The days came and went. Repetition set in like a slow, grinding tide. For everyone in the academy, it was the same, training, Aether control.
Lessons filled with classifications of beasts, titans, and demons their types, ranks, how to survive an encounter, and when to run.
But something was coming. No one said it outright, no announcement had been made, but there was a quiet tension building. The Academy was preparing for something.
Something beyond the Empire's walls. Beyond the horizon. Into the breathless black that was the Abyss.
For now, the students were idle. Mingling, grouping up, forming little cliques and hierarchies.
The noble circles orbited each other like planets in a carefully balanced system. But the commoners Kade, Drax, and Seronio remained an isolated constellation. Not forgotten, but resented. Scorn came silently, from every direction looks, mutters, deliberate avoidance.
Surprisingly, B-Class was different. They didn't insult the trio. They didn't acknowledge them at all.
As if they weren't worth the breath it took to insult them. At first, it was curious almost a relief but Seronio knew better. He could feel it. They're waiting, he thought. They'll strike. Just not yet.
(Kade)
Kade stood in the training grounds, sword in hand, staring at it like it had betrayed him.
No matter how much he trained, it wasn't clicking. His progress felt stagnant too slow for someone who was supposed to be rising, not crawling.
"What the fuck am I doing wrong?"
His Aether control was solid better than most in his class, maybe even top tier. But his swordsmanship? It lagged behind, stubborn and unresponsive.
He'd studied countless sword arts, read ancient techniques, watched dueling footage, but none of them stuck. None of them felt right.
His elements lightning and ice rejected everything he tried to pair them with. There was no rhythm. No harmony.
It was frustrating. Maddening.
He left the grounds in silence, walking the stone corridors back toward the dorms, lost in his thoughts. As he passed a hallway, a few nobles brushed by him shoulders squared, eyes sharp. That's when it happened.
"You commoners don't deserve to be in this academy," one of them muttered.
Kade glanced at the speaker. He was average. Plain face, forgettable posture. Honestly, Kade looked more like a noble than he did.
Kade chuckled to himself, tired and done with the games. "Fuck off."
Simple. Satisfying. He didn't even slow his pace.
But another voice followed a sharper one, mocking and smooth.
"They won't survive the hunting exercise," said a pink-haired noble before disappearing around the corner with the rest of them.
Kade stopped.
Hunting exercise? His head snapped back, but the group had already vanished into the crowd.
He stood there a moment longer, staring down the empty corridor.
Something was coming. And it was coming fast.
The next few days were like waking nightmares for Kade.
He was failing he knew he was. And worse, he couldn't hide it. Not from himself, not from the training logs, and not from the creeping weight in his chest every time he held his sword.
He stopped talking. Not out of bitterness or anger, but something quieter… emptier. He sat with Drax and Seronio during meals, but said nothing.
He trained with them, but only in body. His mind was elsewhere distant, locked in a spiral of frustration and doubt.
They noticed, of course. His brothers. His closest friends. But Kade didn't give them room to reach him.
Every time Seronio cracked a joke or Drax bumped his shoulder, trying to pull him out of it, Kade only offered a thin smile. Not a real one. Just a placeholder.
He felt like he was suffocating inside his own skin. Lost in his own dilemma.
The sword felt heavier by the day.
And still no breakthrough. No clarity.
Just silence.
(Seronio)
Seronio sat in a pool of his own sweat, fists clenched tight but not in frustration. In satisfaction. Progress.
He was getting better. Sharper. His technique wasn't just forming it was becoming his. No borrowed form, no mimicry. A style of his own, raw and dangerous. He was thriving.
Drax, too, was finding his rhythm—becoming something fierce in his own right.
But Kade… Kade was different.
He hadn't said much in days. Seronio noticed the way he avoided eye contact, how he withdrew from conversation like it costed him something. He wanted to say something anything but he held his tongue.
He'd known Kade for years. Kade never liked being helped. Not like that. He had to claw his way through problems. If you handed him a solution, he'd throw it away just to find one that fit him. That was just… Kade.
Still, Seronio couldn't ignore it.
He glanced at the nearby cluster of students some from C-Class, others from D. All of them whispering.
"The commoner's actually pretty good…"
"Yeah, but shame about the swordsman. I heard his instructor's already given up on him."
Seronio gritted his teeth hard enough to hurt. "Dammit."
He stood up abruptly, ignoring the looks tossed his way. Normally, he'd flip someone off, maybe throw a smartass comment. But not now.
He needed to find Kade.
He stormed through the training hallways, rounding a corner too fast and collided hard with someone.
The girl stumbled back, glaring daggers. Her hand whipped across his face with a sharp crack.
Then she crouched down, scooping something from the ground.
A snake.
"You blind fucker," she hissed, holding the coiled reptile in her hands like it was royalty. Her eyes burned. "Watch where you're going."
Seronio bit his lip to stop from snapping. This bitch. He could already feel her winding up for a speech he didn't have time for.
Then
(Kade)
Kade was there.
Not ten feet away, eyes locked not on the girl, but on the snake in her arms.
Something flickered.
DING DING DING — ACCEPTANCE OF LIGHTNING.
The words rang in his skull like thunder crashing through his mind. His eyes widened. His body tensed.
The snake slithered, pulsing with instinctual grace, and Kade saw it really saw it. The current in its body.
The raw, fluid coil of its muscles. The stillness before the strike.
His eyes lit up.
"That's. Fucking. Cool."
Seronio blinked. Wait—what the hell? Was he calling the snake cool? Or the girl who just cursed him out?
Before he could say anything, Kade was gone.
He turned on his heel and bolted straight toward the swordsmen's training ground like a man possessed.
Seronio just stared, confused and stunned.
"…What the fuck just happened?"