Sienna Vlyn
Power is a performance.
And if you play it well enough, people mistake your act for truth.
By day, I am Lady Sienna Vlyn—second child of the Grand Duke, student of etiquette, the girl everyone praises and dismisses in the same breath. "Perfect," they call me. Perfect posture, perfect manners, perfect smile. So perfect they forget to look too closely.
Which is exactly how I like it.
Because perfect girls don't plot. Perfect girls don't poison their chessboards before the game begins. And perfect girls certainly don't spend their nights in shadows, drawing circles to stitch broken magic back together while their hair turns silver and their eyes burn amber.
But then, I've never cared much for being perfect.
The Test: A Stage for Fools
The Academy prides itself on "cultivating future leaders," which mostly means pampered children with too much mana and not enough spine get to hit each other with wooden swords while professors clap.
Four matches today: three to weed out the weak, one optional round for glory. Glory doesn't interest me. Access does. Win five matches, and you earn a Temple Badge—permission to enter the Holy Temple itself, where the real secrets are kept.
Briol and Vivi complain about the exams as though we're not standing on the easiest battlefield imaginable.
"If the Crown Prince's little fan club screams one more time, I swear I'll burn the stands," Briol mutters, her fire affinity flickering across her fingertips.
"Do it after the fights," Vivi suggests, adjusting the eagle perched on her arm. "That way they can call it art."
I smile. "You both underestimate the entertainment value of letting them think they're winning."
The first three matches are… quaint. Boys swinging like they're chopping wood, girls over-relying on flashy beasts. I let them tire themselves out, then humiliate them with precision. A flick of my wooden sword. A twist of my heel. A bow so delicate it feels like insult.
The fourth match—water elemental. Older, higher-ranked, convinced she's about to teach me humility. Her strikes crash like tides, relentless and smug. I pretend to panic, stumbling just enough to draw her in. She lunges; I pivot; my blade slams her wrist. She drops her weapon, stunned, as mud splashes her pristine boots.
The crowd cheers. I bow again. Perfection in motion.
And then I make my mistake.
"I want to fight him," I say.
The Boy Who Refuses the Game
Asher Leonard.
White hair like bleached bone under the sun. Eyes hidden beneath his mask. A figure who seems less like a student and more like a rumor that decided to walk. Everyone whispers about him—illegitimate, cursed, probably mad. I've been watching him. He avoids lessons. Avoids people. Avoids playing.
Which makes him dangerous.
Dangerous things should be understood. Or broken.
He steps into the ring with his hands in his pockets. Doesn't summon mana. Doesn't call for an animal. Just… moves.
And gods, he's fast.
I swing. He's already gone. I pivot. He's behind me. His kicks land like punctuation, clean and deliberate, as though he's writing my defeat before I even think to resist.
Five minutes later, I'm staring up at him from the dirt.
"You did good, princess," he says, voice low, amused, like I'm nothing but a curiosity.
Then he walks away. No bow, no gloat, just dismissal.
I want to strangle him. No—worse. I want to win. One day, when it matters, I will.
Crown Prince Cecil
Cecil steps forward as I rise, tossing me an elixir.
"A valiant effort, Lady Vlyn," he says, red eyes gleaming with the same heat that flickers in the stripes across his wrist—mark of his fire-tiger affinity.
I give him the perfect duchess smile. "Your Highness honors me," I say sweetly, already calculating the best place to discard the bottle.
He's handsome, charming, and entirely predictable. A man who thinks marriage to me will crown him twice: once in love, once in politics. And he's arrogant enough to think I'll let him.
Night: The Real Me
By day, I am a duchess. By night, I am someone else.
In the empty alleys behind the Academy, I lay out my tools: chalk, crushed mana stones, silver dust. Circles bloom under my hands, glowing faintly as they knit shattered magic back together. The nobles who buy my work never ask who I am. They see silver hair, amber eyes, and assume I'm just another mercenary mage. They don't realize I'm the girl they applaud in the morning.
Tonight's job is quick—a broken teleportation ring that I stitch into perfection. Mana hums through me, dangerous and intoxicating, and I force it back down. No one can know what I am. Not yet.
Hazel's asleep when I return to our dorm. Serpent controller, commoner, heart too soft for this world. She's the only person here who cares without wanting something back. Sometimes I wonder how she survived long enough to meet me.
I sit on my bed, washing silver dust from my hands, when something catches my eye outside the window.
The Secret I Wasn't Meant to See
A figure in a hooded robe—Estelle, the earth elemental diva, unmistakable even in shadow—slips toward the southern courtyard. She thinks no one notices her after hours. She's wrong.
Curiosity drags me to the hallway, quiet as breath.
And that's when I see him.
Not the Asher Leonard I fought earlier. Not the white-haired ghost who humiliated me.
This boy's hair is black as obsidian, his mask gone, his posture sharper, heavier, like the darkness itself bows to him. Estelle approaches him like she's meeting a god she intends to seduce.
I freeze, hidden by the glow of the courtyard's willow, my mana still thrumming from the circles I just drew.
Two things become clear in that moment:
Asher Leonard is not what he pretends to be.
Neither am I.
And maybe—just maybe—this game is going to be fun after all.