Aurelia POV
Aurelia closed the classroom door behind her, her posture calm and expression neutral.
On the surface, nothing had happened despite the fact that her classmates were now avoiding her eye.
She sighed. She hadn't looked at him. Hadn't spoken. She was trying to be respectful. Professional as he called it. It did not turn out well. Of course the first class she has is one with him.
Aurelia released a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding—along with it, a ripple of cold mana slipped free, sharp and glacial.
Or should she say more cold mana. Like the mana she released in the classroom.
She covered her eyes with her hand.
It wasn't intentional.
She hadn't meant to let her aura slip.
But that girl—with her perfect blonde hair and big chest—just walked up and asked Zane to lunch like it was nomral. Like she could just have his attention.
He was her friend. Who did she think she was?
Problem was, her aura did slip out and it spread through the room like frost chasing shadow, thin and biting, subtle as snowfall—but heavy enough that was probably suffcating to most.
She was still irritated. She needed to calm down and she needed answers.
She didn't go far. Just one floor above the quad, back to her locked lounge. She keyed the glyph, stepped inside, and sealed the door.
"Liora," she said, lifting her communicator.
Her assistant's voice came through instantly. "I just sent the full report, my lady. It's waiting in your private cache."
Aurelia opened it.
The holo-display expanded from her crystal, forming clean data rows across a floating pane. Her eyes skimmed the top.
Name: Zane Myles
Age: 18
Class Year: First
Background: Provincial region designation 77-K
Parents: Deceased. Cause: Officially classified as an unresolved spellpoplution event. Further detail locked.
Aurelia blinked.This parents were dead. No wonder he was so serious all the time.
Family.
Siblings: Two
– Jordan Myles, Male, Age 13
– Lila Myles, Female, Age 15
Current Guardian: Zane Myles (legal).
The family sitaution appears compliation. Mr. Myles seems to have other family but they are estanged. There is almost no information avalaible about his material grandparters.
Financials: Scholarship-approved. Dual academic-track. No known sponsors.
She stared at the line longer than necessary. Eighteen. First year. Raising two children while managing to qualify for a Tier I mana scholarship? On a provincial applicant slot?
She kept reading.
Core Type: Non-aligned
Mana Purity: 97.8%
Mana Scale Rating: 8.6
System Stabilities - unknown
Stability Index: Not measurable
Override Note: Mana scale reading appears corrupted. Calibration anomaly? Retesting advised.
Aurelia narrowed her eyes.
She tapped the field. Pulled up the diagnostic chart.
The data wasn't corrupted. It was just… beyond the top end of the graph.
Even hers—the highest recorded of her generation—barely nudged 8.2.
He surpassed her.
Elemental affinity - none confirmed. Inclinations: Unclear. No signature. Just raw, unfiltered, untethered magic. The kind that destroyed untrained mages from the inside out.
Her pulse quickened.
Spellcasting Evaluation: Minimal
Formal Training: None logged in Tower Registry
Combat Certification: None
Realm Access: Open
Discipline Violations: None
And yet—
The footnotes began to multiply.
Unclassified movement technique observed
Projectile conjuration using unshaped mana flow—unrecorded configuration
Sustained body reinforcement through raw transfer application—unsafe and unprecedented
Capable of externalizing force fields, glyphs, and compression bursts without runes
She leaned back slowly.
He was willworking—channeling mana directly,
But how, he has a system, everyone does, you have to have a system to move around a modern city. Was he so integrated with this system that he was bypassing the delay? Was the system somehow handling the his spells with processing the runes?
Was that even possible?
The footage she'd reviewed now played back in her mind under a new lens.
The way he absorbed the shock spell. Redirected momentum and energy. The brutal simplicity of his strikes. It wasn't just that he knew how to fight.
It was that magic obeyed him like it knew who was in charge.
She turned back to the siblings section.
Jordan. Lila.
His file included a photo—he'd listed them as dependents. A note scribbled in with provincial ID tags and grocery credits used as collateral.
He was raising them.
Without help. Has recieved no formal training that she can see and can still be her. In a one on one sword dual.
She didnt know if he would fair as well if she used all her bloondline abilities. But Even with just body strengthening and mana injection, which she personally could not do, he had beaten her soundly.
A magic and sword prodigy.
Wow.
Not only that, in the defense of someone he did not know, and on his first day at one of the most competitive schools in the Kingdom, he was already he had shattered a noble's wand who was four years his senior, and very powerful.
She took a breath.
Her fingers hovered over the communicator.
She could call Liora. Send someone to test him. Leak his name. Watch what happened next.
But she didn't.
Instead, she whispered to herself, almost smiling.
"So it is you."
Zane Myles.
She said it out loud. Testing it.
It didn't sound dangerous.
Aurelia stared at the floating report long after the final data tab faded. The room was quiet—sealed with a pressure ward she'd cast on instinct. Her teacup, untouched, sat on a levitating tray, cooling into uselessness.
Zane Myles.
She whispered the name again. This time, it felt… heavier.
She stood, slowly, crossing to the edge of the balcony and letting the city breeze drift across her skin. The academic tower of New Liora shimmered below, its spires aglow with afternoon runelight. Students milled through walkways, unaware of the storm building three stories above their heads.
How was she supposed to talk to him?
She'd seen how he responded to status. He didn't freeze, or grovel, or simper like most lowborns. He avoided it—shut down completely. It was written into the report, visible between every line: independent. Withdrawn. Never asked for help. Never joined a club. Didn't even use the free counseling resources his scholarship granted.
He wouldn't approach her. Not as Aurelia Vael Taranis noble gorgeous famous swordgodess.
That is not the name she gave herself.
She couldn't approach him as PrincessFlyer either.
Not after she'd spent six months fencing alongside him in the Crucible Realms, keeping their conversations strictly about technique and theory, hiding everything except the one thing that mattered: their shared love for the sword.
She returned to the data feed and flipped back through the personal file. There had to be an angle.
Something real.
Something human.
She found it tucked at the bottom of the sibling record.
Volunteer/Work Permit: Approved
Current Posting: Central Verge Community Arts & Combat Initiative (CVCACI)
Function: Assistant Swordsmanship Instructor
Time Commitment: 3 days/week, 5–8 PM
Location: District 8, Union Hall Annex—Recreation Quadrant
Tier: Public Use / Open Enrollment
Her breath caught.
He taught swordsmanship?
At a recreational combat center? Equivalent to a mana-infused YMCA?
Aurelia leaned forward.
No wonder no one had caught his style. He wasn't trained by any tower. No master-grade mentorship. No formal lineage.
He built it.
In sweat. In repetition. Probably while teaching children or exhausted day laborers trying to defend themselves after dark.
And he still had time to qualify for scholarship at The Nine Pillars.
Still had time to shatter a noble's wand like it was kindling.
She closed the report and stood. Her reflection glinted in the warded mirror near the lounge doors—flawless skin, perfectly pressed uniform, a walking symbol of everything he'd spent his life avoiding.
She couldn't show up as herself.
He'd never let her in.
But this… this was her opening.
"Liora," she said aloud.
"Yes, Lady Aurelia?"
"I need a plainset."
There was a pause. "Plainset?"
"No crest. No insignia. Something suitable for martial training, not aristocratic display. I'll also need authorization to bypass quadrant assignment tracking and enter the Verge after dusk."
Another pause. "Lady Aurelia, with respect—why?"
Aurelia smiled faintly.
"To investigate a unique tactical anomaly. One with no prior combat license and no standardized casting theory—and yet, who can shape mana by instinct and cut with intent like it's music."
"...You mean the boy."
"Yes," she said.
"The one you nearly suffocated in class?"
She ignored that. "Just send the set."
Liora hesitated again.
Then: "I'll prepare a bag discreetly. Shall I summon a decoy for your usual evening study route?"
"Obviously."
Aurelia closed the line and turned back toward the window.
She didn't know exactly what she was going to say when she saw him.
But for the first time since she'd arrived at New Liora, she wasn't bored.
She was interested.
And in that moment, she realized something she hadn't expected:
She might've just found her final philopory case.
Because if she could figure out how he worked—how someone like Zane Myles existed—she might finally understand something greater than legacy, status, or power.
She might actually learn something real.