Support Division classrooms were tucked into one of the academy's older wings, the stone here darker, the ceilings lower, the windows small and narrow. It felt less like a place of learning and more like a place where people were quietly filed away and forgotten.
"Support candidates, inside!" an assistant snapped from the doorway.
Caelum stepped in with the others.
The room was a stepped amphitheater, stone benches circling a central platform etched with faint sigils. The air smelled of chalk dust, herbs, and the sharp bite of cleansing solution—too clean, trying to erase whatever had been spilled here before.
Lira clung to her satchel like it was a shield. Jalen took a seat near the back, posture slumped from chronic disappointment.
Caelum chose a spot in the middle row. High enough to see everything, low enough not to be noticed first.
He sat.
Watched.
Waited.
Students filled in. A cluster of nobles in pristine uniforms sat together near the front, their eyes sliding over the rest like judges surveying livestock.
One of them sneered openly at Dorm Nine's group.
"Look at that. They really let the rejects into Support Division. How… charitable of Ashthorne."
His friends laughed.
Lira hunched her shoulders.
Caelum didn't look at them.
A noble who mocks without measuring value is useless. They will either become tools or corpses.
A soft click echoed from the side door.
The room fell silent.
The instructor walked in.
She was not what most expected.
No flowing healer robes, no kind grandmother aura. She was tall and straight-backed, with silver hair bound into a severe knot and eyes like polished glass. Her uniform was plain, dark, and immaculate.
She set a leather case upon the desk, opened it, and carefully removed a piece of chalk.
"With each breath," she said, voice precise and quiet, "someone in this empire dies because a Support Sigil user was not good enough."
She turned to the board and began to write complex sigil structures in smooth, practiced strokes.
"If you find that thought inspiring, you do not belong here."
The class shifted uneasily.
"If you find it terrifying, you might survive."
She set the chalk down and finally faced them.
"I am Mistress Halien. I teach Sigil Stabilization, Healing Theory, and Resonance Calculus. You are Support candidates. You are not warriors. You are not front-line killers. You are what stands between victory and collapse."
Her gaze moved across the room, weighing, cutting.
Then stopped.
On Caelum.
Again.
He looked back, calm, expression neutral.
Her eyes narrowed by a fraction.
"You," she said. "Stand."
Lira's breath hitched.
Caelum rose smoothly.
"Name," Halien said.
"Caelum Veylor."
Murmurs.
"Veylor… that Veylor?"
"I heard his family disowned him."
"Why is a Veylor in Support rank F?"
Mistress Halien's expression did not change.
"Your evaluation," she said, "marks your Sigil as Slate-tier, Support, unclassified. Potential D-minus. Academy scan recorded an instability spike and a momentary resonance failure."
She paused.
"That… annoys me."
A nervous chuckle rippled through the class. It died quickly when they realized she wasn't joking.
"I dislike unstable variables," Halien continued. "Either you are weak or you are not. I want clarity."
She pointed at the central platform.
"Step into the circle."
Lira grabbed the edge of her bench.
"Wait, but Mistress— it's the first day, he hasn't—"
"Silence," Halien said without looking at her. "He is not being punished. He is being seen."
Caelum walked down the steps without hesitation.
Public focus. Good. Let's see how much my Sigil will cooperate.
The platform's sigil lines were faint but old, etched deep into the stone. He stepped into the center.
Halien raised her hand, fingers moving in a pattern too refined to be mere habit. The sigils on the floor awakened, light blooming along the grooves in a soft, cold blue.
"Resonance evaluation," she said. "Basic. It will not harm you."
That depended on how one defined harm.
The light crawled up around Caelum's feet, circling him like a low fire. There was no heat, yet his skin prickled.
He felt the probe.
Pushing.
Prying.
Reaching for his Sigil.
His Proto-Sigil stirred.
Threads tightened.
Hide, Caelum thought. Contract. Present trash.
For a heartbeat, Residual Thread resisted.
It wanted to push back.
It wanted to see.
He forced his will down like a blade across unruly strings.
Not yet. We are not ready for this dance.
The pressure melted. The Sigil folded inward, compressing into a dull, compact knot.
The scanning circle hiccuped. Light fluttered, flickering like a candle in a storm.
Mistress Halien's eyes sharpened.
The sigil finally stabilized.
The light flashed once.
Text appeared in the air beside him, lines of glowing script.
SIGIL: SUPPORT — UNCLASSIFIED
GRADE: SLATE
STABILITY: 43%
RESONANCE: LOW
POTENTIAL: D-
The class snickered.
"That's it?"
"Not even proper classification…"
"Trash."
Halien's mouth thinned.
"Get out of the circle," she said.
Caelum stepped out.
"Return to your seat."
He did.
She watched him walk the whole way.
"You will all remember something," she said to the class, her voice very soft. "A weak Sigil is not an excuse for a weak mind. Those are separate flaws."
Some of the laughter died abruptly.
Halien picked up the chalk again.
"Open your notebooks. If you don't have one, watch and pray your memory is worth the food we waste on you."
Lines of sigil structures appeared on the board, elegant in their brutality.
"This," she said, "is the basic stabilizing pattern for a Grey-tier healing Sigil. If you cannot understand this by the end of the week, you will fall behind. Once you fall behind at Ashthorne…"
She let the sentence hang.
Everyone knew what it meant.
Chalk scratched.
Students scribbled.
Mistress Halien began dissecting the pattern—breaking it down into resonance nodes, stability anchors, and feedback circuits.
"This loop here," she tapped the board, "is what prevents healing Sigils from ripping the caster's own circulatory system apart. Those who forget this step either die or spend the rest of their lives vomiting blood."
A boy in the back swallowed so hard the sound was audible.
Caelum listened.
He didn't write at first.
He watched Halien's hands.
The way she constructed the pattern.
The way resonance flowed.
In his mind, the chalk lines weren't lines. They were threads.
He saw connections—hidden ones—that most wouldn't.
Places where the pattern could be tighter.
Places where it was inefficient.
This structure is wasteful, he thought. Redundant safeguards to protect idiots from themselves. Understandable, but still crude.
He began to write then, not just copying but annotating in short, neat strokes.
Beside him, Lira's handwriting shook. She tried to keep up, pen scratching frantically.
Marenne, a few seats ahead, was writing calmly, occasionally glancing back toward Caelum with analytical interest.
An hour passed.
Halien finally set the chalk down.
"Now," she said, "since this is your first day, I will be generous."
She scanned the room.
"I will only humiliate one of you."
Tension snapped through the air like a pulled wire.
Her finger flicked up and stopped.
"Veylor."
Of course.
Lira stiffened. "Wait—"
Caelum stood without being asked again.
He walked down to the lower rows as Mistress Halien gestured sharply to the board.
"Correct the pattern," she said.
He looked at the array.
Dozens of eyes burned into his back.
"And if I don't see a correction that improves stability by at least two percent," Halien added, "I will assume your first evaluation was optimistic."
No numbers on the board.
No guiding marks.
She was testing him, not on raw knowledge alone—but on whether his mind could dance with the pattern.
He studied it for a few seconds. Long enough to not look prepared. Short enough to send a message to anyone paying close attention.
Some students whispered.
"What's she doing?"
"He's F-rank, this is cruel."
"He'll embarrass himself."
Caelum reached for the chalk.
The Proto-Sigil pulsed, sensing the familiar geometry.
He exhaled, a small, quiet breath, and made three changes:
– Removed a redundant resonance loop
– Shifted a stabilizing anchor two chords to the left
– Added a minor, nearly invisible balance sigil that siphoned excess energy safely into the environment instead of the caster's heart
The changes were clean.
Unobtrusive.
Elegant.
The pattern looked almost the same—only someone trained would notice the deviation.
Halien noticed.
Silence swelled.
"Explain," she said.
Caelum faced the diagram, not the class.
"The previous loop," he said quietly, touching it, "prevented collapse, but caused minor lag in activation. Shifting the stabilizer here reduces the delay. Adding this siphon transfers backlash into ambient air instead of the circulatory system. Stability improves by… approximately three percent."
Rough estimate.
Accurate enough.
He set the chalk down.
Halien studied the board.
Her eyes flicked to him, sharp as a blade tip.
The class waited for the explosion.
It didn't come.
"Sit down," she said.
No praise.
No insult.
Nothing.
So she had noticed—and chosen silence.
Interesting.
Caelum returned to his seat.
Lira stared at him like he'd just pulled a dragon out of thin air.
Marenne's eyes gleamed behind her glasses.
He could almost hear her thoughts turning.
He hides within trash evaluations, but thinks like this?
What are you, Veylor?
Mistress Halien erased the pattern with a precise sweep.
"Memorize the corrected version," she said. "The original is now obsolete. If I see anyone using it past this week, I'll personally correct your circulatory system with a chisel."
A few students flinched.
Caelum allowed himself the smallest internal smile.
Not bad for an F-rank.
After class, the Support candidates spilled into the corridor, buzzing.
"That was insane…"
"Did she really change the official pattern because of him?"
"Who cares, he just got lucky."
"He's still F-rank."
Lira tugged on Caelum's sleeve.
"That was— that was incredible," she said, eyes wide. "How did you know how to fix it?"
"I paid attention," he said.
A simple answer.
An unsatisfying one.
Marenne approached, hugging her books to her chest.
"You knew that pattern wasn't optimal before she asked, didn't you?" she said.
"Perhaps."
"Did you study in advance?"
"No."
"Then how?"
Caelum met her gaze.
He let a flicker of the truth reach his eyes.
"I see things… differently," he said softly. "That's all."
The hall lights flickered for a moment, as if something beneath the floor had laughed.
Marenne inhaled like someone stepping into cold water.
"I'm going to figure you out," she murmured, mostly to herself.
Caelum smiled gently.
"Good luck."
You won't.
By midday, as the divisions split for their second round of lectures, word had already started spreading beyond Support:
A trash-tier Veylor from the Reject Dorm had corrected an official academy sigil pattern on his first day.
Some dismissed it as a rumor.
Others filed the information away for later.
A few, like Seraphine Pyrell, simply watched more closely.
And deep beneath stone and sigils and screaming classrooms, something old and bound and rotting shifted in its sleep.
The threads around Caelum Veylor grew tighter.
The world was starting to notice.
He hadn't even begun.