The guild outpost at Crossroads Watch was quieter at midnight. Most of the adventurers had retreated to the inn or their bedrolls, leaving only a skeleton crew at the counter and a few drunks slumped in corners. I approached the counter on unsteady legs, my core still throbbing from the battle, the pouch of gold heavy in my hand.
The clerk was the same grizzled human from before. He looked up, recognized me, and raised an eyebrow. "The botanist. Heard you went with the Rust Axe crew. Figured you'd be crow food by now."
"Almost was," I admitted. "I need to register for the Dragon Academy trials."
He blinked. Then he laughed, a rough sound like grinding stones. "You? Kid, no offense, but you look like you just crawled out of a grave. The trials aren't some backwoods dungeon crawl. They're brutal. Candidates die every year."
"I'm aware." I placed five gold coins on the counter. "Is this enough?"
He stared at the gold, then at me, then back at the gold. Slowly, he reached under the counter and pulled out a thick, official-looking document and a small, silver medallion stamped with a dragon coiled around a tower.
"Fill this out. Name, age, origin, class, element, confirmed rank. The medallion is your admission token. It's enchanted—will glow when you're within a day's travel of the Academy grounds. Don't lose it. Replacement cost is another five gold, and they don't refund dead applicants."
I took the form and a quill. My hand was steady now, the gold's weight a strange reassurance.
Name: Roy White
Age: 12
Origin: Holy Empire, Whitefall Town
Class: Support Magician (Specialized)
Element: Plant
Confirmed Rank: E
The clerk glanced at the form and snorted. "E-rank Support Magician. Plant element. Kid, I've been doing this twenty years. You know how many Plant Support applicants I've seen get into the Academy?"
"How many?"
"Zero. They don't want healers who can grow flowers. They want fighters. Mages who can level a battlefield. Warriors who can crush a dragon's skull." He slid the medallion across the counter anyway. "But rules are rules. You paid, you get your shot. Don't say I didn't warn you."
I took the medallion. It was cool to the touch, the dragon emblem seeming to shift in the torchlight. I slipped it into my pouch beside the remaining gold.
"One more thing," I said. "The trials. When and where?"
"Main event's at the Academy grounds in the Holy Dragon Lands, six months from now. But there are regional preliminaries. Closest one's at Stormhold, a week south of here. If you can't pass the prelim, you don't get to the main event. Prelim's in three months. Registration closes in two." He shrugged. "Better hurry."
Three months. Time to travel, to prepare, to heal. It was tight, but possible.
I left the guild and found Lena and Bren at the inn, already deep into celebratory mugs of ale. Lena spotted me and waved me over.
"Roy! Join us! First round's on the bounty!" She pushed a mug toward me. I took it but didn't drink.
"I'm leaving in the morning," I said. "South. To Stormhold. The Academy prelims."
Lena's smile faded slightly. Bren set down his mug. For a moment, the tavern's noise seemed distant.
"Academy, huh?" Lena studied me with those sharp, assessing eyes. "Figured you were aiming high. You've got the weird skills for it, I'll give you that." She extended a hand. "Good luck, Roy. If you ever need work again, ask for the Iron Hollow crew. We'll be around."
I shook her hand, then Bren's. His grip was firm, his nod solemn.
"Watch your back," he said. "The world's full of things that don't fight fair."
I slept that night in a real bed, the first in months. The silver medallion lay on the table beside me, catching the moonlight. A ticket to a new world. A chance to stand among the giants.
Or a death warrant. Time would tell.
---
The road south was long and lonely. I travelled through farmland, past villages that grew larger and more prosperous as I approached the empire's heartland. The Moss Cloak kept me comfortable through changing weather. My enhanced rations kept me fed. And every evening, I practiced.
Not combat. Not magic. Control.
I sat in quiet groves and focused on the smallest applications of Verdant Sovereign's Touch. Making a single blade of grass grow one millimeter taller. Encouraging a fallen leaf to curl a specific way. Sensing the health of a tree's deepest roots. Each act cost almost no mana, but each built precision. My core was healing, slowly, the cracks filling with a faint, green-gold resin that felt stronger than the original.
By the third week, I could consistently use my skill's analytical function without conscious effort. I'd touch a plant and simply know its condition, its history, its potential. It was like learning a new language, then realizing the language was thought itself.
I passed through a town called Millbrook and restocked supplies. The gossip was everywhere: the Dragon Academy trials, the candidates, the "monsters" who would compete.
"Heard the Lionheart boy's already confirmed. Alan something. Duke's son, born with both mana and aura. They say he's SSS-rank."
"Snowfall princess too. Ice mage. Killed a frost wyrm at twelve."
"Light's candidate is a mystery. Church is keeping him hidden, but everyone knows he's coming."
The names washed over me. The Five. They were real, and they were gathering. In six months, I might stand in the same arena as them. Not as a rival—never that—but as a witness. A survivor.
On the forty-fifth day of travel, I crested a hill and saw it: Stormhold.
It was a fortress city carved into a mountain, its walls of black stone rising hundreds of feet. Towers bristled with siege weapons. Banners of a dozen noble houses flapped in the wind. And at its base, sprawled across the valley, was a tent city—thousands of hopefuls, merchants, gamblers, and hangers-on, all drawn by the preliminaries.
I walked down into that sea of humanity, a small figure in a moss cloak, my white hair hidden under a hood. The noise was overwhelming after weeks of solitude. Hawkers shouted. Armor clanked. Spells crackled in practice areas. Everywhere, candidates trained, posed, and glared at each other.
I found the registration tent after an hour of pushing through crowds. The line stretched for what looked like miles. I joined it, pulling my hood lower.
The person ahead of me was a young man, maybe sixteen, in ornate armor covered in flame motifs. He glanced back, saw my small frame and plain cloak, and sneered.
"Another peasant with delusions. Let me guess—you're a healer? They always need healers, right? To patch up the real fighters after they win?"
I said nothing.
"Listen, kid. Save yourself the embarrassment. Go home. The Academy isn't for—"
He stopped. His eyes widened, fixed on something behind me.
I turned.
A figure was walking through the crowd, and the crowd was parting like water before a ship. She was young, maybe thirteen, with hair like spun silver and eyes the color of a winter sky. She wore practical but elegant traveling clothes, and the air around her shimmered with cold. Frost formed on the ground where she stepped.
Eve Snowfall. The Ice Empress. One of the Five.
She didn't look at anyone. She didn't need to. Her presence was a force of nature, and everyone felt it. She walked to a separate, guarded entrance and vanished inside.
The flame-armored boy beside me had gone pale. "That's... that's her. The princess. They said she was coming, but I didn't think—" He looked at me, his sneer replaced by something like awe. "We're really going to compete against that?"
I turned back to the line, my heart pounding. Eve Snowfall. She was real. They were all real. And in a few months, I would stand in the same arena as beings who could freeze armies and crush dragons.
The line moved forward. I clutched the silver medallion in my pocket, feeling its faint warmth.
The giants were gathering.
And I was walking right into their shadow.