THE FIRST GATE.
Sunlight glinted off the chrome and glass of the Hero Academy's main examination dome, a structure so vast it seemed to hold up the sky. Its polished surface reflected a distorted image of the clouds, making it look like a piece of the heavens had fallen to earth.
Thousands of applicants swarmed its base. A river of nervous energy, ambition, and fear flowed through the massive entrance doors. Kael saw kids in slick, branded training gear laughing with their friends, and lone figures with hard eyes who looked like they'd fought for every scrap they had. The sheer diversity of power and privilege was dizzying.
Kael was just a drop in that river.
He felt the forge inside him, the memory of the hole in the wall, his secret weapon. But standing here, surrounded by the best and brightest, it felt like a single, tiny ember in a raging wildfire.
The inside of the dome was even more overwhelming. A colossal auditorium that swept upwards, tier after tier, filled with an ocean of faces. Holographic banners of the world's top heroes hung in the air, their stoic faces looking down on the hopefuls. The air was thick with the murmur of a thousand conversations, a low hum of anxiety and boasting.
KA-THUMP. KA-THUMP.
Kael could feel his own heart beating a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
Then, he saw him.
Ren.
He wasn't walking through the crowd. The crowd was parting for him, an invisible wave of deference. He moved with an effortless grace, flanked by a group of equally confident applicants from other elite schools. They laughed at something he said, their admiration obvious and absolute.
He was a sun, and they were just planets caught in his orbit.
Ren's eyes swept across the room, a king surveying his domain. For a terrifying second, his gaze locked with Kael's. There was no recognition. Just a brief, dismissive glance before moving on, as if looking at a piece of furniture.
Kael was just part of the scenery. Insignificant.
He clutched the strap of his worn bag, the worn fabric a comforting anchor in this sea of polished confidence. He found his assigned section, a dizzyingly high tier that made the proctors on the stage below look like ants.
SCRAPE.
The sound of his chair pulling out was lost in the noise.
He sat down, his hands trembling slightly. He placed them on the cool, smooth surface of the desk.
"This is it," he whispered to himself, the words a fragile shield against the crushing weight of the moment. "The first step."
—--
The air crackled with nervous energy, thick with the scent of ozone and expensive cologne.
Before the proctors signaled the start, the auditorium was a hotbed of last-minute posturing and psychological warfare. The students from elite schools had naturally formed clusters, creating invisible walls that separated them from the rest.
To Kael's left, a girl with hair like spun fire was showing her friends a glowing orb of plasma dancing on her fingertips.
"My private tutor, the pro hero Ignis, taught me this focusing technique," she boasted, her voice carrying. "He said my thermal control is already at a B-Rank level. This written stuff is just a formality."
Behind him, a boy with a jawline sharp enough to cut glass was talking about his prep school.
"At Crestwood Academy, we've been running simulations of this exam for two years. The moral dilemmas are all based on classic heroic doctrine. It's a formality for us. It's the Gauntlet where we'll really shine."
It was a language of privilege. A world of private tutors, advanced training, and expensive schools. A world Kael had only ever seen on news broadcasts, a world that felt as distant as the moon.
He felt a familiar pang of inadequacy, a cold knot tightening in his stomach. His training was a cracked wall and a stubborn refusal to give up. His tutor was failure. His prep school was the unforgiving streets of the Outer Districts.
A sneering voice cut through the noise from a row below. "Can you believe they let in scholarship cases from the Outer Districts? It just lowers the standard for everyone. They don't have the proper educational foundation."
"I heard they have a quota to fill," another voice replied with a laugh. "Makes the Academy look charitable. They'll all be weeded out by the end of today."
The words weren't aimed at him directly, but they might as well have been branded on his skin. He was a scholarship case. He was from the Outer Districts. He was the person they were talking about.
He lowered his head, his gaze falling on the cheap, disposable pen provided on his desk.
His grip tightened.
CLICK.
The sound of the pen's nib extending was sharp, definitive in his small space.
He felt the sting of their prejudice, the casual cruelty of their assumptions. But beneath it, the fire in his forge burned hotter. This wasn't just about his dream anymore. It was about proving that a person's worth wasn't determined by their postal code.
He was here for a reason. He had earned this seat, same as them.
—--
A sharp, amplified voice echoed through the dome, cutting through the thick atmosphere like a blade.
"ALL APPLICANTS, BE SEATED. THE WRITTEN EXAMINATION IS ABOUT TO BEGIN."
A sudden, dramatic hush fell over the thousands of candidates. The nervous chatter died instantly, replaced by a tense, collective intake of breath that seemed to suck the very air out of the room.
Dozens of proctors, all active pro heroes in severe, formal uniforms, moved through the aisles with silent, intimidating efficiency. Their faces were stone, their eyes missing nothing. One of them, a hero known for his sonic abilities, seemed to make the air vibrate with his passing.
They placed a thick booklet, sealed with the Academy's holographic crest, facedown on every desk.
Kael's heart hammered. He stared at the blank cover, at the shimmering, unbreakable seal. Everything he had fought for, everything he had endured, came down to this moment, this piece of paper.
The head proctor, a stern-faced woman with a scar that bisected her left eye, stood at the main podium. She radiated an aura of absolute authority. Kael recognized her as the pro hero 'Warden'.
Her voice was cold, sharp, and absolute.
"You have ninety minutes. There will be no questions. There will be no leaving your seat. Anyone caught using their Evolve in any capacity—be it for light, information, or communication—will be immediately disqualified and permanently barred from all future exams. We will know."
Her eyes, one grey and one cybernetic red, seemed to scan every single face in the auditorium at once.
"Begin."
RIIIIIP.
The sound of thousands of seals being broken at once was like a tearing fabric, the sound of fate being unsealed.
Kael turned his booklet over.
His stomach dropped into a frozen void.
The page was a blur of complex diagrams and dense text. The questions weren't about history or science, not in the way he'd studied. They were designed to break you.
Question 1: The 'Shifting Trolley' Dilemma. An unmanned high-speed train is about to hit five civilians tied to the track. You are on a bridge overhead next to a known, unrepentant villain of immense size. Pushing the villain onto the track will stop the train and save the five civilians, but you would be directly responsible for a death. Do you push the villain? Explain your reasoning in terms of the Heroic Code, Section 4, Paragraph B.
Question 7: Logic Puzzle. You are trapped in a room with three pro heroes: one who always tells the truth, one who always lies, and one who answers randomly. You may ask two questions to determine which one is the Truth-Teller to get directions to the exit. What are your questions?
The confident applicants around him were already writing, their pens flying across the page with practiced ease.
Kael just stared. Blankly. The words swam before his eyes, mocking him.
Panic, cold and sharp, began to rise in his throat, choking him. The room felt like it was tilting.
"I don't know any of this," he thought, his blood running cold. "I don't belong here."
—--
Ten minutes passed. It felt like an hour carved out of his life with a dull knife.
Kael's page was still blank. A pristine, white monument to his failure.
He tried to answer the first question the conventional way. He wracked his brain, trying to claw back the exact wording of the Heroic Code he'd memorized from old, library-loaned textbooks.
"Section 4, Paragraph B… something about the sanctity of life… but not at the cost of one's own morality? Or was it about proportional response?"
It was a useless, fuzzy memory, a ghost of a fact he couldn't grasp. The privileged kids had probably drilled the code with holographic simulators until it was second nature. To him, it was just words on a page he'd read by fading light.
His inner monologue was a rising tide of self-doubt, drowning him.
"You're a fraud.""You shouldn't have come.""Ren was right. This world isn't for you."
He could feel the smirk of the boy behind him without even looking. He could feel the weight of thousands of pens scribbling, a constant, scratching reminder of how far behind he was.
He moved on, his eyes desperately scanning the page, hoping for an easier question, a lifeline.
Question 12: A high-rise building is on fire. Inside are ten civilians and one of the Academy's top research scientists, who holds the cure for a deadly plague. You have time to either save the ten civilians or the one scientist. Heroic protocol dictates saving the greatest number of lives. Do you follow protocol? Justify your choice.
The question hit him like a physical blow.
It wasn't a riddle. It wasn't a logic puzzle. It was the alleyway. It was the mugging. It was the choice to step in when he was weak and terrified because a person was in trouble.
He saw the face of the woman he saved, her wide, terrified eyes. He remembered the feeling of his own fear, a cold, hard knot in his gut, and the feeling of pushing past it.
He thought about the textbook answer. "Follow protocol. Save the ten. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one." It was simple. Logical. Cold. It was an answer a machine would give.
And it felt completely, utterly wrong.
A hero wasn't a calculator. A hero didn't weigh lives on a scale.
A hero saved people. The people right in front of them.
He took a deep, shuddering breath, the panic finally receding, replaced by a strange, sudden clarity. The noise of the other pens faded away.
He couldn't answer these questions like they could. He hadn't lived their life. He hadn't had their training.
Trying to imitate them was a guaranteed path to failure.
He shook his head, a small, defiant gesture.
"No."
The thought was a thunderclap in the quiet of his mind.
"I'll answer it my way."
—--
He picked up his pen. The cheap plastic felt solid and real in his hand.
And he began to write.
On the question about the villain on the bridge, he ignored the Heroic Code. He wrote about what he would do.
Answer: I would not push the villain. A hero's job is to save people, not to decide who lives and who dies. Pushing him makes me a killer, just like him. It means he wins. Instead, I would use my Evolve—my light—to create a flash bright enough to get the attention of the train's conductor or trigger its automated safety sensors. I would aim it at the civilians to make them a more visible hazard. There is always another option besides killing. A hero's first job is to find it, even if it's harder.
He moved to the question about the fire, his pen barely pausing.
Answer: I would save the person I could get to first. A life is a life. It is not my place to decide if a scientist is worth more than a baker, a mother, or a child. If I start making those calculations, I stop being a hero and start being a politician. My duty is to the person I can save, right here, right now. I would save them, and then I would go back into the fire for the others. I would keep going back until I saved everyone or the fire took me, too. That is the protocol I would follow.
His pen moved faster now, a furious scrawl across the page. He didn't hesitate. He didn't second-guess.
He answered the logic puzzle not with abstract variables, but with personality. "I'd ask the first hero, 'If I were to ask you if this door is the exit, would you say yes?' The liar is forced to lie about his lie, giving a true answer. The truth-teller gives a true answer. The random one is a gamble, but two out of three gives me the best odds of survival. Heroes have to play the odds."
He wrote from the heart. He wrote from experience. He wrote about the lessons learned in back alleys and on the streets of the Outer Districts, not in the sterile classrooms of a prep school.
The girl with the fire-hair glanced over at his paper, her eyes widening slightly at the sheer volume of his writing on a single question. A smirk touched her lips.
He was writing an essay for a multiple-choice world. He was clearly failing.
Kael didn't notice. He was in a world of his own, the words pouring out of him.
For the first time since entering the dome, he didn't feel like an imposter. He didn't feel weak or out of place.
He felt like himself.
And for the first time, he thought that maybe, just maybe, that was enough. A flicker of pride, small but warm, ignited in his chest.
—--
"PENS DOWN."
The proctor's voice boomed, sharp and final, a gavel falling on hundreds of dreams.
The synchronized CLACK of thousands of pens hitting desks echoed in the sudden silence.
The exam was over.
A collective sigh of relief and exhaustion washed over the auditorium. Kael slumped in his chair, his writing hand cramping, his mind a drained, empty space. The adrenaline that had fueled him vanished, leaving behind a bone-deep weariness.
He had written on every single question. He had filled pages with his strange, unorthodox logic. He felt a profound sense of relief, but it was tangled with a deep, gnawing uncertainty.
"Was I just wasting my time? Did I just fail in the most spectacular way possible?"
The proctors moved through the aisles again, collecting the test booklets with grim efficiency. The tension in the hall returned, thicker than before. This was it. The moment of judgment.
The papers were stacked on a trolley and wheeled to a long table at the front, where a panel of senior examiners sat. One of them, a gaunt man with tired, intelligent eyes, was the same observer who had been on the rooftop the night before. His name was Proctor Elara, a man known for his razor-sharp intellect and disdain for convention.
He began flipping through a booklet from the top of the pile, his expression bored. His eyes scanned the neat, concise, and utterly predictable answers.
Standard. Standard. Textbook. All correct. All passionless.
He sighed, already weary. "Another year of robots."
He picked up another booklet, this one from Kael's section. He opened it.
And he paused.
His eyes, which had been glazing over, sharpened. He read the first answer. Then he read it again, a flicker of something unreadable in his gaze.
He slowly leaned forward, his posture shifting from languid disinterest to sharp focus. He was no longer skimming. He was absorbing.
He turned the page. He read Kael's answer to the fire dilemma.
A GHOST OF A SMILE played on his lips. It was small. Fleeting. But it was there. It was the smile of someone who had found something unexpected, something real.
The other examiners continued their work, oblivious. But this one man remained captivated, his fingers tracing the passionate, slightly messy handwriting on the page as if it were a map to a new world.
Kael, high up in the stands, pushed his chair back and stood on weak legs. He was just one face in a sea of thousands leaving the hall, exhausted, anonymous, and utterly unaware that he had just caught the eye of someone who mattered.
The examiner watched the stream of applicants depart.
He closed Kael's booklet, a thoughtful, intrigued expression on his face.
He tapped a single finger on the cover, on the applicant number.
"Interesting…" he murmured to the quiet hall. "Very interesting indeed."
—--
End of Chapter 6