The nearby corridor widened with human instinct; students slowly gathered while pretending not to. Nobles and commoners alike. Everyone is suddenly far more interested in getting to class at a much slower pace than before.
The noble moved into Ryn's space with the stiff aggression of someone who had never actually learned what to do after a threat was challenged.
"I don't know what filth-hole you crawled out of," he said, "but this isn't the Basin. You don't get to speak to nobles like that here."
Ryn's expression lost some of its humour.
"You're right," he said lightly. "This place has got way better lighting."
One of the girls in the noble group choked on a laugh before immediately pretending it had been a cough.
The narrow-faced noble turned even redder.
His hand twitched at his side.
"You commoners," he said, voice rising now, "you think being admitted here means something. It doesn't. You don't know real magic. You don't know refinement. You don't know—"
He cut himself off with a sharp breath, then lifted one hand.
"But I'll show you."
The Aether in the air gathered.
Pathetically.
Even before the spell formed, I could feel the instability in it.
The Codex flickered quietly at the edge of my vision.
[IGNIS PATTERN DETECTED]
[FORMATION QUALITY: LOW]
[CONTROL: INCONSISTENT]
A thin line of flame twisted from the noble's palm, coiling outward into the shape of a serpent.
Or trying to.
"Ignis:Ember Serpent."
The spell was pathetic.
A small, narrow snake of flickering fire hung in the air, its body wavering with poor focus, head malformed, heat output barely above that of an overworked lamp. It moved in jerky, awkward bursts, its shape collapsing and reforming every half-second like the spell itself regretted being cast.
The corridor had gone still.
Ryn looked at it.
Then back at the noble.
Then at the spell again.
He seemed almost offended.
"HAHAHAHA!! What the hell was that?? That's what you wanted to threaten me with??"
The noble's face twisted.
"It's more than enough for trash like you."
He snapped his fingers sharply, sending the serpent lashing forward in a weak strike of heat.
I moved before Ryn needed to.
Not physically, at first.
Just one step forward, enough to shift the room.
"Actually, that spell has quite a few holes in it," I said.
The noble blinked, thrown by the interruption.
"What?"
I looked directly at the unstable serpent.
Its tail was collapsing because the heat distribution was uneven. Its head lacked compression. The flow logic in the body was stuttering where it should have coiled cleanly.
The Codex flickered again.
[OPTIMAL CORRECTION AVAILABLE]
[REVISED STRUCTURE POSSIBLE]
[IGNIS FORM: SERPENT-TYPE IMPROVEMENT ROUTE DETECTED]
I lifted my hand.
"I think you built its body too narrow," I said. "The control points are all fighting each other; its spine should broaden before the strike. Otherwise, the whole thing will collapse."
The noble stared at me.
Around us, the watching students had gone even quieter.
Ryn looked at me with the expression of someone who both fully trusted me and deeply regretted whatever I was about to do.
The noble snarled.
"You think you can do better?"
In my head, I wanted to say yes.
But in reality, I should say no.
Unfortunately.
I couldn't help myself.
"Sure can."
The Codex pulsed.
[SIMULATION READY]
[IGNIS MODEL: PHOENIX SERPENT]
[WARNING: USER OUTPUT BELOW SAFE SUSTAINMENT THRESHOLD]
I knew that would happen.
But I reached into my core anyway.
The heat came reluctantly at first, then all at once.
Not enough for endurance.
Enough for one shape.
One image.
One second of impossible.
My hand burned with pressure as I formed the pattern, forcing the corrected structure into existence with sheer precision.
"Ignis: Phoenix Serpent."
The corridor lit up.
And submitted.
Fire tore from my hand in a sweeping arc, then surged upward, not like a lash, or as some desperate student's flame, but as something vast enough to make the hall feel suddenly, and absurdly small. A winged serpent of brick-red flame uncoiled above us, its body thick as a tower-column and impossibly long, scales suggested only by shifting plates of fire and bands of deep crimson moving beneath the surface like molten veins.
It kept rising.
Past the noble. Past the corridor's height. Past what the space should have been able to contain.
The Academy's wards screamed to compensate. Silver lines in the walls flared bright, crystal panels humming under the strain as the serpent's body bent through the corridor like it had become a window into something much larger. It wasn't merely oversized. It felt misplaced. It looked like a creature that belonged solely to the skies, not summoned by Aether by someone my age.
Its wings opened in fragments first, its feathers of living flame, each one long as a blade, then wider, greater, until they spread in a cathedral-like silhouette of incandescent fire. The heat didn't strike all at once. It rolled outward in measured waves, enough to make the air buckle and the corridor lights dim beneath its presence.
It didn't twitch.
It didn't thrash.
It just descended into stillness.
Majestic.
Imposing.
And.
Catastrophic.
Its head lowered on a slow, elegant curve, its vast jaws parting just enough to show the core burning inside its throat. One eye, if that blazing hollow could even be called an eye, turned toward the noble's pathetic Ember Serpent.
The smaller spell didn't just fail.
It disintegrated. As if it knew who the real predator was.
Its shape wrinkled inward, flame stripping away from its own outline. In one breath, it was there; in the next, it had withered into sparks and ash, erased by the sheer insult of comparison.
The Phoenix Serpent moved again.
Not forward.
For a moment, it looked less like a spell and more like some ancient beast dragged halfway out of myth and forced into the present by mistake. It was far too large, far too refined, far too hungry-looking to belong to me.
Which was the point.
There's no way I could cast anything like this to use against someone. At least not now. I didn't have enough Aether to use this thing properly. Not in a fight. Not against a person. If I let it go, it would break apart before it ever became a real attack.
But the noble didn't know that.
All he saw was the serpent lowering toward him with impossible size and impossible heat, its shadow made of red-gold fire swallowing the corridor whole.
The noble stumbled back so hard he nearly tripped over his own feet.
His face drained.
"Stop!" he blurted, voice cracking. "Please—!"
And the serpent held there, hovering above him like judgment, with its patience wearing thin.
The corridor had gone dead silent.
I held the spell for one more second; it was just long enough for everyone watching to understand the difference.
Then I let it collapse.
The Phoenix Serpent unravelled into a scatter of sparks and heat, vanishing before my straining core could expose the bluff.
A sharp pain stung behind my ribs.
It wasn't visible.
But it was there.
'I overdid it again.'
The noble was still staring at the empty air where the construct had been; he was breathing too fast, his face was pale with humiliation or fear, or both.
And then a sharp voice cut through the corridor.
"What is the meaning of this?!"
A faculty member paced through the gathered students, his robes snapping behind him, his expression already set in the kind of disciplinary severity that suggested he had no interest in the context I would offer.
He took in the noble, the crowd, me, Ryn, and the lingering heat in the air.
Then, predictably, his gaze settled on me.
"Explain."
No one spoke immediately.
Ryn opened his mouth.
But the noble beat him to it.
"He threatened me, Professor!" he said, still visibly shaken enough that the lie came out thinner than intended. "He used a devastating combat spell on me in the corridor—"
The faculty member lifted a hand.
"Enough. That will do."
'Of course it would.'
He turned to me.
"Tell me, commoner. Have you no sense?"
Ryn straightened immediately.
"Oh, come on! That's ridiculous."
"Silence."
"No, that guy—"
"Silence."
The faculty member's eyes never left me.
"To embarrass a noble student in public with an unauthorised display—"
I almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
But because of how ironic the whole situation became. How quickly the truth had stopped mattering. How real this fantasy trope became.
'Maybe Ryn was on to something.'