Devin stood before the towering, intricately carved oak doors of the Class 4 Stark lecture hall. The silver 8.5 Star insignia pinned sharply to Zain's woven jacket felt infinitely heavier than a full suit of Trangdar iron armor.
He took a deep, steadying breath, closing his eyes. He forced the residual, volatile Cyprian venom to settle quietly in his stolen veins.
As he pushed the heavy oak door open and stepped over the brass threshold, a profound, almost paralyzing rush of nostalgia washed over him. There was a refreshing, undeniably crisp feel to the air inside the academic wing. It was the distinct, wealthy scent of polished mahogany, expensive parchment, and the faint, ozone-like tang of ambient magic.
It violently recalled his genuine, innocent first-year school days. Back when the world was incredibly simple. Back when he was Prince Devin, eager to learn the complex histories of the Northern Kingdoms, walking these exact same hallowed halls with a foolish, arrogant grin on his young face.
He paused at the top of the tiered amphitheater, his dark, unfamiliar eyes sweeping over the descending rows of polished desks. He looked around the vast class, desperately wanting to soak it all in. He just wanted one second of peace. One single second to pretend he still belonged here.
But then, his eyes locked onto the third row.
There he was.
Aiden Colstar.
The Prince of Colstar was sitting stiffly at his desk, his usually perfect, oceanic posture completely ruined. He was bruised, heavily bandaged, and radiating a quiet, murderous fury.
Devin stared at him, genuinely taken aback by the miraculous, terrifying efficiency of the UEI's restorative wards. You truly had to admire the medical department for their exceptional, borderline-miraculous work. Zain's venom-laced punch had shattered Aiden's jaw and nearly taken his royal head off his shoulders just an hour prior.
Yet, sitting there now, wrapped tightly in faintly glowing, alchemical silk bandages and smelling of potent healing salves, Aiden looked like he had only been roughed up in a tavern brawl. The massive swelling had been aggressively reduced to a sickly, pale yellow bruise that crawled up his sharp cheekbone.
Devin's eyes scanned the rest of the crowded, echoing lecture hall, looking for an empty chair. The room was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with the elite progeny of the North, all of them chatting loudly, organizing their expensive quills, and preparing for the academic grueling to come.
There was only one empty seat left in the entire sprawling amphitheater.
It was directly to Aiden's left.
Devin stopped breathing for a fraction of a second. Curse my fate, he thought, his jaw clenching.
He gripped the leather strap of Zain's satchel so hard the tough material audibly groaned. He swore, he tended to hate God more and more as every single breath escaped his lungs. The divine architect wasn't just cruel; He was unimaginably petty. He was a cosmic playwright who found exquisite, sadistic joy in microscopic, agonizing ironies.
Of all the seats, in all the sprawling lecture halls of the UEI, God had meticulously orchestrated it so Devin would have to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with the lecherous prince he had just brutalized in the hallway.
Devin forced his face into Zain Ricky's signature mask of sociopathic, dead-eyed apathy. He descended the wooden stairs, his boots clicking rhythmically against the floorboards, and slid into the empty seat next to Aiden.
The tension immediately spiked. The air between them turned colder than a Trangdar winter.
Aiden stiffened instantly. He refused to look at the barista, his knuckles turning a bloodless white as he gripped his expensive, silver-nibbed fountain pen.
"You're a dead man, Ricky," Aiden hissed, his voice a low, painful rasp through his wired jaw. He didn't turn his head, staring rigidly at the blank chalkboard. "The moment we step off Institute grounds, I'll have the Colstar guard mount your head on a spike."
Devin didn't blink. He slowly unpacked a blank scroll from his satchel, laying it flat on the desk.
"Keep your voice down, Colstar," Devin replied, his tone chillingly flat and devoid of any human inflection. "Or I will shatter the other side of your face before the professor even walks in."
Aiden's jaw flexed, a bead of sweat rolling down his temple, but the prince wisely snapped his mouth shut. The sheer, unnatural strength of the blow he had received earlier was still fresh in his mind.
Sitting there in the suffocating silence, the brutal, uncompromising hierarchy of the United Educational Institute came rushing back to Devin.
Here in the UEI, the system was designed to mercilessly separate the wheat from the chaff. Everyone had massive, general classes meant for their specific age level—like this one. But the student body was violently, irrevocably bifurcated.
The better, untouchable students were placed in the Stark tier, blessed with the finest professors, luxurious dormitories, and limitless resources. The not-so-good ones, the ambitious but ultimately inferior commoners and struggling nobles, were thrown into the Phrill tier to fight for the scraps.
But the general lectures were only the foundation. Every individual was strictly required to select a highly specialized department at the end of their first year. It offered additional, grueling, selective lessons aside from the general curriculum.
As expected from the heavy leather folder Devin had found hidden in the rotting apartment, Zain's selective department was Venom Research.
It was the perfect, brilliant cover for a Cyprian sleeper agent. He was literally being trained by his enemies on exactly how to bypass their own antidotes.
Aiden, on the other hand, was an Aquatic Technologist. It was entirely fitting for the Prince of Colstar, the kingdom loved by the ocean. He was likely spending his afternoons designing pressurized deep-sea vessels or harvesting volatile, underwater marine flora.
Looking back at his past life as Devin, a sharp, familiar ache pierced his chest.
Fenrys and he had spent countless late nights in the grand library, both hoping and planning to be in the Study Department. It was a rigorous, highly academic branch dedicated to geopolitical mapping, lost histories, and the complex socioeconomic relations between the Northern and Southern hemispheres.
Their ultimate goal was to know absolutely all there was to know about all the Kingdoms. He wanted to be a wise, just King; she wanted to be the smartest woman in the world.
Devin stared blindly at the front of the class, a hollow void opening in his stomach. Did she actually go through with it? he wondered. Did she pick the Study Department after I died? Did she sit in the archives alone, surrounded by the maps we were supposed to memorize together? Only God knew. Scratch that. Only Ferran knew what department he was planning to pick, though Devin had always heavily suspected it would be Mechanical. Ferran was aggressively obsessed with Frazer cycles, constantly talking about combustion runes and aerodynamic chassis while everyone else was trying to study.
The heavy oak door at the front of the hall suddenly swung open, snapping Devin out of his grief.
Professor Vane swept into the amphitheater, his dark, velvet robes billowing behind him like a thundercloud. The lecture began immediately, with zero pleasantries or roll calls.
What followed was an absolute, agonizing blur of pure academic terror.
The lesson flew by, and Devin was, quite obviously, left completely and utterly dumbfounded by everyone and everything. Professor Vane began violently scribbling complex magical equations and socio-economic magical theories on the massive chalkboard, speaking at a rapid, unforgiving pace.
"The resonance of aetherial bodies in a vacuum directly correlates to the socioeconomic decay of isolated magical communities," Vane barked, his chalk snapping against the board. "If the Aether-flux equation yields a negative integer, what happens to the localized trade routes?"
Students all around Devin were nodding sagely, taking furious notes, and occasionally raising their hands to offer brilliant, multi-layered rebuttals.
And there Devin sat.
The 8.5 Star prodigy. The supposed genius of Class 4 Stark.
He stared at the chalkboard as if the equations were written in an ancient, dead language. He had absolutely no idea what was going on. He was a prince trained in broad, heavy swordplay and basic royal etiquette, not advanced arcane calculus and aetherial thermodynamics.
Suddenly, Professor Vane paused. His sharp, hawkish eyes swept over the third row, locking directly onto Devin.
"Mr. Ricky," Vane called out, his voice echoing in the silent hall. Dozens of elite students turned their heads to look at the barista. "You've been absent for an entire rees, yet you sit there without taking a single note. Care to weigh in on the sub-strata application of this theory?"
Devin's heart completely stopped. The entire room was staring at him. Aiden shot him a venomous, triumphant smirk out of the corner of his eye.
Devin didn't panic. He simply narrowed his dark eyes, crossed his muscular arms over his chest, and leaned back in his chair. He offered the professor a look of profound, arrogant boredom.
"The foundational premise is entirely flawed, Professor," Devin lied smoothly, his raspy voice dripping with condescension. "I'd rather not waste my breath correcting an equation that collapses upon its own primary variable."
A collective gasp rippled through the nearby students.
Professor Vane's face turned a mottled shade of red, his grip tightening on his chalk. But miraculously, the professor seemed to interpret the absolute, baffling ignorance as Zain's typical, detached, monstrous brilliance.
"We shall see during your practical evaluations, Mr. Ricky," Vane snapped, turning sharply back to the board.
The physical toll of maintaining the elite façade, combined with the suffocating, silent proximity to a seething Aiden Colstar, left Devin completely drenched in a cold sweat beneath his clothes.
Finally, mercifully, the grand brass bell echoed loudly through the corridors. School was officially done for the day.
The absolute second the professor dismissed them, Aiden slammed his heavy textbook shut. He turned his bandaged face aggressively toward Devin, his mouth opening to undoubtedly unleash a tirade of royal threats or demand a formal explanation for the assault.
Devin didn't give him the chance.
He grabbed Zain's satchel, vaulted effortlessly over the polished mahogany desk with a burst of venom-enhanced agility, and zipped entirely out of the classroom before Aiden could even form a single syllable.
Devin practically sprinted down the grand, sweeping staircase, leaving the sunlit, crowded academic wing behind as he descended rapidly back into the cold, damp stone belly of the institute.
He navigated the subterranean maze with a renewed, grim purpose, eventually arriving back at the heavy, runic iron doors of the Venom Research Department.
The door yielded to him once again, groaning open as the Cyprian venom in his blood announced his arrival. He marched down the immaculate, glowing white lane, purposefully ignoring the diligent, doomed researchers working tirelessly in their glass boxes.
He reached the secretary's doorless alcove.
The stern-looking woman was still there, meticulously filing a stack of parchment. She paused, adjusting her narrow glasses, and looked up at him. She gave him a curt, singular nod.
"He is expecting you" she said, her voice dropping the bureaucratic tone for something far more sinister.
Dr. Langstrum was in.
He had to be. Devin's hands balled into tight fists at his sides. It was time to meet the architect of the slaughter. It was time to receive his bloody orders from the very monster he was going to systematically destroy.
Devin turned toward the massive, towering obsidian door at the end of the hall. The experimental Cyprian venom in his veins began singing a dark, anticipating, violent symphony.
He raised his hand, and knocked.