What do I say?
Lucas stood there with five pairs of eyes on him and his own thoughts going nowhere useful.
'They're looking at me like I belong here. Like fourth place means something. Like the name on that screen was supposed to be there.'
His fingers curled slightly at his side. 'And the second I tell them the truth- no element, nothing awakened, just a dagger and five days of not dying that look goes away. It always goes away.'
He'd seen it enough times to know exactly how it happened. The moment the information landed, something would shift behind their eyes. Not always dramatic. Sometimes just a small thing a fraction of distance, a slight reassessment. But he always caught it. He'd spent enough of his life watching for it.
For a second he thought about lying. Just picking something. Fire. Wind. Anything that sounded real and moved this along.
The words didn't come.
"Lucas." Celia's voice broke through. Patient, but only just. "You're making me more curious by the second. Just say it."
He exhaled.
"Well…" His voice came out uneven. His gaze dropped to the floor without him deciding to let it. "To be honest…" A pause. Shorter than it felt. "I don't have an awakened element yet."
Silence.
The real kind. The kind where you can hear the room.
"What?" Celia said. "Really?"
Lucas lifted his eyes.
And there it was. Already forming, already creeping in at the edges of their expressions that shift. That subtle recalibration. He recognized it the way you recognize something you've been dreading.
'Of course. Same as always. Doesn't matter what I did out there. Doesn't matter what the rank screen said. The second the truth comes out—'
"That's incredible."
He blinked.
Sylvia was looking directly at him. Not with the polite indifference she'd had since they sat down. Something else- focused, genuine, the look of someone who has just found something worth paying attention to.
"I can't imagine fighting without my magic," she said. Her voice was even, unhurried. "Not for a day. Not for an hour." She held his gaze. "You survived an entire week in that forest. Without an element. Without spells." She took one step forward. "That isn't weakness. That's something I don't have a clean word for." A pause. "If anything… I'm more interested in you now."
Lucas stared at her.
He genuinely did not know what to do with that.
Beatrice's voice came next, quieter than usual. "I'll be honest with you, Lucas." She leaned forward slightly, her golden eyes on him. "In all my years running this academy, I have never seen a cadet without an awakened element place in the top five. Not once." She let that land. "The fact that you did, that you came out of that forest ranked fourth without a single spell to your name, that doesn't disappoint me." There was no performance in her voice. She just meant it. "It impresses me."
Lucas opened his mouth. Closed it. "Headmaster…" he managed.
"I want to learn that!" Celia stepped forward before the moment could settle, eyes bright. "Fighting without relying on magic! can you teach me? How does that even work? What were you thinking when—"
"Hold on—" Nova cut across her, already on his feet, pointing at Lucas with a grin that had appeared from nowhere. "I want you as my rival."
"I was literally about to say that," Gideon said immediately, stepping forward. "He's mine."
"I said it first."
"I thought it first."
"That's not how rivalry works—"
"Then how does it work, Nova, explain it to me—"
The two of them squared off with the very specific energy of people who have forgotten there are other people in the room. Celia watched them with the expression of someone filing something away for later use.
And Lucas just stood there.
'They didn't—'
He looked at Sylvia. At Beatrice. At Celia trying not to laugh at Nova and Gideon. At Nova and Gideon genuinely arguing about who gets to be his rival like that was a thing worth arguing about.
'They didn't look down at me.'
The thought arrived quietly and stayed.
'I told them the truth, and they didn't look at me differently. They looked at me more.'
Something in his chest shifted. Some tight thing that had been there so long he'd stopped noticing it loosening, just slightly, like a knot coming undone at one end.
"Hey," he said.
Nova and Gideon stopped.
Lucas looked at both of them. "Stop arguing." A pause. Then a small smirk, the real kind, the one that came from somewhere genuine. "I'm alone enough to rival both of you."
Silence.
Then:
"Works for me." Nova.
"Fine. Don't underestimate me." Gideon.
At the same time. Without coordinating it.
Celia burst out laughing. Even Sylvia's mouth moved, just slightly, just for a second, but it moved.
And just like that, the room was different.
Beatrice dismissed them not long after, and somehow Lucas wasn't entirely sure how it happened they ended up at the top of one of the academy's spires.
The wind up there was serious. The kind that doesn't ask permission. It came in from every direction, loud and constant, and the view it gave them in exchange was something else entirely, the whole academy spread out below like a map, the training grounds and dormitories and lecture halls all reduced to neat shapes, the cadets moving between them looking small from up here.
Beyond the academy walls, the landscape opened up wide and uninterrupted.