The actual Combat Praxis session was exactly the disaster Kael had promised.
Vane spent ninety minutes in the general arena, paired off against students who had spent the last decade refining their fundamentals. They weren't masters like Kael, but they were competent technicians. Once they realized the Rank 1 student held his spear with a death grip and had terrible footwork, they tore him apart.
He was swept, disarmed, tripped, and bludgeoned with blunted training weapons. He couldn't use his stolen skills without revealing his hand, and without them, he was just a brawler trying to play chess against grandmasters. The humiliation burned hotter than the physical bruises, exacerbated by the whispers and stares of the elite crowd noticing that their "king" had no clothes.
When the final bell rang, Vane limped straight to the infirmary.
It was a sterile, efficient place that smelled of strong alchemical antiseptic. There were no gentle healers here, only efficient staff wielding glowing crystal wands that knit flesh and bone back together with uncomfortable speed.
Twenty minutes later, Vane walked out. His split lip was sealed, the massive bruise on his back from Kael's staff was gone, and his ribs were no longer aching. Physically, he was pristine again. The uniform was mended by a quick cantrip at the door.
But the mental weight remained. The healing felt cheap. It erased the evidence of his failure without fixing the cause. He was still the same fraud who had walked into the arena two hours ago; he just didn't have the bruises to prove it.
He couldn't go back to Villa 1 yet. The thought of the silent, luxurious rooms felt suffocating. He couldn't go to the library or the dining halls and face the students who had just used him as a punching bag.
He needed air. He needed distance.
Vane turned away from the central campus hub and started walking toward the outer perimeter.
He passed through the manicured parklands that surrounded the main academic buildings, ignoring the students lounging on the grass. He kept walking until the marble pathways gave way to wider, utilitarian causeways made of reinforced concrete designed for heavy transport.
He reached the eastern edge of the floating island. A massive, sheer retaining wall dropped away into the sea of churning white clouds miles below. The wind here was bitter and cold, whipping his uniform jacket around him. The roar of the massive mana engines that kept the island aloft was a constant, deep thrum vibrating through the soles of his boots.
He leaned against the cold stone balustrade, looking out at the endless sky.
A shadow fell over him.
Vane looked up, and his breath caught in his throat.
Perched atop a massive, reinforced obsidian spire built specifically for their weight, two magnificent creatures sat watching the academy.
Dragons.
They were immense, their scales shimmering like sun-baked bronze and deep azure. They weren't feral beasts clawing at the barriers; they were inside the perimeter, resting with the regal, terrifying intelligence of sentient beings older than any human nation. One of them turned its massive head, its slit-pupiled golden eye locking onto Vane for a fleeting second with an intelligence that felt heavier than gravity, before returning its gaze to the horizon.
Vane stared, paralyzed not by fear, but by realization.
These weren't wild monsters. They were allies. He remembered the history books in Oakhaven—the reason the Empire had swallowed half the continent wasn't just better steel or mages. It was because a century ago, the Empress had brokered a pact with the Dragonflights.
And in the present times, they were even friends with Headmistress Evangeline.
They were guests here. Guardians. Friends of the administration.
Vane looked at his own hands, which still didn't know how to hold a piece of wood correctly. Then he looked back up at the living weapons of mass destruction that were just casually hanging out near the dorms.
The sheer scale of the power concentrated on this island hit him like a physical blow. He was trying to con his way through an institution that counted ancient dragons as faculty staff. He wasn't just underqualified; he was absurdly out of his depth.
Feeling smaller than he ever had in the slums, Vane pushed off the railing. He couldn't look at that kind of majestic power right now. It just made his own failures feel bigger.
He kept walking along the perimeter path, moving further away from the civilized center of Zenith, seeking somewhere quieter, somewhere broken.
As he walked, the campus began to change. The pristine upkeep faded. The concrete grew cracked, sprouting tough, wiry weeds in the fissures. The ornamental trees were replaced by dense, thorny thickets that hadn't been pruned in years.
The air grew thicker, damper. A cold, unnatural fog began to seep out of the ground, clinging to his ankles and swirling around the base of the derelict buildings that lined this forgotten sector. These were old supply depots and sealed-up barracks, their windows boarded over, the ward-lines on their fences flickering weakly with dying mana.
This was the ass-end of Zenith. The place where they put things they wanted to forget.
It felt familiar. It felt like home.
Vane stopped in front of a rusted iron gate that hung precariously off one hinge. Beyond it was what used to be an ornamental meditation garden, now choked with brambles and overgrown statues covered in moss. The fog was thicker inside, reducing visibility to twenty feet, turning the world into grey shapes and shadows.
It was perfect. Total isolation.
Vane stepped through the broken gate, pushing aside a thorny vine. The silence was profound here, dampened by the mist, broken only by the distant, subterranean thrum of the engines.
He walked deeper into the overgrown garden, seeking a clear space where he could just sit in the fog and figure out how the hell he was going to survive the rest of the week.
He found a small, circular clearing paved with cracked flagstones, surrounded by the looming shapes of dead, gnarled trees.
He stopped, breathing in the cold, damp air.
Then he heard it.
Thwack.
Vane froze. His hand instinctively went to the dagger hidden under his uniform jacket.
The sound came from ahead, deeper in the fog. It was sharp, percussive, and heavy. Like a whip cracking, but with significant weight behind it.
He waited, straining his ears against the silence.
Thwack.
There it was again. Perfectly rhythmic.
It wasn't the sound of a beast or a piece of machinery breaking down. It was the sound of intent. The sound of air being violently displaced by something swung with perfect, disciplined force. It was the sound of competence in a place where nothing should have been working.
Vane lowered his hand from his dagger. He shouldn't investigate. He was tired, depressed, and outclassed. He should just go back to his villa.
Thwack.
The sound pulled at him. After a day of being told he had no foundation, no art, no right to hold his weapon, the sound of that perfect impact was hypnotic. It was the sound of something he desperately wanted.
Vane stepped off the flagstones, moving silently into the deeper fog, following the rhythm of the unseen strike.