Kael did not sleep well.
He spent most of the night staring at the ceiling, thinking about professors, duels, broken stones, and a notification that still had not explained itself.
By the time the morning bell rang through the academy, he had managed maybe three hours of rest and a headache that felt entirely appropriate for his situation.
He washed up, changed into his uniform, and stepped out into the corridor.
Three students he had never spoken to stopped talking the moment they saw him.
One of them nodded slowly, the kind of nod people gave to someone they considered important, and Kael nodded back out of reflex.
They whispered to each other as he passed, and he kept walking.
By the time he reached the dining hall for a quick breakfast, he had counted seven separate conversations that stopped the moment he entered a room. Two students moved aside to let him through a doorway first without being asked. One girl at a corner table pointed at him and said something to her friend that made the friend turn and stare with open curiosity.
Kael sat alone at the far end of a long bench with a bowl of something warm and tried to eat in peace.
It did not work.
Mira appeared beside him with a tray and sat down without asking permission, with the ease of someone who had already decided they belonged there.
"Good morning," she said cheerfully.
"Is it?" Kael replied.
Mira looked around the dining hall with the satisfied expression of someone watching a story unfold exactly the way they had expected.
"Your reputation has spread faster than I thought," she said. "Everyone in the first year knows about the stone. Word has already reached the second year."
Kael stared at his food. "It was an accident," he said.
"You keep saying that," Mira said.
"Because it keeps being true."
Mira smiled and ate a spoonful of something without responding.
Kael exhaled slowly. "What are they saying exactly?" he asked.
Mira brightened, and she clearly enjoyed being asked this.
"Several theories," she said. "The most popular one is that you are a late bloomer, your power has not fully awakened yet, and breaking the stone was an early sign of something much larger, and the second theory is that you are deliberately hiding your real ability to avoid drawing attention."
Kael gestured broadly at the dining hall, where at least a third of the students were still glancing in his direction between bites.
"How is that working out for me?" he said.
Mira laughed softly. "There is also a third theory," she added.
"What is that one?" Kael asked.
"That you made a deal with something dangerous before entering the academy and that your power comes from an outside source rather than natural talent," Mira said.
Kael set down his spoon.
"That one is the most dramatic," Mira said, entirely unbothered.
"That one is in Kael, " I said.
"Most of the interesting theories are," she replied simply.
Kael picked his spoon back up and finished the rest of his breakfast in silence. There was nothing useful he could say that would improve the situation, and he was beginning to understand that explaining himself only seemed to make things worse.
After breakfast, he made his way to Professor Hale's private office on the third floor of the east wing. The door was already open, and Hale was seated behind a wide desk covered in neat stacks of papers and two small measuring stones sitting side by side, both intact.
Kael sat in the chair across from him without being asked, and Hale looked at him for a moment without speaking. Then, he slid one of the small stones across the desk.
"Touch it," he said.
Kael reached out and pressed two fingers against the surface of the stone. It flickered once, then cracked straight down the center, clean and precise, exactly as the core stone had cracked during assessment.
Hale looked at the two halves without changing his expression, then he slid the second stone forward across the desk.
Kael touched it, and it cracked.
The room went very quiet, and Hale leaned back in his chair and pressed his hands together slowly.
"That is the third stone you have broken," he said.
Kael stared at the two halves sitting in front of him on the desk.
"I barely touched it," he said.
"I know," Hale replied. "That is the problem."
He stood and walked to the window. Outside, the academy grounds were busy with morning activity, students crossing open paths, training in pairs along the field edges, and carrying books between buildings under a grey sky.
"Measuring stones absorb and record magical output," Hale said, facing away from Kael. "They withstand normal mana pressure, but they break when they encounter something outside their design."
Kael waited.
"Which means," Hale continued, turning back around, "whatever you are producing is not standard mana."
Kael glanced briefly at his panel before closing it.
[ Luck: SSS ]
"I do not know what I produce," he said. That was the honest answer. He had no better one.
Hale studied him carefully for a long moment.
"That," the professor said, "I actually believe."
He sat back down behind his desk and folded his hands.
"I will not report your results to the council yet," he said. "But I will be watching your progress closely. If this continues, we will need answers that I can give to people above me."
Kael nodded slowly and stood to leave.
"One more thing," Hale said.
Kael paused at the door.
"Your duel with Darius Vane has officially registered," the professor said. "Day after tomorrow. Academy grounds. Open format." He paused. "I suggest you prepare."
Kael looked at him.
"How am I supposed to prepare when I have F rank everything?"
Hale's expression did not change.
"That," he said, "is an excellent question."
Kael walked out of the office and into the corridor. The door clicked shut behind him, and he stood in the hallway for a moment and looked at his panel one more time.
[ Strength: F ]
[ Mana: F ]
[ Speed: F ]
[ Stamina: F ]
[ Dexterity: F ]
[ Luck: SSS ]
A duel in two days, a professor who did not trust him, and a reputation built entirely on accidents that he had no idea how to stop accumulating.
He started walking. Somewhere behind him, two students were talking in low voices.
"There he is."
"He just came out of Hale's office."
"What do you think they talked about?"
"I heard Hale asked him personally for training advice."
Kael kept walking and did not look back.
His reputation was growing faster than he could control, and the worst part was that it had absolutely nothing to do with anything he had actually done.