2025-12-15 20:30:36The big brass bell on top of the Crimson Flame Academy tower rang loud and long.
Dong… dong… dong…
The sound rolled across the red-tiled roofs and poured into every classroom like warm honey. Students jumped from their seats, chairs scraping the stone floor, bags flying onto shoulders.
Inside Class 3-A, the noise was even louder.
“I can’t wait for tomorrow!”
“Finally, the Awakening Ceremony!”
“Who do you think will get the strongest flame this year?”
Asta Xavier sat at the very back by the open window, one leg crossed over the other, his arms folded. His black hair fell over his brown eyes as he stared at the excited crowd. A tiny smirk played on his lips.
He whispered to himself, so low no one heard.
“Keep talking. Tomorrow you’ll all be looking up at me.”
The classroom door slid open with a soft creak. Miss Rena, their homeroom teacher, stepped in. Her long red robe fluttered like real fire. She clapped once. Everyone went quiet.
“Hey everyone, listen up!”
She smiled wide.
“Hope you guys know what tomorrow is?”
“Yes, ma’am!!”
The whole class shouted together.
Miss Rena laughed.
“Good. And guess what? Her Imperial Majesty, the Empress herself, is coming to watch the ceremony. So be early. Be clean. And behave… unless you want to be fried into crispy chicken.”
She winked.
“Okay, ma’am!”
The class answered again with laughter.
Miss Rena gave a small wave, turned on her heel, her robe swishing, and walked out. The door closed softly behind her.
The second she was gone, the noise exploded again.
Whispers turned into open talk.
One boy nudged his friend and pointed at the back of the room.
“Ohh, look at Asta Xavier.”
Another girl giggled.
“Yeah, I bet he’ll be the strongest among all of us. I mean, he is the real son of Lord Ignatius,the strongest Flame mage ever and leader of the Xavier clan.”
A third boy nodded hard.
“Exactly! His flame will probably be even bigger and hotter than his father’s!”
Asta heard every word. He turned his head slowly and looked out the window. Sunlight fell on his face. The smirk grew bigger.
He muttered under his breath.
“I won’t brag… but yeah, they’re right. Tomorrow I will find out just how strong I really am.”
He gave a tiny, proud chuckle.
“Bet I’ll be way stronger than Father ever was.”
Just then the classroom door opened again.
Every head turned.
Elara Veyron walked in like she owned the whole academy.
Her long platinum-blonde hair shone like moonlight. Her ice-blue eyes sparkled. The crimson uniform hugged her body perfectly. Gold phoenix patterns danced on the sleeves.
The boys forgot how to breathe.
“Wow…”
“She’s so beautiful…”
“Goddess level, seriously.”
“I would die for one smile.”
Elara didn’t even look at them. She walked straight to the back, heels clicking, hips swaying just a little.
She stopped behind Asta’s chair, bent down, wrapped her arms around his shoulders from behind, and kissed his cheek softly.
Asta’s face turned bright red.
Elara’s lips brushed his ear. Her voice was sweet, low and a little naughty.
“What are you thinking about, hmm? Thinking about me?”
Asta stammered, his heart racing.
“Y-yes! Of course I was thinking about you!”
Elara giggled. She rested her chin on his shoulder and looked at him with half-closed eyes, full of heat.
“Good. Because after tomorrow… when you awaken the strongest flame… I’ll be completely yours.”
She dropped her voice even lower.
“We’ll spend the whole night together… and have lots of fun. You know exactly what I mean, right?”
Her eyes were hungry, her lips slightly parted.
Asta trembled. His voice came out tiny.
“Y-yes… yes, I know what you mean…”
Inside his head he screamed.
‘I have zero idea what she’s talking about!’
Elara smiled in a satisfied manner.
“Perfect. I have to go now. My driver’s waiting.”
She turned his face gently and kissed him full on the lips this time,slow and right in front of the whole class.
The boys exploded.
“Ugh, kill me now.”
“Lucky bastard!”
“Why him?!”
Elara pulled away, waved her fingers at Asta, and walked out, hips swaying even more. The door closed softly behind her.
The boys turned to Asta like angry cats.
“You lucky bastard!”
One shouted.
“Seriously lucky.”
Another agreed.
“Everyone knows he’ll be the strongest tomorrow, so of course the prettiest girl wants him.”
A third boy shrugged,his voice low.
“Yeah… I guess you’re right.”
Asta looked at them from the corner of his eye and smirked harder than ever.
‘They still don’t get it. The reason Elara is all over me is simple:when we were kids, my father and Duke Veyron made a promise. We’re engaged. Tomorrow I’ll make it official and propose it properly.’
He muttered to himself as he stood up, swung his backpack over one shoulder, and walked out of the class like a king.
The afternoon sun was orange and warm. Asta walked along the tree-lined road that led away from the academy. He could have taken the family carriage, but he liked walking.
A big black school bus full of older students roared past him. Asta’s eyes locked on one boy inside,tall, black hair with red tips, gray eyes, two years older. The boy stared back for a second, then the bus turned into the academy gates.
Asta kept walking.
Twenty minutes later he reached the huge iron gates of Xavier Manor. Golden lions stood on both sides. The gates opened by themselves.
Two lines of butlers and maids bowed low.
“Welcome home, Young Master Asta!”
They said together.
An old housekeeper with kind eyes hurried forward and took his backpack.
“You must be tired, dear.”
The head butler, Mr Gregor, tall, gray hair, always serious,walked up and bowed.
“Young Master, I still don’t understand why you refuse the carriage every day.”
Asta grinned, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Because I love walking, Gregor. I love it so much.”
Before the butler could argue, Asta raised a hand.
“I’m starving. Tell the chef I’m home.”
“Right away, Young Master.”
Gregor turned to leave, then stopped.
“Oh,I almost forgot. Your cousin, Young Master Cassian, will arrive tonight. He’ll attend tomorrow’s ceremony with us.”
Asta froze on the stairs. His smile disappeared for a second.
“…Alright.”
He said quietly, then kept climbing.
In his room he threw off his uniform, washed his face in the marble basin, and changed into soft home clothes. The water was warm and smelled like roses.
A small silver bell rang downstairs,dinner was ready.
Asta ran down the grand staircase two steps at a time and sat at the long dining table. Plates of roast meat, buttered bread, and honey-glazed carrots waited for him. He started eating happily.
‘Ding-dong!’
The front-door bell.
Footsteps. Mr Gregor’s voice, warm and welcoming.
“Oh! You finally made it, Young Master Cassian. How was the trip?”
Silence.
Heavy boot
s on marble.
Asta turned his head slowly.
The boy from the school bus stood in the doorway,tall, black hair with red tips, cold gray eyes.
Cassian Xavier looked straight at Asta with a scornful gaze.
“I’m home.”
Cassian said…
His words hung in the air as their gaze was still locked on each other…
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Chapter 596
The forest at this hour was its own thing.Not the daytime forest, not the layered light and the visible depth of it. The night forest, the closed-down version, the one that operates on different senses because the visual ones have been mostly removed. The specific sounds of it. The specific smell, the cold version of the forest smell, the one that comes when the temperature drops and the damp rises from the ground and the trees breathe their different night-breath.Asta moved through it with Flora on his left and Mira on his right.They moved in the specific way of people who need to be quiet and know how to be quiet,not the slow, overcautious movement of people trying to be quiet, the practiced movement of people for whom quiet was a thing they had learned to do properly. The camp behind them was still. Nothing had shifted. Nothing had called out.The trees thickened.And then, in the small clearing that the thick trees made between themselves,the specific organic clearing of a for
Chapter 595
The space that was not quite dark and not quite light but had its own specific quality of illumination, the source of which was the dragon himself, the vast, scaled presence that occupied the far end of it the way certain things occupy far ends, with a completeness that made the far end feel closer than it was.The Emperor Dragon was looking at him.Not the patient look. Not the measured look of their usual conversations, the look of something that has been waiting, that has been in the specific frustration of a thing that cannot move on its own and has been waiting for the thing that can to become available again."You're awake.” The dragon said."What happened." Asta said."What happened." The dragon said. "Is that a man put his hand on your throat and spoke seven words of the Dimming Incantation into you, and your body received those words and acted on them because that is what bodies do when the Dimming Incantation is applied correctly, which it was." He looked at Asta with t
Chapter 594
Not running to get there, simply there, the arrival so fast that the between had not been visible, the specific movement of something that had been given its full expression and the full expression was this.His hand found Asta's throat.Not the grip that Asta had used on Eren,something more deliberate than that, more positioned, the hand of someone who knows exactly where they are putting it and why. The specific placement of fingers that has been practiced until the practice has become automatic.And then his lips moved.Low,barely above breath, the volume of something that was not meant for anyone standing at a distance, only for Asta at the distance of the grip. The words were not language in the conversational sense, they were the older version, the incantation version, the words built for function rather than meaning. Ancient and rhythmic, the cadence of them specific, the specific cadence of a technique that required the words in a specific order at a specific pace.They took
Chapter 593
He stopped. "When I made contact with Loki directly, when I tried to reinforce Jabber's resistance and give him the leverage to push back…" He looked at his hands again. "Loki looked at me. That is all. He looked at me. And he told Jabber,in the voice that things use when they speak inside someone's consciousness, the voice that is felt rather than heard, he told Jabber to remove me."The clearing was quiet."And Jabber.” Eren said, his voice going lower."Threw me out. Not because he wanted to. Because when Loki said it with the full weight of what Loki is, the full ancient weight of a god-class dragon speaking to the vessel it has possessed,the vessel does not have the capacity to disobey. Not at this stage of the possession. Not yet."He looked at Asta."I'm sorry." He said.Asta stood there.He looked at Eren for a long moment. At the expression on his face, the genuine, specific sorrow of someone who has tried and has not arrived at the outcome the trying was for and is stan
Chapter 592
The pallor of it. The eyes, not red, not wet, not any of the conventional expressions of grief, just hollow, the specific hollow of someone who has had something taken from the inside rather than the outside, the particular empty quality of a space that was occupied recently and is not occupied now.He was looking at Eren.Eren was looking back at him.The Elf Chief's expression had the quality of someone who has been waiting for this arrival and has been carrying the weight of the waiting in the knowledge that the arrival was going to be this. The specific expression of someone who knows that something that happened was partly a consequence of their involvement and is standing in the presence of the person who has paid the most for the consequence.Asta looked at him.And then his hand came up.Fast, the specific speed of something that had been building in him the whole walk back and had arrived at the expression of itself without the mediation of decision, the body acting on what
Chapter 591
He looked at Jabber's name the same way everyone looked at Jabber's name when they said it now, with the specific quality of a word that used to mean one thing and currently means something else and the transition between the two meanings had not been clean.Flora looked at him.Something moved in her face.Something that knew, the way certain parts of a person know things before the knowing has been delivered properly, that what came next was not something she was going to want to receive.………………….Cassian told them.He did not build to it, he did not arrange the telling for effect or find the gentle approach. He looked at Flora and Elara and Sera and Garrett and he told them what had happened in the forest the same way you tell people things when the things do not have a version that is easy to deliver and you have decided that the slow version is not more kind than the direct version, only slower.He told them about Jabber.About the clearing and the crater and the smoke and Jabber
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