The whispers had become impossible to ignore.By the middle of the second week, the entire lower floors of the academy carried an undercurrent of unease whenever I passed. Students no longer openly mocked me they simply stepped aside faster, their conversations dying mid-sentence. Beasts that once strutted proudly now lowered their heads or growled uneasily when I approached. Even the cleaning staff, who had treated me with casual contempt, now avoided eye contact and finished their own tasks quicker when I was nearby.I kept my head down and continued the assigned duties, but inside, the bond with Nyxar had grown sharper, more intimate. His voice was no longer occasional it was a constant presence, guiding, commenting, hungry.Tonight, the academy felt quieter than usual. Most students had retreated to their dorms after evening drills. I was finishing the last of my assignments: inventory check in the beast supply wing, a dimly lit warehouse filled with crates of raw meat, enchanted

The rumors no longer whispered they echoed.By the end of the week, the entire academy had begun to notice that something unnatural walked among them. Students avoided the corridors I frequented. Instructors lingered longer when I passed, their conversations dropping to low murmurs. Even the cleaning staff, who had once treated me with casual disdain, now finished their tasks in record time whenever I appeared nearby.I continued my assigned duties with mechanical precision sweeping halls, hauling supplies, scrubbing blood and scorch marks from training floors. On the surface, I remained the perfect image of an F-rank failure: quiet, obedient, broken.Inside, the bond with Nyxar had become a constant, living thing.Every night in the outer dorm, I practiced. The shadows answered me with effortless obedience now. I could extend them across an entire room, shape them into claws or wings, or use them to erase evidence of my presence entirely. My senses had sharpened to the point where I

The question hung in the air like a challenge no one dared to voice openly.“Still a failure?”It followed me through the academy like an invisible shadow of its own. Students no longer shouted it in the corridors, but I heard it in their hushed conversations, saw it in their sidelong glances, felt it in the way beasts tensed and instructors paused mid-step whenever I passed.I continued my duties without reaction sweeping the lower training halls, hauling supplies, scrubbing the aftermath of other students’ glory. The work was monotonous, degrading by design. Yet every bucket of dirty water I emptied, every scorch mark I erased, felt like another layer of camouflage.Nyxar found endless amusement in it.“They still call you failure in their hearts,” he murmured one afternoon as I mopped the floor of Hall Four after a particularly brutal sparring session. “How delightful. Let them cling to that illusion a little longer. It makes the moment they realize the truth all the more exquisite

The challenge came on a gray afternoon when the New York sky hung low and heavy with clouds, casting the academy grounds in muted tones.I was crossing the central courtyard after finishing inventory duty when the air shifted. Conversations died. Footsteps slowed. The usual bustle of students moving between classes quieted as if someone had flipped a switch.Kael Thorn stood in the middle of the open space, arms crossed, his golden mane lion pacing beside him with restless energy. A small crowd had already gathered, drawn by the promise of spectacle. Phones hovered discreetly, ready to record.Kael’s voice carried clearly across the courtyard.“Drax.”I stopped, the crate of supplies still balanced on one shoulder. The weight felt trivial now. My body had grown stronger with every passing day, the bond feeding me a steady stream of raw power that made ordinary effort feel almost insulting.Kael’s eyes burned with barely contained fury. The humiliation from our last encounter and the l

The arena had gone deathly silent after Kael Thorn dropped to his knees.No cheers. No triumphant roars from the crowd. Only the heavy, stunned quiet of hundreds of students who had come expecting to watch a failure get crushed and instead witnessed something they couldn’t explain.Kael’s golden mane lion lay sprawled on the floor beside him, breathing shallowly, its once-fiery mane reduced to weak, flickering embers. The beast’s eyes were wide with terror, fixed on me as if I were the monster from its nightmares.Kael himself looked broken not physically, but in every way that mattered to someone like him. The arrogance had shattered. In its place was raw, unfiltered fear.I stood a few feet away, the shadows at my feet slowly retreating back into the floor. I had held back deliberately. Not enough power to reveal the full truth, but more than enough to shatter the illusion that I was still the same weak boy from the awakening ceremony.The referee’s voice cracked over the speakers,