The auditorium could hold ten thousand students.
Every seat was filled.
New recruits whispered, speculated, stared at the enormous stage where a curtain of floating runes shimmered like liquid glass. Above it hung the academy crest — a rotating sigil older than most nations.
A voice boomed:
"Please welcome your orientation instructor."
The curtain dissolved.
And the room… stopped breathing.
The man who stepped forward looked less like a teacher and more like a sculptor's final apology to humanity.
Tall. Perfect posture. Silver-black hair falling just enough to look careless. Eyes like polished obsidian reflecting the rune-light. His uniform wasn't flashy — yet it fit him with surgical precision, like the world had tailored itself around his existence.
Half the auditorium gasped.
Someone fainted.
A girl in the third row started crying quietly.
Leon Geis stood up so fast his chair flipped.
"No," he whispered.
His masked followers froze.
"No… no no no no…"
The handsome teacher smiled gently.
"Good morning. I am Professor Caelum Veyr. I'll be supervising your first year."
Leon's aura detonated.
Pink dragon fire exploded upward — then immediately collapsed like a punctured balloon.
He dropped to one knee.
The followers screamed.
"PRINCE LEON HAS BEEN STRUCK BY DIVINE HANDSOMENESS!"
"PROTOCOL—"
"NO PROTOCOL!" Leon wheezed. "RETREAT! RETREAT!"
Across the auditorium, Danny watched with half-lidded eyes.
Interesting.
He wasn't looking at the teacher's face.
He was looking at the space around him.
Reality bent slightly near Professor Veyr — not visibly, not magically, but structurally. Like gravity itself was behaving politely.
That was not beauty.
That was pressure disguised as elegance.
Danny scanned deeper.
There it was.
A seal.
Layered. Ancient. Hidden under personality, posture, and a very convincing smile. Something inside the professor was chained so tightly that even the air avoided touching him directly.
Not human.
Not demi-human.
Not monster.
Something older.
Professor Veyr gaze drifted across the crowd… and paused on Danny.
For a fraction of a second, the smile sharpened.
Recognition.
Danny smiled back lazily.
Two predators nodding across a cafeteria.
Then the professor clapped once.
The sound reset the room.
"Welcome," he said softly. "Some of you will survive this academy. A few of you might even enjoy it."
Leon was still on the floor, shaking.
Danny sighed.
So much for a quiet year.