Chapter 112: Assembly [1]

Adrian stopped directly in front of the group, straightened his posture like he had rehearsed this moment, and offered Roselle an extremely polite bow.

"I’m Adrian Valemont." His hand extended with the kind of smile that had definitely worked before. "I hope we can become great friends."

Everyone watched.

Roselle hesitated, then reached out and shook his hand politely. "I’m Roselle. I guess we can?"

They shook once. Twice. Three times.

Roselle’s smile started doing something complicated. She tried to pull her hand back. Adrian didn’t quite register this. She pulled harder. He shook again, with genuine enthusiasm.

Roselle yanked her hand away and stepped back. "I hope we don’t now."

Adrian’s hand stayed suspended in the air. His smile froze on his face. For a full second he stood there completely still, and then a sound came out of him that was not a sound any living person should make.

Crack.

An actual thin fracture split across his cheek. He had somehow turned into a statue of pure human despair.

He turned his neck slowly toward Claire.

"Hello. Nice to meet you—"

Claire pointed behind him. "Make friends with them."

He followed her finger. Nicholas, Leon, and Alden looked back at him.

Three more cracks appeared on his face in rapid succession.

"I see," he said, in the voice of someone watching his future collapse.

His shoulders dropped approximately three inches.

Alden watched all of this in complete deadpan silence. ’Is he some kind of a lady simp?’

Before Adrian could lose his mind entirely, the yellow-haired girl stepped forward. She bowed with the ease of someone who actually meant it.

"I hope we all get along well. I’m Cecilia, from Calyndor."

Roselle’s whole face changed. "It’s so good to meet you, Cecilia."

Claire gave a proper nod and introduced herself. Within thirty seconds, the three of them were talking naturally, filling the space between them with the comfortable rhythm of people who find each other easy. Cecilia fit into the conversation without any seams showing.

Adrian stared at this.

He looked at his own hands.

He looked back at Cecilia.

’How?’ He was genuinely horrified. ’She just walked over and it happened. Why it can’t be me?!’

Leon was watching him from the side with narrowed eyes. He leaned toward Nicholas and Alden and said, in a voice that carried completely across the room "Why does that guy look like he’s been trying way too hard to get attention?"

All three girls heard this immediately.

Adrian spun around. "No! It’s not like that at all—"

"You’re right," Cecilia said, not turning around.

Adrian blinked. "What?"

"He’s a pervert." She said it pleasantly, the way you describe the weather.

"THAT IS EXTREMELY UNFAIR!" Adrian grabbed his chest. "You’re damaging my reputation in front of people I just met!"

"I’m accurately describing you to people you just met," Cecilia said. "There’s a difference."

"How are you this cruel?!"

Cecilia offered a sweet smile toward the group.

Then the atmosphere changed.

The pressure simply arrived in the air, the way cold comes before dawn. Every casual sound in the room died on its own.

Alarion stepped back into the hall.

"All Assemblies are ready." His eyes moved across every face. "Are you prepared?"

Every cadet straightened immediately. Any remaining humor disappeared from their expressions.

"Yes Sir."

"Follow me."

He turned and walked toward the enormous double doors at the far end of the hall.

The chamber on the other side was something the word chamber didn’t fit.

It was vast the way the sky is vast. The ceiling rose so high above them that the top of it was lost in shadow.

The floor beneath their boots was white marble, sunken into a wide circular basin like a ceremonial arena. The walls curved upward and outward in clean, white stone, stretching up to elevated platforms on all four sides where enormous figures sat in complete stillness.

The moment the cadets crossed the threshold, the pressure hit them.

It wasn’t aggressive it didn’t push or strike it was simply there the way gravity is there, except far heavier and far less forgiving. Leon’s knees bent before he decided to bend them. Roselle’s breathing went ragged. Nicholas and Claire set their jaw and forced themselves straight through the force, but his face went white doing it. Adrian and Cecilia stumbled.

Alden felt the ambient pressure like everyone else.

And then he felt something else. All of the ’Eyes’.

Several sets of attention had found him from the platforms above, and they were not the casual gaze of observers. They pressed into him like something that wanted to know exactly what was underneath his skin.

His legs gave out.

CRACK.

His left knee hit the marble and the floor fractured outward from the impact in thin spiderweb lines, the stone spreading across the white surface.

"Alden!" Nicholas and Leon turned immediately, fighting the pressure in every muscle to do it.

"Alden!" Claire turned to reach for him, but the distance between them was too great. Before she could take a single step, the weight crashed down on her shoulders, locking her in place.

Roselle turned despite the force pressing down on her shoulders, her breathing labored, and reached her hand out toward him. "Are you hurt?!"

Alden looked up at her hand.

He took a slow breath and grabbed it.

She pulled. He got his boots under him and stood.

The moment he forced himself upright, a faint whisper of motion caught the edge of his vision. A thin thread of dark smoke curled around his bruised ankle. It hovered for half a second, lingering against his skin before vanishing into nothingness.

His eyes narrowed slightly, fixing on the spot where the dark wisps had dissolved. ’That is what stopped my kneecap from shattering.’ He held the realization in his mind for a quiet second, before raising his head to take in the vast chamber around him.

Four massive stone platforms towered on all sides, rising high above the sunken floor of the basin. Atop each ledge sat a figure. Every single one was entirely still, shrouded in a heavy silence as four pairs of cold eyes looked down at the cadets gathered in the center below.