He woke up to the sound of laughter.
The laughter came from the row behind him, then the row beside him. He blinked hard, lifted his head and found every eye in the classroom looking at him. The teacher stood in front of the blackboard with one hand on her hip and the other resting on her notes, looking at him with the particular patience of someone who had already asked a question once and was now deciding whether to be annoyed or disappointed.
"What was that? I asked you a question."
He rubbed his eyes and tried to look less like someone who had been dragged out of sleep by public humiliation. A few students were still grinning. One of them leaned toward another and whispered something that made them snicker again. He ignored them. That was easier than pretending he hadn't deserved it. The teacher repeated the question, slower this time, as if she were giving him one last chance to join the world properly.
"Who are the Shvé Civilization?"
That got him fully awake. He sat up straighter and when he answered this time, his voice came out clear enough to silence the room almost at once.
"The Shvé Civilization is a civilization that's existed for thousands of years. At first, they lived on the moon of Erna, where the Towermaster allowed them to remain together. They were the Summer Tribe, the Phoenixborn, the Raukerai and the Humans. They all lived there under his protection until he sacrificed them to save his family."
The classroom went still. Even the students who'd been laughing a second ago stopped smiling. The teacher didn't interrupt.
"The Towermaster was judged by the Primordials for it. He survived the trial and after that he decided he'd never do that again."
One of the boys in the back row shifted in his seat. Nobody laughed now. The room had gone from teasing to listening. He drew a breath and went on.
"The second generation of the Shvé Civilization began four hundred and ten years ago when the Towermaster took in the inhabitants from a realm called the Gardens of Asphodelia. He also took in the afterlife of the Hidden Citadel, the Sinking Void. After that, the Towermaster died and was reborn in the Timeless Realm, where they live now. They've been there for four centuries."
The teacher's expression had changed by then. She was no longer prepared to correct him. She was just listening. He looked up at the front of the room, encouraged by the silence.
"We as the Shvé Civilization, been taken care of by the daughter of the Towermaster for four centuries. She's the one who made sure we were stable and she let us have a celebration every decade so we could remember that we were are still one civilization. So we can celebrate being the Shvé Civilization instead of just surviving as scattered pieces of it. It's on its fifteenth generation now."
Nobody spoke after that.
The classroom had gone so quiet that even the hum of the lights sounded loud. A few students were staring at him as if they were seeing him for the first time. One girl in the front row had even stopped holding her pen. The boy who'd been laughing the hardest earlier looked completely uncertain now, like he had no idea whether he was supposed to be impressed or embarrassed on the other boy's behalf.
The teacher stared at him for another second, then slowly lowered her notes.
"Well," she said at last, and there was a clear note of surprise in her voice now, "that's correct. Very good. Continue paying attention."
"Yes, ma'am."
She nodded and turned back at the board, but the room had changed. The teasing was gone. The boy who had been sleeping a minute earlier sat with his back straight and his eyes on the lesson, no longer drifting off. He could still feel the aftertaste of the laughter, He didn't look around at the others again.
°°°°°°°
TheAcademy of Combat was louder than the rest of the Academy district, even before anyone picked up a weapon. The arena itself was built like a proving ground with training platforms on the sides where students waited for their turn to be humiliated, corrected, or promoted.
Across the Deux Cities, the five main academies each had their own purpose. Arts preserved the civilization's inherited culture and taught what the Shvé had built over the centuries. Politics shaped future administrators, governors and leaders. Economics trained people to manage the living machine of the ORS without breaking it. Exploration prepared those who wanted to travel deeper into the floors and reach places most citizens would never see. Combat though, was the one that drew the most respect and the most pressure, because it carried the old expectation that had followed the Shvé Civilization since its first generation: if your family had fought, you were expected to fight too.
The teenage boy sat on a bench near the edge of the training arena and watched the others sweat for a future he had never wanted. He looked perfectly capable of standing there among them but that was not the problem. His problem was that he had been born into a family known for combat and in the Shvé system, family legacy mattered unless the Merit Change System decided otherwise.
He had wanted Exploration from the start. He wanted the outer floors, the strange halls, the hidden regions and the places where the ORS felt less like a city and more like an entire world waiting to be mapped. That was what excited him. That was where he saw himself but his family name had dragged him here instead into the combat track, posture drills, blade forms, endurance training and the endless expectation that he should be grateful to continue what his ancestors had already made famous.
The Shvé Civilization did meritocracy better than most.
Children under sixteen were exempt because they were still children and nobody expected them to carry the same weight as adults. At eighteen, though, he was fully inside the system which did not care what he dreamed about. His ancestors had been massive contributors to the city's defense and that contribution had become its own kind of chain. Unless the Merit Change System happened to reroute his status, which the Towermaster's Daughter, the Lotus Lady of Miracles, made occur at random, he was stuck on the path chosen for him.
He let out a long breath and leaned back on the bench, staring at the students drilling in the center of the arena. Sweat flashed in the light. The instructor's voice cut through the air at regular intervals. Somewhere farther down the row, someone shouted in frustration after missing a stance correction and a few other students laughed before being silenced by a glare from the staff.
Then the training teacher called his name. He looked up slowly.
"Get up. You're sparring next."
A couple of the students nearby smirked. He pushed himself to his feet without much enthusiasm and walked to the weapon rack, where he chose a real sword instead of a practice blade. That caught a few eyes. Real weapons were allowed in the advanced combat classes but the more cautious students still preferred wooden ones. He didn't bother explaining himself. He just took the sword, tested the weight once in his hand and stepped into the arena.
His opponent was already waiting.
Lynne Laeris stood across from him with the kind of calm that only came from being very good at something and knowing it. She was the top combatant in the class, a genius by every standard the academy cared about. Everyone in the arena knew it. Her family name carried weight too but hers came with a reputation for discipline rather than indulgence. She looked at him once, saw the lazy expression he hadn't bothered to hide and clicked her tongue.
"You always look like you'd rather be anywhere else."
He rolled his shoulders once and gave her a small grin.
"And you always look like you're about to lecture someone."
"That's because someone like you usually needs it."
"Fair enough."
The instructor stepped back and raised his hand. The arena fell quieter. A few students leaned forward to watch. This was exactly the sort of sparring match they wanted to see. It was the prodigy versus the boy who never looked like he belonged there.
"Begin!"
Lynne moved first.
The speed would've caught a weaker student immediately but he didn't retreat. He turned slightly, let the first strike pass and let the momentum of her attack carry just enough to open a gap on her left side. She noticed too late that he wasn't where she expected him to be.
"Stop lazing around. You've been doing this all week."
He met her blade with his own and grinned at the impact.
"You really think you're the only genius in the room?"
She blinked once, just long enough for him to control the situation. Her left leg came off at the knee.
He simply cut through and Lynne dropped with a sharp gasp as her balance vanished. The lower half of her leg hit the floor first then she did, with one hand slamming down to catch herself before she went fully flat. The entire arena went silent.
No one had expected that.
A few students actually took a step back. Someone near the top row muttered that he had to be joking. Another whispered that he had probably cheated somehow. But when they looked closer, all they saw was the same lazy-looking boy standing there with a sword in his hand, except now the expression on his face had changed. It wasn't lazy anymore.
The whispers started immediately.
"That's impossible."
"He really is one of them."
"No way he's ordinary."
"That's a Delia. You didn't know that?"
"He's from the Delia Generation."
The name moved through the crowd fast. Asran Delia, one of the descendants of the ancient royal family.
The Delias had been famous long before the current generations and their line still carried the weight of old combat talent that refused to disappear even after centuries of change. He had never bothered announcing it because he hated the attention but the arena had just learned it for itself.
Lynne was breathing hard on the ground with fury flashing across her face as the nearby healers rushed in to fix the damage. They worked fast. The severed leg was already being restored by the time he lowered his sword again. He watched the process with the same easy calm he'd shown before the strike, then looked at her with a smile that made the insult land even harder.
"I'm glad we fought. Seriously. But next time, pick an easier opponent."
Lynne stared at him, half in pain and half in outrage, while the healers finished repairing her leg and stepped away. The arena stayed quiet around them, every student still trying to process what they'd just seen. He adjusted his grip on the sword, looked at the instructor, then at the class, and let his smile change into something more irritated than arrogant.
"We pick your own sparring partners. Choosing me just because I looked lazy and new was stupid."
That got a fresh round of stunned murmurs. He didn't wait for a reply. He turned, walked past the benches and left the arena with his sword still in hand. It was as though he hadn't just shredded the class favorite in front of everyone.
Behind him, Lynne was furious. The healers were trying not to look panicked. The students were still whispering about the Delias. After all, they were the royal family who ruled the Second Generation of the Shvé Civilization.