Interlude: Rheon Vale
The teleport fades, leaving behind the scent of ozone and failure.
I stand alone in the now-empty chamber, the glow of a hundred shattered cores painting the floor in dull, fading color. The headmistress is gone. The spectators, the instructors—gone. Only the echo of the trial remains.
And the memory of him.
That boy. The unaligned.
He shouldn't have been able to resonate. Not like that. Not with her.
I close my eyes and replay it—the instant their cores touched, the flare of light that shouldn't have existed. It wasn't power. It was something deeper. Wild. Improvised. Untamed.
For a moment, the whole chamber had sung.
And the Headmistress—Liora—she smiled. At him.
My fists clench before I realize it. A thin crack runs along the floor beneath my boots, golden sparks bleeding through. The resonance in my blood surges in protest.
"I'm supposed to be the one," I whisper.
Top of my cohort. Perfect synchronization. Chosen by the Vale bloodline's Emotive Seal before I could even walk. I've trained for this since childhood—breathed, bled, broken myself for it.
And some half-formed nobody walks in with no alignment, no training, no name, and the world bends around him like he's a missing note in the song of creation.
I force a breath through my teeth, steadying the resonance flow before it cracks the chamber further.
[Note: Emotional instability detected.]"Silence."
The system retreats. It knows better.
I look up at the faint imprint of light still hanging in the air—where his resonance met hers. Silver and blue. Opposites that should repel, yet somehow… harmonized.
"Luna Vael," I murmur.
The Vael family's resonance was legendary. Cold. Precise. Controlled. For her to link with someone unaligned means she either lost control—or he forced it.
Either way, that bond makes him dangerous.
And the Headmistress promoting them to upper division on the spot? That's more than favoritism. That's interest.
Which means I can't ignore him.
Not anymore.
I let out a slow breath, the anger cooling to something sharper. Focused.
"Farein, was it?" I whisper to the empty chamber. "You have no idea what you've walked into."
My reflection in the cracked marble looks back—eyes glowing gold, a faint smile cutting through the calm.
"Let's see how long you last once the real tests begin."
Chapter 5 — The Upper Division
Morning comes with blinding sunlight and a sense of dread that tastes suspiciously like school.
I wake up to an unfamiliar ceiling—a vaulted dome lined with faint silver filigree that glows in rhythm with my heartbeat. My new dorm room, apparently.
The bed's too soft. The air's too clean. It's the kind of place that screams you don't belong here in a really polite way.
[Objective: Begin Upper Division Orientation.][Note: Try not to embarrass yourself.]
"Thanks for the confidence boost."
I swing my legs off the bed, wincing slightly as my bare feet hit the polished floor. My new uniform—white with silver trim—hangs neatly from a rack near the door. I stare at it for a moment.
"Well, at least I'm not wearing vines this time."
The system doesn't respond, but I can feel its judgment.
The Academy proper looks different up here.
Gone are the crowded squares and noisy lecture halls of the lower terraces. The upper division campus feels quieter—heavier, like the air itself carries more magic. Floating sigils drift lazily in the breeze, tracing invisible currents through the courtyard.
Students move with purpose, most in pairs or small groups—linked partners whose resonance hums faintly around them like invisible halos.
Luna's already waiting by the fountain when I arrive.
She's traded her combat gear for a uniform similar to mine, though hers carries a faint blue sheen. Her expression, as always, is calm to the point of unreadable.
"You're late," she says without looking up.
"I was busy trying to figure out how to tie this uniform sash without accidentally strangling myself."
Her lips twitch—maybe a smile, maybe a grimace. Hard to tell.
"Come on," she says. "Class starts soon."
Our first lecture hall looks like something between a cathedral and a planetarium—tiered seats circling a central platform where floating glyphs rotate in slow orbit.
Dozens of upper division students fill the seats, whispering. And when Luna and I walk in, those whispers spike.
I can practically feel the attention. Not admiration. Curiosity. Suspicion.
"Are they the ones the Headmistress pulled from the trial?""Unaligned, they said. Can you even resonate like that?""She linked with an outsider?"
Luna ignores them. I wish I could.
[Note: You're causing a scene.]
"I'm literally just walking."
[Precisely.]
We find our seats. The instructor—an older man with streaks of blue in his hair—taps a sigil on his podium.
"Welcome to Resonance Theory II," he begins. "Or, as most of you know it—how not to explode."
A few nervous laughs.
He gestures, and the air fills with intricate light diagrams—heartbeats, frequency waves, emotional spectrums rendered visible.
"Every resonance begins with emotion. Every bond amplifies it. But when two frequencies collide without balance…" He claps his hands together. The image flares, then implodes into smoke. "You get disaster."
"Good thing we're already unbalanced," I mutter.
Luna gives me a sideways look. "That's one word for it."
Then the door opens.
And Rheon walks in.
He's immaculate as ever, uniform crisp, expression unreadable. The whispers surge again—some admiring, some fearful. He takes a seat two rows ahead but doesn't look back.
Not until the instructor says, "For today's exercise, we'll test synchronization. Pairs only."
Then Rheon glances over his shoulder—directly at us—and smiles.
That's when I know the real test hasn't even started yet.