It starts as a trickle. A single, shy first-year approaches the Emberwood kitchen, holding out a half-eaten bag of rice crackers. "I... I wasn't going to finish these," he mumbles, blushing. "I thought maybe... you could use them?"
Lucien takes the bag with the gravity of a diplomat accepting a treaty. "Thank you," he says. "We can."
Then comes another. And another. Soon, there's a line. Students from every dorm, every guild, every social clique, are coming to their kitchen. They bring bruised apples from their backpacks, the crusts cut from their morning toast, the last few olives from a jar. They bring them not as trash, but as offerings. As ingredients.
It is a spontaneous, campus-wide act of collective culinary faith. They are no longer just watching The Leftover League. They have become part of it.
The final weigh-in is scheduled for an hour after the feast. Holt's last stand. He expects them to be overwhelmed, to have generated mountains of peels and rinds from feeding hundreds. He is waiting in the Grand Refectory with the official scales and a single, final spotlight, ready to pronounce his judgment.
But the kitchen of The Leftover League is a whirlwind of controlled, joyous chaos. The Zero Remnant Audit has become a real-time, community-powered kitchen.
Caelan, Nyra, and Lucien, joined by Mira Solstice who is calmly logging ingredient data and even Zadie Nightwell, who has put down her camera to help chop, are transforming the student offerings as they arrive. The rice crackers are pulverized into a savory dust to top a second batch of congee for the kitchen staff. The apple bruises are cut out and simmered into a quick, fragrant compote. The olive brine is used to season the soup.
Every single thing is finding a home.
Finally, the time comes. Caelan, Nyra, and Lucien walk from their kitchen back to the Grand Refectory for the last time. They are followed by a quiet procession of students, a silent show of solidarity.
Provost Holt stands by the polished digital scales, his face a grim, impatient mask. "Well?" he demands. "Bring out your waste."
Caelan steps forward. He is holding a single, small, white bowl. He places it on the scale.
Inside the bowl is one object.
It is a single, perfect seed. A tomato seed, saved from the preparation of their very first meal for the Audit.
"All of our scraps and leftovers have been returned to the students, as food," Caelan announces, his voice calm and clear, echoing in the vast, silent hall. "Everything has been consumed. Everything has been used."
He gestures to the single seed in the bowl. "This is all that remains."
His voice drops, filled with a quiet, profound reverence that commands the attention of every person in the room.
"But a seed is not an ending. It's a beginning. It's not waste."
He looks directly at Provost Holt, at the entire academy, and delivers the final, defining thesis of his entire philosophy.
"It's a promise."
The number on the scale flashes, measuring the infinitesimal weight of a single tomato seed. It is not zero. It is something far more powerful. A tiny, measurable, undeniable gram of pure potential.
The crowd doesn't just applaud. They erupt. It is a roar of approval, a standing ovation not for a winning score, but for a winning idea. The Zero Remnant Audit is over. Holt has lost.
But in the back of the hall, unseen by the celebrating crowd, Chef Barthol Maillard is not looking at Caelan. He is looking at his datapad, at a series of urgent, encrypted messages he has been receiving all night. He intercepts one final communication from Holt's office to an external server. A single line of text.
ASSET COMPROMISED. PROCEED WITH HOSTILE TAKEOVER PROTOCOL. GIDEON MARCHE IS ON HIS WAY.
Maillard's face goes pale.
The academy might have been saved from Holt's philosophy. But it is about to face a far greater threat. The Audit was just the prelude. The real war, a war for the very soul of food, is about to begin.