Lucas closed his eyes.
'Okay. I've got mana. I know I've got mana. I've been using it this whole time without knowing what it was. So it's already there. I just have to find it.'
He opened his palm wide, spreading his fingers, giving himself room to work with.
The system flickered quietly.
[Providing guidance. Stabilizing mana flow for optimal concentration.]
He felt it almost immediately, that thing Starc was describing, the current underneath everything. The system was smoothing it out, keeping it from scattering before he could work with it, holding the edges steady while Lucas focused on the center. Like training wheels, kind of. But it was there. He could feel it moving.
"Heh." The arrogant cadet again, leaning back in his seat with both hands behind his head, voice carrying just enough. "For someone without an awakened element, come on. This is an elite class. You can't seriously expect someone talentless to pull off something more complicated than elemental magic. This is embarrassing to watch."
Celia's teeth ground together audibly. Sylvia's eyes went sharp and cold. Nova's jaw tightened and his fists twitched in his lap and he muttered something low to Gideon that sounded like "should I just kill this bastard and burry deep ten-"
"You can't murder someone in the academy," Gideon said quietly, cutting him off before he finished. "Just Cool it, Don't let hi—wait… what is this?"
He'd said that last part because something was happening in Lucas's palm.
[Centripetal mana force initiated. Revolving and forming spherical containment. Stabilization at maximum output.]
The energy moved in a slow clockwise spiral, soft yellow, gathering toward the center of his palm like water circling a drain except upward, building on itself, layer by layer, each rotation tighter than the last. The hum of it was subtle but real, the kind of thing you feel before you hear it.
The hall noticed.
Not all at once. One cadet stopped mid-spell and looked. Then the one beside him. Then the row ahead. The chatter thinned out in patches as people turned, and the arrogant cadet who had been smirking at the ceiling, slowly lowered his gaze and found the same thing everyone else was finding.
'He's… already doing it?' Gideon thought, leaning forward.
Starc had gone completely still at the front of the platform.
'Normally that kind of stabilization takes days just to feel,' he thought, eyes locked on the spiraling sphere.
'I told him to try and understand how it moves. I expected him to sit there for the rest of class getting a faint flicker at best. And he's—' He watched the mana continue building, steady and controlled, the shape holding without collapsing. 'This kid is a genius. An absolute genius. If guided correctly there's no ceiling on where he goes.'
[Formation complete. Mana sphere successfully stabilized. Energy shaping partially internalized.]
Lucas opened his eyes.
Above his palm, roughly the size of a basketball, a glowing yellow sphere hovered weight to it, warmth to it, the slow clockwise rotation still visible on its surface. It hummed gently against his skin.
He stared at it for a second.
'I did it.' The feeling hit him somewhere between his chest and his throat. 'I actually did it. First try.'
"You did it, Lucas," Starc said quietly from the platform. The admiration in his voice wasn't performed. "I didn't expect you to manage that on your first attempt."
Silence across the hall. Real silence. The kind that follows something nobody was prepared for.
Nova let it sit for exactly three seconds.
Then he leaned back in his chair, spread his hands wide, and looked slowly around the room. "So," he said pleasantly. "Does anyone have anything they wanted to add? No? Hello?" He cupped a hand to his ear. "I genuinely cannot hear a word."
The cadet who'd been running his mouth sat frozen with his jaw slightly open. He did not say anything.
Class ended and the hall emptied into the corridor in a wave of footsteps and chatter. The academy hallways were wide and high-ceilinged, sunlight coming through arched windows in long strips across the marble floors, banners hanging from the walls representing different magical disciplines.
Lucas walked with the others, and it felt easy in a way he wasn't used to yet.
Nova threw an arm around his neck without warning, grinning too wide for someone trying to be casual about it. "That was genuinely insane. I'm jealous of you, I hope you know that. Like actually jealous."
"Honestly," Gideon said from his other side, "Professor Starc said it takes days just to feel the flow and you walked in and did it first try. I didn't see that coming."
"And your sphere was bigger than the Professor's," Celia added, with the specific energy of someone who has been waiting to say that since the moment it happened. "Bigger. On your first attempt. And every single person who was mocking you had nothing to say afterward." She looked extremely satisfied about this.
Lucas scratched the back of his neck. "It wasn't- I just followed what he said. Processed it and it worked."
[Liar. You didn't understand a single thing. I controlled the mana and formed it perfectly. You just stood there looking good while I did all the work.]
Lucas's eye twitched. 'Shut it.'
He turned back to Nova. "Hey- thanks. For speaking up back there."
Nova waved it off. "Come on. It was nothing." But he was already straightening up, something sparking behind his eyes. "Actually — now I'm fired up. I'm going to work on shaping pure mana too. Both mind and mana flow at ease simultaneously- I want to get there."
Celia raised an eyebrow at him. "You shaped your element fine today. You tried pure mana twice and failed both times."
"Professor Starc said it takes practice!" Nova pointed at her. "I'm not as naturally gifted as Lucas- nobody's arguing that, but I'll get there."
"That's literally an excuse," Gideon said.
"It's not an excuse it's a timeline—"
"Those are the same thing, Nova—"
"They are absolutely not—"
The three of them drifted ahead, the argument carrying down the corridor in the comfortable way arguments do when nobody's actually upset. Lucas followed a step behind, watching them, the small smile on his face.
Sylvia fell into step beside him.
She didn't say anything for a moment. Just walked. Which was, Lucas had figured out, just how she did things she got there when she was ready.
"You did really well," she said quietly.
"Thanks." He glanced at her. "And — what you did back there. With the lightning." He let out a short genuine laugh. "I saw what was left of that guy."
"I was backing a friend," she said simply. "Is that wrong?"
The word landed and stayed. Friend. Like it was the most obvious thing.
Lucas felt it settle somewhere warm in his chest. He raised his fist without overthinking it. Sylvia looked at it for a moment, a brief hesitation, something considering in her eyes, then a small smile appeared and she bumped her fist against his.