Morning didn't begin in the slums it leaked in, like a mistake the sun made. The first light always reached the upper city first, where the white towers caught it like gold dust. Down here, the streets only started to glow when the day was already tired of being new.
I washed my face in a cracked basin behind a tannery. The water smelled of rust and mold, but it was the cleanest thing I owned. I'd patched my shirt with twine last night, though the thread was so thin that the holes just made new ones around it. I rubbed my hands together, pretending I didn't feel the tremor in them.
Today was the day.
The Awakening Center opened its gates once a month for anyone of age twelve and above. No coin needed, at least not for the test. It was the Empire's way of pretending the poor had chances. But if you awakened to white or grey, they wouldn't even remember your name. If you awakened to blue or higher… maybe, just maybe, someone would.
Lira's words echoed behind my ribs.
"Even blue is something, Zero. It means you get to stand. Not beg."
I wanted to stand. Just once.
The road from the slums to the upper city was longer than I remembered. The cobblestones there were polished, warm under the light. My bare feet looked wrong on them skin cracked, dirt pressed deep like old scars. People stared, but no one said anything. The silence of the rich was sharper than the insults of the poor.
I passed a fountain shaped like an angel. The water glittered with mana, pure and faintly blue. A child in fine clothes reached into it and laughed as the drops turned to sparkles in her palm. I stopped, staring, feeling that same hunger that wasn't for food. It was for something I didn't have a name for. I walked faster.
When the white gates came into view, I almost stopped breathing. The Awakening Center rose like a temple marble veins running through the stone, runes pulsing softly across its pillars. I'd never seen mana glow like that before. It wasn't a lamp or a stone; it was alive. It hummed through the air, low and patient, like a beast watching everyone who entered.
A guard glanced at me, his eyes sliding down my rags.
"Street test?" he asked.
I nodded.
He sighed. "Straight through the left hall. Don't touch anything."
Inside, the air felt clean. Too clean. Like the walls had never known dust or grief. A row of children stood in line ahead of me nobles' sons and daughters, their robes pressed, their hair bound with silver threads. I could smell incense on them.
They whispered. Not words I could make out, but I knew what they meant.
He doesn't belong here.
When my turn came, the attendant didn't even look at my face. She just pointed to the crystal orb on the pedestal.
"Place your hand," she said.
I swallowed hard and pressed my palm against the glass. It was cold, colder than anything I'd ever touched. It felt like it was searching through me like fingers of light probing every corner of my chest, my bones, my blood. I waited for something to happen.
The orb stayed clear.
I waited longer. My pulse slowed. My throat burned.
Still clear.
The attendant clicked her tongue. "No response. White grade," she said flatly, writing something on her slate. "Next."
I didn't move. I stared at the orb, half expecting it to change its mind. But it didn't. It just reflected my face thin, hollow, eyes too old.
White.
No mana. No future.
The guard beside the door tapped his spear lightly. "Move along, boy."
I stepped back. My hand left a faint smudge on the crystal, the only mark I would ever make in that room. As I turned to leave, a noble boy behind me whispered loud enough for everyone to hear.
"Even the orb knows filth when it sees one."
Laughter followed me to the gate.
Outside, the sun was brighter, as if mocking me. The air tasted like metal. I walked until the streets turned narrow again, until the world stopped shining. I found a wall, leaned against it, and let my legs fold under me.
My hand still tingled from the crystal's touch. It felt empty now, like something had been taken instead of found.
White grade.
The lowest of the low.
Worse than nothing because it meant I had tried.
For a long time, I sat there, watching dust drift through the air. The same dust that covered Lira's old spot by the fountain. The same dust that would cover me, someday.
That night, when the moon rose, I whispered to myself not a prayer, not hope. Just words to fill the silence.
"I'll still find a way."
The slums didn't answer.
They never did.