchen. "You cannot do this alone, boy."
The question hangs there, unspoken but deafening. Who stands with him?
Nyra looks down. Her eyes fall on the ridiculous, bow-tied cat emblazoned on her chest. A week ago, she would have sooner set herself on fire than wear this thing. But now… she remembers the calm, steady rhythm of the Heartbeat Chop. The scent of onions that smelled sweet instead of sharp. The quiet, collaborative peace of making a simple meal that brought comfort to her dorm mates.
She'd learned more in this shabby kitchen in one hour than she had in a month of sterile, high-pressure duels.
Provost Holt wanted to crush this. To erase it. To declare it blasphemy.
Her hand moves from her knife to the knot of her apron strings. With a single, sharp tug, she tightens it. The gesture is small, but it is an oath.
"I'm not an assistant anymore," she declares, lifting her gaze to meet Caelan's, her ember eyes burning with a clean, defiant flame. "I'm a co-conspirator. You'll need a sous chef who understands strategy. Holt's playing chess. We'll play it better."
Lucien looks at his own hands, still dusted with potato starch. For his entire life, food had been about status. A symbol of the Argent family's untouchable prestige. Then, a single bowl of ramen made from trash had made him feel more genuine warmth than any ten-thousand-dollar tasting menu he'd ever eaten.
Holt represented the cold, sterile world of perfection he was trying to escape. Caelan, in his ridiculous vest, represented… home.
"He taught me how to peel a potato," Lucien says, his voice thick with a strange, new humility. "As if it was the most important job in the world. My family would call that a disgrace." A small, bitter smile touches his lips. "I call it an honor."
He steps forward, no longer a prince, but a soldier signing up for a rebellion. "I know how the sponsors work. I know Holt's network, his pressures, his weaknesses. You'll need more than a strategist. You'll need an inside man." He looks Caelan dead in the eye.
"Do you have another apron?"
For the first time since he walked into the refectory, Caelan smiles. It is a small, genuine thing that transforms his entire face. "I have a whole box of them."
Chef Maillard watches the scene, a slow, deep satisfaction on his face. He raises a hand. "Then it is decided. To compete in the Audit, you must register as a formal guild. Holt will fight it, but the charter allows for provisional teams. You will need a name."
Nyra immediately suggests "The Crimson Vanguard." Lucien offers "The Argent Reclamation."
Caelan shakes his head. He walks to the hook where his own pink apron and yellow vest hang. He looks at the cheerful, glitter-whiskered cat face. Holt, and the entire academy, had meant that name as an insult. A brand of shame.
He would turn it into a banner.
"We'll call ourselves The Leftover League," Caelan says.
At that exact moment, a crisp chime emanates from every datapad in the room. A campus-wide notification. The screen illuminates with a polished video of Provost Holt, his face a perfect mask of academic concern.
"…and so," Holt's voice drones from their devices, "in the spirit of our founder's creed—Perfection through Elimination—I hereby declare the commencement of the Grand Zero Remnant Audit. Over the next seven days, we will rediscover the meaning of culinary discipline. Every ingredient will be pristine. Every technique will be tested. There will be no room for… waste."
On the screen, a graphic details the brutal rules: Public, twice-daily weigh-ins of all organic waste. Disqualification for any guild exceeding the five-hundred-gram threshold. Final banquet menus subject to board approval.
The message is clear. It is a purge.
Zadie Nightwell's channel explodes with a breaking news banner: HOLT DECLARES WAR ON WASTE! WILL VEST BOY'S "TRASH MAGIC" SURVIVE A WORLD OF PERFECTION?
A low rumble starts from outside the dorm, growing louder. The distinct groan of a large truck's air brakes.
Maillard walks to the window and peers out. He turns back to the three of them, his expression grim.
"Your ingredients have arrived," he says.
They follow him to the window and look down. Parked in the service lane of Emberwood Hall is a gleaming, refrigerated truck from 'Elysian Fields Purveyors,' the most exclusive and expensive food supplier on the continent. Workers in white coats are unloading dozens of identical, sterile-looking crates.
It's a mountain of flawless vegetables, prime cuts of meat vacuum-sealed in pristine plastic, and perfectly uniform fruits, each one a testament to genetic and agricultural perfection.
It's an army of ingredients without a single story of struggle among them.
Caelan looks at the sterile, intimidating mountain of perfection. He looks at Nyra, her hand resting on her new uniform. He looks at Lucien, standing ready.
"Let's go say hello," he says.