The hall had turned into something between a classroom and a small disaster zone.
Cadets everywhere, all of them concentrating hard, hands moving through the air trying to pull something real out of nothing.
Some were struggling badly their mana twisting and snapping back the moment their focus slipped, like trying to hold water in an open fist.
Others were close, shapes forming faintly for a second before collapsing into nothing, close enough to feel but not quite close enough to hold.
A few had miscalculated completely, overconfident or just careless, producing sudden loud pops and bright flashes that sent the people nearby ducking in their seats. The laughter that followed every accident was immediate though, and people shook it off and tried again, learning the way you can only learn something by failing at it repeatedly until your hands understand what your head is telling them.
Starc moved through all of it unhurried, watching, catching things other people would miss.
"Yes, that's the spirit! Keep at it, keep focusing!" He paused near one section, his gaze settling. "Excellent work, Miss Sylvia. Very well done."
Lucas glanced over.
Sylvia sat with her eyes closed and both hands raised, lightning threading slowly between her fingers- not wild, not fighting her, just moving exactly where she put it. As he watched it tightened, pulling itself into sharper edges, until it locked into a perfect glowing cube suspended in the air in front of her. Steady and precise. Not a flicker of instability in it.
A few desks over Nova threw both hands up. "Yeah! I did it!" Four water orbs hovered around him in a loose orbit, catching the light, doing exactly what he wanted them to do. The grin on his face was enormous and completely unashamed about it.
Gideon and Celia had both gotten there too, quieter about it, exchanging a look of shared relief, their shapes holding in the air between their hands. Small victories. The kind that feel bigger than they look from the outside.
Starc swept his gaze across the whole room and nodded once. "Very good all of you. Quick learners, genuinely." He clasped his hands behind his back. "Remember what I said. Control comes from patience and focus. Master those two things and your magic follows. Every time."
The hall settled into renewed determination, people adjusting, concentrating harder, feeling that particular thrill of turning something invisible into something you can actually see.
Lucas sat with his hands resting on his knees.
He watched all of it. Every shape that formed and held. Every small celebration. The magic swirling and dancing across the room while he sat in the middle of it with nothing moving in his palms at all.
'I really want to try it too.' His fingers twitched against his legs without him deciding to move them. 'But I don't even have an element yet. What am I supposed to do with that.'
"Mr. Lucas, I presume? What's the matter? Can't seem to get it?"
He looked up. Starc was watching him from across the platform, calm, waiting.
Lucas opened his mouth —
"Ha." A cadet nearby stepped forward. A small ball of pale light gathered in his palm, lazy and self-satisfied. His voice carried just enough. "How exactly is someone supposed to perform magic when they don't even have an element to work with? What a joke." He let the light ball float above his hand like punctuation. "Do you even belong in this class? Failure."
Nova's jaw tightened immediately. Gideon went flat and still. Celia's eyes narrowed.
Sylvia didn't change expression at all. She simply raised one hand, and a needle of pure lightning crossed the room in a straight line and hit the light ball dead center. The impact cracked loud and white and when it cleared the cadet was standing there with a blackened face, significantly less eyebrow than before, and an expression that had nowhere good to go.
The hall went quiet for exactly one second.
Then half the room broke.
Nova leaned back slowly, arms folding, smirk spreading like he had all the time in the world for this. "Someone who can't control what comes out of their own mouth calling other people out." He shook his head. "What a failure."
Lucas watched the whole thing without moving. He caught Sylvia's eye for maybe half a second, she'd already looked away, back to her cube, like it was simply something that needed handling and she'd handled it. Nothing performed about it.
Something in his chest settled quietly.
Starc cleared his throat once and the remaining laughter pulled itself together. He looked at Lucas, expression thoughtful. 'So this is the one Headmaster Beatrice mentioned,' he thought. 'Top five without an element. Unique doesn't quite cover it.' He kept that off his face.
"So," he said, walking toward Lucas. "You don't have an element yet. But you have mana. Correct?"
"Yes," Lucas said.
"Then you're not as empty-handed as you feel right now." Starc stopped a few feet away. "An element gives mana a direction- wind, lightning, water, they're channels. But mana itself exists underneath all of that. Raw. Unaligned." He held Lucas's gaze. "It can still be shaped. Controlled. Directed. Without an element anchoring it the difficulty is higher, the method is different, but it's not impossible."
Lucas looked at his hands. "How so professor?"
Starc raised one finger. A small sphere gathered at the tip- yellow, dense, pulsing with something that felt simpler than everything else in the room. More direct. He extended his finger toward the far wall and released it. It crossed the room clean and fast and hit the stone with a sharp sound, leaving a small scorched circle.
"Pure mana," he said. "No element. Just will and control doing the work together."
"Woah," Nova said from his seat, leaning forward. "That's actually even cooler than the regular version."
Lucas stared at his own empty palms. "So I can do that too?"
"Exactly," Starc said. "It requires you to synchronize your mind and your mana at the same time, that's the difficulty, because you have no element doing half the work for you. But practice consistently and it becomes natural." He paused. "Understand how it moves first. How it responds to you. Don't reach for a form yet. Just try it."
Lucas inhaled slowly. "Alright. I'll try."
Starc smiled warm, with a quiet edge of challenge underneath it. "Good. Focus. Feel your mana move. Let it show you how it responds to your intent." He stepped back. "That's where it starts."