( A few hours earlier, inside the Headmaster's Office )
The Headmaster's Office was a tranquil setting, disrupted only by the tick-tocking of the grandfather clock, and even for the gentle touch of the quill scratching the polished surface of the paper.
The tall, arched windows permitted some morning sun to break through the dust that covered the spines of the shelves and the jars, and a burning smell of disquiet circling each of the old, dusty bookshelves and polished wood, suffice it to say, it found its way into the smell of paper, mere antiquity.
The second draft of the first-year students' roster lay in the headmaster's shaking hands with the quill poised above it as he fought to spit out the ending words.
Alistair's frost-hardened pupils skimmed across the names one by one. He read the names of familiar offspring of friends and rivals stepping into the new generation of taking their place by the world's side. Then his pupils froze.
Kairen Zephyrwind.
The name landed on him with a burden of memory. For a brief heartbeat, the office faded from view. He was back in a peaceful garden, on a long-lost day that was clear as morning light. Rain had drenched the stone paths, the plants, and even the air was thick after the rain and for the earth itself.
A woman sat on a cracked bench, hands cupped and fingers intertwined in her lap, her face was pale but her look was steadfast. Next to her, a toddler knelt in the grass, brandishing a carved wooden sword and making whoosh noises as he fought in the wet mud.
"The Academy still has a place for you," Alistair said, his voice low, cautious enough not to fracture the balance of grief. "We need your strength—now, more than ever."
She did not look up. Her eyes were glued to her son in a fierce, heartbreaking devotion.
"My strength belongs to him now," she whispered, almost in a prayer. "He is all I have left of him. I want to take care of my baby now."
"But what of your experience, what you know—"
She finally turned, and the fire in her eyes clenched his chest, a primal power that was devoid of spells and filled instead with a mother's will.
"Promise me you'll let us be," she said softly. "Obscure my name in the records. Let him simply be a boy."
The memory fled like mist. The soft ticking of the grandfather clock returned, and the smell of parchment anchored him. Alistair's finger hovered above the list. Zephyrwind.
He dipped his quill, the black ink shining. With determination, he drew a single stroke across the boy's name on the final, longest list—the list for students with the lowest aptitude scores. Then, his eyes drifted to the very first parchment, the one with the thick silver heading for names of the most talented students at the academy. He wrote in heavy, confident strokes under the last name typed on the page, at the bottom:
Kairen Zephyrwind — By Headmaster's Decree.
He laid down the quill and breathed out, a soft, silent expulsion that appeared to release seven years of weight.
"Forgive me," he spoke softly into the vacant space. "But the boy deserves this opportunity."
(Present Time, The Grand Seminar Hall)
The Headmaster's words at last ceased. For a moment, the silence lingered, heavy and thick with the burden of a hundred futures. A shared breath. And then the room simply. erupted.
The scraping screech of chairs against icy stone, the shouts of giddy students spotting their friends, the cacophonous rumble of talk that engulfed all silence. The gray and blue uniforms turned into a mad whirl as all pushed toward the rear of the auditorium in an unholy, human tide.
"First years, please check the main hall notice board for your class assignments!" a teacher's voice, magically amplified, cut above the din, a lighthouse in the tempest.
Oh, no. The board. Kairen's stomach twisted into a knot of raw terror. He was a piece of driftwood, helpless against the brutal crowd. The air thinned and became hot, filled with the smell of perfume and nervous sweat. Someone's elbow jammed hard into his back. His arms were held tight to his sides, his bag a heavy weight pulling him down. The choking of it was a different terror from the axe, but equally real. He was drowning.
Then, a hand on his shoulder. Firm. Weighty. Earthy. It was Dain.
"Stick close!" Dain bellowed, his voice a joyful, thunderous rumble right by Kairen's ear. He stood firm in the surging tide of students, an immovable anchor. He set a stabilizing hand on Kairen's shoulder and another on Ilya's. "Just a friendly mob! Happens every year, I bet!"
He simply walked. He did not shove or push; he just walked ahead with an unyielding confidence, and the sea of students seemed to split around his gigantic frame as if by second nature. Kairen stood in the peaceful wake Dain left behind, the weight on his chest lifting. He could breathe.
"Come on!" Dain shouted, and they at last forced their way through the worst of the crowd to the comparative tranquility in front of the notice board.
The wall was plastered with great sheets of parchment, thick with names in beautiful, cursive writing. Kairen's gut, which had been stuck in his throat, dropped to his feet. There were so many.
Dain had his name immediately, naturally. His fat finger pointed at the top list, the one beneath a bold, silver title that merely said 'Class A'. "YES! I got it! Dain Ragnor, Class A!" He bellowed triumphantly, and a couple of students over by him shot him dirty looks. He didn't even catch the looks. "My grandma's going to make me a victory cake!"
Ilya was equally quick. Her silver eyes passed over the same list, her expression serene and impassive, though a small, satisfied smile flickered at the corners of her mouth as she spotted her own name. "Me too." Naturally she had.
They turned to him together then, their faces bright with anticipation, eager to rejoice with him. Kairen's heart thudded against his ribcage. His palms were cold and greasy. His vision blurred as he attempted to read the Class A list, the handsome letters intertwining in a derisive waltz. He looked for a 'Z'. Nothing. The awful, cold sensation of failure was back, colder and more bitter than before. He knew it. Why should he be on this list? He was the dud. The charity case. The boy who rejected the crystal. He was likely in Class F. Class F for Failure. The idea weighed heavily and surely, a rock in his belly.
The words were stuck in his throat, there. You people go ahead, I'll locate my name afterwards. But his mouth was dry. He couldn't do it. Not yet. So he just kept gazing at the list, hoping the letters would shift themselves into his name through sheer, desperate hope.
They didn't.
He could feel the pain of it. This is where he was left behind. He stepped back, prepared to just dissolve into the sea of people. Better to disappear than to have them notice his name on the last, sad list.
"Are you sure? Look again!" Dain instructed, noticing the look of defeat on Kairen's face. His voice was a rock, full of an unbreakable assurance that Kairen just did not get. "My grandma always says you have to look twice for things you've lost! Sometimes they're in plain sight!"
One more time. He owed them that. He owed himself that. A cold, narrow sliver of hope, delicate as glass, flared in his chest.
He compelled himself to begin at the bottom of the list, his finger moving over the parchment, shaking just above the paper. He spoke each name aloud in his mind, a slow, agonizing crawl. Vance, Era. Underhill, Marcus, Thor, Alis. He crept up the list, and with each name that wasn't his, the fragile glimmer of hope cracked a fraction more. He reached the very top. Nothing. The hope snapped into a million pieces, leaving only a shrinking, hollow pain.
And then he saw it.
It wasn't in the main, typed list whatsoever. It was right at the end, scribbled underneath the last name like an afterthought, in another, bolder hand.
Kairen Zephyrwind.
He gazed at it. He read it again. And again. It was his name. Under the 'Class A' heading. No. This must be some sort of error. But the ink was dark and definite. It was actually there.
Relief swamped him so strongly he nearly fell over. A shuddering gasp tore from him, a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding forever. A wide, silly, uncontrollable grin creased his face, and he couldn't have checked it if he'd wanted to.
"NO WAY! We're all in the same class!" Dain laughed so hard he hit Kairen in the back, almost sending him stumbling forward, coughing, but the smile remained.
For one lone, shining moment, the pain inside him was forgotten. The burden of his name, the terror of his mark, the shame of his failure—it all disappeared. He was simply happy.
"This is going to be fantastic!" Dain shouted, already dreaming of their future victories. "The three of us, storming the academy!"
"Indeed," Ilya replied, the trace of amusement in her silver gaze as Kairen struggled to draw breath. "It will be. interesting."
"The Class A room is third floor, North Wing!" Dain declared, already moving in that direction.
The hallways on the upper floors were quieter, vast and echoing. They ascended past enchanted paintings whose eyes seemed to follow their every move and fountains where water flowed upwards into crystal bowls.
"I bet they teach us how to do that!" Dain said, pointing at an impossible fountain.
"That's a basic hydro-stasis charm," Ilya replied without looking up from a pamphlet. "Second-year textbook."
They walked to a magnificent, curling staircase that walked itself, the marble steps gliding up in a quiet, unbroken turn. "My grandmother says a walking staircase is just a lazy man's mountain!" Dain asserted.
"It is a standard kinetic rune array," Ilya said flatly. "It consumes more ambient energy than walking."
"See? Walking is better! Grandma's always right!" Dain beamed, taking the moving stairs anyway.
The air grew different as they ascended, charged and tingly on the skin. The wing-mark on Kairen's back began to feel warm, a faint, comforting heat that spread across his shoulder blades. It wasn't the burning of shame or fear, just… a quiet presence.
They found the door. Polished dark wood, with the silver letters 'Class A' etched into it, gleaming softly. His palms were sweaty again. Dain didn't hesitate. He just shoved it open.
And then… Kairen stopped.
The room was silent. Empty. And breathtaking.
The walls were, in fact, not walls at all; they were huge sheets of enchanted glass, seamless. His feet were drawn toward one, moving without his conscious will.
They were not overlooking the school; they were looking out at the sky. Serene, green, lush islands floated in the clouds, with ancient trees and sparkling waterfalls like some forgotten dream. Tiny, iridescent birds zipped between them, their wings flashing light.
The desks were a rich dark wood, polished to the shine of a mirror. The blackboard at the front of the classroom was a single slab of smooth, black rock that had faint silvery lights dancing deep within it, as if some trapped stars could be released.
This was his classroom. His classroom had floating islands outside the window. This was insane.
They found empty seats near the back and sat down. Kairen couldn't stop staring out the glass wall. For a single, precious minute, he forgot about the sick feeling, about his name, about the crystal, about everything.
He was just a boy watching a tiny waterfall spill from the edge of a floating island and disappear into a cloud below.
Dain gave him a big, goofy grin. Ilya nodded to him, a tiny, almost imperceptible gesture of shared wonder.
And a shaky sense of hope began to grow inside his chest. Maybe… maybe he was a student here after all. His stomach knot started to relax. He felt… okay. For the first time all day, he thought he might be able to pull this off.
And then the feeling went cold. Like a sudden draft of arctic air.
He sensed him before he saw him. An invisible shift in the room's atmosphere, the way the air, once light, became heavy, infused with a familiar, predatory energy.
He was here.
Kaelan Brightblade, walking down the aisle with the arrogant grace of a prince, his two goons trailing behind him like shadows.
He stopped right at Kairen's desk.
And that smile spread across his face. The one that meant he was about to be cruel.
"Well, well, look what we have here," he said, his voice a low, mocking hum that vibrated with malice.
And just like that, the floating islands, the hope, the promise of it all was gone.