The Refectory was the social crucible of the Arcana Institute, a vast hall where power hierarchies were cemented by who you sat with. Normally, Kael Varis would have ghosted through the periphery, grabbing a ration bar and vanishing before making eye contact with anything more threatening than a spoon.
Today was not normal.
Kael pushed open the heavy oak doors, and the riotous noise of the midday rush—the clang of cutlery, the loud laughter of the elite students, the crackle of stray magic—didn't stop. It seized.
Every head turned. Not in curiosity, but as if yanked by an unseen, physical force.
The Kael who walked in wore the same standard gray tunic, but it now seemed to mold to the lines of a body that had been sculpted overnight. His dark hair, once perpetually messy and dull, fell perfectly across a sharp brow. But it was the presence, the radiating aura of raw, concentrated Mana Core energy, that arrested them all. His old three-unit flicker had been replaced by a silent, gravitational pull. He didn't walk; he commanded the air he moved through.
He saw the faces he recognized instantly:
In the center of the largest table sat Elara Vance, surrounded by her court. She was mid-sentence, her perfect lips paused mid-word, a fork hovering halfway to her mouth. Elara, the queen who never broke composure, suddenly looked brittle. Her usually imperious winter-sky eyes fixed on Kael, a spark igniting in their depths that was less about recognition and more about an instinctive, consuming need. Her composure shattered first. A flush crept from her collar up her neck, and her breath hitched, loud and ragged in the suddenly silent room. She didn't look at his power; she looked at him like he was the only resource left in a dying world. Her fingers clenched, the fork falling unnoticed to the table.
Across the room, at the solitary table reserved for the most serious scholars, sat Sienna Thorne. The intellectual prodigy who valued logic above all else. Sienna, who had never given Kael the courtesy of a second glance, now found her gaze locked. Her arcane scroll, which she always guarded with fierce focus, slid from her grasp. She didn't notice. Her sharp, analytical eyes widened, searching, as if her mind were frantically trying to calculate the source of this illogical, overwhelming stimulus. A tremor ran through her hand, causing a slight ripple of controlled crimson mana to dissipate uselessly in the air. Her focused energy was gone, replaced by a devastating, unexpected weakness centered entirely on Kael.
The effect wasn't limited to the elite. Everywhere Kael's eyes swept—across the tables of apprentices, the senior class, and even the stern-faced instructors—women were frozen in place, their expressions shifting from surprise to a profound, heated yearning. Their bodies seemed to lean into his presence, their hands pressing inadvertently against their chests.
Kael walked straight to the ration counter. It was a simple, mundane act, but as he approached, the two female student servers—who had been bored and listless moments before—stood up straighter, their cheeks blooming with color.
"What would you like?" one of them managed, but her voice cracked, her eyes wide and dark.
Kael, still adjusting to the sheer noise of his own presence, simply said, "Just the standard meal, please."
His voice, no longer a meek whisper, was now a deep, resonant rumble, charged with a faint, intoxicating undercurrent of raw power. It hit the room like a physical shockwave.
Elara gasped, pushing away from her table. She had to get closer.
Sienna stood up, knocking her chair backward with a clatter that no one even registered. Her rational mind screamed at the overwhelming pull, but her body was already moving.
Kael took his meal. He turned, looking for an empty spot, and found only a hundred pairs of eyes fixated on him. He was the sun, and they were planets, suddenly locked into his orbit, unable to look away, desperately wanting to be consumed by his light.