The bell marked the end of training. The field shimmered back into steel and glass, erasing every scar of battle.
"Dismissed," Miazaka Sayuri said. "Tomorrow, classes begin in full. Remember — your choices shape more than yourself."
The students scattered, their voices loud with new rivalry and fresh pride.
---
The Academy's campus stretched like a city within walls. Towering dormitories, stone courtyards, training domes, lecture halls, and gardens threaded together by silent trams. Every student could choose — stay in the dorms, living inside the school's heart, or return to family homes beyond the walls.
Most chose the dorms. Power carried prestige, and prestige thrived under watchful eyes.
Aoi packed her things neatly. "Renka, are you sure you're staying here? You could come back with me. My house isn't far."
Renka only laughed, biting into another square of dark chocolate. "And miss the midnight snack raids in the dorm kitchens? No way."
Aoi sighed but smiled. She knew him too well — or thought she did.
---
The boys' dormitory was a towering block of white stone and glass, its lobby filled with chatter. Students compared powers, argued loudly, forged alliances that would likely shatter within weeks.
Renka stumbled through the hall with exaggerated clumsiness, bumping shoulders, laughing it off. He was quick to hand out sweets, quick to grin, quick to make friends.
"Renka, you're too easy," Kanzaki Toma scoffed as lightning flickered across his fingertips. "You'll get walked over."
"Then I'll just walk back," Renka answered with a grin, pretending to trip on his own foot. The room laughed. Even Kanzaki smirked.
---
But when night fell, laughter faded. The dorms grew quiet.
Renka lay on his bed, curtains drawn. A half-eaten bar of chocolate sat by his hand.
In his other hand, a crystal heart pulsed faintly. He had taken it earlier in the day, just a fragment of Yui's warmth, drawn while she smiled at him. He rolled it between his fingers, black light glimmering.
He could eat it, crush it, keep it.
Tonight, he saved it.
The Academy thought it trained students to master themselves.
But Renka knew the truth.
He wasn't mastering anything.
He was feeding the darkness.
---
Next day, life began in earnest. Classrooms opened, schedules filled:
Ability Theory, with old instructors droning about elemental resonance.
Combat Studies, where Sayuri's sharp eyes never blinked.
History of Awakening, reciting centuries of chaos and law.
Practical Survival, the most feared subject, taught in forests and ruins outside the walls.
Friendships deepened, rivalries sharpened. Aoi quickly rose as a leader among the class. Renka, cheerful and clumsy, floated in the middle, liked by all, distrusted by none.
No one saw the shadows he carried back to his dorm each night.