Kine's hand came down on the back of Lucas's neck before he could process what was happening.
Not choking. Just there. That familiar weight pressing down, the kind that doesn't need force to communicate exactly what it wants to say. Lucas felt his posture drop instinctively, his eyes pulling toward the floor before his brain had decided to let them, and he hated that. Hated how automatic it was. Hated that his body still remembered.
"Look at you," Kine said, low and almost warm, the way cruelty sounds when it's been practiced long enough to become comfortable. "The academy must really be desperate this year." He leaned in slightly, close enough that his voice dropped to something private. "Tell me something. Did you actually pass the entrance exam? Or did you find some other way in?"
Ley let out a soft sound from beside him. Not quite a laugh. More like the sound of someone who finds something predictable. "Pass?" He shook his head slowly. "Kine, you're being generous. Someone like him couldn't pass. I guess he just begged for a seat that's it." A pause, easy and contemptuous. "Trash doesn't become talent just by walking through a door."
They laughed.
And Lucas stood there.
His hands had started trembling somewhere in the middle of it and he hadn't noticed until now. His breath was coming shallow and uneven and his eyes were fixed on the floor and he could not make himself look up and he did not understand why his body was doing this.
He had fought a C-rank beast alone at midnight. He had taken down many giant beasts. He had stood in front of a hall full of cadets who doubted his name on that screen and not shaken once.
But Kine's hand on his neck and Ley's voice in his ear and he was trembling like he was eleven years old.
'Why. Why is this happening. Is it the memories or am I actually scared of them.'
The memory came whether he wanted it or not.
*****
Cold marble under his knees. The smell of shoe polish staining his fingers black, smeared across his clothes. He was eleven. The tin sat beside him and he was trying so hard, just trying to do one thing right.
"What the hell are you doing." Kine's voice arrived before he did. "Can't even clean properly? Use your eyes."
The kick came before Lucas could apologize.
His cheek hit the marble. Pain sharp and immediate. He lay there a second with his vision blurring before pushing himself back up, hands shaking, polish smearing further across everything.
"I'm sorry," his younger voice said. Small. Unsteady. "I'll do it properly this time, Brother Kine. Please, just one more chance—"
"A sorry?" Kine repeated. Almost amused. "You think that fixes anything?"
A chair scraped. Ley stood up slowly and walked over with that unhurried gait that always meant something bad was coming. He looked at Lucas on the floor and smiled.
"That's not how this works," he said pleasantly. "If we don't correct you, how will you learn?"
"Please," Lucas said. "Please don't—"
What followed didn't have a rhythm. Just pain arriving in different forms, Lucas on the ground trying to get up and not managing it, his hands pushing uselessly against the marble while his voice came out smaller and smaller until it was barely sound at all.
Ley's foot pressed down on his cheek, grinding his face into the cold floor.
Lucas's hands shook against the ground. Tears tracked down his face. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm really sorry. I won't make mistakes again. Please. It hurts. Please."
Kine crouched down and looked at him the way you look at something that has disappointed you past the point of feeling anything about it.
"You're nothing," he said simply. "A mistake. A burden to this family."
Ley's foot pressed harder. "Be grateful we even let you live under the same roof."
Their laughter filled the hall. And Lucas lay pressed against the cold floor, silent and small and completely unable to make it stop.
*****
The corridor snapped back.
Kine's hand still on his neck. Ley's smirk still exactly where it had been. The documents still in his arms. His hands still trembling.
Nothing had changed.
Except somewhere underneath the trembling there was something else now. Something that hadn't existed at eleven years old on that floor. Something built one sleepless night at a time in a dark forest, one fight at a time, one stat point at a time. It sat quiet and cold underneath everything else and it was not afraid.
It was patient.
"My apologies, seniors."
Sylvia's voice entered the corridor like something clean moving through something stale.
Both brothers turned.
She stood a few steps back, composed, expression unreadable. Her eyes moved briefly to Lucas — to his hands, his posture — and in that half second something passed across her face that she didn't announce and didn't need to.
"I'm aware you may be reconnecting with Lucas after some time," she said, with the specific quality her voice had when she was being polite and completely immovable simultaneously. "But I currently need him for some work. I'll have to borrow him for now."
Kine's politeness dropped instantly. "Huh? Who are you? What gives you the right to interrupt us?"
"Yeah," Ley added, eyes moving over her. "We're in the middle of something."
Sylvia didn't flinch. If anything she stood slightly straighter. "My apologies for the interruption." A small pause, precise and deliberate. "I'm Sylvia. Sylvia Silvercrest. First-year Elite class." Another pause, shorter. "And Lucas's friend."
The name landed.
Both of them went still for exactly one second — that involuntary recalibration that happened when a name carried weight and the body recognized it before the pride could catch up.
Then Ley's hand shot out and grabbed Lucas by the collar.
He yanked him forward and dropped his voice to something ugly and low. "How did you manage to get close to someone like her?" His grip tightened on the fabric. "You filthy little—"
He shoved.
Lucas hit the floor. The documents went with him, papers scattering in every direction across the corridor, the whole stack collapsing around him.
He sat there among the mess and didn't move.
Both brothers turned toward Sylvia. The contempt was still there but redirected now, wrapped in something that made it worse. Kine stepped forward, forcing a smile that had nothing genuine behind it.
"Sylvia, was it?" His voice went smooth. Practiced. "Our little brother here is a genuine disappointment. Weak, useless, not worth anyone's time." He tilted his head. "Someone like you deserves far better company than trash like him."
Ley moved to her other side, circling slightly. "Come with us instead," he said, voice easy, eyes not. "I promise it'd be far more worthwhile than wasting time with him."
They stepped closer. Both of them. Too close.
And then Sylvia wasn't there anymore.
No sound. No visible movement. She was simply not between them, and neither of them had registered it happening. Ley turned a full circle. Kine's head snapped left then right, genuine confusion breaking through the smirk for the first time.
"What the—"
"Where did she go?!"
"Thank you for your concern, seniors." Her voice came from behind them.
She was standing beside Lucas. Exactly beside him, close and steady,
"but for now?" she bent down without a word and gathered the scattered papers from around Lucas, stacking them back neatly, unhurried, like the two seniors looming over her were simply not a pressing concern. "we'll be taking our leave."
She straightened. Extended her hand toward Lucas.
"Let's go, Lucas."