The line for the Qualifier wasn't a line. It was a brawl.
It spilled out of the Pre-Trial Plaza, a gray, wind-blasted square of stone that sat on the border between The Dregs and the "civilized" part of the city. The plaza was designed to make us feel small. Giant, blocky statues of old, dead Valerius men stared down with blank stone eyes, judging the desperate, shoving mob that had gathered at their feet.
I'd put on my "best" clothes, which meant my one coat that had the fewest holes and boots I'd re-soled myself with a stolen scrap of rubber. It didn't matter. The moment I joined the crowd, I was just another piece of trash, fighting for a chance to be slightly less trashed.
"Ugh, what's that smell?"
The voice was high, nasal, and dripping with a disgust that was practiced. I turned. Three boys, barely my age, were staring at me. Their clothes were a dull, uniform gray, not the fine, tailored blacks of the high elites, but clean. They had leather shoes. They had washed their hair.
Low-elites. Kids from merchant families, the ones with a tiny trickle of magic, enough to light a candle or fix a broken cup, who thought it made them kings.
"It's the slag heap," one of them sneered, not even trying to lower his voice. "I think one of the rats crawled out."
I met his gaze. My hand instinctively went to the knife I kept in my boot. Don't. Not here. Getting arrested would end this before it even started.
I turned my back to them, my shoulders high, and focused on the table. It was a hundred yards away, a tiny island of order with a black Aethelgard banner hanging behind it.
The crowd surged, a single, many-limbed animal. Someone's elbow caught me in the ribs, and I gasped, stumbling.
"Move it, Dreg-girl!" a woman with a hard face hissed, shoving me aside.
I shoved her back, harder, regaining my footing. "You first."
This was the Qualifier. Not even the tournament, just the chance to maybe get into the tournament. And it was already a war. I saw people crying, their faces streaked with soot and tears. I saw a man fall and get trampled, his hands reaching, before he was swallowed by the sea of feet.
A cold, sick feeling washed over me. What was I doing here?
These people were desperate, but I could see the tiny glimmers of their magic. A woman's fingers sparked as she pushed. A man's boots had a faint, glowing rune on them for stability. They had something.
I had... what?
The dark, chaotic wrongness inside me.
The first time it happened, I was seven. A merchant had grabbed Elara's arm, accusing her of stealing a piece of fruit. He hadn't just grabbed her; he'd shaken her. The fear and the rage had been so hot, so fast, I hadn't even thought. I just willed him to let go.
And he had. Because the wooden crate of apples he was leaning on had... frayed.
It hadn't broken. It hadn't shattered. The edges had just turned to dust. The wood had un-become, unraveling like a cheap sweater, spilling rotten fruit all over his feet. He'd looked at the "broken" crate, then at me, and his face had gone white. He'd let Elara go.
I'd run, dragging her with me, and I'd never felt so terrified in my life.
It wasn't Aether. Aether creates. It builds. It shines. Elara told me that in the one year of "public" school she'd gotten, they'd taught her that magic, Animus, was the "breath of the world."
Mine wasn't breath. Mine was a void. It was unraveling. It was Anima. It was the thing the elite priests warned about in their street-corner sermons. The magic of "chaos," "decay," and "unmaking."
The magic of monsters.
I can't do this, I thought, my feet freezing to the stone. The crowd shoved past me, but I was stuck. I can't. What if I get in? What if they see? What if I lose control in front of them all?
They wouldn't just kick me out. They would end me.
"Anya..."
I flinched, spinning around, but there was no one. It was just the wind.
No. It was a memory. Elara.
I squeezed my eyes shut, right there in the middle of the shoving, roaring crowd. I saw her face from this morning. I'd been checking her blankets, and she'd stirred, her eyes barely opening.
"You're warm," she'd whispered, her voice paper-thin. She'd tried to smile. "Stay..."
Her smile. It was so weak. It was fading. She was fading. The waste was taking her, piece by piece, and I was just... watching.
The fear of my magic was real. It was a cold, sharp blade in my gut.
But the thought of Elara's smile disappearing forever? That was a mountain of ice, crushing my lungs.
The fear for my sister, it was just... bigger. It was bigger than my fear of them. It was bigger than my fear of myself.
My eyes snapped open. The low-elite boy who had mocked me was in my way, trying to cut in front of me.
"I told you, rat," he sneered, planting a hand on my chest. "Go home."
I didn't say a word. I didn't reach for my knife. I just grabbed his wrist.
He was half a foot taller than me and had at least thirty pounds of muscle. But I was from The Dregs. I knew how to break things. I twisted his wrist down and in, using his own momentum against him, and drove my knee into his side.
He let out a strangled oof! and buckled, more from surprise than pain.
In that one second of chaos, I dove through the gap he'd left. I was a snake, a rat, a shadow. I was whatever I needed to be. I slammed my hands on the registration table, gasping for breath.
The crowd roared behind me, a faceless monster. But in front of me, it was quiet.
A man sat at the table. He was a "Trial-Scrivener," his black robes marked with a silver sigil of the college. He looked like he was carved from a block of old, gray ice. He didn't look up.
"Name," he said. His voice was bored. He'd said that word a thousand times today.
"Anya Rostova." My voice was shaky, but I made it loud.
He dipped his quill in an inkwell. "House?"
"None."
He looked up at that, his eyes, pale, cold gray, raking over me. He saw the worn coat, the soot on my cheek, the desperation. A flicker of something, disgust? amusement?, passed over his face.
"Affiliation?"
"The Dregs."
He made a small "hm" sound and wrote it down. "Magical discipline?"
My heart stopped. This was it. I couldn't say "Void." He'd call the guards. I couldn't say "Aether." He'd laugh in my face.
I remembered the old word. The one from the banned books I'd found in a burnt-out library. The word that meant everything else.
"Anima," I said.
He paused. His eyes narrowed. "Anima," he repeated, tasting the word. It was an old-fashioned, almost peasant word for magic. It wasn't the clean, academic "Animus" of the elites. It was a "soul-magic" word. A word that could mean anything. A word that was, technically, true.
He clearly decided it was just another word for "weak."
He shrugged. He stamped my paper with a heavy, final thud.
"Qualifier Trial is tomorrow. Dawn. Here. Don't be late," he droned, already looking past me. "Next!"
He shoved the paper into my hand. I stared at it. A single sheet, with my name and a black, official-looking stamp.
It was real.
I clutched the paper and let the crowd spit me out the other side. I was shaking. I was terrified.
But I was in.