Three days of classes had sanded the edges off their expectations and sharpened everything else. On the fourth night, when the campus had settled into its respectable hush and the sea kept its own counsel, Kori sent eight messages with the same three words: east court, midnight.
Crown Spine waited there like a vertebrae the Academy had grown on a dare - fifty meters of dark wood and pale stone, handholds that made no sense until they did, thin platforms tucked into the structure like commas so you could learn where to breathe. Dew stitched silver along the climbing holds. A small bell hung under the top lip, shaped like a rude secret.
The court lamps were turned low. The banners dreamed scarlet in the still air. The sky didn't belong to morning or night yet - that blue that makes faces look like they're concentrating.
Kori sat on the low wall with her ankles crossed and a thermos in her hands. "Good evening, or morning. Disasters!" Kori said, not too loud. "Welcome to Crown Spine, the part of the Academy that likes to pretend gravity is a hobby. Rules are simple. Up, down. Repeat until your body files a complaint it can't take back. If you let go and the platform doesn't love you in time - you're done. If you climb down and can't climb back up - you're done. No skipping steps. Water when I say water"
Esen raised a hand. "What's the prize?"
Kori sipped her thermos like it contained justice. "Calm down. You'll find out when someone earns it."
Hikari rolled her shoulders, eyes up the tower like she was reading starlines. Raizen flexed his fingers and then shook them out because flexing felt like a lie. Arashi took his jacket off like the tower deserved the respect. Keahi laced her gloves tight and checked them twice. Lynea's braid was a metronome. Ichiro was there when you looked, not there when you didn't. Feris smiled at the bell like it had already rung for her in a dream.
Kori gave them the start: "Go."
They started.
The first ascent was noise and sense braided together. The tower learned their weights - the wood made that small, forgiving groan that buildings use when they agree to be used. The eight found the vertical rhythm: pull, step, shift, breathe - make a triangle with your body, move the triangle up, don't think about the ground like it's personal.
Hikari reached the top first. Not because she sprinted - because she didn't pause. She dropped down through a tight line, boots whispering, fingers hooked, and the dew answered with the kind of treachery only water knows.
Her right sole slid half a hand-width. The adjustment was perfect - weight shifted, grip changed - and then the next hold wasn't where her hand had decided it would be. She fell three meters like a bead sliding off a string, hit a stud on her shoulder, rolled with insulted grace, and came up already grimacing at her own decision-making.
Kori didn't get up. Hikari's jaw clenched. She sat. She breathed. Elimination arrived not with drama but with a wrist she didn't trust for the next hour and a half.
"That's one" Kori murmured. Lynea reached it second. She loved the shape of a problem too much to run past its edges. She now learned where the wood wanted to be touched and where it wanted to be left alone. Dew made all the holds equal - equally rude.
Esen got up third and saluted the bell at the top because he couldn't help it. Arashi slightly touched with no additional movement. Then Keahi. Feris with the same breath she'd used at the bottom. Then Ichiro, and lastly Raizen.
They dropped. They went again. Midnight ate itself and made more midnight. Half an hour in, Ichiro came down clean, stood with both hands on a hold, under his cloak, and didn't go back up. He bowed once to the wood - apology or respect - and stepped aside like he'd left a room without opening a door.
Kori flicked a look his way - you could miss it - a tiny jolt of approval for a person who knew exactly where his line was. An hour in, Feris reached the bell again, laughed low at nothing, and climbed down. She stood on the stone for a long second like destiny was a friend she'd promised to meet later, then stepped back. "I'll cheer" she said, and meant it like a vocation.
Two hours found Esen at the top for the fourth time, wrists buzzing. He gave the bell a flip of his finger, hung for an unnecessary heartbeat just to prove to someone (himself) that he could, then started climbing down. Touching the ground, Hh looked at his hands, opened them, laughed once - a dry bark of surrender - and announced to the night, "I'm in a committed relationship with my calves, and I think we need to see other people." He stood. He stepped aside. Pride set down carefully, not thrown.
Three hours turned the tower into a decision. Arashi's ascent had been a poem up to then - clean phrases stacked into an argument. On his last push, he paused at two-thirds, examined the next fifteen moves like they were a chess endgame, and came down instead of up. It looked like choice, because it was.
"Leave some beauty for the morning" he told Crown Spine, to which Crown Spine made no reply. He took a bottle of water from nowhere and drank it all.
Keahi lasted to four hours by converting stubbornness into math - don't look up, don't look down, count the beat under the skin of your fingers and put your boot where the beat says, not where your ego screams. She tried to negotiate with herself like a woman who had made friends with complicated diagrams. Her arm didn't negotiate. She dropped two meters, caught, held, breathed, looked at Kori, and shook her head once. "Next time" she told the tower, and it believed her.
When the clock indicated somewhere around "5:30" Lynea hit the lip, counted to three because the bell deserved ceremony, came down, trembling. When her feet touched stone again, she stood a little too long. You could see the angle of the choice slide toward enough. She stepped back. She didn't sit. She didn't wobble. She watched.
By then the court had begun to grow an audience it hadn't invited. First it was a handful of insomniac first-years. Then two professors who didn't pretend to be passing by. Then a ribbon of uniforms coming off midnight study, drifting toward the east court in that moth way humans have for light and spectacle. Whispers braided themselves along the railings.
"Royal Scholars."
"Midnight?"
"Dawn, Feris clarified. Start at midnight, end when there's no one left."
"Who's still on it?"
"I don't know… The girl with the long braid until an hour ago"
At seven-thirty, the tower belonged to a single person.
Raizen's world had shrunk to three things: the step he was on, the next step, and the bell that made all those gestures matter. His forearms burned the honest burn of a thing used properly for too long. His calves pulsed in four-beat patterns. His lungs weren't hurting - they were a metronome that insisted he keep the count. He didn't go fast. He went on.
The hum wasn't under the floor here. It lived in the ribs of the tower - a patient tone carried by wood that had listened to a thousand sweats and decided to keep their secret. Every now and then it matched something in his chest and stayed there a breath too long, and he wondered whether the building was learning his rhythm or he was learning its. He filed the question behind his teeth. Up. Down. Again.
He slipped once - not a drama, a physics lesson. Two thirds up, a bead of dew pretended to be a handhold. His boot took the lie, his center of gravity tipped, and one palm skated off a hold slicker than it had any right to be. He dropped fast enough for six stomachs in the crowd to flip, fast enough for Kori's hand to freeze around her thermos, fast enough for Hikari - already on the sideline with her wrist banded tight - to take a step she knew was useless. He found a lower hold by feel, fingers closing with that animal clamp all bodies remember, and caught the fall four meters down. His shoulder felt like it exploded. He hung, legs bicycling once in space, then stilled, then set his feet and stood.
The sound the court made wasn't applause. It was a collective breath dragged back into a lot of chests at once.
Raizen pressed his forehead against the wood, eyes closed a moment, not in prayer but in inventory. Up. Down. Again.
"Go on" Esen said, softly, hands cupped around his mouth like a megaphone he hadn't earned yet. Then louder. "Go on!"
He wasn't trying to start anything. He started something.
The sound collected students like a net. The railings filled. Windows found faces. The east court - which was a place for drills, not for myths - learned the shape of a small myth anyway.
Dark bled toward gray. The first not-quite color slid into the sky. The banners shivered like creatures waking. Crown Spine wore the hour like a crown that hadn't decided if it fit.
Kori got off the wall and stood. She didn't pace. She didn't clap. If you didn't know her, you'd think she was simply a person who'd been standing there all along. If you did know her, you'd see the line of her mouth trying not to do something honest.
Halfway up, the eastern horizon found the idea of gold. The sea took it and threw it back up the cliff so the tower looked outlined in a light it had earned. Three quarters. Raizen didn't bargain. He didn't say one more out loud. He always hated contracts his body could hear. He moved. In the midst of all the sound, you could hear Kori take a breath and hold it because she was the kind of person who refused to make anyone think she held her breath for anything.
The last handhold was close and too far. He had two more honest pulls in his forearms. Then he finally reached the top. Golden light bathed his entire being, the sun's brightness made his eyes tear and his sweat sparkle. And in the middle of the tower, the huge brass bell. His palm met it. He didn't tap. He didn't smash. He rang it like a person who had broken himself down into the exact motion necessary and refused to add a flourish.
The first ring.
The Lotus Academy woke. Windows opened. Doorways filled. The bell - which students didn't ring - said morning. Then he started climbing down, step by step. More insecure with the second.
Finally reaching ground again, Raizen laughed - the way you do when oxygen remembers who you are - and then his legs remembered they were legs. The hip forwarded it to his spine, who wrote agreed in darker ink. The ground rose to meet him. He didn't collapse. He miscalculated standing. Arashi simply appeared where physics suggested someone should be and caught him in a neat, infuriatingly gentle arrest of momentum.
"Careful" Arashi said, as if they were crossing a street.
"Obviously" Raizen said, because the word had lost the shape of a joke and kept the shape of a pact.
The court made a sound now. It wasn't polite. It wasn't academy. It was human - messy, layered, voices thrown in together without choreography. Esen's cheer had become a wave and then a tide. Hikari stood very still, the way you stand when your body wants to run at someone and your brain says they're already being held. Feris was smiling with her hands clasped like a prayer that wasn't to anyone. Lynea's mouth pressed into that small, fierce line that meant noted, logged, next time I will beat you.
Kori swung the thermos once, caught it, and bounced off the wall like gravity had loosened its rules for her alone.
"Alriiiiight" she said, voice bright because everything under it wasn't. "That was stupid and excellent. The combination is rare. Don't chase it daily."
Esen pointed at her. "Prize" he demanded, joyful and bossy at once. "Tell me I didn't do all that spectating for free."
Kori grinned - a knife and a ribbon in one line. "Private session" she said. "With me. One on one. No whistles, no witnesses. You pick the day, I pick the ruin."