Eira Lumi turned sixteen at the beginning of autumn, which in this world was the legal age to register as an adventurer. The registration took place inside the guild hall, a wide stone building with tall windows, polished floors, and crystal lamps lining the walls.
Young men and women stood in line, dressed neatly in their best clothes, whispering nervously as they waited for their turn. Each stepped forward to place a hand on the crystal ball, which glowed in different colors depending on the person's element and rank. Fire, water, wind, earth, lightning, and rarer branches appeared again and again, each confirmed by the examiner who read the glowing text that formed inside the crystal.
When Eira's name was called, and he placed his hand on the crystal, it glowed softly but showed nothing at all. There was no symbol, no element, and no text for the examiner to read.
The officials exchanged quiet looks, already familiar with this result, and after a brief discussion, they approved him only as a provisional E-rank adventurer, not because of his magic but because of his documented dungeon experience, monster subjugation records, and his unusual sword that carried mana even if he himself could not use it properly. Eira accepted the result without complaint, not because he was satisfied, but because at least it was not a rejection.
After sixteen, anyone with an adventurer's license could enter the academy as a transfer student regardless of background, origin, or past failures, as long as they passed the basic written and practical exams.
The academy existed less to teach greatness and more to prepare students for survival, because formal education ended at eighteen, and the final two years determined almost everything. Students worked to secure apprenticeships, guild recommendations, or noble sponsorships.
Some were trained to become royal knights or court mages, while others were prepared for trades like alchemy, medicine, jewel crafting, rune work, or agriculture. At the end of their education, a massive nationwide evaluation was held in a grand stadium attended by magic knight orders, guild masters, nobles, merchants, and envoys from other states.
They observed students and selected those with talent, offering contracts, positions, and training, while the rest quietly returned home to ordinary lives.
When Eira told his parents he intended to go to the academy, they were quiet at first but not surprised. His mother worried, his father smiled sadly, and both supported him without hesitation. Neo also passed her magic test, gaining water magic at a basic level, and she insisted on coming with him.
She studied hard, passed the academy entrance exam, and promised she would grow stronger, not only for herself but so she could stand beside him. They paid the academy fees using Eira's savings from years of adventuring and dungeon work, packed their belongings, and said their goodbyes to the village that had raised them.
Before leaving, they visited the forest where Neo had once fallen into eternal sleep, now healed and peaceful again, though the memory remained heavy between them.
The academy stood near a river beyond the hills, its white stone walls reflecting in the water like a mirror. Towers rose into the sky, bridges connected different wings, and the courtyards were filled with students training, studying, arguing, and laughing. It felt overwhelming and alive in a way the village never was.
Eira and Neo, registered as transfer students, were assigned small shared dorm rooms and placed into mixed classes with students from different regions and backgrounds. No one knew them, no one cared about their past, and no one expected anything from them.
For the first time in years, they were not chasing answers, monsters, or survival, but simply beginning again as ordinary students, even though both of them knew that nothing in their lives had ever stayed ordinary for long.
The academy felt far larger on the inside than it had from the outside, and on the first morning, Eira found himself walking through long stone corridors with tall windows that poured pale light across the floors.
Students moved everywhere in quiet streams, their voices low and excited, carrying books, weapons, scroll cases, or toolkits depending on their chosen fields. Some wore noble crests stitched into fine coats, others wore simple uniforms, and a few dressed in practical travel clothes that marked them as adventurers or craftsmen.
There were stares, of course, curious glances, and quiet judgments, but none lingered long on Eira. No one recognized him, no one whispered his name, and no one seemed to care that he had once stood before the crystal with no visible magic. To this place, he was simply another transfer student.
Neo, on the other hand, drew attention without meaning to. Her black hair and green eyes stood out against the pale stone halls, and her calm confidence made her seem older than she was. When students discovered she had water magic and that she had passed both the written and practical exams easily, their interest grew quickly.
Girls approached her with shy smiles, boys found excuses to walk near her or offer help, and even some nobles took notice. Neo handled it with awkward kindness, always polite, always gentle, but she stayed close to Eira whenever she could, as if the world made more sense when he was near.
Eira noticed it, but he did not feel jealousy. If anything, he felt quietly grateful that she was being accepted so easily. To him, Neo was still the same girl who followed him through fields, who tripped on roots and laughed at herself, who believed in him when he had nothing to offer.
He treated her the same as always, as a close friend and nothing more, even when her glances lingered a little longer than before, and her smiles seemed softer in the evenings.
They spent their first few days adjusting to academy life, learning schedules, locations, and rules. Mornings were filled with theory classes on mana control, monster behavior, dungeon ecology, and magical history.
Afternoons were spent in specialization courses, where students split based on their paths. Eira attended basic combat theory and dungeon survival, while Neo joined water magic and healing fundamentals. Their subjects rarely overlapped, and most of the day they were apart.
Eira's roommate was a quiet boy named Ryn who barely looked up from his books or tools. He was a craftsman student, specializing in magical devices and rune carving, and his desk was always covered in small parts, half-built items, and glowing inscriptions. They exchanged polite greetings, but little else. Ryn studied late into the night, slept little, and treated learning like a duty rather than a joy.
In the evenings, Eira and Neo often met again. Sometimes they walked through the gardens, where magical lamps floated like fireflies above flowerbeds, or along the academy walls where moonlight reflected on stone and water alike. They spoke about classes, about how strange it felt to live among so many people, and about the future in quiet, uncertain ways.
Neo often thanked him for bringing her here, for paying her tuition, for believing in her. Eira always waved it off, uncomfortable with her gratitude, telling her it was only fair since she had stood by him when no one else had.
One night, after returning to his room, Eira fell into a deep and vivid dream. He found himself standing in endless snow beneath a dark blue sky, his old, broken body lying behind him on frozen ground. The snow goddess stood before him, wrapped in white and pale blue cloth that shimmered like frost under moonlight.
Her presence was warm despite the cold, her eyes calm and knowing. She touched his chest lightly, and he felt the same strange pull he had felt when she first kissed his forehead, a mixture of comfort and unease.
"You must prepare," she told him. "Evil is moving toward you, slowly but surely."
"Then why am I still weak?" Eira asked her. "Why do I still have no power?"
She smiled faintly. "You have not even touched a drop of what you hold. Your power sleeps deeper than this world understands. When it wakes, nothing will be simple anymore."
He tried to ask more, but the dream faded, and he woke to pale morning light through his window and the sound of students already moving through the halls.
The dream stayed with him.
That day, he went to the academy library, a vast circular hall filled with tall shelves, floating ladders, and quiet desks lit by crystal lamps. He searched through records of gods, magic origins, forgotten deities, and ancient faiths, but he found no mention of a snow goddess. Ice, frost, winter spirits, and cold magic existed, but none matched her description.
The absence bothered him more than if she had been written about poorly. It was as if she simply did not exist.
It was there that he met a student, a noble girl with pale lavender hair and tired eyes. Her name was Lara, and she struggled to control her mana, which surged and faded unpredictably.
Because of it, her magic often failed or backfired, and students whispered about her behind her back. Some nobles mocked her openly, calling her broken or unstable, despite her high birth. Lara was searching for answers in the library just as Eira was, hoping to understand her condition.
When a group of nobles laughed at her for dropping a book when her mana flared and shook her hands, Eira stepped in quietly and helped her gather the fallen pages without a word. Lara thanked him with a small, fragile smile, and from that moment, they became familiar faces to each other.
A few days later, practical lessons finally began. The instructor, a stern woman with silver hair and battle scars across her arms, announced that their first test would be an A-rank dungeon under supervision. It was meant to evaluate teamwork, awareness, and survival, not raw power. Students were divided into teams, each with a teacher assigned.
Eira was placed with Eira, Lara, Ryn, and one instructor.
The dungeon lay beneath a ruined watchtower outside the academy grounds, its entrance marked by warning runes and heavy stone doors. Inside, the air was damp and cold, and the walls glowed faintly with natural mana veins.
Not long after entering, the ground collapsed beneath them, dropping the students into a lower chamber while the instructor remained above, separated by fallen stone and debris.
They were alone.
The chamber was dark, filled with broken pillars and thick fog, and something large moved within it. A massive serpent emerged, its scales dark green and slick with poison, its eyes glowing with predatory focus. It was an A-rank monster, far beyond what first-year students were meant to face alone.
Lara raised her staff, hands shaking. Eira tried to stabilize her mana, Ryn fumbled for a device, and Eira stepped forward, gripping his sword as the creature hissed and drew back to strike.
This was no longer a lesson.
This was survival.
And for the first time since arriving at the academy, Eira felt that something was finally about to change.