The door to Class F opened with a tired creak.
Dust drifted through the beam of light that slipped past his shoulder, each particle hanging in the air like it didn't want to land.
The room was bigger than it looked from the hall, though that only made the emptiness worse.
Old training mats covered the floor, their edges curled up like pages of a forgotten book.
A cracked mana conduit ran along the wall, pulsing weakly in and out — a heartbeat trying to remember how to beat.
The air smelled faintly of steel polish and something older, something used too often and cleaned too rarely.
Ren stepped inside.
A few other students were already there, scattered across the room in uneven lines, pretending they weren't looking at one another.
Everyone here had failed somewhere — their mana too weak, their control too unstable, their lineage too plain.
You could see it in their posture: shoulders that bent just enough to fit the space.
A woman stood at the front.
Her uniform was pressed, but the sleeves were rolled once past the wrist; her dark hair tied in a no-nonsense knot.
Her face was sharp, her tone sharper.
"I'm Professor Selene Virel," she said. "Congratulations. You've been placed in the Academy's least prestigious class."
No one laughed.
"If you're here, it's because your evaluations were incomplete, inconsistent, or disappointing.
The Academy loves potential, but it loves results more. Your task is to prove that admitting you wasn't a mistake."
Her gaze swept the room, stopping briefly on Ren before moving on.
"You will address me as Professor. You will arrive on time. You will train until I say stop.
Your grades, combat scores, and field performance feed directly into your Merit total. Lose too much, and you're expelled.
Gain enough, and you might crawl out of this basement."
She pressed a button on her wristband.
The wall behind her flickered to life with a projected chart — colored tiers from F to A, and above them ten golden symbols shaped like stars.
"Each division has ranks," she said. "The highest of them are the Ten Stars. You will not meet them.
You will, however, see their shadows every time you check your Merit screen. Let that motivate you."
The chart vanished.
"Gear up. Training begins now."
The weapon racks were bare bones: practice swords, chipped staves, and battered shields stacked without pride.
Ren took a standard longsword — iron, unenchanted, heavier than it should've been.
It wasn't that he preferred simplicity; it was just the only thing that didn't complain when he touched it.
A few students gathered near him, whispering.
He caught his name, the pause that always followed it.
"That's the Ardyn kid."
"Didn't his awakening fail?"
"Why's he even here?"
He didn't respond.
He'd stopped responding years ago.
Professor Virel walked down the line, eyeing their stances.
"Pairs of three. Anchor, Lance, Cover. Basic triad formation."
Ren waited until everyone else had chosen.
When the groups were full, he was left standing alone.
The Professor noticed.
"No partners?"
"None available," he said.
She studied him for a second, then tapped her tablet.
"Fine. Practice solo. Try not to cut through the floor."
The whistle blew.
The others moved in rhythmic trios — a dance of motion and mana, glowing trails marking each strike.
Ren moved without glow or rhythm, his blade drawing silent lines through the air.
Each swing precise, measured, empty of flash.
The lack of mana made every motion harder.
There was no hum to balance the weight, no guiding flow to absorb recoil.
Just steel, muscle, and breath.
He'd grown used to the strain; it was honest.
Sweat gathered beneath his collar.
The sword bit the air again and again until the ache in his shoulders became steady enough to trust.
Across the hall, a loud thud broke rhythm.
A student fell flat, groaning. His teammates snickered. The Professor barked for them to reset.
Ren kept moving — quiet, invisible — the way water moves in the shadow of sound.
When the drills ended, most of the class collapsed onto the benches.
The AEI terminal hummed and projected their results onto the wall.
[Coordination: 63%]
[Team Focus: B-]
[Merit Gained: +3]
Line by line, names filled the screen.
Ren's appeared at the bottom:
[Ardyn, Ren — Triad: N/A — Merit Gained: 0]
The numbers glowed for a few seconds before fading.
He watched them disappear, then unbuckled his gloves and set the sword back on the rack.
"Good form," Professor Virel said as she passed behind him.
The compliment was dry, the kind that could evaporate at any second.
She added, almost to herself,
"If only mana could be taught like discipline."
Ren didn't answer.
He left the hall with the slow pace of someone in no hurry to arrive anywhere.
The corridor beyond was quiet — no cheers, no bright energy leaking from overcharged mana lines like in the higher floors.
Here, the Academy felt old.
His dorm assignment blinked on his wristband: E-317.
The Dormitory E building stood at the edge of campus, where the neat lawns turned to dry ground.
Its glass panels bore hairline fractures that caught light in spider-web glints.
Inside, the hallway smelled of cleaning solvent and nostalgia.
Ren found his room at the far end. The numberplate was missing its last screw.
The room inside was narrow, clean, unkind.
A folding bed, a built-in desk, a shelf, a wardrobe that hummed faintly from the mana line threaded behind it.
One window looked out over the maintenance yard — a rectangle of concrete and machinery humming like it had secrets.
He set his bag down and unpacked the little he had: two uniforms, a faded hoodie, an old paperback whose cover had peeled away, and his issued wristband charger.
No decorations. No family photos. Nothing heavy enough to need remembering.
He sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped politely and offered no comfort.
The hum of the dorm's mana field pressed faintly against his skin, the same itch that had followed him since the day the light broke.
Outside, laughter echoed down the hallway — bright, careless, full of lives that fit the world better than his did.
Ren leaned back, staring at the ceiling.
The cracked paint traced a jagged line above his head, almost like a map of somewhere else.
He closed his eyes.
Everyone here wants to be seen, he thought. I just want to exist without breaking anything.
Down in the Academy's server wing, a technician yawned at her console as data from the day's evaluations streamed by.
One file refused to process cleanly.
Subject: 0917 — Ardyn, Ren
Mana Output: 0.0
Signal Noise: 312%
Classification: Error
She frowned.
"Faulty tag?"
Her supervisor glanced over, squinted, and shook his head.
"Not faulty. Inverted. Leave a note; we'll run it again."
A red marker appeared beside his name, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat that didn't know whether to keep going.
Ren slept with the window half open, the hum of the city bleeding through.
The towers of Aurelius glowed in the distance — tall, alive, unreachable.
Somewhere far above him, a golden star symbol flickered on a leaderboard, bright enough to stain the clouds.
He didn't see it.
He dreamed of silence breaking like glass.