Chapter 1The crystal stayed dark. Ren Hoshino had stared into it for so long that the black seemed to have soaked into his eyes, and even after the examiner lifted it out of his hands he kept seeing that empty spot where the light was supposed to be. "Next," the examiner said, already scribbling on his slip, and Ren stepped down from the platform with his fingers still curled around a crystal that was no longer there. The tests ran every weekday, Monday through Friday, with one group of applicants each day, and Thursday had been his group's turn. There was no arguing with a schedule.Ten minutes earlier that same crystal had blazed gold for the boy who now stood at the front of the crowd, and the whole test ground had cheered until people went hoarse. Daichi Kurogane had passed the way other people walk through a door. His father, a squad commander in a grey coat, had watched from the officials' stand with the face of a man whose expectations had simply been met, which made sense whe

Chapter 3The claws never landed. Ren knelt in the dark behind his own eyelids, waiting for the end, and instead of pain the voice cut through his head, low and furious and very close."Get up. You are not dying here.""I can't," Ren whispered. "I don't know how to do anything. You said it yourself, I'm nothing.""I said you were weak. I never said you were nothing, and I went quiet on purpose. I wanted to see what you would do when there was nowhere left to run, and now I know." The voice softened, just slightly. "That was all I needed. Sit back and watch this."The numbness poured over him again, from his scalp to his heels, and this time he did not fight it. His body rose off the sand as though someone had lifted him by the collar. The broken arm no longer mattered, because he could no longer feel it, and his left hand hung at his side while his right hand opened and closed as if testing itself. His eyes opened, and the world looked different through them, wider and slower, every g

Ren was two days late to his own first day.He stood outside the door of Class 1-A with the enrollment slip crumpled in his fist, listening to the murmur of voices on the other side, and tried to decide whether it would be worse to knock or to walk in. His uniform still smelled of the cloth it had been packed in. The collar was stiff against his neck, the sleeves were slightly too long, and somewhere behind his ribs a voice that had said nothing since the elders' hall was keeping very quiet.He pushed the door open.The classroom was bright and tall, with windows running the whole length of one wall and five desks set in a shallow curve facing the board. Each desk had a number carved into its corner. Four of them were already occupied, and the conversation died as every head turned toward him. Daichi Kurogane sat at the second desk with one boot propped on the rung of his chair, and his smile arrived before Ren had finished stepping through the door."Well, look at that," Daichi drawl