Stone dust still drifted when Rin reached the courtyard.
Caelion lay in a shallow crater, coughing chalk, eyes glassy with the kind of panic that doesn't know whether to stand or beg. Rings of students backed away from the impact point, faces pale under lantern-light. The royal academy's mid-bridge arced above, filled with onlookers leaning over the rail to see who'd just been turned into a headline.
Rin didn't hurry. He crossed the last steps with clean posture, hands loose at his sides, aura sealed. The quiet stretched so tight you could hear the last pebbles settle.
Caelion staggered up, breath hitching, a fresh sword already forming along his forearm in a slick sheath of ice. Pride made his chin lift; fear made his feet slide back.
"Don't—" he rasped, then remembered his audience and forced a sneer. "Don't think this means anything, half-blood."
Rin stopped two paces away. He didn't answer. He simply looked at Caelion like he was a noise that had to be turned off before study hour.
The silence gnawed at Caelion's nerves. He slashed, horizontal and high—telegraphed, desperate.
Rin stepped in, not out. His forearm met the blow; winter kissed steel; the sword skittered away in sparks. Rin's other hand came up in a short, disciplined hook. Ice surged inside his knuckles at the exact moment of contact.
The punch didn't break Caelion's bones. It broke his balance—launched him backward in a spray of fractured frost and dignity. He plowed into the tiled walkway outside the training quad, sliding to a stop at the feet of half a dozen noble heirs who had been whispering about nothing a moment earlier and now stared like they'd seen a god lift a curtain.
Rin followed at a measured pace. No stomp, no roar. His expression didn't change. That, more than anything, drained color from faces. The etiquette made it worse; a predator that knows the rules doesn't need to snarl.
"Hey! What's going on down—"
A prefect's voice died halfway through the sentence as her eyes caught up. Murmurs rippled outward. Is that the newcomer? The queen's…? The question dared not finish itself aloud.
Caelion scrambled to a knee, both hands up. He conjured a hasty buckler of ice in one palm and a jagged short-sword in the other. The buckler wasn't bad—smooth center, reinforced rim. He'd practiced it. He'd never used it against someone who didn't care.
Rin's shadow crossed him. He paused, almost polite, and then leaned in—just enough to make Caelion feel how small the space was. When he spoke, his voice was low enough that only the front row heard it.
Caelion's friends had stumbled down the slope, pale and panicked. The fallen noble gasped on the flagstones, air refusing to return to his lungs.
Rin stopped three paces away. He did not loom, because he didn't have to. His presence did the work.
"Stand," he said, voice flat as winter. Not loud. Not cruel. Simply a command that assumed obedience.
Caelion staggered upright with help, shoving the hands off a second later when pride remembered itself. He bared his teeth. Frost crawled instinctively along his forearms, this time visible, gaudy. "You— you dare assault a royal?" His eyes bulged. "My mother will—"
Rin stepped once, and the boy flinched back despite himself. Rin stopped at the exact distance that forced eye contact without touching. Then he crouched. Not a bully's lean—balanced, hands loose at his knees, gaze level.
"You do realize," he said, each word crisp with patient condescension, "I'm the queen's grandson."
A wave of whispering tore through the courtyard. It was the kind of admission that felt like myth until spoken aloud. Students glanced from Rin to the palace banners, then to the insignia at his collar they'd dismissed as decoration. The murmurs sharpened: grandson, grandson, grandson—
Caelion stared at him like he'd announced the sky was edible. Color drained from his face, returned twice as red. "J—just because you're trying to woo Rose Sylvanyr doesn't mean you can claim Her Majesty Seraphina as your grandmother!"
The courtyard didn't just go silent. It emptied. Every sound retreated as if embarrassed to be present. Even the fountains had the decency to hush.
Rin's mouth twitched. He swallowed the laugh because the moment didn't belong to him.
A soft giggle broke the stunned quiet anyway.
It came from above, along the grand steps leading to the academy's great hall. A cluster of dignitaries had arrived without anyone noticing. At their front: a woman of winter-calm with hair like starlight, crown of crystalline lilies, eyes that could freeze oceans or warm a nation—Seraphina Sylvanyr. Beside her, Rose—arms folded, failing to smother her grin. And languidly reclining along the marble balustrade like a cat in a sunbeam: the World Tree's spirit, heels bouncing off the stone, petals orbiting her head in careless coronas.
Sylvan laughed outright, delighted, clapping once. "Oh, this is rich."
Rose coughed into a fist, shoulders shaking.
Seraphina's lips curved, but she raised a hand and let the amusement melt into sovereign poise. Her voice carried without force. "Students," she said, tone like a bell across snow, "to the great hall. There is an announcement."
The command washed through the crowd like a warm wind. Heads bowed. Feet moved. Even Caelion, blinking like a man waking from a failed dream, stumbled into line.
As the current formed, Rose descended two steps, eyes never leaving Rin. Her voice cut through the murmurs, crisp and bright enough to draw every head.
"Cousin," she called, as if she were reminding him of the time. "Let's go."
The word dropped like a stone into a still pond.
Grandson. Cousin. The titles stitched themselves together in the minds watching. A dozen gasps broke late, laughter bubbled at the edges, and Caelion's face went corpse-white with realization. The World Tree spirit bit her knuckle to keep from cackling and failed.
Rin rose from his crouch in one smooth line and fell in alongside Rose with the same unhurried gait he'd used to walk down the stairs. He didn't look back. He didn't need to.
Behind them, whispers pivoted from derision to awe with the speed of hungry birds changing direction.
They entered the great hall to a hum that burned at the edges with anticipation. The principal bowed deep to Seraphina. Sylvan draped herself over a balcony like a sin the architects had decided to accommodate.
The Queen stepped forward, and the hall stilled as if the room itself held its breath.
"In one week of our allied planets' time," Seraphina said, "the Conflux of Crowns will open."
A ripple of energy rolled through the gathered students—both from the words and from the latent mana that responded when the name was spoken aloud. The Conflux—an old name, older than most in the room, whispered at festivals and carved into stone above the academy gates: the interstellar tournament where world trees sent their finest.
"Here in Sylvanyr," she continued, "that gives us longer. But not forever. We will send twenty. You will earn those places. Tests begin tomorrow; a preliminary tournament will follow. Excellence is not requested; it is required."
Her gaze swept the room and, for the briefest flicker, warmed when it passed over Rin. She hid it so quickly only someone who knew her blood would have caught it.
"After this assembly," she finished, "you will register. Your number will reflect your will to stand first."
The hall exhaled as one.
What followed moved like a ritual. Lines formed. Slates glowed. Names burned onto lists like oaths. Rose pressed her palm first—001—because that is what she was in this house: forerunner. Rin followed—002—because he did not need to push to be close.
Behind them, a lagging clatter of pride and fear made itself known. Caelion, nursing a bruised chest and a shredded ego, hovered at the edge of the crowd like a storm cloud that thought it was a mountain.
He shoved forward just enough to be heard. "In the name of Sylvanyr," he declared, planting the words like a flag he hoped might stop his fall, "I will defeat Rin in the tournament."
A handful of his friends—those who'd gotten back on their feet—murmured support. Most students looked elsewhere, the social calculus already written.
Rin didn't turn. "Rose," he said quietly, "what does that actually mean?"
She didn't make him look foolish in front of the hall. She kept her voice low, for him alone. "It's an ancestral vow. If he loses after saying it, he forfeits noble standing and residence in the upper isles. The World Tree reclaims the excess frost his lineage holds and gifts it to the one who proved the right to wield it. It's rarely invoked." She paused. "And rarely wise."
Rin's brow ticked. "So he demotes himself publicly if he fails."
Rose's mouth curved, wry. "He already did. He just hasn't realized it yet."
They stepped aside as the next wave registered. The crowd washed around them, eddies forming where gossip pooled.
Rose tipped her head toward the exit. "We leave. You master your defense tonight. Tomorrow I explain the tests." She let that hang a beat, then added—matter-of-fact, not unkind—"You're strong, Rin. But strength without choice is a cage. The Conflux will chew cages and spit them out."
Rin met her eyes. The frostlight behind his own pulsed once, steady as a vow. "Then I'll break mine."
They walked—two lines of winter through a hall suddenly very interested in their shadows—into a night full of humming bridges and watching stars. The river inside him moved like a tamed thing, ready to turn wherever he pointed.
Behind them, Caelion stood alone with his vow reverberating around him like a bell nobody wanted to hear twice.
Tomorrow, Rin thought, as lantern light scattered across the training terraces outside, I make the armor move before I do.
Codex Record: The Conflux of Crowns
"When world trees whisper, even stars bend to listen." — Fragment, Sylvanyr Archives
The Conflux of Crowns is the oldest and most revered trial among the Elven bloodlines scattered across the cosmos. Once every age, when the currents of mana align beneath the roots of the world trees, each great tree calls forth its finest heirs to compete—not for land, not for treasure, but for rightful recognition of supremacy.
Origins
Ten millennia past, before the fall of the Scriptwriter or the defeat of void, the Conflux was created as a pact of unity. The eldest of the world trees—Sylvanyr, the First Root—declared that Elves across distant worlds would meet in measured combat rather than endless war. Thus the Conflux became both festival and battlefield, a crucible where the best are chosen under the branches of fate.
Structure
Participants: Each world tree may send only twenty. The number is sacred, symbolizing the twenty veins of mana that feed the Eternal Root.
Selection: In Sylvanyr, noble students must pass trials and duels until only twenty remain. To forfeit a duel after invoking Sylvanyr's name is to lose noble status—your frost reclaimed by the World Tree and gifted to the victor.
Stages: The Conflux is fought in escalating rings: first among one's kin, then among the visiting heirs, until the strongest remain. Every duel is watched, recorded, and etched into the living memory of the trees themselves.
Significance
Victory in the Conflux does not merely elevate a fighter. It crowns them as Bearer of a World Tree's Will, a title that bends diplomacy, secures alliances, and can sway the course of interstellar wars. Even the Void once hesitated to challenge those who wore this mantle.
Current Cycle
For Sylvanyr, one week in the outer worlds—a month in elven time—remains before the Conflux begins anew. This age's trials are more than pageantry: whispers speak that the Void stirs again, and that the crowns sought in this tournament may decide not just honor, but survival.