Five months passed like a blade sliding through silk—quiet, sharp, and irreversible.
In that time, the Academy changed Gaius.
Not on the surface, perhaps—his frame remained lean but ironed with sinew, his eyes as quiet and discerning as the day he stepped through the obsidian gates—but inside, his thoughts moved differently now. Purposefully. The rhythm of his breath aligned to the cadence of command, his body trained to respond with lethal efficiency. He had grown, not just in power, but in something harder to measure: awareness.
The Academy was not a school. It was a sieve through which futures were filtered. That had never been clearer.
The initial ceremony of chaos and celebration had faded into memory. What remained now was the regimen—the endless hours of combat drilling in the Crucible, the study of ancient war doctrines in the Hall of Memory, the brutal personal combat scenarios that were spoken of in hushed tones by students who hadn't been sent into them yet. Not everyone returned. Some came back... changed.
The top ten had become something else entirely.
Lucius, whose brute strength had earned him both awe and scorn in equal measure, now walked with a subtle discipline to his swagger. His power had sharpened—not honed by drills or lectures, but by proximity to power. He was the third of their cohort to be chosen.
Chosen.
The word meant more here than anywhere else in the Imperium. Because to be chosen was to be drafted—not into a House, nor a faction, but into the sphere of an Imperator.
The first had been a surprise only to the naive.
Vereon Cassius, the disgraced second son of House Cassius—the same House that once sat among the Nine Great Thrones before their fall—was plucked from obscurity in the third month by none other than Lord Cassian Atrius himself. The war-worn legend had arrived at dawn, silent as ever, his only words a single command: "You. Follow."
Rumors had exploded, of course.
Three disciples, all Dominus-level monsters, had once walked under Atrius' shadow. All three dead. Not in glory. Not in triumph. In failure.
And yet, for some reason, he had picked the fallen noble son as his fourth.
Cassian said nothing, as always.
And neither did Vereon.
The second had been even more dramatic.
Her name was Elurien.
They whispered it like a spell, as if uttering it too clearly would fracture the illusion she was. A face so inhumanly perfect it silenced rooms, with eyes that held the clarity of a still lake before battle. She bested every trial with the ease of slipping silk over the blade of a sword, her footsteps so light she often wasn't noticed until her opponent had already lost.
When the Sword Saintess arrived—a name that belonged not just to legend but to lineage—the Spire turned silent.
She descended from her personal warship like a shard of sky, clad in robes that flickered between star-silver and dusk. Her presence was as undeniable as the edge of a blade. She said nothing as she entered the hall. She needed not. All knew her—Daughter of the Emperor, Imperator of the Fifth Fleet, and the second strongest cultivator on Gaia.
She placed her hand on Elurien's shoulder.
Elurien bowed.
And just like that, the Academy had two titans standing at its heart.
Lucius was next.
It happened during a sea trial in the Azure Strata—one of the domains pulled from the Oceanic Simulacrum created by the Academy's top Dominus-level warcasters. The arena was treacherous and deep, filled with illusory storms and thousand-meter drops into abyssal trenches lined with electric serpents. Lucius, drenched in salt and sweat, emerged victorious after dragging a leviathan to the surface by its gills.
The one who awaited him at the arena's edge had stood alone, his halberd planted into the steel.
Imperator Khaedros of Varedis.
The Ocean-Sworn. Keeper of the Abyssal Fortress. His Domain was water—no, not merely water. It was the ocean, boundless and eternal, a shield none had ever broken in war. They said his Domain could halt a fleet mid-assault, its pressure alone enough to crush enemy commanders into paste.
He said nothing when Lucius bowed.
He only turned.
Lucius followed.
And the tide turned again.
All of the top ten were chosen within two weeks after that.
The Academy whispered constantly now. The second-year and third-year students cast long glances, calculating. There had not been a cohort like this in fifty years.
And yet, there was still one who remained unchosen.
Gaius had waited in silence.
He trained, harder than ever. His formwork with the blade was studied. Precise. Not showy like some of the noble styles, not overwhelming like Lucius. It was balanced. Measured. Deceptively simple.
He spent nights in the Obsidian Vault reading strategies forgotten even by most instructors. He memorized the principles of three different combat doctrines. He studied the weaknesses of half a dozen Houses.
But still, none came.
Until the fifth month.
It happened in the middle of a winter storm simulation—one of the rare ones held outside the Academy walls, deep in the Cryoclast Fields of Gaia's northern pole. The trial was meant to test team cohesion in a storm that numbed limbs and obscured all sight beyond two meters. Their squad had broken, splintered under pressure. Gaius had assumed command by instinct.
And when the storm ended, their team alone stood at the extraction point—cold, battered, but intact.
He had turned to speak to one of his squadmates and found himself standing in the shadow of a man he had never seen before.
No insignia. No coat. No weapons.
Just a man. Old. White-haired. But tall, composed, and quiet in a way that reminded Gaius of falling snow over a battlefield.
"You altered the flow of the entire trial," the man said, his voice like winter and iron. "No one saw. But I did."
Gaius bowed.
"Name?"
"Gaius Voss."
"I am Arkael of the Silver Star. Do you know what that means?"
Gaius hesitated, then nodded. "Third-ranked Dominus in the Imperium. Holder of the Stilling Domain. Former Blade of the Eastern Reach."
Arkael watched him a moment longer.
"Good. You read."
Then, he turned.
Gaius followed.
The mentors called it scouting.
The students called it something else.
Drafting.
Like soldiers before a war. Or stones picked for the foundation of something vast and terrifying.
Each of them had been drafted by an Imperator or a Dominus—leaders of fleets, commanders of history-altering wars, cultivators who controlled not just territory but the trajectory of fate.
A Dominus could change the tempo of battle. Halt time for those beneath them. Rewrite physics in their personal Domain. They could shatter warfronts. Evacuate entire cities. And from among them, a rare few would become Imperators—living embodiments of the Empire's divine authority.
Now, Gaius was one of them. Not one of the ten. But close. Too close to ignore anymore.
The first lesson under Dominus Arkael was quiet.
He said nothing during the initial walk through the Blade Garden, a training field covered in snow and surrounded by statues of swords frozen in time, each one stuck halfway into the ground as if waiting to be drawn.
At the end of the path, Arkael simply gestured.
"This is where my students train."
Gaius looked around. The area was serene. Silent.
No footprints.
No signs of past students.
He turned. "How many?"
"Nine," Arkael said.
Gaius's jaw tensed. "Are they…"
"Not dead. Not yet. Not broken. Merely gone." Arkael turned to face him, pale eyes calm. "You may ask one question. Use it wisely."
Gaius did not hesitate.
"Why me?"
A long pause.
Then, a faint exhale.
"Because you are not a genius," Arkael said. "You are not a storm. You are not a monster. You are a man. And yet, you did what only monsters are supposed to do with your inhuman determination and endurance."
Gaius lowered his head in acknowledgment.
"I will not disappoint."
"You will," Arkael replied. "But you will survive it. That is the lesson."
Gaius did not speak again.
He walked to the nearest statue, the nearest blade half-frozen in time, and began to draw it.