2026-02-09 03:34:45The academy courtyard was too clean for the number of people packed into it.
Stone polished smooth by decades of magic reflected the pale morning light. Banners hung perfectly still despite the open air. The stone seemed to drink in sound rather than reflect it, as though the place itself had learned how to listen. Hundreds of students stood in uneven rows, whispers rippling through the crowd like insects trapped beneath glass. Some voices were sharp with excitement. Others trembled with nerves. All of them blended into a restless, constant murmur that pressed in from every direction. Riven hated crowds. Not because they were loud. But because they were unpredictable. Too many people. Too many unknown variables. He stood with his hands at his sides, posture relaxed in a way that took effort. Every muscle stayed loose by design, ready to tighten at a moment's notice. He forced his breathing slow. Even. Steady. His eyes moved constantly, tracing lines most people ignored. Exits. Elevated walkways. The spacing between towers. The height of the surrounding walls. The way shadows pooled unevenly near the corners. The giant dais at the front. The man standing upon it. Beside him, Cael rocked back on his heels, arms folded behind his head like this was a street performance instead of the most important day of their lives. He scanned the crowd with open curiosity, as if daring it to impress him. "Bet the food's terrible," Cael muttered. "Places like this always pretend hunger builds character." Riven didn't respond. He was too busy watching the way the light bent strangely around the dais, as if the air itself was reluctant to settle there. The sound changed. Not louder. Heavier. Like a puzzle piece being put into place. The courtyard fell silent without anyone asking for it. Conversations died mid-sentence. Even the shuffling of boots stilled, as though the ground itself had been warned. Headmaster Valen Oris stood at the center of the dais. No announcement. No procession. He had simply always been there, as though the world had remembered him late and rushed to correct itself. "Welcome," Valen said, his voice calm, carrying effortlessly across the stone. "To Orison Academy." The words settled like weight, pressing into ribs and lungs. Riven felt it land somewhere deeper than sound could reach. "You stand here because you showed promise," Valen continued. "Talent. Persistence. Or a refusal to stop when you should have." A few nervous chuckles rippled through the crowd. Valen did not react. "This academy does not value bloodlines," he said. "It does not reward laziness." "And it does not forgive wasted potential." Riven felt Cael straighten beside him, some of the humor draining from his posture. The easy confidence tightened into focus. "From this moment forward." The air shifted. Riven felt it first as pressure behind his eyes, like the world had leaned too close. His vision sharpened painfully, edges too crisp, details too loud. Then came the heat. Sudden. Sharp. Blooming directly in his chest, spreading outward like a brand pressed from the inside. He gasped, fingers curling instinctively into the fabric over his heart, breath tearing free before he could stop it. Beside him, Cael hissed under his breath. Riven turned. Their eyes met. No confusion. No question. Just the raw, immediate understanding that whatever this was, It wasn't happening to just one of them. The courtyard fractured. Students gone. Stone beneath Riven's feet blackened and split, cracks racing outward like veins seeking a heart. The academy towers twisted, partially collapsed, their upper floors hollowed and burned as if consumed from within. The sky dimmed to a dull, unmoving gray. Heavy. Oppressive. Sound vanished. No screams. No explosions. Just silence. Thick. Final. Ash drifted upward, defying gravity, brushing past Riven's face without warmth or weight. Riven stood in the same place. But no one else did. The courtyard was empty. Not abandoned. Emptied. His breath hitched, chest tight, lungs refusing to work properly. The air tasted wrong. Dry. Lifeless. The vision tore sideways. Valen Oris's voice cut through the ruin, layered and distant. "You will be ranked." Riven blinked. The academy snapped back into place. Stone unbroken. Banners intact. Students standing shoulder to shoulder like nothing had happened. Like the world had never cracked open at all. But the heat in his chest remained. A flicker at the edge of his vision. A girl a few rows ahead clutching her arm, eyes unfocused, breathing too shallow. Another standing unnaturally still, jaw locked, as if bracing against something unseen. A third tilting her head, nostrils flaring faintly, like she smelled smoke no one else could sense. Then they steadied. Or pretended to. Valen continued without pause. "You will fail," he said evenly, "if you believe power alone is enough." Riven pressed his palm flat to his chest, grounding himself in the pressure. The sensation there wasn't pain. It wasn't injury. It was presence. Something settled beneath skin and bone, undeniable but unreadable. Like a second heartbeat waiting to be acknowledged. Beside him, Cael leaned closer, his voice low, stripped of its usual edge. "Did you see that?" Riven nodded once. Their eyes stayed locked. Not searching for answers. Just confirming reality. Cael's jaw tightened. "Was that real, Riven?" "I don't know," he said, and hated how true it sounded. Cael glanced toward the dais, then down at his hands like he expected them to be wrong somehow. Like they might still be burning or broken. "I saw…" He shook his head once. "Something bad." Riven swallowed, throat tight. "So did I." They didn't say more. They couldn't. Whatever it was, it hadn't come with words. No warning. No meaning. Just an image burned too deeply to ignore. Valen Oris's gaze swept the courtyard again, unreadable, lingering just a fraction longer than necessary. "For those who endure," he said, "this academy will give you everything you need." The heat in Riven's chest cooled. Not fading. Not disappearing. But settling. Like a heartbeat finding its rhythm. The speech ended. Students exhaled. Whispers returned. Life resumed. Boots shifting. Voices rising. Nerves loosening. But Riven didn't move. Neither did Cael. Because somewhere beneath the stone and banners and orderly ranks, Something had already gone wrong. And whatever it was, It had shown them something terrible.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Uneven Distribution
The academy woke the same way it always did.Light filtered through sigil-glass in pale bands.Wards eased themselves from night-cycle to function without a sound.For a brief moment, there was a pause that most people never noticed.Not silence exactly.More like a held breath.The air settled into itself.Pressure equalizing in increments too small to feel unless you were listening for them.The academy did this every morning.Shift.Align.Resume.The sequence completed without hesitation.As it always had.Ilyra felt the transition pass through her like a temperature change just shy of perceptible.She didn't move.Didn't react.Stone floors held the memory of yesterday's footsteps and accepted new ones without complaint.From the outside, nothing distinguished this morning from any other.Ilyra noticed immediately that the wards had shifted their emphasis.Not their strength.Not their coverage.Their attention.As if waiting for instruction that hadn't arrived yet.She stood nea
A Normal Morning
The bell rang on time. Its tone was clear and precise. The familiar triple resonance that marked the start of instructional hours. It rolled through the stone corridors and open arches of the academy without distortion.Students moved when they were supposed to move. Doors opened when they were meant to. The day stepped forward as if nothing had happened.Cael lay still for a moment after it sounded. Staring at the underside of his desk. The wood grain held a shallow split near the corner. Repaired at some point before he’d arrived.He tried to remember when he’d first noticed it. He sat up slowly. The motion careful out of habit, rather than pain.His body felt… intact. There was no ache. No stiffness beyond the dull residue of exhaustion. If he’d closed his eyes and trusted sensation alone, he might have believed everything was fine.But he didn’t trust it anymore.Around him, the boys’ dormitory stirred with quiet efficiency. The air smelled faintly of soap and testosterone driftin
Consequence Without Explination
The hour had turned late enough that the academy began to dim itself on instinct.Ward-lamps stepped down one shade at a time.Voices softened.The building settled into the version of night it had practiced for centuries.The boys’ dormitory was quiet in the way only shared spaces ever were.Not silent but subdued.Footsteps softened by stone and distance.Doors closing without urgency.The muted murmur of voices filtering through walls.Each sound dampened by ward-lamps easing toward their night cycle.Bells marked the hour somewhere deeper in the complex—distant, already fading.Schedules adjusted. Rotations completed.No one lingered long enough to be noticed.Cael lay flat on his back, staring at the ceiling. Cleared for rest. Cleared for observation, with language that sounded comforting until you listened too closely.Avoid casting for at least two days. Preferably three. Reassessment to follow.The instructor who’d delivered the instructions hadn’t met his eyes. That bothered
The Ever Tightening Grip
The dormitory smelled of warm stone and warmer wood.Sun baked into the walls during the day, slowly bleeding back out now that night had settled in.The scent carried with it a sense of age and routine.Of a place that had absorbed centuries of footsteps and learned to hold them gently.Ward-lamps lined the hall in steady intervals.Their glow softened deliberately.Calibrated so shadows pooled in corners instead of cutting sharp lines across the floor.It was a design choice meant to soothe.Nothing harsh.Nothing abrupt.The academy was packed.That, more than anything, unsettled Cael.Students passed in loose clusters.Voices overlapping without urgency.Arguments about drills and footwork.Laughter too loud for the hour.Someone humming tunelessly as they dragged their feet along the stone.A door slammed somewhere down the hall.Muffled apologies followed.Another door creaked open.Hinges complained softly before settling.Life moved forward.Uninterrupted.Nothing had broken.
The Echo After Fire
Cael woke slowly.Not to pain. That was the strange part.But to the awareness of weight. The press of a blanket against his chest. The firmness of the bed beneath his back. The faint, steady hum of healing wards doing what they believed had already been done.He opened his eyes.The ceiling above him was smooth white stone, veined faintly with sigils that glowed low and constant.The medical wing.He remembered that much. What he didn't remember was feeling like this.His body felt settled.Not weak. Not sore.Just wrong in a way that refused to organize itself into words. Like a limb that had fallen asleep and woken incorrectly. Circulation restored. Sensation present. But something essential misaligned.He shifted, testing himself.No sharp pain. No resistance.Just a strange, crawling awareness beneath his skin, centered somewhere in his chest, spreading outward like an echo that hadn't finished bouncing yet.One of the healers noticed the movement and crossed the room."You're aw
What Answered Back
Ilyra had fallen asleep in the medical wing healing Cael.Her consciousness snapped into place.Not because of pain.Because the room fell away.For a single, suspended moment, the medical wing ceased to exist. The white stone. The muted glow of ward-lights. The careful murmurs of healers working in practiced rhythm. All of it peeled back as if it had never been real to begin with.The ward-lights flickered.Not enough for anyone else to notice. Just a fractional hesitation in the steady glow, the kind that only registered if you had spent years watching for signs of failure.The hum beneath the room shifted pitch, like a note held just slightly too long. Her hands tingled where they rested near Cael's chest. Not with magic, but with expectation.And then the room let go of her.Sound vanished first.Then weight.Then time.She stood somewhere else.The sky was wrong.Not dark but empty. Devoid of any color. As if someone had reached up and scraped the color out of it, leaving behind
You may also like
Civilian Dragon lord
Drew Archeron186.8K viewsSoul Avatar
Japhel14.9K viewsONCE BULLIED: LYON ARMSTRONG IS BACK.
ASystem18.8K viewsReturn of the S-class Young Master
IceFontana1818.8K viewsThe Gate of Eternity Curse of Heaven
Haiistory1.4K viewsTHE DEVIL'S FRUIT
Ifee_God334 viewsTransmigrated into another world with the strongest core
Kreed163 viewsThe True Dragon System
Musey134 views