Margin Of Supremacy
In the marble-veined halls of Elysium Academy, supremacy isn't inherited—it's carved out with teeth and silence. Here, every student starts with a fortune of points that buys food, status, alliances, even mercy. Lose them all, and you're not just expelled; you're erased. Families pretend you never existed. Bodies vanish quietly. The academy calls it "recalibration." Everyone else calls it death by degrees.
"You think you're invisible, Vale?" Elara Voss leans against the shadowed railing of the rooftop, wind whipping her platinum hair like a blade. Her voice is velvet over venom. "Sitting in the back of Class D, doodling while the rest of us bleed for every point. Cute act. But I see the way the numbers shift when you're in the room—like gravity bending around something too heavy to notice."
Kairos Vale doesn't flinch. He keeps staring at the city lights far below, hands in pockets, expression blank as fresh snow. "People see what they want to see, Voss. You want a rival. I want quiet."
She laughs, low and sharp. "Quiet? You tipped the Midnight Auction. You fed Thorne that fake lead on Jax's 'weakness'—let him break the wrong bones. Class A bled twenty thousand points overnight because of whispers only you could have planted. Don't play humble. You're the ghost in the machine."
He finally turns, eyes flat obsidian catching no light. "If I'm a ghost, why chase shadows? Go back to your throne. Class A still has the crown—for now."
Elara steps closer, close enough he can smell the faint jasmine on her skin, the expensive perfume masking something metallic underneath. "Because crowns slip, Kairos. And when yours does—when the fool mask cracks and everyone sees the monster underneath—I want to be the one holding the knife."
A beat of silence stretches taut as wire.
Then Kairos smiles. Not wide. Just a flicker, cold and precise. "You assume there's a mask to crack."
Down in the dorms, Jax slams a fist into the wall, knuckles splitting fresh over old scars. "They jumped me again. Thorne's goons. Said it's payback for 'your games.' What the hell are you doing, man? You're supposed to be the nobody!"
Kairos bandages the hand without hurry. "I'm doing what nobodies do. Surviving."
"Bullshit." Jax yanks away, eyes wild with pain and loyalty that hurts worse than the bruises. "You let them think you're weak. You let me take the hits. Why?"
"Because," Kairos says quietly, voice like a scalpel sliding home, "the strongest blade stays sheathed until the moment it isn't. And when it finally comes out... no one sees it coming."
In Elysium Academy, the game isn't about climbing to the top.
It's about making sure everyone else falls first—while you stand in the margin, unseen, untouchable, supreme.
