The silence in the Crystal Chamber was heavy enough to crush a man. The smoke rising from the hairline fracture in the million-gold-piece artefact didn't help.
Head Proctor Vance stood behind his podium, staring at the readings on his slate. He was a severe man with a face like a crumpled map and eyes that looked like they hadn't blinked since the Second Age. He tapped the slate, looked at the smoking crystal, then looked at me.
"Candidate 404," Vance said, his voice dry as parchment. "Murphy Sunstrider."
"Present," I croaked, trying to look smaller.
"In my forty years as Head Proctor," Vance began slowly, "I have seen students fail to light the crystal. I have seen students pass out from the strain. I have even seen a particularly foolish pyromancer try to set it on fire." He paused, gesturing to the fracture glowing softly in the diamond spire. "But I have never seen a student break it."
'He sounds impressed,' Ronan offered helpfully in my head.
'He sounds like he's calculating a lawsuit,' I corrected.
Vance looked back down at his slate. "Raw Output: Unmeasurable. Stability... Non-existent. You didn't channel mana, boy; you detonated it."
He picked up a heavy iron stamp. For a second, I thought he was going to crush my application. Instead, he slammed it down on the parchment with a sound like a gunshot.
ACCEPTED.
I let out a breath. We were in.
"However," Vance continued, reaching into his desk. "The Azure Spire is an institution of learning, not a charity for vandals. The Resonance Crystal is self-repairing, but the mana required to knit a fracture of this magnitude is... significant."
He slid a second piece of paper across the polished wood. It wasn't a certificate. It was an invoice.
Liability Fine: 1,000 Gold Crowns.
My stomach dropped through the floor.
"A thousand gold?" I choked out. "I don't have a thousand gold. I barely had fifty."
"Then you do not attend," Vance said simply, already reaching for the next file. "Pay or leave."
"I can't pay that upfront," I said, panic rising. "Is there... a payment plan? A scholarship for the magically volatile?"
Vance looked at me over his spectacles. He sighed, the sound of a bureaucrat who was already tired of me. "You are a Hazard-Class student, Mr Sunstrider. We cannot expel you without releasing a potential bomb into the city. So, we will garnish your future."
He scribbled an amendment on the form.
"Fifty Gold Crowns per week. For twenty weeks. You will pay the Bursar every Friday before sundown."
He looked up, his eyes hard. "If you miss a payment, you will be remanded to the Imperial Debtor's Prison. If you leave the city without prior authorisation before the debt is cleared, the Academy will alert the City Watch. You are not just a student, Murphy. You are an investment. Do not depreciate."
He waved a hand. "Dismissed. Get out of my sight before you break my desk."
I grabbed the papers and walked out, my legs feeling like jelly.
'Fifty gold a week,' I whispered mentally. 'Ronan, that's... that's insane. We're destitute. We're worse than destitute; we're indentured servants with homework.'
'We survived the death squad,' Ronan pointed out, ever the optimist. 'Only to be killed by predatory lending.
'This is a very sophisticated form of torture, Ronan. You might not know this about me, but I happen to know a thing or two about torture and let me tell you, this, this is right up there, Ronan... riiiiight up there... '
Ronan just kept quiet. He knew if he said anything, he would just be enabling me. I could respect his self-control.
I stumbled out of the Great Hall and into the blinding afternoon sun of the courtyard. The other successful candidates were celebrating, hugging parents, or tossing caps into the air.
I just clutched my massive debt to my chest and tried to find a shadow to hide in.
The crowd ahead of me suddenly parted. It wasn't the respectful parting they gave the professors; it was the nervous, wide-berth parting you give a dangerous animal.
Standing alone in the middle of the path was Candidate 402. Lady Vespera Winter-Moon.
The High Elf genius stood with her arms crossed, her silver hair gleaming like a drawn blade in the sunlight. Her icy blue eyes were locked onto me with terrifying intensity. She was vibrating with tension, her posture rigid.
She stepped directly into my path.
I stopped, my hand drifting instinctively to the dagger under my cloak. 'Great. She's pissed I broke her record. Here comes the fireball.'
"You," Vespera said. Her voice was crisp, cold, and perfectly enunciated.
"Yeah?" I asked, tensing up.
She stared at me for a long, uncomfortable silence. She seemed to be analysing me, cataloguing my scuffed boots, my grey cloak, and the exhausted slump of my shoulders.
"I saw your output," she stated. "It was... Impressive."
I blinked. "Can I help you?"
"You are chaotic," she continued, as if reading from a script she had rehearsed in a mirror. "I am precise. You rely on brute force. I rely on calculation. You are the narrative counterweight I require to reach my full potential."
She took a breath, squared her shoulders, and pointed a finger at my chest.
"You are now my Rival."
I stared at her. "...My what?"
"Rival," she repeated, looking slightly annoyed that I didn't know the word. "Nemesis, Obstacle. The iron against which I shall sharpen my steel. Prepare yourself, Sunstrider. I will not go easy on you."
She gave a single, sharp nod—decisive and final—then spun on her heel and marched away like a clockwork soldier, her chin held high.
I watched her go, utterly baffled. The students around us were whispering, looking at me with a mix of pity and awe.
"Did you see that? The Ice Queen threatened him."
"He's dead. She's going to flay him in Duelling Class."
'Random noble girl hates me,' I muttered. 'Fantastic. Let's just add it to the list.'
'I don't think so,' Ronan's voice chimed in, sounding amused. 'That wasn't hatred, Murphy. That was... social catastrophe.'
'What?'
'She stood there waiting for you. She practised that speech. "Narrative counter-weight"? Who talks like that?' Ronan chuckled. 'She's awkward. Terrifyingly awkward. I think she just proposed friendship in the only language she knows.'
'She called me her Rival, Ronan.'
'Exactly. It means she respects you enough to want to beat you. In High Elf culture, that's basically a marriage proposal.'
I shook my head, starting the long walk toward the dorms. 'Great. I have a thousand-gold debt, a Hazard label, and a stalker with a god-complex. School is going great so far.'
I followed the map provided by the administration, leaving the manicured lawns and marble walkways of the main campus behind. As I walked, the scenery changed. The white stone gave way to grey cobbles, and the ornamental fountains were replaced by practical water pumps.
I passed the gleaming towers of House Aurelius and House Vermillion. They looked like palaces, draped in banners and humming with expensive warmth-runes.
House Argent was at the very edge of the Academy grounds, nestled against the perimeter wall where the wind from the cliffs hit hardest.
It wasn't a tower. It was a block.
It was a squat, rectangular fortress built from heavy, dark grey stone. The windows were narrow slits designed for archers, not sunlight. Ivy, thick and gnarled as rope, clawed its way up the walls. It looked less like a dormitory for mages and more like a bunker for people expecting a siege.
'It's... rustic,' I noted, eyeing the chipped stone crest above the heavy oak door. It depicted a simple Silver Shield, but half the paint had peeled away.
'It is sturdy,' Ronan corrected, his tone surprisingly appreciative. 'I recognise this masonry. This wasn't built by the Academy architects who love their filigree and gold leaf. This is pre-Unification military work. In my day, buildings like this were the Knight's Halls. No frills, thick walls, good bones. It will hold heat well in the winter.'
'Great,' I muttered. 'I'm living in a historical monument to austerity.'
I pushed open the heavy iron-reinforced door. It groaned on rusted hinges.
The inside was a shock. I expected a dungeon or a silent, depressing barracks. Instead, I walked into a wall of noise and smell.
The common room was massive, with a vaulted stone ceiling blackened by centuries of smoke. It smelled of cheap vegetable stew, old parchment, and sweat. And it was packed.
There were students everywhere—sitting on mismatched furniture that looked scavenged from the trash of the upper houses, studying on the floor, or arguing over diagrams on a chalkboard. A girl was sewing a patch onto a robe in the corner. Two guys were playing cards for copper pieces.
It didn't feel like a school for the elite. It felt like a crowded tavern for the working class.
'It's the Economy Class dorm,' I realised. 'Commoners, scholarship cases, and the people who barely scraped in. My people.'
I found the roster pinned to a notice board near the stairs. Sunstrider: Bunk 4B.
I barely had time to find my room—a small stone cell that looked more like a monk's penance than a student's quarters. It held the bare essentials of existence: a lumpy straw mattress on a sturdy iron frame, a narrow wardrobe that smelled of cedar and mothballs, and a heavy oak desk and chair scarred by generations of bored students carving their initials into the wood. A single mana-lamp flickered on the wall, buzzing like a trapped fly—before the door banged open.
A Prefect stood in the doorway. He was an older student wearing the silver trim of House Argent, but he looked exhausted, clutching a clipboard like a shield.
"Sunstrider?" he asked, not looking up.
"That's me."
"You're on the Roster," he said, tossing a bundle of cloth at my chest. "Restitution Detail."
I caught the bundle. It unfolded into a jumpsuit. A bright, screaming, humiliation-orange jumpsuit.
"What is this?" I asked, holding it up. It looked like something a prisoner would wear.
"Honestly, I usually don't know why students are on this list—or care—but in your case? The whole campus is buzzing about it." The Prefect looked up, a smirk playing on his lips, eyeing me with a mix of amusement and grudging respect. "You actually cracked the Resonance Crystal. That takes some serious heavy lifting for a First Year. Unfortunately, Headmaster Vance wants you to work off some of the repair costs immediately. You're assigned to the 'Slag Squad', as we affectionately call it. Not sure how much this would actually dent your debt, but it's something, right? Anyway, report to the shed behind the greenhouses. Now."
He turned and left.
'I'm impressed. These bureaucrats work fast.'
'Death and Taxes,' Ronan mused. ' But at least it's honest work.'
'It's a prison gang, Ronan,' I snapped, pulling the hideous overalls on over my clothes. 'I look like a traffic cone.'
"Pffft…. Like you actually care." Ronan pointed out.
"Yup! I don't. Let's get this over with."
I trudged out to the shed. Three other students were already there, all human, all wearing the same neon-orange mark of shame. They looked like the island of misfit toys.
Leaning against the wall was a girl with short, grease-stained hair, wearing a pair of thick welding goggles on her forehead. She was tossing a wrench in her hand. This was Grace.
"What are you in for?" she asked, eyeing my fresh overalls.
"Parking tickets," I said.
She looked confused. "Right. Well, I was caught trying to dismantle the West Clock Tower because I wanted to see how the gears worked."
Next to her was a scrawny kid who looked like he was vibrating. He was clutching a broom like a weapon. Finn.
"I... I sneezed," Finn stammered. "I have a wind affinity. I was checking out the classes, you know, so I struggled to find the right ones on our first day. Anyway, I walked into one of them and sneezed near one of the professors while he was grading papers. A lot of papers are still missing."
"Reasonable..." I said.
The last member of the squad was a mountain. He was seven feet tall, with greyish skin and tribal tattoos. He sat on a crate, staring at a ladybug crawling on his thumb. Kael.
"And him?" I asked.
"Insubordination," Grace said. "Professor Vex told him to recite a poem. Kael refused to speak. Vex gave him detention. Kael just stared at him until Vex got uncomfortable and sent him here."
A sour-faced Groundskeeper walked out of the shed, wheeling a cart filled with glowing, blue mana stones.
"Listen up, Scraps!" the Groundskeeper barked. "The Academy runs on magic, but magic runs on charged cores. The Pale Cores in the fountains, perimeter lamps and the street-sweeper golems are burned out. Your job is to swap them."
He pointed to the cart.
"These are fresh cores. Don't lose them. Don't eat them. And for the love of the Gods, don't try and steal them. I guarantee you will not get far."
I looked at the cart, then at my team of convicts.
"Right," I said, grabbing a pair of thick leather gloves. "Let's go change some batteries."
The "rounds" turned out to be less of a maintenance patrol and more of a tour of every claustrophobic, dangerous, and smelling corner of the Academy.
Our first major stop was Sub-Basement 4, affectionately known as "The Gut." It was the central junction for the steam-heating pipes that ran beneath the Student Union. The air down here was thick enough to chew—a humid, oily soup that smelled of rust and stagnation.
"Valve 7," Grace barked, checking her clipboard. She didn't look at us. She was marching ahead like a general who had been saddled with an army of toddlers. "The pressure gauge is red-lining. If we don't vent it, the floor heating in the library will explode."
We found Valve 7. It was a massive iron wheel the size of a shield, encrusted with fifty years of calcified rust and mineral deposits. It was glowing a dull, angry cherry-red from the heat of the steam behind it.
"Right," I said, assessing the situation. "That's seized solid. Thermal expansion has locked the threads."
I looked around the room and spotted a length of discarded steel piping in the corner.
"Kael," I pointed to the pipe. "Grab that. We can use it as a breaker bar. If we slot it through the wheel spokes, we get more leverage. Basic physics."
Grace let out a sharp, derisive snort. She pushed her welding goggles up, fixing me with a look of supreme condescension.
"Physics?" she mocked. "This is the Azure Spire, Sunstrider. We don't hit things with sticks like cavemen. We use Art."
She pulled a piece of chalk from her pocket and marched up to the hissing valve. "I'll inscribe a ferrous-corrosion reversal script on the main seal. It will dissolve the rust molecularly."
'She is arrogant,' Ronan noted, his voice echoing in the damp space. 'But confident.'
'She's over-complicating it,' I countered. 'Just turn the damn wheel.'
"You two," Grace snapped, pointing at Finn and Kael without looking back. "Hold the light. Steady. If I misalign a stroke, the containment fails, and we all get boiled like lobsters."
Finn scrambled to obey, grabbing the heavy mana-lantern. He held it up, his hands shaking so hard the shadows danced wildly on the walls.
"O-okay," Finn stammered. "Steady. I can do steady."
Grace began to draw. It was intricate work, inscribing runes directly onto the superheated metal.
Then, Kael moved.
The giant simply shifted his weight, perhaps to get a better look, or maybe just because he was bored. His shadow, cast by the lantern, stretched across the ceiling like a looming monster.
Finn flinched. It was a pure, neurotic reflex. He saw the movement, gasped, and jerked back as if he'd been burned.
The lantern slipped from his sweaty grip.
CRACK.
The crystal housing shattered on the concrete floor. The room plunged into near-total darkness, lit only by the angry red glow of the valve.
"Finn!" Grace shrieked, her hand jerking in the sudden shadow.
The chalk line snapped. The rune, which had been drawing a steady stream of mana from Grace's core to bind the metal, suddenly hit a dead end. The circuit was broken, but Grace hadn't stopped channeling. The flow didn't stop; it piled up, pressurized, and violently rejected the broken syntax.
It flared—not the calm blue of success, but a violent, sickly green as the mana arc-welded the mistake into the iron.
'Run,' my Danger Sense whispered.
"Get back!" I yelled, tackling Finn behind a concrete pillar.
BOOM.
The containment spell shattered. The valve screamed. A jet of superheated steam blasted out of the seal where Grace's rune had failed, hitting the opposite wall with enough force to strip the paint. The room instantly filled with a blinding, scalding white fog.
"My tools!" Grace yelled from somewhere in the mist, coughing. "I can't see! The pressure is still rising!"
"Forget the tools!" I shouted, pulling my collar up over my mouth to filter the heat. "We need to close the breach or the whole junction goes!"
"I can't get close!" Grace coughed, sounding panicked now. "It's too hot!"
I was about to try and crawl toward the valve myself—Inventory ready to suck up the steam—when a shadow moved through the whiteout.
Kael walked past me.
He didn't run. He didn't crawl. He simply walked directly into the jet of steam.
"Kael, stop!" Finn squeaked. "It'll melt you!"
The giant ignored him. He walked up to the glowing, screaming valve. The steam blasted against his grey skin, hissing as it made contact, but Kael didn't even flinch. His Iron-Blood heritage made his skin dense as granite; heat was just a suggestion to him.
He reached out and grabbed the cherry-red iron wheel with his bare hand.
The smell of singing hair filled the air, but Kael's expression didn't change. He looked bored. He braced his feet and twisted.
SCREECH.
The metal groaned, the rust shattered, and the valve turned.
With a final, heavy clank, the steam cut off.
The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by Finn's wheezing breaths. The steam began to clear, revealing us.
We were a disaster. I was covered in oily condensation. Finn was curled up in a ball. Grace's face was smeared with soot, her expensive tools scattered.
And Kael stood there, shaking his hand slightly as if he'd touched a hot kettle, looking at us with dull, grey eyes.
"You..." Grace wiped her goggles, her voice trembling with a mix of adrenaline and humiliation. She turned on Finn. "You dropped the light! You useless little twitch! We could have died!"
"I didn't mean to!" Finn shouted back, his voice cracking. "He moved! He snuck up on me!" He pointed an accusing finger at Kael. "Why do you have to be so... looming?"
"He saved your life, you ungrateful idiot," I snapped, standing up and wringing sludge out of my sleeve. "And Grace? Next time, just use the damn pipe."
Grace spun on me, her eyes flashing. "Don't lecture me, 'Hazard'. If you hadn't distracted me with your caveman suggestions—"
"Stop," Kael rumbled.
It was one word, but it had the weight of a falling boulder. He picked up the tool bag and walked past us toward the exit.
We followed him out in silence. We weren't a team. We were four people who happened to be wearing the same ugly jumpsuit, and right now, I was extremly anoyed by every single one of them.
By late afternoon, we were sweating, covered in grime, and exhausted.
"One more zone," Grace said, with a sigh. "The Aurelius Lawns. They have a party tonight for the first years, so the events coordinator wants the decorative fountains fully charged."
"A party," I muttered. "Perfect."
We rolled the heavy cart toward the pristine, golden-gated grounds of House Aurelius, looking like a stain on a silk sheet.
The sun began to set, casting long, golden shadows across the Academy grounds. For the students of House Aurelius, this was the "Golden Hour"—the time for leisure, networking, and showing off their summer wardrobes.
For the Slag Squad, it was just hour four of sweating in neon orange.
We had spent the afternoon trudging through the mud, swapping out the sizzling, spent cores of the perimeter lamps. My hands were blistered inside the thick leather gloves, and I smelled like ozone and burnt hair. As I wrestled a particularly angry stone out of its socket, the searing heat radiating through the leather triggered a memory—a beat-up sedan I'd tried to fix in a previous life. The engine block had been so hot that it warped the head gasket. Thermodynamics, it seemed, was universal: heat is just wasted energy leaving the system. If these arrays were running efficiently, the spent cores would be cold. The fact that they were hot enough to cook on meant the runes were probably leaking energy like a sieve. Something told me I should file this information away for later.
"This is it," Grace said, checking her clipboard. She pushed her welding goggles up, leaving a reverse-raccoon mask of clean skin on her grease-stained face. She was kinda cute, actually. 'We start with those fountains over there.'
We rolled the heavy iron cart toward the pristine, manicured grounds of House Aurelius. The contrast was violent. On one side of the hedge were four students in stained orange jumpsuits, dragging a cart of warm cores that glowed like hot slag. On the other side was a scene from a fairy tale.
Dozens of noble students drifted across the emerald grass. They held crystal flutes of sparkling nectar. A string quartet played softly in a gazebo. Floating "Server Golems"—brass spheres with delicate trays—drifted among the guests, offering hors d'oeuvres.
We were the stain on the silk sheet.
"Keep your heads down," I whispered to the team. "Do the job, don't make eye contact, and let's get out of here."
We moved to the main fountain—a marble statue of the First Emperor wrestling a Hydra. The pump was wheezing. Grace popped the access panel with a wrench.
"It's hot," she hissed as steam vented out. "Kael, I need the tongs. Finn, keep the cooling bucket ready."
We were working with the precision of a bomb squad when a voice cut through the music.
"You there. Mechanics."
I froze. I knew that voice. It was the voice of a guy who had never been told 'no' in his life.
Lysander Thorne was standing ten feet away, surrounded by a sycophantic circle of admirers. He looked immaculate in a doublet of white silk with gold thread and clearly drunk. He wasn't looking at us; he was looking at a Server Golem hovering near his elbow.
The golem was shuddering. It made a grinding noise, sparked once, and then went dead, dropping a tray of empty glasses onto the grass. Smash.
Lysander kicked the dead machine. He snapped his fingers at us.
"Fix this. Now."
Grace winced. She looked into our cart.
"We can't," she whispered to me. "We're out of fresh cores. That was the last one in the fountain. The cart is just slag now."
"Great," I sighed. "I'll handle it."
But Finn beat me to it. The nervous Wind Mage stepped forward, clutching his broom like a shield. He was trying to be helpful. He was trying to do his job.
"A-actually, my Lord," Finn stammered, his voice cracking. "We... we are empty. The allotment is finished. You'll have to wait for the Night Shift to restock."
The music seemed to stop. The circle of nobles turned to look.
Lysander stared at Finn. "Wait?"
It wasn't a question. It was an accusation. To a Thorne, being told to wait was worse than being slapped.
"I do not wait for the help," Lysander said, his voice dangerously quiet. "Make. It. Work."
Finn shrank back, realising his mistake too late. "I... I can't make mana out of nothing, my Lord! It's impossible!"
"Did you just patronise me!?," Lysander shouted.
He reached out to a nearby banquet table. He didn't grab a weapon. He grabbed an empty, heavy glass wine bottle by the neck.
"It seems someone needs to learn their place," Lysander said, weighing the bottle in his hand
He didn't telegraph it. He just threw it.
He whipped the heavy bottle straight at Finn's head with the speed of a practised duelist.
Finn froze. He squeezed his eyes shut.
But Kael moved.
The giant Berserker had been silent all day, dutifully carrying the heavy crates without complaint. But he had been watching.
Kael didn't try to catch the bottle. He didn't try to block it with his arm. His instinct was absolute protection.
He grabbed the edge of the massive, oak banquet table—loaded with roast meats, gravy boats, towers of pastries, and crystal pyramids—and he heaved.
HRAAGH.
Kael flipped the entire table onto its side, lifting it into the air in the process, interposing the thick wood between Finn and the projectile.
CRASH.
The bottle shattered against the underside of the table.
But the consequences were catastrophic. The table was now vertical. The feast was not.
An avalanche of expensive food slid off the surface. Roast geese, tureens of soup, tiered cakes, and hundreds of gold plates crashed onto the manicured lawn in a wet, chaotic explosion of culinary destruction. Gravy splattered onto the hem of a girl's dress. A meat pie rolled to a stop at Lysander's feet.
Silence.
Absolute, horrified silence descended on the garden. The string quartet stopped playing.
Lysander stared at the mess. A vein throbbed in his temple. A "Janitor" had just destroyed a thousand-gold banquet to save a nobody.
Swords hissed out of scabbards. Garrick, Lysander's brute, stepped forward, his skin already turning grey and metallic.
'Murphy,' Ronan's voice was a warning siren in my head. 'This is bad. If they attack, Kael will fight back. If Kael fights back, the Red Haze takes him. If he hurts a noble, they will execute him before the sun sets.'
I looked at the nobles, their hands on their hilts. I looked at my team—terrified Finn, grease-stained Grace, and Kael, who was already crouching, ready to kill.
We were about to be slaughtered over a table of snacks.
'I need a distraction,' I thought. 'I need to de-escalate this. I need to make them stop seeing us as threats.'
I took a deep breath, and then I channelled my inner Jack Sparrow..
"I'LL SAVE THE CAKE!"
I sprinted out from behind the fountain, arms flailing like a windmill in a hurricane. I wasn't running like a warrior; I was running like a man whose legs had forgotten how to communicate with his brain.
Ten feet from the spilled feast, I "tripped" over a divot in the grass that didn't exist.
It was a masterpiece of physical comedy. I went airborne, my limbs splayed in a desperate, terrified attempt to catch the non-existent falling food.
I aimed my chest directly at the centrepiece—a massive, golden-roasted goose lying in a puddle of gravy.
THWUMP.
I face-planted into the bird. To the onlookers, it looked like I had just body-slammed the roast into the mud. But the moment my chest compressed against the meat, I triggered my inventory.
Schluck.
The goose didn't squish; it vanished. I absorbed it instantly into the void. But I didn't stop moving. I scrambled up, my boots slipping on a patch of spilt truffle sauce. I grabbed for a silver platter piled high with lemon tarts.
"I got it! I got it!" I shrieked, hugging the platter to my stomach.
Zip.
The tarts and the silver platter disappeared into my gut.
I spun around, feigning a loss of balance, and lunged toward three bottles of vintage red wine that had miraculously survived the table flip. I snatched them up, juggling them frantically before "losing my footing" again.
"Whoa! Whoa!"
I fell backwards, sliding across the wet grass like a curling stone. I slammed directly into Kael's shins. The impact buckled the giant's knees, forcing him to sit down hard in the grass, effectively breaking his combat stance and stopping him from murdering anyone.
I lay there in the ruin of the banquet, covered in mud, cream, and gravy, clutching nothing but empty air.
For three seconds, there was silence.
Then, a high, tittering laugh broke out from the back of the noble crowd. It wasn't polite laughter; it was the raucous, cruel sound of people who had just witnessed a clown slip on a banana peel.
It was contagious. The tension, which had been a taut wire ready to snap into violence, suddenly went slack. They weren't looking at a threat anymore. They were looking at a circus act.
"Did you see that?!" a noble boy gasped, doubling over and slapping his knee. "He tried to catch the gravy! He actually tried to catch it!"
"Oh, gods, I can't breathe!" another girl cried, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes. "He never even had a chance! Is he retarded or just stupid?"
The laughter swelled into a roar. They were howling. They were pointing. For them, this wasn't a tragedy; it was the highlight of the evening.
Even Lysander Thorne's expression shifted. The murderous rage drained away, replaced by a sneering, amused smirk. You don't execute a jester; you tip him.
"Pathetic," Lysander chuckled, shaking his head as he looked down at me wallowing in the filth. "Look at them. Rolling in the slop like pigs. It's almost poetic."
A pretty noble girl in azure silk stepped up to Lysander, slipping her arm through his. She was giggling behind her fan.
"Oh, leave them be, Lysander," she laughed, looking at me with pure, unadulterated pity. "You've had your fun. Besides, looking at them is ruining the aesthetic. Let's go inside."
Lysander looked at me one last time, curling his lip.
"You're right," he agreed. "The air out here is suddenly... stale."
"Come on!" someone shouted from the back. "There's more wine in the cellar! Let the rats clean up the mess!"
The crowd turned, chattering and laughing, replaying my humiliation to each other as they drifted back toward the golden glow of the Aurelius dorms. They left us there in the dark, dismissed and forgotten.
I lay in the mud for a long moment, listening to their laughter fade.
"Murphy?" Finn's voice was a whisper.
I felt hands on my arms. Finn and Grace grabbed my shoulders, hoisting me out of the muck. Kael stood up, wiping gravy off his armour, looking down at me with a mix of confusion and concern.
"Are you okay?" Grace asked, checking me for broken bones. "That was... brutal."
"I'm fine," I said, my voice flat. I watched the last of the golden robes disappear into the tower.
"Let's go," I muttered, shaking off their hands. "Before they come back for an encore."
I grabbed Kael's arm—the giant looked confused, his rage short-circuited by the absurdity of the moment—and dragged him away. Grace and Finn scrambled after us, heads bowed, as the laughter of the Golden House followed us into the dark.
The walk back to House Argent was a silent, miserable affair.
The adrenaline had faded, leaving only the cold wind coming off the cliffs and the shame of the retreat. We trudged across the overgrown courtyard, the squat, dark silhouette of our dormitory looming against the night sky like a tombstone. I pushed open the heavy oak doors, the iron hinges groaning in protest.
We entered the common room. The high, vaulted stone ceilings trapped the cold, and the drafts whistling through the arrow-slit windows cut right through our damp clothes.
Finn slumped against a stone pillar, sliding down until he hit the flagstones.
"That was..." Finn's voice trembled. "That was humiliating. Did you hear them? They laughed at us. We're the campus joke."
Grace kicked a scavenged chair, sending it skittering across the floor. Her frustration was boiling over. "At least we aren't expelled. But we're still freezing, we're still broke, and now we're starving."
I didn't say a word. I turned back to the main entrance and threw the heavy iron bolts, sealing the fortress against the outside world.
I turned back to the room. I wiped a smudge of expensive vanilla cream off my cheek and licked it off my finger. It tasted like victory.
'Get cleaned up and meet me down here in ten minutes. Bring all the first years.' I said as everyone left for their rooms. As soon as I was alone, a ripple of Aether washed over me. In a single heartbeat, the thick layers of mud, gravy, and grass stains vanished, sucked instantly into the void. My orange overalls, moments ago a ruin of filth, were suddenly pristine and dry.
I straightened my spine. The hunch, the flinch, and the cowardly tremble evaporated instantly. A slow, shark-like grin spread across my face.
I walked to the heavy, scarred oak table in the centre of the room. I placed my hands on the wood.
The air shimmered.
Thud.
A massive roast goose, steaming hot as if it had just come out of the oven, appeared on the table. It was perfectly clean—not a speck of mud or grass on it.
Clatter.
A silver platter piled high with lemon tarts materialized next to it.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
Three bottles of the vintage wine I had "fallen" on appeared, standing in a neat row.
Thump.
A wheel of cheese the size of a shield topped off the pile.
A crowd of students filed into the common room, eyes wide as they saw the feast.
I climbed onto a chair, spreading my arms as I announced. "Congratulations to all the first years of house Argent. Enjoy the feast, everyone."
The silence in the room was absolute. Finn's jaw was on the floor. Grace pushed her goggles up, blinking rapidly.
Kael stared at the goose. He looked at the steam rising from the golden skin. Then he looked at me. The giant's shoulders started to shake. A low, deep rumble started in his chest, growing louder and louder until he threw his head back and roared with laughter. It was a deep, booming sound that seemed to chase the cold out of the room.
"You..." Finn whispered, pointing a shaking finger. "You didn't trip. You were shopping."
I picked up one of the wine bottles and sucked the cork out using the inventory.
"Dignity is expensive," I said, taking a swig and passing the bottle to Kael. "Dinner is free. Dig in."
'I have never been so embarrassed and so impressed at the same time,' Ronan's voice echoed in my head, sounding genuinely baffled. 'You are a chaotic little goblin, Murphy.'
'I'm a survivor, Ronan, ' I corrected, grabbing a drumstick.
While the party was in full swing, the slag squad sat around the scavenged table in the flickering light of a mana-lamp, tearing into the stolen feast of the Elite. We weren't friends yet—we were a mess of outcasts and failures—but as we ate the food meant for kings, we were something else.
We were partners in crime.