The Grand Hall of Trivia Garden had not been built to welcome students.
It had been built to measure them.
Vaulted stone ribs arched overhead like the inside of a cathedral, pale and immaculate, as if dirt itself had been outlawed. Stained-glass windows cut the afternoon light into disciplined colors—blue, gold, crimson—painting the crowd in borrowed dignity. Each beam made certain faces look higher-born than they were, and made others look as though they had stepped into the wrong story.
Virgil von Bunansa stood in the registration line and let the hall do what it was designed to do.
He did not resist the pressure. He read it.
A marble plinth dominated the center of the hall: the Class Point Board. It was taller than a man and wide as a carriage, a slab of polished black stone veined with faint silver. Names of classes waited in neat columns, empty for now, while rows of glowing zeros sat beneath them—perfect, clean, persuasive.
Everyone starts at zero—except those who brought the people who write the ledger, the board seemed to promise.
Virgil did not believe in promises that needed marble.
His coat felt heavier than it should have.
It was not dirty. Virgil kept it clean—brushed seams, mended hem, buttons aligned. But the cloth was tired. At the elbows the fibers had faded, and the collar held the faint memory of hands that had gripped it when there had been no other anchor.
A dark brown academy coat—still unmarked, still without the letter that would make it official.
Yet in the eyes that slid over him, that letter might as well have already been stitched on.
Ahead, ornate desks had been arranged in a long arc. Ink pots, ledgers, stamped seals. Behind each desk sat an academy registrar—stern faces, white gloves, the calm authority of people who never had to raise their voices to make others obey. Behind the registrars hovered a quieter layer of power: sponsors.
Old nobles in embroidered coats.
Merchant representatives with signet rings that looked like tiny crowns.
A handful of clergy, their symbols subdued but unmistakable.
And around them, the new students moved in clusters, orbiting their families and patrons the way moons orbit planets—close enough to bask in reflected light.
Virgil stood alone.
That, more than his coat, was what turned heads.
He watched the crowd the way he watched a map.
Not for faces—faces lied.
For patterns.
Who spoke and who listened.
Who laughed too quickly.
Who kept a respectful distance from a priest, and who stood close enough to be mistaken for devotion.
He noted shoulders angled toward authority, hands behind backs, small gestures meant to communicate allegiance without ever admitting it.
The hall was full of people accustomed to being an answer.
Virgil had learned, long before he stepped into Trivia Garden, that crowds did not need reasons.
They needed direction.
The line moved.
"Next."
Virgil approached the desk.
The registrar was a middle-aged man with thin hair and eyes trained to flicker across documents rather than faces. His quill hovered over a ledger like a blade poised over skin.
"Name," the registrar said.
"Virgil von Bunansa."
The quill paused.
Not long enough to be called a hesitation, not long enough to be criticized.
Just long enough to be felt.
A few feet away, a whisper rose and died.
Bunansa.
Not a royal name.
Not a name that could command a room.
But a name known well enough to invite opinions.
A cadet of a noble branch—high enough to be noticed, low enough to be bent.
The registrar cleared his throat and returned to his practiced neutrality. "Status?"
Virgil did not wait for the next question. "Adopted," he said evenly. "Under the main house."
It was a simple sentence.
It had the elegance of a legal stamp.
It also sounded, to anyone with ears, like a collar.
The registrar wrote. "Aptitude Trial tomorrow morning. Sword proficiency and spell proficiency, including mana capacity."
Virgil nodded.
The words were not new. The tone was.
It was the voice of an institution that believed the world could be cataloged.
Sword.
Magic.
Capacity.
Numbers.
If something could be measured, it could be ranked. If it could be ranked, it could be justified.
The registrar slid a small metal token across the desk. It clinked softly against the wood.
"Registration points," the man said. "Each class accumulates points. Points may be exchanged for facility access, mentor hours, and mission eligibility. Keep it. You'll need it."
Virgil picked up the token.
It was light, but it carried weight.
One side bore the emblem of Trivia Garden—an enclosed garden behind ironwork, beautiful and restrictive. The other side held a number, stamped deep enough to survive years of handling.
He turned it once between his fingers.
A leash.
A weapon, if used correctly.
At the edge of the hall, laughter rippled—polite, contained, but unmistakably aimed.
Virgil did not look up immediately.
He already knew what it would be.
Young elites had a particular talent: making cruelty sound like conversation.
A group of students stood near one of the pillars, uniforms crisp, colors bright—marks of funding and belonging. Their coats were tailored, their boots new, their insignias unblemished. They were not simply students.
They were future officers, future administrators, future owners of rooms like this.
One of them stepped away from the group and approached.
He was about fifteen, with ash-blond hair combed neatly back, and a face sculpted into the kind of pleasant arrogance that never had to learn shame. His smile formed without effort—as if he had been taught it alongside etiquette.
At his hip hung a slender rapier with a decorative hilt, as much a statement as a weapon.
He stopped at a comfortable distance and offered a small bow.
"Bunansa," he said, tasting the name like something he had read once in a history margin. "Veynor de Luca."
De Luca.
A family name that did not need to shout.
Virgil gave a slight nod—not respect, but acknowledgment.
Veynor's gaze dipped to Virgil's coat for the briefest moment, then rose to the Class Point Board as if they were sharing a private joke.
"They say Trivia Garden is fair," Veynor said lightly. "Everyone starts at zero."
His tone suggested he believed it.
Or wanted others to believe he did.
Virgil waited.
Boys like Veynor always needed a second line.
The first line was a doorway.
The second was the trap.
Veynor continued, "But it's funny, isn't it? Some arrive with sharp blades and overflowing mana. Others arrive with…" He tilted his head politely. "With inherited cloth."
Behind him, a few students chuckled.
Not loud.
Not crude.
A refined laughter. The kind that could be denied if anyone accused them of insult.
Virgil glanced at the Class Point Board again. The zeros glowed steadily.
"Cloth can be replaced," Virgil said quietly.
Veynor's smile did not falter.
"What's harder to replace," Virgil added, "is the habit of measuring people by fabric."
For a fraction of a breath, Veynor's eyes narrowed.
Then the pleasant mask settled even smoother, like a glove pulled tight.
"Ah," Veynor said. "A tidy tongue. Good. In this academy, everything can be settled with a duel."
He said it as if offering mercy.
Virgil heard the cage behind the words.
In a place where everything could be solved by dueling, those born with better swords and greater mana would always claim virtue by calling it choice.
Virgil turned the token once more in his fingers.
"True," he said. "If everything can be settled with a duel…"
He met Veynor's gaze.
"…then the luckiest are those given the best blade before they ever learn what it costs to hold one."
The laughter behind Veynor faded into a careful silence.
Veynor's smile sharpened, not into anger, but into interest.
As if Virgil had stopped being furniture and become a puzzle.
"I look forward to tomorrow," Veynor said smoothly. "The Aptitude Trial has a way of putting stories in their proper places."
Virgil did not correct him.
Stories did have places.
So did people.
The question was whether Virgil would accept the one assigned to him.
Veynor bowed again and returned to his group, where the conversation resumed—softer now, with the tone of people who had just encountered something mildly inconvenient.
Virgil stepped away from the registrar's desk.
He moved along the edge of the hall, letting the current of bodies pass him rather than forcing his way through. He listened without appearing to listen.
Fragments drifted.
"—heard the Treasury is cutting—"
"—Church is stricter this year—"
"—the war-games will be brutal—"
"—points determine mentor allocation—"
Virgil stored each phrase like a clerk filing documents.
The academy spoke in systems.
And systems always had seams.
A sudden flash of heat crawled up his palm.
Not real heat.
Memory.
For an instant he smelled smoke—thick, oily, alive—and beneath it, the sour sting of spilled grain turning wet on stone. He heard it too: the brittle crack of a storehouse latch giving way, the ugly cheer that followed, as if hunger could be made holy by volume.
He flexed his fingers subtly, finding the small scar near his thumb. A pale line. The last place his father's ring had caught when Virgil had tried to pull him back through the door.
He breathed once, measured.
Crowds.
Noise.
One foolish shout—then another answering it. Footsteps multiplying. Wood groaning. A sack splitting somewhere with a sound like bone, and then the hiss of grain pouring out, applause for waste.
The night swallowing his parents.
He forced the memory back into its box.
Here, chaos wore uniforms.
Here, madness came with rules.
That did not make it safer.
It made it harder to call out.
Near the main doors stood a narrow notice board, overlooked by most students too busy admiring the Class Point Board. Fresh parchment had been pinned there, the ink still dark.
Virgil stopped.
He read.
CLASS ASSIGNMENTS WILL BE ANNOUNCED PUBLICLY FOLLOWING THE APTITUDE TRIAL.
Publicly.
Not simply informed.
Announced.
In front of sponsors.
In front of students.
In front of the very crowd that had already learned how to laugh politely.
Virgil read it twice.
Not because he was slow.
Because he understood what public announcements were truly for.
Not to communicate information.
To establish positions.
To turn one person's fate into everyone else's entertainment.
He glanced back at the center of the hall.
The Class Point Board waited like an altar.
Points like in a children's tale, dressed in marble and authority.
A game.
But games were honest in one way life rarely was:
They told you the rules.
Or they pretended to.
Virgil slipped the token into the inner pocket of his coat and felt it rest against his ribs.
He did not know yet which class he would be assigned.
He knew, however, which class the institution wanted him to be.
And he knew something else as well.
If everything could be settled by duels, then the academy believed it had chosen the battlefield.
Virgil had no intention of fighting where his opponents were strongest.
He walked toward the exit, the stained-glass light trailing over his shoulders like a blessing he did not ask for.
Behind him, the hall filled with voices—new alliances forming, old names being traded like currency, laughter calibrated to status.
He did not turn.
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, slight enough to be invisible.
Not a smile of victory.
A smile of calculation.
Tomorrow, they would measure sword skill, spell skill, mana capacity.
They would announce results as if numbers were destiny.
They would set him in a place meant to be small.
Virgil stepped out of the Grand Hall and into the colder air beyond.
He let the doors close behind him with a soft, final thud.
Then, very quietly—as if speaking to no one at all—he made himself a promise.
Not to be strong.
Not to be loved.
Not even to be forgiven.
Only this:
He would learn who controlled the measurement.
And he would force them to live inside the rules they worshiped.
Because evil could be predicted.
Foolishness could burn the world while calling itself righteous.
And Virgil had already watched a world burn once.
He would not watch again.