--- Kori's POV ---
If you are waiting for a speech, you will be disappointed. I don't do speeches. I do inventory. And coffee. In that order. After all, I'm Kori.
Two things first.
One - the Rust Room is honest. It tells you what you are without asking permission. Raizen and Hikari listened. That is rarer than you think.
Yes, Mina, you can stop nodding like I just invented honesty.
Two - the city won't clap for you.
Don't need it to. If applause paid rent, the Underworks would be a palace.
You want to know what I think of them.
ALL OF THEM!? Alright, alright.
Well... Raizen is... What happens when stubborn gets happily married to patience.
He still tries to win the room by breathing harder than everyone else, but realistically? He doesn't know when to stop forcing. His blade used to write too many messy sentences. If you read them, you'd probably think that his swords have dyslexia or something.
Now it says what it needs to say and then shuts up.
He blocks because he intends to, not because his survival instinct kicks in. That is a different kind of speed.
He'll tell you he is not ready. He't totally lying, but it is a useful lie. It keeps him from getting cocky. If he gets cocky, I make him hold a plank until... I don't know, until I get bored.
Hikari makes me careful. Not worried, careful.
Still a mystery, that girl... There's a line in her that moves too straight, too scary, sometimes.
The first time I saw it I thought it was a coincidence, or she's gifted.
She isn't. She's a person who was taught to move like a fierceful warrior before she ever held a blade.
The Rust Room tried to trip her into proving she was still flawed. She stayed on her feet anyway.
But I have to say it. She's also kind. If you blink, you miss it.
You've heard other names. Keahi. Arashi. They don't share a room with Raizen and Hikari much right now, and that is on purpose.
Their work would have torn the rigs out of the floor if they kept going. Mina would complains about budget. I'd happily pretend to care.
Keahi came across the ocean to stand where the Lotus Academy could teach her. Too young by the rules when she arrived. Old enough by the look in her eyes.
I found her in the lower market studying a map that didn't match the streets. Tourist face level 100. She watched every doorway like a veteran.
That made me laugh. I don't laugh often. She has a temper like a fuse that refuses to burn until it's finally time.
She is where she belongs - in drills that would crack the Rust Room in half. We practice outside so Mina doesn't throw a chair at me. Basically? I agreed to train her.
Arashi is an older story. Ten years now. Back when I still wore the Phalanx crest and thought my bones would never get tired.
I was 18, come on! You know how they are: young and restless, chaotic here and there, chasing butterflies...
Back to the Phalanx - we were moving people out of Velarion. There, I found a boy in a stairwell, trying to lift a boulder almost as big as him. Six years old and already wearing the face of a man. The coat he had on used to be expensive.
He didn't remember his family name. For me, that's enough to grow a teenager who thinks mistakes are personal. He is relentless and too hard on himself.
He'll either become a standard or break trying. I'm cheating the odds toward the first outcome. Sometimes by yelling. Sometimes by tea. He loves tea. Both work.
Basically both of them want to fight Nyxes. I took them both under my wing... Quite the babysitter I've become!
Then... we have Velarion.
Everyone speaks of it like a story that happened to someone else. In reality it didn't. It happened to all of us.
A rich, clean city. Lamp lit parks. Dinner on elevated terraces, multi-leveled gardens...
Then the Anathemas stepped out of the shadows.
People will tell you there are twelve of them. People also tell you street noodles are healthy.
Both are optimistic. I have never seen all twelve at once, and I can only hope that there are less.
What I know is smaller, and I trust small truths.
They took the form of evil things, human malices, that are present in our lives. Either people made that up, or I'm just too pessimistic...
"Greed" was an enormous Nyx that kept getting fatter. It ate matter like a habit. Stone, wood, iron, breath - all the same. Every bite made it larger and lazier. Over 50 meters tall
It didn't enjoy learning our blades. It learned it anyway. I strongly would not recommend. That thing took hours to finally get rid of!
Good thing it ate too much that it could barely move...
And before you start rebelling "but oh, Kori! How can humans kill a monster that size, if it was so powerful!?"
Let me tell you. The Phalanx was something unlike you've ever imagined before. One of us shattered a mountain - that's right. A whole ass mountain - with one blast.
So don't ask questions, ok? I don't get paid for that.
"Ignorance" was a shape that would not let your eyes agree with each other. You could shoot and swear you had missed on purpose. I never got close enough to decide what it truly was. Nobody I know of did.
I was not with the line that dropped it. I was at the east gate pulling children through while the west side burned. I'm fine with that choice.
Someone else can write the hero story. I'll write the list of names that made it out.
Selfishness is the one the stories and tales never tell correctly. They say about a monster that wanted the city. It did not want the city. It wanted itself, and when there was nothing left to take, it turned inward and ate its core.
The blast that followed erased half of Velarion so completely the maps still refuse to draw those ruined streets back in. People say that was the day the city died.
They're wrong. That was the day the city learned how to live with a piece missing. Maps sulk. Cities adapt.
We lost three of seven Phalanx in those weeks.
Good ones.
Useful.
Human...
The leader went to face something we did not understand. We called it the Nyx Queen because we needed a name to hold our fear.
I didn't see that fight. No one I know of did. The last time I saw our leader, his back was straight and he didn't say goodbye. That was the last time anyone saw either of them. Yes, I still stand up straighter when I think about it, and my spine shivers when I remember.
This is where you wait for a moral. I won't give you one! Who do you think I am!? I prefer facts. And lessons learned on your own skin.
Fact - numbers help until they lie. Twelve percent is only a number. It proves a thing. It doesn't finish it. Wayyy less than one in ten make it through the Lotus entrance exam.
I've seen better odds on a rigged gambling table! But what matters is not the so called twelve percent. It's whether you have what it takes.
Become someone who doesn't need a crowd. If you need a crowd, buy a drum. Don't bring it to training. Come to think of it... Those things are so satisfying to break! I should get one and smash it against-
Oh. Ok. Sorry.
Now, because you insist on hearing about the Lotus... I won't say much. Don't wanna ruin your suspense.
But It's not a school the way people tell it. It's a sieve. It'll shake you badly until only the part that needs to stay does. I like sieves. They tell the truth about tea leaves and people.
People sign up for all the usual reasons - glory, coins, a story to tell. Big mistake, if you ask me.
The exam does not care about any of that. It cares about whether you keep your feet when the Nyxes come.
It cares about whether you learn a new thing while you are still bleeding from the old one.
Oh, you want gossip?
I can hear it in the way you lean. Fine. The entrance thing... The exam itself changes every year. Don't believe anyone who says they know the exact shape of it. The only constant is surprise. They don't test what you practiced.
Sometimes it's teams. Sometimes it's alone. Sometimes they give you exactly what you asked for and make you fail anyways.
That's my personal favorite.
Keahi will meet the thing she came for - an institution that doesn't need her and therefore might finally deserve her.
Arashi... He'll meet a mirror he probably won't enjoy. He'll learn to walk past it anyway. If they pass, none of them will thank me. They will blame me when they're tired. That means I did my job.
Complaints are the flowers of progress.
Don't send me actual flowers, though! Don't get me wrong, I love them, but Mina is allergic. One more risk of a chair being throw at me...
I keep thinking about the line I tell them every other day...
Don't try to impress anyone. Be hard to knock down. Be honest about what you're bad at. Mercy isn't weakness.
It's the only thing that will keep you from becoming a knife that forgot it's purpose. If you argue, I will make you do wall sits until your soul apologizes.
If Raizen and Hikari learn that, they'll be fine. In fact, they'll be fine either way! If they learn it, they'll be dangerous in the right way.
If you hear me call them dangerous, that is a compliment. If you hear me call you interesting, that's not a compliment. No, you're not special, you're just weird. In the bad way.
The entrance exam is here.
When it comes, it won't be nice stuff.
I won't be in the hall when they go. I have already said what I wanted to say. I will be where I belong - counting, watching, ready to laugh at the ones who break and send them back better.
Raizen. Hikari. Keahi. Arashi. Go sharpen something that... Uh... isn't a blade. No, Arashi, you can't sharpen butter knives again!
Well... Yes. Quite the babysitter I've become!
---
Alright. Now that everyone's gone…
Wait. You're still here?
Fine. Then you get the truth.
When the lights go out in the Rust Room, it's quiet enough to hear your thoughts argue with each other.
I told them they'll be fine. I've said it enough times that even I almost believe it.
But the Lotus Academy isn't a forge like this place. It doesn't break and build you - it changes what you are.
Every year, a few walk back out with eyes that never quite look the same again.
The Rust Room? It merely put down the base. But the Academy teaches one thing above all.
Eon.
The only thing that's ever stood between us and the Nyxes. Power made from the same light that devours them. The only thing that kept the darkness away.
It's beautiful. Gorgeous, even. But the rose is beautiful as well, yet it still has thorns.
Every battlefield that ever glowed with Eon ended the same way - the silence of death, smoke, ashes, and a few broken weapons that still hummed afterward.
Eon is both miracle and curse, and every glow carries a grave. Us, Humans, made it a curse.
I've seen what it can do. My time in the Phalanx showed me.
I've seen it heal wounds, and melt lives in the same breath. Countless lost. Mountains obliterated. Walls shattered. Seas frozen (Uh... That was me...)
But the people wielding it smiled through the smoke, because winning is easier than surviving.
I think you've heard about the Vanguard Division One.
In my opinion, one of the best. They owned some of the best Luminite weapons this century's seen.
All gone. Same cursed hand. Nyxes.
Raizen wants to fight them. They all do.
But too few come back.
If you'd seen what I've seen - expeditions limping home with one survivor, convoys wiped out, villages erased, faces you swore you'd protect gone to silence - you'd truly understand what i mean.
The kids have made it farther than most. I can only pray that it's far enough.
The Rust Room taught them control. But it's merely the base.
The Academy will teach them to dominate. The true cost of survival.
The city feels different tonight.
And the exam…
It feels different too.