[Otos: Age 25 | Vanitas: Age 16 | Aretia & Justitia: Age 19]
The afternoon sun was calm, radiating a deceptive warmth across the backyard garden.
I was sitting on a wide wooden bench opposite Aretia, reading a chapter on siege tactics and breaking ranks in a military book, while she was immersed behind a massive leather-bound tome, shielding her face from the world as usual.
(Step... step).
The sound of leather boots clicked regularly on the smooth stone path. I lifted my gaze from the pages.
Vanitas was walking in front, turning his head lightly as he guided a group of noble youths toward the east gate. They were whispering with forced, pretentious laughs. When they passed our bench, the eyes of those youths cast fleeting glances at us; their features didn't change, and none of them bothered to lower their head in respect to me as a knight of the Kingdom, or to Aretia as a scion of Exemplar.
Vanitas stopped suddenly.
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't utter a letter. He just shot them a dead side-glance... a black, suffocating look, as if a nightmarish shadow had pounced on their necks in broad daylight.
And in a fraction of a second, the youths froze in their places as if a lightning bolt had paralyzed their limbs. Their laughs vanished, and they turned with terrifying, mechanical movements, bowing at a sharp angle that kissed the ground in submission and terror.
"We greet Lord Otos... and Lady Aretia Exemplar." The words came out of their throats in a unified voice, trembling like autumn leaves.
I nodded my head slowly: "Welcome."
Vanitas's polite and perfected smile drew on his lips. He took a soft step toward one of them, placed his palm with exaggerated gentleness on the boy's shoulder, then leaned in and whispered a single word in his ear.
The blood drained from the youth's face in the blink of an eye, and his skin turned the color of dead ash. He looked into Vanitas's eyes with bestial terror, and stuttered in a voice the air could barely hear: "But... sir..."
The moment he uttered that word, Vanitas's mask deformed for a fraction of a second; a flash of pure icy anger almost burned his artificial calm.
The youth backed away in panic, bowing his head further: "Sorry! I apologize... come on, this way!"
The boys jogged toward the exit with stumbling steps, preceded by their panting breaths and an unmistakable fear.
I sighed, and returned my gaze to the lines of my book, trying to regain my focus.
Five minutes passed...
Vanitas returned, walking past us back toward the palace, his hands in the pockets of his coat, stepping with calculated lightness.
Aretia didn't lift her eyes from the pages of her tome, but her voice came out like the edge of a blade, cleaving the silence of the garden: "Don't let your terrified dogs pass through here again."
Vanitas's feet nailed to the ground. He turned his torso toward her slowly, and tried to tighten his facial muscles to draw his usual mocking smile: "I... d-..."
He stopped. His lower lip trembled, and the letters froze in his throat. "I... d-.. didn't..."
He was stuttering. A blatant, childish fluster that shattered his aura in a second.
Aretia slammed her book shut with a resounding clap that shook the table, and fixed her piercing eyes into his hollow ones: "Little bastard."
His face flushed a deep crimson, and an angry, incomprehensible hum escaped through his teeth, then he turned and hurried away toward the palace with quick steps, slapping the air with the tail of his coat.
I stared at Aretia in astonishment, and set my book down on the table: "What just happened?"
Aretia opened her book coldly: "A conversation between siblings. What is the problem?"
"Vanitas stuttering in front of you like a child caught red-handed?" I said in a tone overcome by surprise: "That is a scene I have never witnessed."
Aretia threw the book on the table with sudden sharpness, and leaned her torso toward me: "Brother... are you truly blind? Or do you master feigning ignorance to rest easy?"
"Feigning ignorance about what?" I replied calmly. "I saw his fluster, and if it points to anything, it points to you putting unnecessary pressure on him."
"I did nothing to that monster!" she said in a sharp voice, narrowing her eyes. "You refuse to see what that boy has built behind your back... you wrap your eyes in a blindfold to remain in the illusion of the protective older brother!"
"Aretia, speak clearly without riddles."
"What you saw moments ago is the naked truth!" Her tone rose with suppressed anger: "That word... what free noble addresses a boy his age with 'sir'?! That terror that squeezed their faces? Their absolute submission to a mere glance from him? The heirs of high families turning into slaves who tremble at his gesture?! This is not the behavior of a noble among his peers, Otos!"
Aretia stood up, pulled her book to her chest, then stopped and looked at me over her shoulder with a tone dripping with warning: "Ask about his reputation in the halls of the High Academy... ask about the obsession, the blackmail, and the shadows he plants under their skin until they fear his shadow like a plague. Go and talk to your little brother whom you defend... and see for yourself if your mind is capable of justifying what you will hear."
[Vanitas's Room]
I stood before his heavy wooden door. I raised my hand and knocked twice.
"May I come in, Vanitas?"
"Come in, brother."
I pushed the door and entered.
The room was as usual... an excessive geometric order that evoked suspicion. Not a speck of dust, papers aligned at perfect right angles, and every book resting in its place with cold precision, as if it were a space designed for display, not for a breathing creature to live in.
"Your room is lined up like an abandoned military barrack," I said in a calm tone, trying to break the ice.
He was sitting in his luxurious leather chair behind his wide desk, his back to me: "What brings you here, brother?"
I took a deep breath, and decided to talk to him as an older brother seeking to contain his brother's missteps: "I heard strange whispers and rumors in the city... about your name, and about the nature of your influence and behavior among the Academy students."
His movement stilled. Then a faint, soft chuckle rippled from his chest.
"Please sit, Otos... on the bed."
I sat on the edge of the meticulously made bed.
The leather chair turned very slowly. Vanitas faced me; he laced his long fingers over his knee, and rested his back with calculated comfort, while he aimed dark eyes at me like a bottomless well.
"You, brother..." his lip tilted in a cold smile, "it is impossible in your nature to dig behind me in the academy halls, or ask the guards and nobles what I do in my absence... Therefore, Aretia is the one who came to fill your head with that nonsense the moment I escaped with my tail between my legs toward the institute."
I scrutinized his rigid features, and said in an honest tone: "Vanitas... I am not interrogating you as a commander, but I sit here as your brother. What are you doing to those youths? Nobles do not bow to each other with such trembling, nor do they shiver in fear from a whisper in the ear. What is this distorted submission you impose on them?"
He tilted his head slightly, and did not blink: "I am doing nothing you haven't done before."
I furrowed my brows sharply: "What do you mean?"
Vanitas moved; he rose from his chair with slow, confident steps, walked around the desk until he stood close to me, looking down at me from his tall stature, his presence overflowing with a suffocating weight: "Those campaigns you lead in the southern colonies... cleaning up the mess, quelling rebellions, and suppressing the scum to enforce the Kingdom's banner... What do you do there, Otos? You break their will and subject them to power so that no one raises their head against the system. I am doing the exact same thing here... Control and displaying absolute dominance is inevitable to tame the monsters in this society."
I shot up to my feet, blood boiling in my veins: "Do not mix things up, Vanitas! What I do in the field is a military duty governed by the laws of honor, justice, and protecting the stability of the land... As for you, you use intimidation, psychological blackmail, and creating monsters who owe you slavery just to satisfy a dark pride! There is a vast difference between enforcing order, and humiliating human dignity to create a flock that trembles at your shadow!"
He did not retreat an inch. The coldness of his eyes absorbed my anger like a vacuum.
He reached his hand out very slowly, and placed his fingertips on my shoulder... a limp, light touch, but it was laden with a detestable pity that provoked my disgust.
He whispered in a warm and dangerous voice, oozing with venom: "You and I walk in two completely different worlds, my brother... one possesses an ambition that will burn the earth to ascend with it to the sky, and the other... the ceiling of his dreams suffocates at the limits of being the 'youngest knight in the Kingdom'."
I jolted and jerked my shoulder forcefully, knocking his hand away from me.
He added with polite rigidity: "If this is all you came for... the door is behind you."
"I will speak with Father about everything you are doing."
He shrugged his shoulders with absolute indifference: "Speak with him as you wish... it will change nothing of reality."
I turned, heading toward the exit, my hand gripping the brass handle.
"Wait, Otos..."
I stopped and turned.
He had walked toward the massive glass window, resting his palm on the cold glass, staring at the palace orchards stretching under the sun: "I am proceeding on a path of no return, my brother... Where are you going? I do not know. And what are you thinking in the core of your mind? I do not care... but my path is clear before my eyes as light. My mind sees no option but to ascend... even if it requires walking over seas of corpses."
He turned to me with a sharp look: "But it will not be a bloody path if things go as I have planned... it is a perfect path, without flaw or error... except what the weak see in themselves."
He turned completely, and advanced toward me with steady steps. He extended his open palm toward me in an explicit invitation, and his tone changed, overflowing with a strange, possessive plea: "Come with me, brother... stand by my side on this path. Let us carry the name of Exemplar beyond the borders of this world... to a station where they are no longer mere nobles."
I stared at his outstretched palm.
That small hand that I promised my mother in my childhood to protect from the bites of the cold and from the dust of butterflies... is now standing before me, stained with dark intentions that want to burn the universe to sit atop its ashes.
My voice trembled with a mixture of deep disappointment and disgust: "Vanitas... you have completely lost your mind."
I raised my forearm, and brought my hand down to strike his palm with a force that knocked it away in the air.
(SMACK!)
He withdrew his hand slowly. He looked at the slight redness that dyed his skin where my strike landed, then raised his eyes to me. The last human spark in his face was extinguished, replaced by an eternal, pulseless frost.
"What a pity..." he whispered in a dead voice, empty of any plea: "I thought you were the one who would carry the family with me to the summit."
He turned his back coldly, and returned to sit behind his desk, looking at his white papers: "But it seems I will climb this mountain alone... I wished you all were with me."
I opened the door and walked out, then closed it behind me with a slam that echoed in the empty corridor.
The Advanced Research Track: Admission to "The Institute"
While most graduates of the Theoretical Alchemy track within the Elite Division settle for administrative and advisory posts or positions in public laboratories, a select few prodigies choose to take on the ultimate challenge: competing for a seat within "The Institute." It stands as the highest academic and research authority in the Empire, dedicated to unraveling the secrets of primordial matter, advanced sciences, and the core tenets of alchemy.
Admission Criteria & Standards of "The Institute"
Securing admission to The Institute is among the most arduous academic endeavors in the realm, governed by exceptionally rigorous screening standards:
Published Research Requirement (Research Record & Theses): Academic marks alone do not qualify an alchemist for nomination. Candidates must have authored and defended original, accredited theoretical research and theses during their tenure in the Elite Division, addressing fundamental dilemmas in energy deciphering, transmutation chemistry, or elemental engineering.
The Grand Qualifying Examinations: Applicants undergo a sequence of intensely abstract and complex theoretical examinations designed to test their ability to devise novel alchemical formulations under extreme intellectual duress, as well as analyze elemental impurities through methods undocumented in public records.
Selection Rigor & Acceptance Rate: The examinations involve ruthless competition among elite graduates. Given their sheer difficulty, acceptance rates remain minuscule; entire academic cycles may pass without a single researcher successfully breaching the examination threshold and proving worthy of Institute fellowship.
Privileges & Academic Standing
Access to Restricted Archives: Admitted researchers receive direct clearance to study ancient alchemical manuscripts and restricted codices barred from standard academies.
Command of Sovereign Projects: Institute researchers oversee sealed laboratories and direct the development of strategic state weaponry and sovereign apparatuses, holding academic immunity and institutional autonomy on par with high imperial chancellors.
The Zenith of Prodigies: Ascent to Apex Peak & Lord Etherium's Laboratory
The Exceptional Opportunity: The paramount minds and foremost researchers within The Institute are presented with the rarest and most prestigious honor in the entire Empire: the right to ascend to Apex Peak.
Direct Collaboration with Lord Etherium: These prodigies receive clearance to enter and work directly within the personal laboratory of Lord Etherium, conducting research alongside him to formulate the most intricate experiments and unlock the ultimate secrets of matter—the absolute zenith of scientific and alchemical prestige achievable in their era.