The corridor beyond the gate smelled of lime dust and sweat. Rem stepped out of the light, the roar of the Coliseum folding behind him like a book. His hands still hummed from the not-punch that had cracked the floor. The dagger rode his back, quiet again, as if it had not just tried to redraw a stadium.
"Rem!" Harry barreled into him with eyes bright and hair a mess from nervous fingers. "That was incredible. I mean, terrifying and incredible."
Rem managed a smile that did not try too hard. "Thanks."
Under the smile, something else stretched and yawned. The same heat that had surged in the dungeon pressed against his ribs, asking to be let out or locked up; he was not sure which. He catalogued it like pain: notice, do not feed. It felt like anger, so he told himself it was because he had lost.
An examiner in a blue sash cut across the flow of bodies. "Results are posted outside on the main board. After that, exam office for badge issue. Keep the line moving."
A ripple went down the hall as if someone had thrown a stone into a river of teenagers. The crowd surged toward daylight. Rem and Harry were carried with it or carried it themselves; it was hard to tell which.
Outside, the Association square had grown a second crowd, buzzing around the great slate mounted on iron posts. Names climbed the stone in two columns, neat hands, hard truths. Shouts went up in irregular bursts. Joy. Disappointment. Oaths that were not meant for priests.
Rem did not rush. Harry did, then remembered to breathe and fell back into step.
"Here," Harry said. He stood on tiptoe, then gave up and threaded closer. "There. Right column. Avern, Rem."
Rem found it.
Avern, Rem : Rank D
The letters did not look like they were teasing him. Rank F porter to Rank D hunter in a day that felt like a year. The square tilted a fraction and then leveled. People clapped strangers on the back because there is a kind of happiness that is contagious if you let it be.
Harry's name lived on the next line down. Surean, Harry : Rank D He whooped, then shook Rem's shoulder with a grin he could not suppress. "We did it. We did it, Rem."
"We did," Rem said. The words chose a place to sit in his chest. The heat behind his ribs stepped back a little, not gone, just… listening.
"I have to go," Harry added, already half-turned, pointing with his token toward the Academy handlers gathering students like sheepdogs with better posture. "Professors want a debrief. If I do not show, they debrief my mother instead."
"Go," Rem said. "Enjoy being debriefed."
Harry laughed, then sobered long enough to grip Rem's forearm. "You were… something out there."
"Still am," Rem said. "Just quieter."
Harry left at a jog, shouting his rank to someone who cared and someone who pretended not to.
"An impressive fight, young man." The voice came from behind his left shoulder, calm and pleased. "I do not regret coming."
Rem turned and found Cecil standing with one hand in his coat and the other relaxed at his side, the stance of a man who had spent a lifetime walking into rooms that needed him to be steady.
"Mister Cecil," Rem said. "How are you. Why are you here."
"I am here because the young miss is here," Cecil said. "I keep an eye on her. And because that makes a fine excuse to see what you are capable of."
"I am not that strong yet," Rem said. "Not for anyone to be impressed."
Cecil's laugh was a clean cut through the square's noise. "Humble. You are already strong."
"Not as strong as I want," Rem said, and the simple honesty of it startled even him.
Cecil's smile thinned into something sharper. "And for what reason do you need to be that strong."
Rem stopped with the question. He looked down as if the answer might have been written on the paving stones without telling him.
"I do not know," he said.
"Then find out," Cecil said, not unkind. "Your blade is heavy. Your convictions are not. You swing because you can, not because you must. A man cannot carry great weight without a reason to carry it. The strongest carry the heaviest reasons. Remember that."
The words slotted into Rem like a key into a lock that had been there since he was small and angry at things he could not name. The heat in his chest shifted from threat to promise.
"Thank you, Mister Cecil," he said. "I know what I need to look for. I need to find my reason."
"Then go," Cecil said. "You do not have time to wait."
Rem nodded, then lifted a hand in brief salute and headed for the exam office at a steady walk. Cecil watched him go with the expression of a man who had seen the first steps of many kinds of journeys.
"What an impressive young man," he said, as if speaking to the air. "Do you not think so, Miss Evelyn."
Evelyn stepped from the angle where the building's shadow kept secrets. Her uniform had lost none of its lines in the heat. Her face did not tell on her, which is a kind of strength.
"The only reason he is not ranked higher today," she said, "is the absence of aura in his core. If he could use it the way he did with me in the dungeon, he would have—"
She stopped. A tremor crossed the line of her jaw, there and gone.
"Forget it," she said, rebuilding her voice. "I am going home. I am tired."
Cecil's mouth tilted. He did not press. He fell into step beside her because that is what he was hired to do, and because he had done it before there was pay.
They left the square to its noise and its new D-ranks, to its small celebrations and quiet recalibrations. The slate kept shining names for anyone who needed more reason to stay in the sun.
Inside the exam office, the queue was blessedly short. A clerk took Rem's form, checked a ledger, and set a small stamping device against a blank tin disk. The punch rang once. She buffed the edge with a cloth and slid the badge across the counter.
"Rank D," she said, with the professional warmth of someone who had learned how to make this moment count. "Congratulations, Hunter Avern."
The word hit different when someone else said it like it belonged to him. He lifted the badge. It was only a piece of metal. It was also more than that, because people had agreed to let it be.
He left the Association with the sun at his back and the city in front of him. The streets were busy with the kind of business that does not notice triumphs unless they block traffic. Rem looked at the badge, then tucked it into the little pocket Livesey had sewn inside the compression top and told him not to use for sweets. One step and then another. The square gave way to market streets, then to the river road that knew his feet.
"This is just a step," he told the badge. "I am not letting go."
He kicked the clinic door open with the enthusiasm of a man who had forgotten how hinges work. "Hey, old man, guess who is a Rank D hunte—"
The frying pan met his face with the kind of authority that makes points succinctly. It clanged. The pan bent. Rem blinked and caught it on the rebound out of pure reflex.
"You rascal," Livesey said from the stove without turning around. "Respect this poor house."
Rem straightened the pan with his hands. It did not straighten. He held it up, the metal warped like a memory of itself. "I am sorry."
Livesey started laughing and had to lean on the counter to keep his feet. He wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist, then finally looked at Rem properly.
"Anyway," he said, voice still warm with mirth, "you passed. Not bad for a brainless moron. Let me see the badge."
Rem tossed it across the room with an underhand that said trust more than accuracy. Livesey's hand flashed, caught the tin between two fingers, and turned it under the light. He examined it as if it might confess to a crime.
"It is just a piece of metal," he said, tossing it back. "Do you feel like a hunter now."
Rem snatched it out of the air, closing his fist around it like the last piece of a puzzle he had not known he was solving. "Yes, old man. And it is thanks to you."
Livesey crossed the room in two easy steps and pulled him into a hug that smelled like spice and iron and clean linen. He was not gentle because gentleness is for strangers. He was careful because care is for family.
"Someday," Livesey said against his shoulder, "you will be someone who does great things. You are a good kid. A little stupid. Big heart."
Rem laughed into his collar and hoped it would not leak out. "Thanks, old man. Thanks for being by my side."
"Now," Livesey said, releasing him and returning to the stove with the gravity of a priest approaching an altar, "put your ass in that chair and eat. I made a special meal in advance because I am clever and you are predictable."
Rem dropped into the chair like a man who had been standing all day on decisions. The table was already set, of course. Livesey brought a pot that steamed like forgiveness and a plate that took the shape of hunger and filled it in. Rem ate because his hands knew how and because Livesey watched like a general taking inventory.
Between bites, the room settled around them: the old shelves and the papers pinned over papers, the window onto the river, the dented pan that had failed to make its point. Outside, the city argued with itself about nothing important. Inside, a badge lay on the table, catching the last light.
Rem thought about a guard's words in a busy square. The strongest carry the heaviest reasons.
He could feel the absence of his own reason like a weight he had not yet picked up. It did not frighten him. It called.
He took another bite. Livesey poured tea. The steam rose and wrote a brief story in the air about heat traveling into cold and making it useful.