Chapter 57

Chapter 57: Chapter 57

Nia and I walked in through the massive bronze doors, and the scale of the place hushed the whole incoming class. The vaulted ceiling rose a hundred feet overhead on pillars of seamless white marble. Towering arched windows of stained glass showed the ancient human Pioneers taking the chaotic elements of the world and forging them into the geometry of the Ancestral Runes.

About a thousand students filled the hall. The first-year cadets were sent to the lower tiers, and the second, third and fourth-years took the sweeping balconies above them. The air hummed with whispers and laughter and the poorly contained heat of hundreds of Dormant and Swelled Buds.

I took a seat by the aisle and leaned my runic bastard sword against the polished wooden bench. Nia sat beside me, wide-eyed at the wealth and prestige packed into the room. Across the aisle I spotted Luckas and Kaelen. Luckas gave me an easy, confident grin. Kaelen stared straight ahead, unreadable.

Then the noise in the auditorium died.

It cut out all at once, and the pressure in the hall shifted, sudden and crushing.

I stiffened, and my hand dropped to the hilt of my sword before I could stop it. I knew this feeling. I had felt it in the command tent of the 7th Legion. The air thickened until it pressed on my lungs like a weight, and the stray Ember of every student in the hall was pressed flat by something far more dangerous than any of them.

A man walked onto the raised marble dais at the front of the auditorium.

He was remarkably unremarkable to look at. Average height, the austere black robes of a Grand Scholar, silver hair tied neatly back, hands clasped loosely behind him. But his Ember burned like a small sun. He was a Shoot Elongation, standing on the same terrifying plateau of evolution as Commander Erula.

"I am Headmaster Corvus," the man said. He kept his voice level, and the words rang clearly in the mind of every person in the hall. "Welcome to the crucible of the Empire."

He walked slowly to the edge of the dais and ran his pale eyes over the students.

"You are here because you possess the bloodlines of the nobility, or because you have shown an anomalous affinity for violence," Corvus went on, his voice cold. "Leave your arrogance at the gates. Inside these walls your titles are worthless and your gold buys you nothing. We do not care who your fathers are. We care about your comprehension of the Ember and your capacity to endure."

Beside me, Nia swallowed hard and sat up rigid.

"The Empire is vast, and it is under constant siege," the Headmaster said, pacing slowly. "The barbarian Coalitions to the south. The political machinations of the Republic to the west. The deep-earth horrors of the uncharted territories. The regular infantry holds the line, but it does not win the wars. You do. Or rather, you will, if you survive this curriculum."

Corvus stopped and pointed one steady finger at the towering stained-glass windows.

"You do not graduate from this Academy by passing written examinations," he said. "You will leave this citadel only when you break the final threshold. You will study the theory of environmental Ember, master the geometry of the Runes, and forge your bodies and minds until you achieve the Bud Burst. Only then will the Emperor formally anoint you a Knight-Mage of the Imperial Vanguard. Until that day, you are nothing but raw ore."

He turned back to face us. The pressure of his Shoot Elongation aura flared for a moment, and several students in the front rows flinched.

"To forge iron, you need intense heat and relentless friction," Corvus said. "So the Imperial Academy runs on strict meritocracy. A ranking system."

He waved a hand, and a huge translucent projection of pale blue light appeared behind the dais, a long list of names and numbers hanging in the air, held there by intricate illusionary Ember.

"There are exactly one thousand students enrolled in this Academy," the Headmaster said. "Your rank dictates your survival. The students at the top of this list receive unlimited access to the high archives, the purest Ember catalysts, the finest weapons, and private tutelage from the Grand Scholars."

He paused, letting the silence stretch, before he gave the last condition.

"The student who sits at Rank One Thousand at the end of each month is expelled. Stripped of their uniform, exiled from the citadel, sent back to their families in disgrace. There are no exceptions."

Panicked murmurs rippled through the lower tiers.

"You may change your rank through academic excellence in the lecture halls, or through the Rite of Challenge," Corvus continued. "Any student may formally challenge a higher-ranking cadet to a sanctioned duel in the combat pits. If you win, you take their rank. If you lose, you are penalised."

The Headmaster turned to the glowing board.

"The initial rankings have been calculated by the administrative scholars from your entry scores, your physical thresholds, and the combat evaluations your sponsors provided. Look closely."

The board shifted, and the three hundred first-year students appeared in glowing blue text.

I scanned the top of the list.

Elvit (Sponsored by Commander Erula, 7th Imperial Legion)Luckas Vance (Sponsored by Duke Vance)Kaelen (Sponsored by the Silent Court)

Nia gasped softly and grabbed my arm. "Elvit... you’re first. You’re the highest-ranked cadet in our year."

I didn’t smile. I knew what that meant. In an academy built on ruthless competition and the threat of expulsion, being ranked first put a target on my back.

"Now," Headmaster Corvus said, his voice cutting through the rising whispers. "Look at the overall citadel rankings. Out of all one thousand students."

The board shifted again, merging the first-years with the veterans of the second, third and fourth years.

1. Aurio Gentrimio (Year 4)

2. Seraphina (Year 4)

3. Elvit (Year 1)

The auditorium erupted.

This time the noise was a shockwave of outrage and disbelief, and people shouted their protests openly. Older students in the upper balconies jumped to their feet and pointed down at the glowing board. A first-year, a provincial nobody from the border legions, had been placed above nine hundred and ninety-seven aristocratic veterans.

I sat perfectly still, my face blank, and ignored the hundreds of eyes I could feel on the back of my crimson cloak. Across the aisle Luckas let out a low, impressed whistle.

"The rankings are absolute," Headmaster Corvus said, his voice cutting through the uproar as the pressure of his Shoot Elongation slammed down on the hall, forcing the students back into their seats and silencing the protests at once. "If you believe the scholars have made an error, draw your swords and prove it in the pits. Ceremony dismissed."

The Headmaster vanished from the dais and left the hall buzzing like a kicked hornet’s nest.

"Are you insane?" Nia whispered frantically as we joined the crowd filing out through the bronze doors. "Third overall? What did Erula write in your evaluation?"

"The truth," I said, adjusting the strap of my sword.

The crisp autumn air in the grand courtyard was a relief after the stifling heat of the auditorium. I wanted to go back to the dorms, study the campus map, and get ready for the next day’s lectures.

I didn’t make it past the central fountain.

Seven older students stepped deliberately into my path, all in the pristine coats of third-year cadets. Their leader was a broad-shouldered young man with a shaved head and a scowl full of wounded pride. His bulk marked him as a low-tier Swelled Bud.

"Lieutenant Elvit," the upperclassman barked, loud enough to turn the heads of hundreds of students coming out of the hall. A wide circle formed around us. "My name is Corin. Rank 112. I spent three years bleeding in the combat pits to earn my spot. I refuse to be outranked by a mud-born grunt who hasn’t sat through a single lecture."

I stopped. Nia stepped back to give me room, her hands clenched into fists.

"I have no interest in your pride, Corin," I said flatly, keeping my hands away from my sword. "Step aside."

"The Headmaster said the rankings are subject to the Rite of Challenge," Corin sneered, drawing a steel broadsword from his hip. The blade ignited at once, wrapped in crackling orange flame fed by his Ember. "I challenge you, right here, right now. Unless the 7th Legion is made up of cowards."

The crowd went quiet. Hundreds of students watched from the edge of the circle, Luckas and Kaelen among them.

I let out a slow, tired sigh. I didn’t want to fight a student. For the past month I had been trying to suppress the lethal combat that my time in the military bled into me. But the Academy had its own rules, and weakness would only bring a hundred more challenges like this one. I needed to establish a precedent.

"Challenge accepted," I said.

The runic bastard sword stayed on my back, and I kept the icy astral precognition of the Rune of Antiquity out of my eye. I unclasped the heavy crimson cloak from my shoulders and handed it to Nia.

Corin took my bare hands as a deep insult. With a furious roar he charged across the cobblestones, moving at the augmented speed of his evolution, and swung the flaming broadsword in a horizontal arc meant to drive me back and sear my face.

I stepped into the strike zone instead and ducked under the blade by no more than a finger’s width. I kept my eyes on his footwork. He was overextended.

As the blade passed over my head I stepped into his guard and drove the heel of my left hand into his sternum. There was no Ember behind it, only the unnatural density of my frame.

The impact cracked like a whip, and Corin’s breath left him in a rush.

Before he could stumble backward I caught his right wrist in my gauntleted hand and locked his sword arm in place. I pivoted on my heel, turned his own forward momentum against him, and put him over my hip.

Corin’s big frame left the ground completely. He slammed onto the cobblestones flat on his back with a sickening thud, and the breath he had just started to recover was knocked out of him all over again. The flaming broadsword clattered out of his grip, and the fire died as he lost his focus on his Ember.

I gave him no time to recover. I dropped a knee onto his chest to pin him and pressed the edge of my heavy leather gauntlet against his windpipe.

The fight had lasted exactly three seconds.

The crowd was dead silent. They stared at the third-year veteran gasping on the ground, then at me, an unarmed first-year who hadn’t even bothered to draw a weapon.

"Your stance is too wide, and you use the fire to hide your poor footwork," I told him calmly, looking down into his wide, terrified eyes. "You fight like a boy in a tournament. Try that on the border and a barbarian will gut you before your sword even sparks."

I stood and stepped away from him.

"Challenge concluded," I said to the silent courtyard.

I turned back to Nia, who was staring at me with her mouth slightly open. I took my crimson cloak from her hands, draped it over my shoulders, and started for the dormitories. The crowd of nobles parted at once and gave me a wide berth, and in their faces I could see they now understood exactly why I was ranked third in the citadel.

When Nia and I finally got back to our room on the third floor, the adrenaline of the courtyard had faded, and the reality of our new lives was sinking in.

At the foot of each bed lay a neat, folded pile of dark fabric.

I walked over and picked mine up. It was the official uniform of the Imperial Academy, beautifully tailored for fighting: a heavy charcoal-grey tunic with flexible leather armor sewn in over the vital organs, and silver stitching along the collar and cuffs. The matching dark grey cloak, much lighter than my heavy vanguard fur, carried the silver crest of the Academy on the shoulder.

"They expect us to wear these starting tomorrow," Nia said, holding her own tunic up to the light and admiring the craftsmanship. "No more silk dresses for the nobles. No more armor for you. Everyone wears the same dark grey."

I ran my calloused thumb over the silver stitching. It was beautiful and clean, without a trace of mud or blood.

"It’s an equaliser," I said, setting the uniform down on the silk sheets. "The Headmaster wasn’t lying. They don’t care where we came from, only what we can survive."

Nia came over and sat on the edge of my bed. She looked at me, serious now.

"You humiliated that third-year, Elvit," she said quietly. "You didn’t even use a fraction of your power. The whole school saw it. The challenges won’t stop, you know. They’re going to keep coming for that third spot."

"Let them come," I said, unbuckling my leather bracers. I looked out the large arched window and watched the sun set over the gleaming spires of the Crown Jewel. "I came here to reach the Bud Burst. If anyone wants to stand in my way, I’ll teach them exactly what I learned in the 7th Legion."