"—and let the standard of Year Two reflect the blood you intend to shed for the Association," Head Instructor Clive's gravelly voice cracked across the amphitheater, cutting through Arthur's thoughts like an iron blade. Clive struck the heartwood stage with the ferrule of his cane. Thud. "Students in the School of Magic will find the updated rankings posted on the eastern face of the Central Courtyard. Dismissed."
The amphitheater dissolved into chaos. Fifteen hundred wooden benches scraped back against the stone in a concussive roar of rustling wool, shifting bodies, and anxious chatter.
Arthur rose smoothly, brushing the hem of his midnight uniform. His features settled into a calm, approachable poise, offering polite nods to passing peers as the crowd funneled through the high arched exits into the crisp, high-altitude air of the Central Courtyard.
Outside, the mid-morning breeze bit with high-altitude frost. Students from both the Honor Class and the Core Class converged in a dense semicircle around the monumental obsidian ranking board, where runic scripts glowed silver against the dark stone.
Standing near the rear of the press, tall and composed, Arthur allowed his gaze to track down the glowing columns.
Rank One: Cedric Drevayne. The perfect requalification score and the prestige of the Saint kept the seat cemented at the apex.
Rank Two: Celeste Devreux. Her raw elemental output remained peerless.
Rank Three: Alice Noctiliene. A sharp ascent from eleventh across a single semester transition—yet entirely consistent with her tutelage under Ms. Noctiliene.
Rank Five: Vicktor Vulivar. Resting just beneath Kaelen at Rank Four. Vicktor's brutal conditioning and nocturnal reviews had dragged his academic standing upward alongside his violent surge into Expert-rank density.
Arthur's gaze drifted lower.
Something was wrong.
His processor flared. Within the span of a single heartbeat, he cross-referenced Ranks One through Nine once, twice, ten times over.
Where is Derrick?
Excluding the student who had withdrawn early in Semester One, Derrick Dunwell had occupied overall Rank Three. Even while masking his full capabilities, Derrick's obsessive intellect and relentless execution had made him an immovable fixture near the summit.
Arthur's eyes dropped one line below the ninth position.
Rank Ten: Derrick Dunwell.
Tenth.
A drop from third to tenth was mathematically impossible for Derrick Dunwell. A noble who treated every mark as an existential war, who despised incompetence with venomous fury, would never suffer a seven-rank collapse by accident. It was a conscious retreat. Derrick was burying his profile—suppressing his standing to accomplish something that the spotlight of Rank Three would have made impossible.
Arthur attempted to push his processor deeper into the anomaly, tracing Derrick's tactical motivations—and struck an immovable wall.
A sharp, artificial resistance seized his neural pathways. It was a mental block, an internal restriction constructed both by himself and not by himself at the exact same time. It locked down his conscious thought, freezing the analytical engine for a jarring microsecond.
Then, through the forced vacancy, a thoroughly vetted memory fell deliberately into focus:
I have not seen him once during the entire summer.
Before the second semester, Derrick had sworn he would raze the Honor Class from within once he reached the summit. Yet across the entire summer recess, he had made no overt moves. No challenges, no political maneuvers, no strikes.
A calculating wolf that went silent for months only to deliberately bury itself in tenth place was not resting.
He was setting an ambush.
"Hey!"
The shout cut through the courtyard from the west, sharp, abrasive, and loud enough to turn heads away from the obsidian slab.
Across the flagstones, the rhythmic cadence of approaching boots echoed off the colonnades. Over a hundred students marched into the courtyard in locked, disciplined ranks, cutting through the loose press like an iron wedge and heading straight toward Arthur's position.
Navy-green wool. High, stiff collars. Polished silver epaulettes.
The School of Academia.
Several magic students refused to give way. Broad-shouldered swordsmen dug the heels of their iron-shod boots into the mortar seams, while Core Class mages crossed their arms, scowling down at the encroaching coats. But the moment a martial student held their ground, the green ranks didn't shove; they swarmed. Three or four scholars immediately closed in, shoulder-to-shoulder, penning the student against the press with practiced, suffocating coordination.
"Are you attempting to incite an unsanctioned physical altercation in the Central Courtyard?" one scholar demanded, leaning forward with clinical disdain and planting the steel tip of a drafting stylus an inch from a swordsman's chest. "Section Four, Article Nine of the Educational Covenant strictly prohibits the intentional obstruction of academic transit. Should we summon Proctor Cole to note this on your conduct ledger, or will you step aside?"
Beside him, two others tapped the brass corners of their folios against open palms with rhythmic, metronomic arrogance. They rattled off campus disciplinary codes by heart, weaponizing the administrative bylaws with smug entitlement. They knew the rules; they knew that in the central pavilion, any retaliatory flare of mana or thrown punch from an awakened combatant resulted in an immediate disciplinary hearing and bursary forfeiture. Facing that suffocating net of legal threats, the magic students ground their teeth, fingers trembling against wire-wrapped hilts in choked frustration, before bitterly yielding the path.
Through this calculated legal badgering, the green cohort sheared through the pavilion. Indignant murmurs rippled across the stones, but the disciplined mass held the clearing with suffocating weight. Ten paces from Arthur, the front rank halted, their boots striking the cobblestones in a single, concussive crack.