The air was heavy and cold. It smelled like old stone and ozone, which was the smell of contained power.
Nyx stood by the massive iron gate of Silverlight Academia. She gripped the strap of her bag until her knuckles ached. This place wasn't a school it was a fortress, built like a spiked gothic crown in the heart of Vespyr. Its tall, black towers looked down on the city, and the windows were dark, like the eyes of something old and cold.
Don't look at it. Just get this done, she told herself.
She was medium height, thin, and easily lost in the crowds of students flooding through the gate. Most of them wore proud uniforms and carried weapons. Nyx wore a plain, dark coat that covered her almost-black hair. She needed to be invisible. Her power was a secret. A killer secret.
She had Celestial (Legendary). A power of stars and fate. It felt like a constant, quiet explosion under her skin. She had to take the Basic Assessment today, a stupid test designed for common elements like Fire or Wind.
"Next! Elementals only! Get your sorry asses moving!" a guard yelled.
Nyx walked through the gate, forcing herself to move like any other scared student.
The Basic Assessment Arena was deep inside the stone fortress. It was a huge, echoing room, its walls scored with burn marks and ice blasts. Three instructors sat on a platform. They looked bored and mean.
Nyx walked to the center line.
"Name, Kingdom, Element," a woman instructor with sharp eyes demanded.
"Nyx. Atgeren. Element is Wind," Nyx said, keeping her voice low. The lie felt like cheap paper in her mouth. She hoped the woman was tired enough not to care.
The woman didn't care. She just yawned.
"Wind. Boring. Simple. Goal is simple: create a steady breeze for ten seconds to move the marker flag five feet. Fail, and you're sent back to your shithole kingdom. Start."
Nyx took a deep, shaky breath. She closed her eyes. She reached deep, past the roaring Celestial source, trying to find a tiny, quiet trickle of Wind. It was like asking a supernova to light a single match.
Just a breeze. Just a breeze.
She pushed the energy out. Instead of a soft flow of air, a concentrated pulse of pure, silver light erupted from her palm. It wasn't hot, but it was too bright it was a contained Starlight Flare, too small to be deadly, but way too big for a test.
The small marker flag didn't move five feet it was instantly destroyed, turning into a plume of gray smoke. The raw energy sizzled on the stone floor.
"What in the living hell?" the lead instructor shouted, standing up. She was no longer bored. "That was not Wind, you little liar! That was highly unstable Fusion! You failed!"
Nyx felt the panic rise like bile. Her eyes were definitely flashing gold now. The Celestial power wanted out. It was roaring now, fighting the instruction to be small.
"I...I apologize, Instructor. My control is..." Nyx started to stammer, but a change in the room cut her off.
The lights hanging from the ceiling didn't just flicker they exploded. POP-CRACK-HISS.
The arena was plunged into darkness, lit only by the smoky emergency lamps near the exit. The temperature didn't drop it went completely cold, then suddenly hot with electric charge.
A dark figure stood leaning against the far iron doorframe.
It was Lucian.
He was tall and powerfully built, around six feet two inches. He had a look of cold, contained violence, and his dark clothes seemed to suck the dim light out of the room. His dark hair was messy, and a thin scar split his left eyebrow. Around his left hand, the shadow was thicker, almost a physical thing.
He was holding back two storms.
"You're late, Lucian!" the lead instructor shrieked, her voice frantic in the darkness.
"You just blew out the main circuit! Get out of here before I fail you for the whole semester!"
Lucian didn't even twitch. His rough baritone voice, deep and quiet, cut through the noise.
"Didn't ask for your opinion, old woman."
He pushed off the doorframe and started walking into the center of the arena, his heavy boots scraping the stone. He was walking right for Nyx.
Nyx couldn't move. She felt a sickening, powerful pull. Her uncontrolled Celestial energy, which was currently screaming in her gut, suddenly started to hum, like a powerful magnet finally finding its opposite pole.
He stopped just a foot from her. His black eyes, intense and cold, finally focused on her. Not her face, but the small, silver glow still pulsing weakly in her trembling hands.
"Move, kid. You're blocking the path," Lucian said, his voice quiet but sharp as glass.
It was a warning, not a polite request. He was dangerous. He knew what she was.
He didn't walk around her. He simply slammed his shoulder hard into hers, pushing her aside with raw force.
The contact was a catastrophic, silent explosion of magic.
It was not a hit it was a pure elemental shockwave that only they felt. Lucian's raw, furious Shadow energy cold, heavy, and suppressing hit her bright, chaotic Celestial power. His Thunder snapped and sparked, trying to burn her light, but Nyx's starlight immediately quenched the Thunder and pulled the Shadow in, making it momentarily stable.
For a second, the two most dangerous elements in the room were perfectly balanced. Nyx's roaring Celestial core went dead silent. Lucian's chaotic energy stopped its internal fight. He felt her stability she felt his grounding, protective darkness.
Lucian instantly yanked his shoulder away, stumbling half a step. His powerful body tensed, and his dark eyes snapped back to hers. They were wide with pure, cold shock.
"What the fuck was that?" Lucian cursed, the words barely a whisper. The Shadow around his left hand flared thick and dark, instantly trying to consume the silence he had felt.
Nyx couldn't answer. The area where he'd touched her felt numb, then sharply electric. She was shaking, not from fear, but from the terrifying realization of the silence. She had never been silent before.
The lead instructor, who had been scrambling to turn a power crank, finally succeeded. The main lights flickered back on, revealing the instructor's furious face.
"Get out! Both of you! You ruined the system, you little whore! You're both failed, get your trash off my floor!" the woman screamed, pointing at the exit.
Lucian ignored the screaming. He only looked at Nyx for a long moment. There was no anger now, just cold, hard knowledge. He knew her secret, and she knew his. He was a perfect, dangerous mirror.
He turned and walked toward the exit, his movements fast and controlled. He left a faint smell of ozone and burnt earth behind him.
Nyx stood alone on the scorched assessment line. She was a failure, and her secret was out at least to him. She looked at the iron door, her hands still tingling from the clash. She knew two things now, with the cold certainty of a prophesy...
He was chaos, and she was destiny. And for one terrible second, their fates had touched.
She had to stay away, but her power already knew it needed his shadow.
This is going to be hell, Nyx thought, pulling her coat around herself, hiding the dangerous, sudden gold flash in her eyes. A literal storm.
Nyx slowly followed Lucian out of the arena, stepping carefully around the sputtering circuits the electric surge had ruined. She moved past the screaming instructor, whose face was still red with fury and fear. The woman didn't dare touch Nyx, knowing the strange power she carried. Nyx was a ticking clock.
Outside the arena hall, the main corridor of the Silverlight Academia felt less like a learning institution and more like a high-end prison. Students mostly older teenagers and young adults dressed in sharp, expensive uniforms moved with purposeful strides.
They didn't bump into each other. They didn't laugh much. They glanced at Nyx, their expressions a mix of curiosity and swift dismissal. They were the children of the six kingdoms, here to master their elements and secure their place in the rigid social order.
They smelled money and power, and Nyx, the girl in the plain dark coat from the less-important North, had neither.
She spotted Lucian up ahead. He wasn't hurrying, but he moved with a controlled, predatory grace that cleared a path. A trio of students two girls and a boy tried to whisper about him as he passed, but they stopped mid-sentence, intimidated by the sheer density of his Shadow presence.
He's used to it, Nyx realized. He doesn't hide his power, he uses it to build a wall around himself.
That was the difference. Nyx was hiding a secret that could destroy her. Lucian was protecting a secret that could destroy others.
She walked faster, needing to get out before someone else recognized the residual Starlight Flare energy clinging to her coat.
Just as she reached a massive archway leading to the main courtyard, a new voice stopped her. It was smooth and cold, like water running over ice.
"Nyx. You failed the Basic Assessment. Didn't you?"
Nyx turned. It was Kian. He was tall and lean, dressed in a spotless, navy blue uniform the perfect student. His calm, pale eyes, the color of frozen mist, assessed her without emotion. He was one of the top students, a master of the Ice element, and a prince from the harsh Nivara region.
"I had a technical issue," Nyx replied simply, forcing her voice to be steady. She didn't like his calmness.
"Technical issue? Your test partner, Lucian, just took out half the grid. That's not an issue that's chaos," Kian said. He stepped closer, and the air around him felt crisp and clean, the opposite of Lucian's smog. "Don't lie. Your power is unstable. It's too large for a Basic tier."
Nyx clenched her fists. "My power is Wind, Kian. Just messy Wind."
Kian smiled slightly. It wasn't a kind smile. "My apologies, Nyx. I am a master of Ice, a Basic element. I understand control. Your energy is not Wind. It's too hot. I've heard the rumors about the rare lineages from Atgeren. You're a liability here, especially with the Static Decay spreading."
The Static Decay. The words were a physical weight. Everyone feared the creeping sickness that was eating the world's elemental magic. It was the reason Silverlight Academia was filled with political tension everyone suspected everyone else of being weak or, worse, a spy for the kingdoms trying to seize control.
"I won't be a liability," Nyx said, meeting his cold gaze.
"You already are," Kian countered. "You are associating with Lucian, the Shadow-slinger. He is a walking disaster. He nearly killed a student with a simple Electric Blast last year." Kian paused, his expression turning sharp.
"Stay away from him. His darkness will ruin your chances here. We don't need unstable fools when the world is ending."
He walked past her without another word, leaving Nyx alone, shaking with fresh anger.
Ruin my chances? What chances? She was here because her kingdom, Atgeren, forced her to prove she wasn't a total failure.
She looked out the archway toward the courtyard, where the midday sun was shining. She could still feel the residual energy of Lucian's touch on her shoulder the cold, electric burn.
She knew Kian was right. Lucian was a danger.Their clash was not a simple accident it was a bad omen.
She pulled her hood up, hiding the gold flash in her eyes for good, and stepped into the sunlight. It was time to find her meager dorm room and figure out how to survive the political hell and the terrifying man she had just met. The world was already falling apart, and now her small life was following suit. This academy was going to be a bloodbath.