"Someone who can take down Dante," he began, fingers steepled beneath a chin sharp enough to cut glass, "deserves better than Silent Moon's cages or Midnight Blade's... discipline."
His voice caressed the word 'discipline' like a lover, turning it into something both seductive and terrifying.
The temperature in the hall seemed to drop several degrees as he stood, unfurling to his full height with fluid grace that made even the most accomplished dancers look clumsy by comparison.
The golden threads of his kitsune banner caught the torchlight and rippled behind him, glinting as if alive—as if the nine-tailed fox embroidered there might leap from the fabric at any moment to devour the unworthy.
"Orion Spade," Ryuzaki continued, her name rolling off his tongue like expensive wine, "allow me to interest you in Crown's Conclave. The circle led by the next emperor." He said this last part with the casual certainty of someone stating that water is wet, letting the words settle like a crown upon his own head—invisible yet undeniable.
The silence that followed lasted precisely three heartbeats before it shattered.
"NO ONE FUCKING SAID YOU'RE NEXT EMPEROR, YOU SELF-PROCLAIMED FREAK!" Dante roared, his massive fist slamming into his throne with such force that hairline fractures spiderwebbed across the ancient stone floor. Lightning crackled between his bared teeth. His eyes—molten gold with vertical pupils—bulged with fury, veins pulsing at his temples.
Several first-years whimpered. A faculty member near the back quietly vomited from sheer terror.
Aria's fan snapped open with practiced elegance, the sound crisp as breaking bone. Behind its gilded lattice, her smile was a beautiful, terrible thing—the kind poets write about before throwing themselves from cliffs.
"Your delusions of grandeur are showing again, Celestial Ryuzaki," she said, the formal title dripping with mockery. Despite her composed exterior, a muscle twitched beneath her left eye—the only betrayal of her barely contained rage.
Ryuzaki turned to her slowly, as if she were a mildly interesting insect he'd discovered on his sleeve. His smile never reached his eyes—cold violet pools that had witnessed empires rise and fall.
"Not delusions, princess. Calculations." His long, elegant fingers traced the edge of his throne's armrest—where the imperial crest would one day be carved.
The gesture held such absolute conviction that several onlookers found themselves nodding in agreement before catching themselves. "But by all means, keep doubting me. It makes the eventual victory sweeter."
He adjusted his cuffs with fastidious precision, the embroidered kitsune on his sleeves seeming to wink conspiratorially in the wavering torchlight. "The throne recognizes power. And mine," his violet eyes locked onto Blazar's with hypnotic intensity, pupils contracting to slits, "is inevitable."
The sheer audacity made Blazar's teeth ache, a physical pain that radiated up into her jaw and temples. Here was a man who breathed arrogance like oxygen, who wore his superiority as comfortably as his pristine white coat. Every movement, every syllable proclaimed: I am above you all, and I know it.
Under normal circumstances, she would have hated him on principle. Instead, Blazar's gaze snapped up, mind racing with feverish clarity even as cold sweat beaded at her hairline. Wait. If Ryuzaki's declaring himself the strongest...
Her mission from Kael flashed through her mind like a blade catching sunlight: Kill the strongest of the four.
The order had been burned into her memory during that midnight meeting, Kael's fingers digging into her shoulder hard enough to bruise as he whispered the words against her ear.
A slow, dangerous smile spread across her face as she studied the Fox King's exposed throat, pale and vulnerable above his immaculate collar. The pulse visible there seemed almost like an invitation.
Maybe I'm supposed to kill him...
The hall was dead silent. Not the normal quiet of a crowd waiting for the next spectacle, but the absolute stillness of prey animals who sense a predator. No one coughed. No one shuffled. Even breathing seemed too loud, too risky.
In the three-century history of Royal Imperium Prestigia, never—never—had four kings stood for one student.
Not for mercy. Not for justice. Not even for their own ruthless purposes.
And certainly not for some nobody noble from a disgraced line whose family name had been struck from the imperial records.
Dante. Ryuzaki. Kaelric. Vesper.
The four most feared kings in living memory—each ruling their own kingdom with malice and menace.
Their names alone made diplomats sweat and armies hesitate. At Royal Imperium Prestigia High, they weren't just students; they were sovereigns who brought their blood feuds and battle scars to these hallowed halls.
That's why the entire academy went deathly silent when four of them stood to defend Orion Spade—a nobody noble with no lands, no lineage, and no right to their attention. The impossibility of it hung in the air like smoke, choking reason and feeding wild speculation.
The principal's gavel cracked like a gunshot, cutting through the murmurs swelling through the hall. The sound made Blazar flinch involuntarily, a reaction she immediately cursed herself for showing.
"Tomorrow at the newbie drafting, if any circle claims Orion Spade after the trials, he lives." A deliberate pause followed. The silence grew teeth, sharp enough to tear flesh. "If not..." He didn't need to finish. The unspoken 'then he dies' hung heavier than any executioner's blade.
His cold gaze fixed on Blazar, standing alone before the tribunal. The light reflecting off his spectacles gave him the appearance of having blank white eyes—a death mask pretending to be human. "This assembly is over. Return to your quarters - now."
The last word cracked like a whip, and the spell broke.
The hall erupted into chaos as students and faculty filed out, whispers hissing like snakes in Blazar's wake. She kept her chin high despite the weight of hundreds of eyes burning holes through her back. Each step felt like walking through quicksand, her legs leaden with exhaustion and delayed terror.
"Four kings stood for him..." gasped a girl with blonde hair braided into an elaborate crown, her fingers digging into her companion's arm.
"...must be blackmail..." muttered a senior with aristocratic features twisted in disdain. "Or something worse."
"...never seen anything like it..." whispered an ancient professor whose stooped shoulders had witnessed fifty years of academy politics.
"They say the Thunder Beast tried to kill The cyborg guy Vyne," a freckled boy confided to his circle, voice pitched too high with excitement. "And Spade stopped him with bare hands!"
"Impossible. No one stops Dante when he's raging," scoffed a girl with rubies woven into her dark braids. "The kings are playing some game we can't see."
"I heard Spade isn't even human," whispered another, forming a protective sigil. "A witch or worse."
"Who cares what he is?" laughed a tall boy with cruel eyes. "He'll be dead by tomorrow night anyway."
Vyne materialized beside her, his mechanical eye whirring furiously as he scanned the dispersing crowd.
The yellow iris expanded and contracted, capturing every whisper, every sidelong glance. "You're so damn lucky," he breathed, dragging a hand through his shock of silver hair. "I thought you were dead meat. You still have a way to live."
Blazar threw her head back with a bitter laugh that contained not one shred of humor. "Lucky? More like cursed. I'd rather have died cleanly than get tangled in this mess." The words tasted like truth on her tongue—sharp and metallic.
Vyne gaped at her, his organic eye widening while the mechanical one narrowed, creating an expression of comical asymmetry. "Are you insane? Four kings stood up for you! That's never happened in the academy's history!"
"You'll never understand," Blazar muttered, rubbing her temples where a headache was blooming like a poisonous flower.
The weight of the kings' attention—Vesper's hunger, Kaelric's icy assessment, Ryuzaki's arrogant offer, Dante's threat—felt like chains tightening around her throat with every breath. Their interest was a death sentence disguised as salvation.
As they rounded a corner, moving from the oppressive grandeur of the main hall into a narrower corridor lined with portraits of former principals (all wearing the same expression of severe disappointment), she shot Vyne a sidelong glance. "Why was Aria so hellbent on killing me, anyway?"
The question had been nagging at her since the princess had called for her execution with such casual venom. There was history there—a hatred too personal for a mere breach of protocol.
Vyne's mechanical eye clicked as it rotated, focusing on her face with unnerving precision. "You really don't know?" he asked, his voice dropping to barely above a whisper despite the empty corridor.