Ard arrived before the door of the classroom he would be teaching.
'That was quite far.'
The moment the door opened, a grand classroom greeted him.
The seats rose in tiered rows toward the back, each row sitting higher than the one before it, as if the entire room ascended along an invisible staircase. It was a room designed so that every pair of eyes would naturally fall on the single point at the very front.
The students were already seated and quiet. Ard stepped inside and made his way to the professor's desk at the center, his back to the large blackboard behind him.
He looked out at them with a calm and steady gaze, carrying an air of quiet superiority. But inside, he let out a long and heavy sigh.
'I want to go home.'
The moment he had walked in and seen them, he already felt tired. Their talents were extraordinary, nearly every single one of them, human and demon and beastman alike.
So what made Ard feel so reluctant?
Because he knew they were not only talented. They were also problematic. He knew this because every single one of them had been his junior during the years he had once spent as a student in this very academy.
---
Meanwhile, inside a different room entirely, a woman sat at a desk buried beneath stacks of documents. Bookshelves lined the walls on every side. A large window sat behind the desk, and the morning light poured through it in wide, warm columns.
Her silver hair caught the light and shimmered faintly.
Another woman entered, green-haired and carrying herself with the air of someone professional. She approached the desk and greeted the seated woman with quiet respect.
"Hmm. Not like you."
"What do you mean?"
"The fact that Rachel came to my office this early. Is that not a little unusual?"
"No. It is perfectly normal. You are simply overthinking it, Headmistress Elisha."
The silver-haired woman turned her chair to face Rachel fully, rising slightly with a smile.
"Am I really that old?"
"You are old."
*Coughs blood.
"You are 413 years old."
*Coughs blood
"You are nothing more than an old grandmother with a smooth face."
*Coughs blood
"...You cruel, Rachel."
"I am only stating facts."
"Could you filter them slightly?"
"That would only distort the facts."
"I am too tired for this. So. About Ard?"
"...I truly cannot hide anything from you."
"It was only a guess. A lucky one~"
The Head of Aetherion Academy, Elisha II. A woman of long-standing legacy and monumental history. She was the one who stood as mediator between the Demon Realm and the Human Realm during the Great War a century ago.
She was also the one who brought equality among all races, dismantling the oppression and discrimination imposed by the dominant race, humanity. Elisha II led a sweeping revolution across the entire world, declaring that they were the same as humans, with only their forms being different.
In those days, slavery had been considered entirely normal among the strong. It was also one of the deepest roots of the endless bloodshed that soaked every continent through generations of racial war.
Elisha II, already serving as Head of the Academy at the time, had grown sick of the smell of blood that followed her everywhere she walked.
She proposed a treaty for all races. Naturally, it did not unfold as smoothly as she had hoped. Even though Elisha offered what she called a gift, peace and the promise of equality, every race regarded her as nothing more than a madwoman. From where each race stood, slavery was simply the natural order. Being told to treat others as equals shocked them. Angered them. To them, it was no different from being told to treat cattle the same as people.
When her words were rejected and mocked, Elisha was left with no choice. She stepped onto the battlefield herself and issued a challenge to every race that refused to see an end to slavery.
Representatives from every race answered.
What followed was a tragedy for all of them. Every representative was slaughtered by Elisha, along with every army they had brought. And so the greatest war in history was carved into the memory of the world, with Elisha at its very center. It was then that she earned the title:
"Arbiter of Silence."
"Kyaa~ how embarrassing!"
Rachel sighed quietly to herself. The world would surely be shocked if it knew that the woman who had slaughtered every racial representative and led a global revolution possessed a personality like this.
She composed herself and continued, her expression returning to seriousness.
"Is it truly alright to place the Young Lord, I mean, Professor Ard in that class?"
"You worry too much."
"Of course I worry." A quiet exhale. "You know what the students in that class are like, do you not?"
Elisha rose from her chair and walked to the large window behind her. Standing there, she looked out. From that height, the entirety of Aetherion Academy spread before her. The swordsmanship training grounds, the Magic Tower, the Alchemy building, the cafeteria, and the students going about their daily lives below.
"Yes. I know."
"Then why assign Professor Ard to teach that class?!"
Rachel's voice rose slightly, carrying both worry and a quiet demand for explanation.
"Rachel, you asked whether I know what those students are like. Very well. Let me ask you the opposite."
"But you still have not answered my question."
"You will find your answer inside mine."
Elisha turned back toward Rachel with a gentle smile, her silver hair glowing against the light. Rachel fell silent and waited.
"Do you know who Ard truly is?"
"Of course I do. He is—"
"No. Not that. Not who he is by identity. But who he is as a person."
"As a person?!"
Rachel jolted, as though struck by a sudden realization. Meanwhile, Elisha walked toward the bookshelves lining the side of the room and took out one of the neatly arranged books, turning its pages with unhurried, graceful fingers.
Ard Le Ventias had once been a student of Aetherion Academy. But he had suffered discrimination, often and without mercy, for one simple truth. He was not the biological child of House Ventias, and he was not human.
Because of this, Ard had been bullied throughout his time at the academy. Countless insults cut into both his heart and his mind. His parents grew so worried that they spoke directly with Elisha. Though Ard was not their blood, he was deeply and genuinely loved by them.
Despite everything he endured, Ard accepted it with quiet composure, because it was simply a fact that he was not human. He responded only with a few calm words that left his tormentors with nothing left to say.
But it was a different matter entirely when the insults turned toward his parents.
Ard showed no mercy to anyone who spoke ill of them. There was even an incident where he beat a professor severely for saying that Duke Ventias must be a fool to raise a child like him. Five internal organs were shattered. Bones were crushed.
Even if Ard was called a demon's child or worse, his talent and intellect stood far above most.
"So there is no need to worry, Rachel," Elisha said, her voice unhurried and calm. "Yes, the students in that class are problematic. But they are also gifted and powerful. Even so, Professor Ard is, how should I put it, someone who does not need to be worried about. Whether they are a noble princess of human supremacists, a racist demon noble, a beastman who despises both races, an elitist elf of the ancient bloodline, a half-blood vampire, or a girl from a persecuted minority carrying wounds she has never spoken aloud. None of them will be a problem for Professor Ard."
Elisha spoke with quiet certainty, her eyes resting on Ard's portrait in the open book she held. Rachel was still not fully convinced. The concern lingered.
But her worry, as it turned out, would prove unnecessary.
---
Back in the classroom.
Cold sweat ran down every student's face. Some had already fainted. The rest sat frozen, unable to look away.
Their eyes were fixed on Ard.
Behind him, two massive eyes had manifested from nothing. A blood-red aura erupted in violent waves. Papers and hair flew as though caught in a storm, yet this was no ordinary wind. It pressed against their lungs. It made breathing feel like a privilege being slowly revoked.
What had happened?
Why was Ard releasing an aura as though he intended to kill his own students?
And somewhere deeper in the academy, past corridors and locked doors and walls that should have been too thick to feel anything through, a single candle on a windowsill flickered without wind and went still.
As though something, somewhere, had just woken up.
* * *