Chapter 759: The meeting of fate
"Oh, and apparently... it was him."
Selphine looked over. "Lucavion. He was the first to uncover the Cloud Heavens Sect mess. Or so the rumors go."
Elara's gaze didn't move—but something inside her stopped.
A breath. A thought. A beat of the heart that faltered mid-rhythm.
"What?" Her voice wasn't loud. But it cut.
Aurelian blinked at her, then shrugged. "Word is, he brought in the first set of evidence. Disguised, of course. Masked. Used one of those old Justice Vault sigils from before the War of Quiet Flame. You know the kind that makes anyone touching it speak only truth?"
Selphine nodded. "He handed over a full ledgers' worth of names, trade routes, blood-tithes. They say the tribunal had no choice but to act. It was too clean. Too exact. Too public. Couldn't bury it even if they wanted to."
"He disappeared after that," Aurelian added. "Before Olarion even knew who'd brought it. Some say Valeria found him. Others say he let himself be found."
Elara felt the stem of her glass tighten in her grip.
She couldn't process the words. Not fully. They refused to settle.
Lucavion… did that?
The sect—she had heard of them in whispers, as any traveler who walked Stormhaven's back routes had. But he—Luca—was the one who had exposed them?
Her jaw clenched. The idea scraped against every memory of that night, of that boy, the weight of shame and exile and humiliation carved into her bones.
'He didn't defend you. He didn't stop it. He let you burn.'
And yet—
He took down a cult.
Not for gain. Not for credit.
He'd exposed monsters. Delivered names that bled rot from the nobility's underbelly.
That shouldn't mean anything.
It shouldn't change anything.
But it did.
Because it didn't make sense.
Not with the Lucavion she remembered. Not with the boy who had reached for her in confusion and left her to the wolves. Not with the ghost who had haunted her vengeance.
'Who are you really?'
Her hand trembled slightly. She set the glass down before it cracked.
Cedric noticed. Of course he did.
His voice came soft at her shoulder. "Elowyn?"
The name helped. The fiction steadied her.
"I'm fine," she said, her voice measured, barely above a breath. "Just… interesting stories, that's all."
She looked across the room again, to where Valeria still moved through the nobility like an elegant sword sheathed in silk. The silver runes along her gown caught the mana in the air like dew.
If Lucavion had passed the torch to anyone…
Maybe it was her.
Valeria Olarion. Ice-pinned grace. Tribunal's blade.
Lucavion's what, exactly?
Ally? Handler?
Or worse—someone who knew what he had done to Elara, and had chosen to stand beside him anyway.
The thought sickened her anew.
And yet—
Even as Elara watched Valeria glide between clusters of nobility, even as the runes on her gown hummed in subtle synchrony with the ambient leyflow of the hall, a different sensation stirred low in her chest.
Not distrust.
Not quite.
There was something else in the way Valeria moved. In the stillness of her gaze. The precision of her presence. Something unmistakably… knightly.
Not the pompous, polished kind born of court dramatics and posturing for glory. No.
The quiet kind. Earned. Tempered.
The kind that fought monsters not for glory, but because someone had to.
The kind that made her spine bristle not from threat, but from familiarity. From memory.
'She doesn't move like someone who would help a man who destroyed a girl's life for sport.'
'But I've been wrong before.'
Elara exhaled—careful, silent. A breath honed by a thousand hours of training. A breath that smothered the war inside and pulled the mask tight again.
She could not afford doubt.
Not today.
The doors were still open at the far end of the hall.
Any moment now—
The second arrival would begin.
The one she had rehearsed in her mind across a hundred nights, in the silence of caves and wind-bitten watchtowers, staring into firelight and letting vengeance braid itself into her soul.
Isolde.
Adrian.
Her sister.
Her executioner.
They would come with smiles on their lips and the court's approval in their hands, and Elara would stand in their path. Not as Elara Valoria, ruined heir of a disgraced name.
But as Elowyn Caerlin. Poised. Perfect. Unburned.
And when they looked at her and did not recognize what stood before them, when they bowed with honeyed voices to the girl they believed beneath them—
She would smile.
And remember everything.
Her gaze flicked to a golden timepiece embedded in the crystalline pillar near the dais.
Nearly noon.
The moment was drawing closer. With each tick, each whisper in the room bending subtly toward anticipation.
'They're about to arrive.'
She didn't move.
She didn't blink.
She simply waited.
Like a blade beneath velvet.
Like winter before the storm.
And if her hands clenched tighter at her sides, no one noticed.
She had learned to look beautiful while bleeding.
******
A bell chimed.
Not loud, not rushed.
A single note — high and crystalline — that rang through the grand hall with ceremonial finality.
The murmurs hushed like a tide drawing back.
Then came the voice.
"Envoy from the Lorian Empire has arrived."
The air changed. Not with panic, but with reverence. Expectation. Some strain of old fear that the room had forgotten how to name but never unlearned.
Doors opened.
And twenty entered.
Future Academy students.
"Exchange Students" one would even say.
Then—
They arrived.
Together.
Linked at the arm.
Adrian Vale. Isolde Valoria.
And the hall shifted around them.
The man: tall, composed, carved from the cold legacy of Loria's statues — not just regal, but designed. Jet-black hair slicked back with military rigor, and a face too sharp, too symmetrical, to ever seem weathered by effort. His pale gray eyes—those eyes—cut across the room like twin blades. Cold. Clinical. Calculating. Not cruel. Worse. Uninvested. The way an executioner studies the guillotine's rope, not the neck beneath it.
And beside him—
Isolde.
Elara's breath caught.
Her sister had not changed. Not truly.
She still wore perfection like a birthright.
Platinum-blonde hair curled like moonlight made flesh, falling in practiced waves down the back of her gown. Pale lavender eyes—chemically precise, refined to an almost alchemical translucence—swept over the room with a serene detachment, like she floated just above the gravity that held lesser things.
Her dress shimmered with silver-thread sigils — purity, harmony, grace — embroidered like scripture across a holy relic. And her expression...
'Serenity.'
'Peace.'
'Control.'
And beneath all of it, that smile — barely there. A whisper. A ghost of delight hidden under layers of sweetness.
Elara knew that smile.
The same one Isolde had worn the night of the disgrace.
The same one, behind the veil of her gloved hand, when the accusations had landed.
'Delicate.'
'Untouchable.'
'Liar.'
She wanted to breathe. She wanted to move. To speak.
But her body betrayed nothing.
Not yet.
She watched, steady, spine unbent, even as the tremor pulsed in her core like a second heartbeat. One made not of blood, but of fury.
Cedric, beside her, stiffened. He didn't speak. But his jaw clenched, and his hand twitched once before he masked the motion by adjusting his cuff.
Aurelian muttered something under his breath, likely a curse disguised as awe.
Selphine, though—Selphine leaned forward ever so slightly, her gaze sharp as a falcon's. "So that's them," she murmured.
Together, yes.
Arm in arm.
Symbols of unity. Of reform. Of Loria's reach extending like frost across the continent.
Isolde and Adrian.
The architect and the blade.
The angel and the marble executioner.
They descended the stairs slowly, gracefully, as if time itself bent politely to accommodate their entrance. Courtiers bowed. Some whispered blessings. Some stared.
Elara simply watched.
Her nails bit into her palm beneath the silk of her gloves.
She didn't move.
She didn't breathe.
She just waited.
Because this wasn't the moment.
Not yet.
But it was close.
And when it came—
She would not falter.
Chapter 760: The meaning
The envoy moved deeper into the hall, the twenty-one students spreading in deliberate, rehearsed rhythm — nobles from every edge of the Lorian Empire. Some carried themselves with rigid decorum, others with lazy arrogance, but all of them bore the quiet confidence of those handpicked to represent their bloodlines.
Yet no one looked at them.
Not truly.
Because all eyes had settled on two.
Adrian Lorian.
Isolde Valoria.
The prince and the saint.
Adrian moved like power made flesh—his presence neither overbearing nor aggressive, but sovereign. The kind of presence that made people part without knowing why. His jaw held no softness. His hands, gloved and relaxed at his sides, needed no flourish to command attention. He simply was—and that was enough.
Isolde, beside him, embodied the poetry of perfection. Not warm, not cold. A serene dusk between extremes. Her skin seemed spun from opaline glass, her smile the kind that broke hearts while appearing too chaste to know how.
The whispers began before their feet had fully cleared the stairs.
"That's them—"
"Prince Adrian—"
Even among prodigies and scions, they drew gravity.
A court formed around them within seconds. The boldest students from other tables rose like petals to a sun, gravitating toward their orbit. Questions flickered behind every eye, admiration laced with ambition.
At the central table, Elara sat still.
Her chair no longer felt like furniture.
It felt like a crucible.
Beside her, Cedric leaned in slightly, voice a soft hush against the shell of her ear. "Are you—"
"I'm fine."
Her voice cut through the air like tempered steel.
Clean. Final.
She didn't look at him.
She didn't need to.
This wasn't something he could carry for her.
It wasn't something anyone could.
Across the table, Aurelian had stopped mid-sip, his teacup hovering just below his lips, eyes narrowed and sharp now. He didn't speak. But Elara could feel his posture shift—no longer lounging, no longer dismissive.
Selphine didn't blink. Her gaze was narrowed, analytic, a storm building behind her calm.
The four of them sat in lockstep silence, bound by something unspoken.
The weight of power entering a room.
And Elara—
She had imagined this moment too many times. Seen it behind her eyes like prophecy, like penance. She had dreamed of it on the cold floors of exile, under Eveline's brutal training, in moments where her own body was nothing but bruises and scars stitched with fury.
Isolde.
Adrian.
They were here.
Not in memory. Not in nightmares.
Here.
Breathing. Laughing. Smiling with polished ease as their retinue dissolved into the crowd.
And not once did either of them look at her.
Not yet.
Not when she wore this face.
Not when her name was Elowyn.
'Let them walk past me. Let them bow to me as if I am nothing.'
'Let them forget the sister they destroyed.'
Because when the moment came—
The murmurs had died down into something cooler now. Not gone, but tempered.
The Academy students, native to the Central Realms and their old rivalries, didn't jeer—no. That would've been crude. Obvious. But the silence that followed the initial swirl of fascination spoke louder than words. The Lorian students were guests. Rivals. Outsiders.
And in the world of nobles, that meant civility sharpened into a blade too thin to see.
The envoys didn't seem to mind.
They took their seats on the far side of the banquet, where a long, polished table had been arranged in slight separation from the rest—not exclusion, not quite, but unmistakable distinction. The kind of placement that said you are part of this, but not yet.
Prince Adrian moved toward the head of that table, Isolde beside him. Even seated, they radiated that same cultivated poise. The nobles around them adjusted like an instrument tuning to their frequency.
But Adrian's face, now that the performance of entry had ended, was not one of charm.
It was grim.
His lips were tight. His jaw sharper than it had been moments ago. And though he exchanged the expected nods with those flanking him
His lips were tight. His jaw sharper than it had been moments ago. And though he exchanged the expected nods with those flanking him, his eyes were no longer on the room.
They were on the dais.
More precisely—
The seat near the main tier. The empty one.
The one clearly reserved.
"So they've done it," Aurelian said softly, almost like a prayer meant only for those close enough to hear.
Selphine's eyes narrowed. "Of course they did."
Elara blinked, glancing between them. "What—?"
But before she could form it into a question, Aurelian gave her that particular kind of smirk he reserved for when the world made sense only to him.
"They arrived before the commoner students."
That was all he said.
And that alone was enough.
Elara's blood chilled. Her breath caught.
'No.'
She turned toward the far corner of the hall, where the eastern wing still stood empty—its gates unopened.
No chimes.
No announcement.
Not yet.
But there would be.
And when it came…
When the next group entered—the ones of low blood, of minor merit, of Academy's newest outer-circle class—
They would arrive after the envoys of Loria.
After Isolde.
After Adrian.
In position, in precedent, in spectacle.
Elara's eyes widened. The implications rolled like thunder inside her ribs.
"They've been elevated," Elara whispered again, though this time it wasn't just realization—it was disbelief wrapped in revulsion.
"No," Selphine corrected, her tone crisp. "They have been lowered."
Elara turned toward her, but the other girl's eyes didn't shift. They remained fixed on the far table, where Adrian Lorian sat in grim silence, and Isolde began exchanging quiet words with a neighboring noble girl whose laugh already bent like a reed in the wind.
"This isn't about welcome," Selphine said, voice low, almost surgical in its precision. "It's about hierarchy."
"The war might've ended," Aurelian added, his jaw set with the kind of wry bitterness only nobles raised on legacy could taste. "But not in treaty. Not in balance. We won the Valerius Plains, Elowyn. Arcanis won."
His voice wasn't gloating. It carried no pride. Only fact. Cold and final.
Selphine nodded, fingers toying absently with the jeweled clasp at her wrist. "Loria didn't send envoys because of goodwill. They sent them because they had to. Because their court couldn't afford another humiliation. So they polished their heirs, dipped them in silk, and offered them to the Academy as—"
"—gifts," Aurelian finished. "Wrapped in excellence. Meant to impress. To distract."
"And to kneel," Selphine murmured. "Because that's what it is, Elowyn. This… this little dance of entry order. It's theater. Carefully staged. A pageantry of power. And today, the curtain rose on something none of the older houses will say aloud—"
"They've ranked them beneath the commoners," Aurelian said.
Elara's breath caught.
Not nobles.
Not even merchant scions.
Commoners.
The newest initiates to the Academy. Most of them barely awakened, some untested. Those who came not with titles, but with aptitude. With desperation. With hope.
And Loria's chosen—Adrian, Isolde, and twenty others—had been paraded before them. Not before in celebration.
But before in placement.
In protocol.
In symbolism.
'Beneath them.'
"They're painting a truth into ceremony," Selphine continued, still not looking at her. "One no one will shout, but everyone will remember."
Chapter 761: It is time
The air inside the waiting chamber of the east wing felt too still.
No fanfare. No music. Just the soft rustle of garments and the occasional murmur—like a storm was building beneath the fabric of formal silence.
Jesse stood with the envoy—her posture clean, shoulders held square beneath the weight of her silver-detailed cloak, her gaze forward and unreadable. Around her, the other Lorian nobles adjusted their gloves, flicked invisible dust from their cuffs, or stared into nothing with the simmering quiet of insulted pride.
No one smiled.
Not even the ones who always did.
Because every single one of them had noticed.
"We're after them," muttered the Marquis' son from Aesthwood, barely louder than a breath.
"After the main procession," said another. "After the native-born nobility. After their lowborn candidates."
The word lowborn hung in the air like ash.
And at the center of it all—Adrian Lorian stood silent.
He didn't pace. Didn't frown. But the stillness of his body was razor-edged. The kind of stillness that only came when movement would give the anger away. His gray eyes stared ahead, fixed on the sealed doors that led to the main hall, but it wasn't anticipation in his gaze. It was calculation. Burned into the lines of his jaw, the small tension behind his gloves, the ghost of displeasure tightening the corners of his mouth.
He wasn't a man enraged.
He was a prince measured.
And beside him, Isolde stood as delicate as ever—hands folded, expression serene.
But even she wasn't smiling.
Jesse's eyes moved across the group. Most of them were from established families—trained since childhood to speak in soft tones and hide their cuts beneath silk. But right now, the cracks were showing. One of the twin sisters from House Lavellan was whispering furiously to her cousin about protocol violations. The heir of Cindrelon had stopped polishing his badge for the first time all morning.
They knew.
They all knew.
Adrian's jaw flexed, the barely-contained fury showing in the subtle twitch at the corner of his mouth.
"These bas—"
"Dear," Isolde's voice was featherlight, a gentle ribbon of silk against the grinding metal of the moment.
She didn't raise her voice. She didn't even turn fully toward him—just tilted her head slightly, the curve of her neck exposed like glass beneath moonlight.
But it worked.
Adrian exhaled once, sharply through his nose, and the rest of the nobles around him tensed—then slowly loosened.
Isolde stepped forward, her gown flowing like water behind her, and looked over the group with that same unshakable poise that had made her beloved in courts far beyond Loria's borders.
"Let's not forget," she began, her voice clear, soft but firm, "we are guests here."
Her lavender eyes swept gently across the envoy, catching the eyes of each noble with practiced precision. "And if our hosts choose to greet us with this... arrangement—" she paused, ever so delicately, "—then we shall receive it as only true nobles can."
Some of the younger nobles visibly bristled, but none interrupted.
"If disrespect is offered," she continued, "we will remember. And when the time comes, we will remind them."
Her voice remained soft. But there was a note beneath it—a glint in her eyes that didn't shimmer like glass, but cut like diamond.
Not forgiving.
Not forgetful.
Simply patient.
"It is not weakness to enter second," she said. "Only weakness to walk with your head bowed."
Adrian didn't respond. But his shoulders straightened, and the rest of the envoy began adjusting themselves again—more deliberate this time. Less insulted. More prepared.
Jesse watched it unfold.
The rallying. The speeches. The delicate spin of image and pride.
She didn't feel comforted.
Not because Isolde's words were empty—they weren't. She had that rare gift of dressing steel in silk. She had a way of calming the blood without dulling the blade.
But Jesse didn't care.
Not about Lorian.
Not about the empire's name, or protocol violations, or the idea of entering "after" anyone else.
Because that wasn't why she was here.
Her eyes stayed on the double doors at the front of the eastern wing.
Through them was the banquet.
And in that banquet—
He would be there.
Lucavion.
Her hands curled loosely at her sides. Not from anxiety. Not from fear.
*****
The antechamber of the Sanctum shimmered with soft aetherlight, its tall arched mirrors laced in gold filament, casting their reflections in gilded perfection. The five stood side by side, cloaked not in armor or spellcraft—but in the sharp edge of poise and polish. For once, the battlefield was etiquette. The armor was silk. And the weapon… was presence.
Kaleran stood a few paces away, arms crossed, one brow raised in the kind of critical silence that made lesser nobles sweat.
He began with Mireilla.
She wore deep green—forestwoven silk threaded with living goldroot patterns that subtly pulsed with druidic charm. Her shoulders were bare, her neckline elegant, her gloves high and thin. But the flowers twined across her left arm were real—grown that morning and magically affixed, blooming in cadence with her heartbeat. She looked like a sovereign of untamed thrones. And her smirk knew it.
Kaleran gave a small nod. "Commanding. Very you."
Next, Caeden.
His outfit leaned militaristic—structured. A black coat with crimson piping, high collar, and a breastplate motif worked into the fabric, suggesting strength without weight. His cleaver hung across his back in a harness that gleamed faintly beneath the tailored lines. A knight carved from dusk and command. And calm.
Kaleran paused. "Polished. Controlled. Good."
Elayne followed, and the room's temperature seemed to shift.
She wore smoke. Or something like it. A flowing ensemble of layered illusion-silk that shimmered between violet and midnight gray with each step. Her fan was folded neatly in one gloved hand, her hair pinned high with silver strands shaped like crescent blades. No jewels. Just precision. She looked like a specter taught to dance.
Kaleran murmured something too soft to catch—but nodded all the same.
Toven came last before Lucavion, and for once, he looked like someone aware of how many volts were running through his personality.
His suit was sharp-cut indigo with arclight thread that sparked faintly at the edges—sleeves cuffed in rune-sequenced glass, his hair just messy enough to look styled. The rods at his hips had been re-sheathed into elegant holders disguised as ornament. He looked like a storm in formalwear.
Kaleran blinked. "Unexpectedly refined."
Toven grinned. "I didn't even set anything on fire."
"Yet."
Then…
Lucavion.
Dressed in layered obsidian. No bright thread, no flashy trim—just seamless black, tailored so precisely it blurred the line between cloak and shadow. The voidweave beneath his clothing enhanced every movement with weightless precision, and the pitch-black estoc at his back gleamed with quiet menace.
His hair had been slicked back slightly—sharp at the temples, casually tousled near the crown. A single silver chain circled the high collar of his coat. No house sigil. No rank.
Just presence.
And at his shoulder, as if born to the elegance, slept a cat.
Midnight-furred, paws tucked beneath her chin, tail curled lazily around Lucavion's neck like a living sash of disdain. She didn't stir. Not even when Kaleran stepped closer.
Kaleran studied him.
Then, after a long pause, exhaled through his nose.
"…You look like a diplomatic scandal waiting to happen," he muttered.
Lucavion smirked faintly. "Charming, wasn't it?"
Kaleran turned to face them all.
"All right," he said, voice low but clear. "It's time."
Chapter 762: Thoughts
"All right," he said, voice low but clear. "It's time."
A soft chime echoed through the Sanctum's upper halls—confirmation that the carriage had arrived. Somewhere beyond the doors, servants moved into silent formation, their footfalls barely registering as more than a breath.
"You'll take the Ascendant Carriage," Kaleran continued, eyes sweeping across them with a last, tactical once-over. "It'll bring you to the banquet hall's east wing. The entry's timed—on cue, not early. When the horn sounds, you walk. Not before. Not after."
His eyes moved across the four.
Then landed—predictably—on Lucavion.
"…Don't cause any trouble."
Lucavion tilted his head with the slow grace of a man who had already weighed the worth of a thousand kinds of trouble. "I'll try."
Kaleran narrowed his eyes. "Try harder."
Vitaliara on Lucavion's shoulder twitched one ear in what might have been shared skepticism.
Behind him, Mireilla gave a low snicker. "He's wearing blacker than death and walking in with a blade taller than a noble's ego. You expected him to blend in?"
Kaleran ignored her. Mostly.
Caeden stepped forward first, his coat brushing his legs like discipline made tangible. "Let's not keep the Empire waiting."
Elayne followed in his wake, fan now half-open—not to hide, but to control line of sight. Toven bounced lightly on his heels, hands in his pockets, a grin itching at the edges of formality.
Lucavion lingered a moment longer, casting one glance at the tall mirror to his left.
He didn't preen.
He didn't check.
He watched.
As if making sure the reflection would walk in with him.
Then he turned.
The doors opened.
A silver-and-black carriage sat outside—sleek, rune-lined, with an emblem of the Sanctum gleaming across its polished flank. The footman bowed wordlessly, opening the door with clockwork precision.
One by one, they stepped inside.
****
The inside of the carriage gleamed like the interior of a warlock's treasury—lacquered obsidian inlay along the frame, floating golden sigils etched in motion along the ceiling, and seats upholstered in deep crimson velvet that practically embraced you when you sat. The magic embedded in the lining subtly shimmered beneath their bodies, automatically adjusting heat, posture, and pressure. A spell matrix woven into the carriage's interior stabilized every motion—no creaks, no jolts, not even a ripple across their cuffs or cloaks.
It was too perfect. Too polished.
Lucavion hated it already.
Mireilla slid into her seat with one boot up, lounging like the daughter of a scandal and a festival. Toven was busy trying to figure out how to turn the armrest into a drink holder. Caeden sat with folded hands, silent, already preparing himself like this was a battlefield. Elayne said nothing—but her gaze touched every angle of the carriage with calculated precision.
Lucavion took the last seat—beside the window.
And leaned.
The glass was cool against his knuckles as he rested his chin near it, his eyes tracing the faint silhouettes of the upper Sanctum towers reflected in the distance. They blurred as the carriage began to move—slow, ceremonial, like every revolution of the wheels had been timed to a drum he couldn't yet hear.
'So, it is starting…'
The words rose in his mind, weightless and weighted all at once.
What he felt right now—there was no word for it. No phrase in the Empire's tongue that could capture the tangle behind his eyes.
Anticipation.
Because this was the moment. The real beginning.
Not just of the Academy's parade of prestige—but of the novel's stage. Of the path carved by Shattered Innocence. And the path he'd already begun twisting out of shape.
This was the first ripple.
And also—
A strange numbness.
Because tonight, he'd see the one.
The one who had nearly ruined everything.
The one who had turned his world sideways without even knowing it.
The one whose name wasn't yet known to these students with the things she did… but whose choices had already stolen years of his life.
Heh…
A sound escaped him—half exhale, half sneer. Not bitter. Not amused.
Just…..
Tired in the way only time-travelers and wounded survivors ever truly understood.
"What?"
Mireilla turned toward him, brow raised. She'd caught it.
Lucavion didn't move from the window.
"You look strange," Mireilla said after a pause, eyeing him from beneath half-lowered lashes. Her voice wasn't teasing, not fully. Just laced with something… curious.
Lucavion's gaze stayed on the passing reflections. "Strange how?"
"You weren't like this before," she replied, more softly now. "You didn't brood this hard. Not even when the exams came in three waves and Kaleran personally tried to kill us with etiquette lectures."
Lucavion exhaled a low breath—neither agreement nor denial.
"I'm a changing man," he murmured, tone light, dry.
"…Whatever," Mireilla said, slumping back in her seat and stretching her legs out like she was trying to push the tension out of her bones. She didn't press. Not because she didn't care.
But because she did.
And knew better than to ask a man staring at his own shadow to name the shape of it.
Lucavion's fingers tapped once against the window glass.
And then—
[Are you scared?]
The voice drifted in from beside him. Not loud. Not sharp.
Just there.
Vitaliara's question, soft as breath and twice as sharp, slid beneath the armor he wore across thought and posture.
'What?' he answered, too quickly.
[You heard me.]
'I'm not—'
[Lucavion.]
His name. Just his name.
And suddenly it wasn't a question anymore.
Just a mirror.
He turned his head slightly, just enough to glimpse her perched form from the corner of his eye. Her paws rested still against the velvet, her tail curled neatly, eyes like glimmering green flame.
[You've faced blades, poison, curses, and the collapse of a future you never wanted. And yet you flinch more at this moment than all the others.]
[Is this one of those?]
Lucavion blinked once, his gaze still fixed beyond the glass as the outside world blurred into golden streaks and velvet silhouettes.
'One of those?'
[You were like this,] Vitaliara said slowly, [when you stood across from that one.]
A beat passed.
'Who?'
[Aldric,] she replied, her voice quiet, but sharp at the edges. [Knight of the Wind.]
Lucavion stilled.
It wasn't the name that made his throat tighten. It was the memory. That one cold dusk beneath the hollowed banners, where honor had teeth and failure had a heartbeat. He'd faced Aldric with his blade steady—but his soul unsure. And even now, all these lives later, the echo of that moment lingered in his bones.
His eyelids dropped closed.
'Yeah…'
The word wasn't a confession.
Just a release. A slow exhale of thought he hadn't meant to let slip.
'What are you doing?' he thought bitterly to himself. This moment—this quiet, wheeling carriage ride—he'd braced for it. He'd walked himself toward it step by step.
And now?
Now he was showing his fault lines to Vitaliara, of all people.
'How embarrassing…'
A soft breath left him, and when his eyes opened again, the smirk was back. Smooth. Slight. Masked just right.
'You speculate too much,' he said inwardly, brushing the edge of her gaze with the flicker of practiced bravado.
Vitaliara didn't look convinced.
But she didn't press either.
She just blinked slowly. Her eyes like green coals.
[You always say that,] she murmured, [when I'm right.]
And then she curled back into the velvet, tail flicking once.
Lucavion tilted his head back against the glass.
The weight in his chest didn't fade.
But the sharpness dulled.
Chapter 763: Entrance
The carriage slowed.
Not with a jolt—but a deceleration so precise it felt like the world itself had exhaled. The distant rhythm of hooves, faint as a memory, softened into complete stillness as the arcane wheels drew to a seamless halt.
A shimmer passed across the window—a faint ripple of light, barely visible unless one was already watching for it.
Lucavion's gaze narrowed.
"Checkpoint," Caeden said simply, already unsealing the scroll marked with the Sanctum's sigil from his inner coat.
Outside, the Academy's outer threshold loomed—less a gate and more a veil, a lattice of suspended mana threads glinting faintly in the night. Towering statues on either side held spears crossed overhead, their runes faintly aglow, their eyes blank and unwelcoming.
The footman stepped down, then opened the door with silent formality.
A figure stood waiting.
Not a guard. Not a servant.
Something in between.
Her robes were regulation-issue, but trimmed with ceremonial silk, her expression unreadable behind a half-mask etched with floating glyphs.
"Elayne of the Glass Veil," she intoned first, her voice modulated by the mask. "Confirm your presence."
Elayne tilted her head, flicked her fan open with a whisper of silk. "Present."
"Toven Vintrell."
Toven raised a hand, grinning. "I sparkle with punctuality."
"Caeden Roark."
Caeden stepped forward, presenting the scroll. "Confirmed."
"Mireilla Dane."
"Confirmed."
A pause.
"Lucavion."
No title. No house.
Just the name.
Lucavion met the masked official's gaze without rising. "Alive and unrepentant."
The woman didn't react—but her mask flickered once, runes reorienting. Then—
"Entry acknowledged. You may proceed."
A flick of her hand, and the veil parted like silk cut by a dagger.
The carriage continued.
And almost immediately—
Lucavion felt it.
The world… shifted.
Not violently. Not even overtly.
But the moment they crossed the Academy's threshold, something changed. Something subtle.
A pressure behind the eyes. A bending of space without movement. The stars above them froze mid-glint, unmoving. Too bright. Too still.
The path beneath the wheels? Unending. Perfect.
Too perfect.
Caeden's brow furrowed faintly. Mireilla straightened.
Elayne's fan didn't twitch—but her fingers tightened around it.
Lucavion stared out the window.
And sure enough—
The banquet hall wasn't getting closer.
Its towers shimmered like painted illusions in the distance. Clear. Real. And yet—never near.
He tapped the glass once.
Then stilled.
The mana had changed.
Not just the air—the weave.
Lucavion closed his eyes briefly, letting the sensation roll over him, not pushing back against it but allowing it to seep into his senses. It was subtle, refined. Not like the wild, tangled mana of outer realms, or the brutal density of blood-forged sanctums. This was something... designed.
'So this is it,' he thought, the faintest current of tension catching on the edge of that realization. 'The Academy's core signature.'
He'd read about it, of course. Shattered Innocence had described it in intricate, veiled language, cloaked as metaphor and poetic nuance. The arc where Elara first stepped into these grounds—the prose had nearly glowed with the writer's awe. Mana shaped by ages, bound to purpose, whispering through soil and stone like a hymn that remembers its singers.
It had seemed like fiction.
Now?
Now he understood.
The mana here didn't just exist.
It listened.
It wasn't reacting to him, not quite. But it was aware. Alert. Like a living skin stretched over land, every footfall pressing into its memory.
He opened his eyes slowly, gaze sharpening against the surreal distance of the banquet hall. Still unreachable. Still beautifully framed against a sky that refused to shift.
'The path isn't meant to bring us there. Not quickly. Not comfortably.'
No—the Academy wasn't welcoming them.
It was measuring them.
And deeper still—beneath the layered awareness of the place—Lucavion sensed something rarer: resonance. Not in the traditional sense. Not like a bond. But like an echo.
'Cultivating here would change a person. Not just physically. Internally. The mana's refined. Filtered. It doesn't fight your will. It sharpens it.'
He leaned slightly closer to the window, the pale reflection of his own eyes flickering against the glass.
'No wonder every faction, every guild, every rotting noble house wants a foothold here.'
Then he saw it.
Above the path, beyond the long illusion-stretched distance—one of the Academy's main towers shimmered.
But this time—it wasn't just architectural grace or ornate spellwork.
A visionplay danced across its highest balcony.
Like a mirage cast from memory, faint golden images flickered into view—a young woman stepping through marble gates, a ribbon of wind catching in her gentle white hair, her eyes wide with new purpose and old grief.
'What is that?'
The thought came unbidden, sharp beneath the layers of practiced detachment.
The visionplay shimmered again.
But this time—it shifted.
The young woman in the mirage moved not with the eager steps of a new initiate… but downward. Descending. As if the memory reversed itself, sinking back into the stone like breath drawn in instead of exhaled.
Lucavion narrowed his eyes.
'She's not walking into the Academy…'
She was vanishing beneath it.
As if returning to something buried.
Or perhaps—someone.
The vision trembled, gold fading toward ash—then stilled.
Just before it disappeared entirely, the figure paused.
And turned.
Her face was veiled in light—indistinct, unrevealing. But her posture… that remained.
Straight. Poised. Watchful.
And then—she bowed.
A shallow incline of the head. Nothing exaggerated. Nothing ornate.
But unmistakably directed—toward him.
Lucavion froze.
'Eh…?'
It wasn't confusion that gripped him.
It was recognition of something that made no logical sense.
The kind of recognition born not of memory—but implication. A silhouette that bowed like it had been waiting for this very moment. For him.
The vision collapsed a heartbeat later.
Gone.
The golden shimmer faded from the tower. The sky returned to stillness.
And the carriage came to a halt.
Smooth. Final.
Outside, the grand steps of the banquet hall stretched like a stage awaiting its players. Banners whispered in the manufactured wind, catching moonlight and mana both, their silk etched with House crests and imperial flourishes.
The door opened.
The moment had arrived.
The door opened with a whisper—not a creak, not a clatter. Just the sound of air parting before ceremony.
Lucavion's gaze hadn't left the tower. Not fully. Even now, the afterimage of the silhouette lingered in his mind like the imprint of light after a lightning flash.
But the moment pressed forward without him.
A voice, clear and practiced, broke the breathless hush of arrival.
"Welcome to the Arcanis Imperial Academy."
The speaker stood framed in silverlight—an attendant, younger than expected, cloaked in imperial gray with threads of azure charm woven through the trim. His posture was impeccable. Polished shoes, scroll clasped to his chest like a badge, eyes perfectly neutral.
But not empty.
He looked at them the way a gatekeeper weighs a key—each figure measured, catalogued, compared to something unseen.
Elayne stepped out first, each movement like a line from a carefully calligraphed script. Her fan flicked once, then closed. She didn't speak.
Toven followed—lighter in step, grin flashing for a single heartbeat before it softened into the kind of charm nobles couldn't quite pin down as genuine or dangerous.
Caeden emerged third. Quiet. Precise. Already slipping into the atmosphere like it had been crafted around him.
Mireilla came last of the four before Lucavion. One boot hit the marble stair with deliberate disrespect. She cracked her neck, adjusted her coat, and offered the attendant a smirk that carried exactly zero imperial reverence.
And then—Lucavion moved.
Not slowly.
Not dramatically.
Just with presence.
Like gravity. Cold and quiet and absolute.
The attendant inclined his head politely, but didn't speak again.
Didn't need to.
The five of them were moving now—ascending the banquet steps that caught the mana in arcs of reflected light. Each footfall seemed to echo louder than it should have, as if the Academy listened not only to their names, but to their weight.
Chapter 764: Entrance (2)
The hall had not yet resumed its full rhythm.
Not completely.
Not after that.
The entrance of the Lorian envoy had left the air faintly charged—polished, smiling, cordial on the surface, yet beneath it, something simmered. A low thrum of unspoken satisfaction that hummed beneath every clipped toast and artful exchange.
Valeria stood near one of the central terrace alcoves, the faint glow of ambient mana catching the silver runes on her gown. She was flanked by two nobles from allied houses—Ser Damanth of House Terevas and Lady Irelenne of Vorthellas—both mid-tier families with enough prestige to matter, and enough tact to know whom to align with.
"And there it is," Damanth murmured into the rim of his glass, eyes flicking toward the Lorian table. "House Lorian, seated after the probationary initiates. I don't think I've seen that level of subtle insult executed with such... refinement."
Lady Irelenne sipped her wine, eyes half-lidded. "Refinement is exactly what makes it burn longer. Let them smile through their teeth while they digest it."
Valeria's gaze remained forward, calm as ever, but the faintest curve touched the edge of her mouth.
"They dressed it in ceremony," she said, voice low but unmistakably composed, "but it was a verdict."
Damanth let out a quiet breath, somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. "A lovely one at that. Rank is dictated by precedence. And today, they were placed beneath our commonborn initiates. On record. On stage."
"It's not just placement," Irelenne added, tilting her head. "It's optics. Perception. Those envoys will carry this moment back to Loria like a shadow stitched into their legacy. That stain will outlive their silk."
Valeria's fingers traced the stem of her glass, but she did not drink. Her eyes moved—not to Adrian, nor to Isolde—but to the nobles now gathered around them. She recognized most. The ambitious. The observant. The ones who knew how to read the shifting winds.
None of them were fawning.
They were watching.
Calculating.
And pleased.
"Arcanis," she said softly, not quite to them, not quite to herself, "does not forget the war. But it also does not shout its victories. We record them. Publicly. Permanently. Elegantly."
"That's why this is beautiful," Damanth agreed, swirling his glass. "It's not a sword. It's a ledger. A matter of fact."
Irelenne's smile was the thinnest line of satisfaction. "A ledger they'll be forced to sign every time they sit at that table."
Valeria said nothing more, but she felt the quiet heat beneath her skin—the particular kind of pride that did not rise from arrogance, but from precision. From knowing that her Empire did not need to roar to dominate. It simply moved the pieces.
And now, those pieces had shifted.
Subtly. Indelibly.
She turned slightly, her eyes catching the faint outline of a woman across the hall.
Not close—no. Near the third columned tier, just removed enough from the nobility's clustered orbit to go unnoticed by most.
Valeria had felt the eyes first.
A gaze. Brief. Inconspicuous. The kind that slid over the skin without weight, but left the senses taut, like a blade brushing silk.
Now, she saw her.
A young woman, seated with composed posture and measured stillness. Chestnut hair, arranged simply. Not ostentatious. Her dress was dignified but unremarkable—no family crest, no daring cut, no hunger for attention in its tailoring.
But her eyes—
Rich hazel. Still. Watching.
Not darting, not wide with ambition or awe like the lower initiates so often were.
Quiet.
The gaze of someone measuring a battlefield, not admiring the decor.
Valeria studied her for a moment longer.
There was something about her presence that didn't quite fit. Not foreign—but not deferential either. The way she held herself spoke of discipline. Control. Familiar with war, or something close to it.
For a heartbeat, something in Valeria's magic-honed instinct pulsed. A faint ripple in the weave. Not threat, exactly. Not yet.
Just… awareness.
Like being watched by something intelligent cloaked in unassuming cloth.
She narrowed her eyes—barely.
'I've overlooked something.'
But the moment passed. The girl—whoever she was—had already turned her gaze away, as if the earlier connection had been an accident. A coincidence.
Valeria's posture didn't shift, but she let her attention slide back toward her companions.
Damanth chuckled low in his throat, swirling the last of his drink as his gaze lingered on the Lorian table.
"I wonder how long their little envoy will keep their posture once the initiates outscore them. Assuming they last the season. I give the younger ones until winter before they start cracking under our system."
"They weren't bred for rigor," Irelenne added, her tone velvet over ice. "Their court worships elegance. But here, elegance is currency, not immunity. They'll learn that soon enough."
Another noble—Lady Marcella of Ardent Crest, lean and lacquered in obsidian silk—joined their gathering with a lazy arch to her brow.
"I overheard one of the Lorian girls whispering about the ranking seals. She didn't even know the primary colors for the Five-Tier Combat Trials. Can you imagine?"
More laughter. Light, sharp. Not cruel in pitch, but in rhythm—like birdsong with teeth.
Valeria listened.
And said nothing.
Her face was the same. Unmoved. Serene. But a shift had settled behind her gaze—subtle as pressure beneath silk.
There it was again.
The smugness.
The joy not in victory, but in degradation.
She understood pride. She understood sovereignty. Arcanis had earned this moment—through blood, through brilliance, through sacrifice that most of these nobles had only read about.
But pride did not require mockery.
Not for her.
Valeria's spine remained straight, her chin just slightly angled upward, as if held by something more than bone—something older. Older than banners. Older than thrones.
A code.
She did not speak against them.
She never did. Not publicly. Not in a gathering like this, where tact was currency and silence the highest denomination of disagreement.
But she did not add to their amusement, either.
Let them laugh.
Let them play their small games around the shadow of a war they didn't bleed in.
She was not here for their approval.
Her eyes drifted once more—past the nobles, past the polished opulence of the hall, toward the far entrance. The eastern wing.
Still sealed.
Still waiting.
She allowed herself a breath.
There were still a few moments left in this act.
Damanth raised his glass again. "To the memory of Loria's supremacy. May it rest comfortably beneath our boots."
Irelenne chuckled. "If they polish the sole, we might even spare their pride."
Valeria didn't turn. Didn't flinch. Her lips didn't move.
But the inside of her glove creaked faintly as her fingers curled tighter around the stem of her glass.
And then—
A soft chime.
High. Measured.
The room quieted.
A voice rang out, clear and composed from the central dais.
"Special Admission Students are entering."
The hall stilled.
Some with disdain.
But most with attention.
Just that.
Special Admission.
Valeria's fingers relaxed slightly around her glass.
The term was precise. Deliberate. Not probationary. Not unranked. And certainly not lesser.
But it meant one thing clearly enough:
The commoners.
Not elevated by lineage. Not carved from bloodlines honed by war or diplomacy or age-old alliances. These were entrants chosen for merit, raw and unvarnished.
And among them—she knew—would be him.
Lucavion.
She lifted her gaze to the far end of the banquet hall, where the great mirrored doors began to open.
And the silence shifted.
This wasn't the awed hush that had greeted the Lorian envoy. Nor the rustling curiosity that had followed the nobles' procession.
This was something cooler.
Still.
Evaluative.
The sound of a hall bracing for something it could not yet define.
The doors widened.
And they entered.
Five figures.
Chapter 765: Entrance (3)
The mirrored doors opened with a breath of polished silence, and the first figure stepped into the light.
Mireilla.
She did not enter like a noblewoman trained in halls and tapestries. She entered like a bloom erupting through marble—uncontainable, unapologetic. Her gown shimmered in a rich emerald that rippled like sunlit leaves, its bodice embroidered with living vines that coiled up her arms in slow, deliberate motion. Subtle, elegant, alive. A crown of gold-laced ivy wreathed her curls, and each step she took left behind the faintest scent of myrrh and blooming cypress. She didn't smile.
She smirked.
And it landed.
Whispers stirred immediately as she descended the steps—curiosity, calculation, the occasional audible "druid?" behind a fan. But none dared look away.
Toven followed in her wake like the second crack of thunder after the lightning.
His suit was cobalt-dark, sharp-angled and luminous at the edges, threaded with glimmers of voltaic runes that pulsed faintly with each step. His coat flared slightly at the cuffs and hem, etched in streaks of silver that mimicked lightning forks mid-strike. The twin rods holstered at his hips glowed with capped energy, restrained but waiting. His hair was artfully tousled, the usual chaos now corralled into style—barely.
He offered a wink to someone near the front and nearly tripped on a step with a muttered curse—earning a ripple of laughter from the bold and the curious alike.
But beneath the antics?
There was voltage.
Elayne emerged next.
And the air changed.
She moved like a shadow taught to glide. Her dress was midnight-layered illusion, flowing in sheer folds that shimmered between amethyst and ash depending on how the light dared touch her. Her neckline was high, her gloves long, her eyes sharp. No jewelry adorned her—only a thin silver pin through her chignon, shaped like a crescent blade.
She made no gesture. No nod. No smile.
But the way she walked—quiet, perfect, unreadable—pulled attention to her like the space between blinks.
Caeden came next.
A pillar.
His presence landed more than arrived. Built like a fortress but dressed like a general, his formalwear struck the line between tradition and silent threat. Dark red coat layered over a steel-toned tunic, reinforced with etched leather around the shoulders in a subtle nod to the cleaver slung across his back—more ceremonial now, but no less real. His posture was immaculate. His expression, quiet. Grounded.
The sort of man one might underestimate—once.
No one made that mistake twice.
There was no flash in his step. No flourish.
Just quiet command.
And then—
The mirrored doors shimmered again, as if sensing the shift.
The light bent differently this time.
Not brighter.
Sharper.
Lucavion stepped through.
He didn't walk like Caeden—measured and commanding. He didn't glide like Elayne, or smirk like Mireilla, or spark like Toven.
He walked as if he were arriving late to a game he already knew he'd win.
Hands tucked into the pockets of his tailored coat, posture effortlessly upright, Lucavion descended the steps without urgency or flourish.
Causal. Controlled.
Like a secret that had already unraveled the room before the door ever opened.
The suit they had prepared for him was a masterwork in midnight indigo—stitched sharp at the lapels and draped like authority over every line of his frame. Silver threads ran through the trim in lines so fine they caught only the highest light, like starlight glimpsed through smoke. No crest was visible at first. Only a glint, a faint shimmer at his breast, like something held in reserve. Waiting.
Then the light struck it just right.
And the illusion broke.
The estoc. The black flame. The single black star.
Not painted. Not woven.
Anchored.
Not everyone could see it. That was the point.
But those who did—fell silent.
His hair, normally tousled in perpetual defiance of decorum, had been smoothed and styled under the meticulous hands of the Sanctum's finest. It swept back from his brow in careful disarray, every strand speaking of intention disguised as carelessness. Against the indigo of his collar and the silver-light of the chandeliers, the dark gleam of his hair looked near-luminous—like ink under moonlight.
And then—
There were his eyes.
Pitch black. Depthless.
The kind of gaze that didn't seek permission to judge—it already had.
Valeria's fingers tightened just slightly around the stem of her crystal glass.
For a moment—just a breath—she said nothing at all.
Lucavion descended the final steps, his presence threading through the air like something half-tangible. Not heavy. Not loud. But certain. Like a memory resurfaced with too much clarity.
She watched him.
And she found it... strange.
It had been years. Years since their paths had last crossed beneath the banner of any shared cause. Years since she'd seen him in anything but fragments—rumors, mentions, and most recently, the broadcast. The scrying orbs had captured his image well enough: his movements, his victories, his calm.
But even at their sharpest, they hadn't captured him.
Because how could they?
The screen could show posture. Expression. Blade technique.
But it could never capture the feeling.
And now—
Now that she was seeing him again with her own eyes, from across this gilded hall...
He had changed.
Yes.
That was unmistakable.
His edges were sharper—less unrefined chaos, more controlled danger. He no longer moved like someone daring the world to challenge him. He moved like someone who had already decided he wouldn't lose, and no longer found it necessary to say so aloud.
There was polish to him now. Precision. He'd learned to wear silence like armor and charm like a blade.
But at the same time—
He hadn't changed at all.
Because Valeria could still feel it.
That wildfire.
Buried now beneath the discipline, perhaps—beneath the formal lines of a perfectly tailored coat and the mirrored steps of courtly descent—but it was there. Just behind his eyes. Beneath the stillness of his walk. A quiet tension in his shoulders, a readiness in his breath.
The same Lucavion who once made a mockery of practice drills because he refused to swing a sword the same way twice.
The same one who grinned before jumping off walls, because climbing down was "inefficient."
The same one who had always, always made her feel like the world might shatter at any moment… and yet somehow, that would be fun.
Her lips almost moved.
Almost.
But instead, she set her glass down slowly and folded her hands before her.
The others were reacting now—she could hear the shift in tone from the nearby nobles, the soft rise in murmurs.
One of the younger girls whispered, "That's him, right? The Sword Demon?"
Another followed: "They say he doesn't even use proper forms. Just instinct."
Someone scoffed lightly, "And yet he beat Elayne. That's what instinct buys, I suppose."
Valeria didn't respond.
Because none of them knew what they were talking about.
Not really.
They hadn't stood next to him when he was training, not seen the way he pushed past the rules not out of rebellion—but because the rules couldn't catch up.
They didn't know that the term "instinct" meant nothing in his case—because what they called instinct, he'd forged through blood, repetition, and something far more dangerous: conviction.
She looked at him again.
At the way he paused briefly near the center of the hall, gaze moving—not slowly, not hurriedly—but with purpose. As if assessing the structure of the world, and deciding whether or not to let it remain intact for the evening.
And Valeria, for the first time in a long while, found herself thinking something utterly undiplomatic.
"He looks good."
Chapter 766: Entrance (4)
The hush that fell over the hall wasn't total silence.
But it was close.
Not stunned. Not reverent.
Watchful.
As the five descended together—Mireilla, Toven, Elayne, Caeden, Lucavion—the atmosphere rippled. Not just from the force of their presence, but from the sheer disruption of it.
Each of them carried a different rhythm.
But it was Lucavion who changed the tempo of the room.
He didn't walk in the center. Didn't make a show of leading. And yet—he was the axis. Every step aligned to him without intention. Even Elayne, poised and honed as she was, adjusted her stride half a breath to match his.
And everyone noticed.
Even the nobles too proud to show it. Even the professors seated above. Even the crest-marked heirs standing near the dais. Their expressions didn't shift much—but their eyes did.
Lucavion's name had already spread through whispers, through wagers, through nervous laughter behind fans and half-masked smirks.
Sword Demon.
An uncrowned thing—too raw for decorum, too refined for ridicule. An outsider who had beaten an imperial favorite with no clan name behind him, no doctrine, no signature style. Just a blade, and the will to put it where it mattered.
He walked as though the hall didn't matter.
As though nothing in it could matter.
And then—
His gaze shifted.
Not in search, but in certainty.
It swept over the room once—and stopped.
On her.
Valeria.
Their eyes met.
Just for a moment.
No flair. No gasp. Just stillness—caught in that invisible thread between the past and the present.
And then—
Lucavion's mouth quirked. Barely. A sliver of curve that most wouldn't notice.
But she knew that smile.
She knew it too well.
And then—
His lips moved.
No sound.
Just a shape carried on intention.
"Hello, Pink Knight."
Valeria blinked.
Her breath caught, so soft it might've passed unnoticed by the room, but not by her.
Her heart—calm for the entirety of the evening, steady under pressure, practiced under a hundred layers of courtly poise—lurched once. Hard.
A quiet stutter against her ribs.
As if her body remembered something before her thoughts did.
Pink Knight.
He said it like a greeting. Like a tease. Like a promise.
And in that instant—
The hall, the nobles, the ritualized noise of power—
All of it blurred.
Just for a second.
Because that name—that name—wasn't spoken by anyone else.
No one here even knew it.
It wasn't written in dossiers. It wasn't whispered among the gossip circles. It wasn't part of her cultivated image.
It was his.
A name shaped between stolen moments and battlefield ash, back when neither of them were what they are now.
A memory made real.
Valeria's spine remained straight. Her chin didn't dip. She showed nothing, as expected of her.
But inside?
The flame flickered to life.
He was here.
And he still remembered.
*****
At the central table, the mood had settled into something almost conversational.
Almost.
Aurelian was tracing invisible glyphs along the stem of his goblet, lips pulled into a slanted half-smile as he dissected Lorian court fashion with his usual flair. Selphine responded in slow, arched phrases, her tone silkier now—measured, as if weighing each word before releasing it like a drop of ink in water. Cedric said little, his attention split between watching the hall and watching Elara.
And Elara?
She didn't speak.
Her posture was perfect, her face composed, her fingers folded neatly atop her place setting. She offered a small nod at Aurelian's latest jab about someone's jewel-encrusted shoes—just enough to pass for engaged.
But her thoughts were elsewhere. Coiled. Focused.
Because beneath the silk and the ceremony, the positioning and performance, she could still feel the rhythm of the hour.
It was not over.
Not yet.
Then came the voice.
Smooth. Arching with ceremony.
"Special Student Entrants—now arriving."
Elara's head snapped up.
The table quieted instantly.
Across the hall, conversation dimmed. Even among the gathered nobility, curiosity flared. The phrase was unfamiliar. Not exchange envoy. Not commoner cohort.
Special.
Aurelian blinked. "That's… not scheduled."
Selphine leaned forward slightly. "Did they move the duelists' bracket?"
"No," Cedric muttered.
Elara didn't speak.
Because she already knew.
She didn't know how. But she did.
And when the mirrored doors at the far end of the hall parted once again—this time with no fanfare, just silence sharpened to a point—
She felt it.
Saw it.
Him.
Lucavion.
The moment he stepped into the light, her heart didn't race.
It stopped.
Not metaphorically. Not with flair. It stopped.
Her breath faltered. Her fingers twitched against the tablecloth. And everything else—voices, light, ceremony—became distant noise.
Because it was him.
There was no mistaking it.
The hair, black and just too tousled to be disciplined. The eyes, deeper than shadow, watching the world like it was already a solved riddle. The suit was regal, precise, far beyond the Luca she had known in tattered edges and scuffed boots.
But it was him.
The same mouth. The same tilt of smirk that curved—barely—at the corner when someone muttered in awe nearby.
The scar was gone. That long mark that once split across his right eye like a line of memory erased.
But the eyes were the same.
And the thing that made her certain—the thing that silenced every last trace of doubt—
Was the white cat curled lazily across his shoulders.
The same cat that used to wind through their campfires in Stormhaven, indifferent to rain and blood and betrayal. The same one that hissed at Cedric once and then slept on his bedroll for a week.
Its tail flicked once, smug.
'Luca.'
The name rose, unwanted, unwelcome, unspoken.
'Lucavion.'
And she felt it then. Like iron branding her lungs.
These two names—once lives apart, once severed like a blade between selves—were not two people.
They were one.
They had always been one.
Her Luca had always been this.
Lucavion.
Sword Demon.
Traitor. Savior.
And now—student.
The halls of the Academy had opened.
And the boy who had ruined her was walking its floors again.
Not a ghost this time.
Not a memory.
Not in exile.
But in glory.
And this time—he would see her.
Eventually.
But not yet.
Not until she was ready to look him in the eye and decide what she would be.
Justice. Ruin. Forgiveness.
Or something far, far sharper.
She swallowed.
Slowly. Silently.
And then—without turning to them—she said to the others at the table, her voice soft as steel behind silk:
"…He's here."
And then—
Her gaze shifted.
Slow. Inevitable.
Not toward him. Not yet. She couldn't afford that. Not while her pulse still pounded in her throat like a war drum muffled beneath silk and spine.
Instead, her eyes slid sideways.
To her.
Isolde Valoria.
Still standing beside Adrian, the two of them like some marble-carved scene from a history tapestry—perfect in composition, pristine in presence. Adrian's arms were folded now, speaking quietly to a nearby noble, his posture still and composed. But Isolde…
She wasn't speaking.
She wasn't smiling.
She wasn't looking at anyone else.
Her eyes—those soft, washed-lavender eyes—were locked.
On him.
Across the vastness of the banquet hall, beyond the murmuring students and the glittering light and the practiced courtesies, Isolde's gaze had found Lucavion.
And it had not left.
It wasn't surprise.
It wasn't admiration.
It was expectation.
A stillness that Elara knew too well. The kind that preceded movement. The kind that said: Ah. You're here.
Not Is that him?
Not Could it be?
Just: You.
Elara didn't want to look.
Not yet.
She wasn't ready—wasn't supposed to be ready. Not with the pulse still hammering against her ribs, not with her knuckles white beneath the silk of her gloves. But the moment pulled at her like gravity, inevitable and cold.
She turned.
Toward him.
Lucavion.
He stood just beyond the lower steps of the dais, framed by the chandelier's flickering light like something conjured—not born. The white cat still curled like a crown over his shoulder, its ears flicking lazily, unbothered by the shift in pressure that had begun to wrap the room like storm-thick air.
But Lucavion—
He wasn't relaxed.
Not anymore.
He wasn't surveying the crowd. He wasn't measuring nobles or mocking etiquette.
He was looking at her.
Isolde.
As if his eyes were saying….