Corren took a seat beside Lyra. Immediately, he felt the weight of stares press in. Nobles whispered behind jeweled hands, their disgust thinly veiled. He was used to being called worthless, but never on this scale.
A shadow fell across his desk.
The thick scent of cologne hit him first. Then he saw the family crest, the Frostmere sigil worn elegantly on the boy's chest, silver thread catching the light. The tall noble placed his hand on the table with deliberate force.
Ice trailed from his fingertips, spreading across the wood in delicate, threatening patterns.
"This is my table. Leave."
Corren looked up, forcing calm into his voice. "We weren't preassigned seats."
The boy's lip curled. "These tables are for those who earned their place. It's obvious you got here by luck."
The ice crept closer to Corren's hand. Words caught in his throat protest, anger, something; but they wouldn't come. He glanced at Lyra, searching for help, for anything.
She was already standing. Her chair scraped softly against the stone floor. "Come on," she said quietly. "Let's move."
They found seats near the far wall, tucked behind a support pillar. Corren slumped into his chair, frustration coiling tight in his chest. Not anger. Just the bitter, familiar irritation of knowing he should've said something, anything but couldn't he wasn't able to
Then footsteps echoed through the hall.
Gladius strode onto the stage, his presence drawing silence like gravity. "I see some of you have already met my little brother," Gladius said referring to the boy who had just bullied Corren out of his seat, his tone calm but sharp enough to cut through the murmurs. "Leon, stop causing a ruckus. You don't even know if you'll pass."
Corren blinked. Of course. The resemblance was uncanny. The same silver hair, the same eyes, but Gladius carried himself differently: calm where Leon was brash, grounded where Leon was all posture.
"The first trial," Gladius announced, "tests knowledge not strength. Your understanding of Veil theory and beast dynamics will reveal how you think. Begin."
Corren stared down at the questions. They weren't what he'd expected, no grand riddles or showy theory. The questions were practical, almost mechanical: pressure ratios of Veil containment; the feeding cycles of Rift fauna; stress fractures in stabilizing cores.
Then one question stopped him cold.
List the grades of Veilcraft that humans can achieve.
His pen hovered over the paper.
Awakened. Advanced. Elite. Master. Mythic. Legendary.
That's what everyone learned. The ladder that stretched from mediocrity to godhood. But there was one more. One that didn't belong on any chart, one that existed only as a footnote, a warning, a statistical anomaly.
Fragile.
He stared at the word in his mind. Did it even count as a grade? Or was it just a label for the broken ones, the mistakes the Stone couldn't fix?
He wrote it anyway. All seven. Let them see.
The rest of the questions felt familiar in a way that surprised him. At the factory, he'd seen coils burst from overcharged Veil flow. He'd fixed containment casings under torchlight, memorized failure patterns to avoid getting burned. For once, that labor felt like more than survival. It felt like knowledge.
His pen moved faster.
When Gladius passed through the aisles, he ignored the muttering students struggling to keep up. His gaze flicked briefly toward Lyra's page, a faint smile ghosted across his lips at the depth of her answers, he expected no less from the heiress of the ArcForge, then stopped at Corren's desk.
Gladius looked down at the boy who had walked through his barrier like it didn't exist.
He was in no way special. The same dark brown hair and brown eyes you'd find on half the workers in the industrial district. Everything about him was mediocre, unremarkable. Even his Veil could barely be sensed — a faint, fractured thing clinging to him like mist over cracked glass.
Yet there he sat, pen moving with quiet certainty across the page.
Gladius lingered a moment longer than usual, intrigued by his answers ,then walked on.
When it was done, Corren turned in his paper with shaking fingers. He didn't know if he'd passed but for once, he didn't feel small.
They were served food next. Real food not ration scraps or factory bread. Bagel sandwiches with salmon or turkey, fruit cups, and small glazed donuts.
Corren stared at the tray like it was an illusion. He hadn't eaten like this in years. He took a bite and slowed immediately, afraid it might disappear if he finished too fast.
Lyra just smiled faintly, saying nothing. Across the courtyard, Darius watched but didn't approach.
For the first time since the Awakening Ceremony, Corren let himself breathe. The written trial had gone better than he'd dared hope. His factory knowledge — the failures he'd memorized, the containment pressures he'd learned by necessity — had finally meant something beyond survival.
Maybe he didn't belong here. Not yet.
But maybe Lyra was right doing this wasn't such a bad idea
A bell chimed across the courtyard. Assistants began collecting trays, gesturing toward the academy's outer field.
Corren stood, brushing crumbs from his jacket. Lyra fell into step beside him.
"Ready for round two?" she asked.
He wasn't. But he nodded anyway.
The next trial would test something else entirely.