Arthur looked down at the unbroken crimson wax. It bore the heavy, crossed-staves crest of the Academy's governing operational body.
His Autonomic Merged Processor instantly fetched the temporal data. Two days. Precisely forty-eight hours until the dawn of the second academic year. A fragmented memory surfaced—the phantom sensation of his thirteen-year-old hands trembling as he tore open his initial acceptance letter last year, flooded with a naive, suffocating excitement.
He seamlessly buried the useless nostalgic friction.
Arthur reached out, his pale fingers brushing the heavy parchment. "What time are we expected to arrive?"
Sinclair leaned back in his high-backed chair. The warm, golden sunlight caught the edges of his sandy hair, casting half his face in soft shadow. "Not 'we,' Cedric. You. I will not be accompanying you."
Arthur's hand stopped moving. His amber eyes flicked up to meet Sinclair's honey-colored gaze.
The silence in the room thickened, drowning out the faint scent of dried peppermint. Arthur immediately mapped the architecture of the Education Board's tribunal room—the towering, shadowed vertical walls, the suspended wooden arrowhead platform designed to psychologically crush the accused beneath the gaze of the delegates.
He ran the historical data. He had faced the Board twice before. Both interactions had been catastrophic failures of his own design. The first time, he had been granted an extension only through Alaric Ordain's silent, heavy-handed interference. The second time, he had been moments away from a formal expulsion sentence, surviving solely because Sinclair himself had burst through the iron doors to systematically dismantle the Board Delegate with a brutal administrative audit.
Why sever the shield now? Arthur calculated, his heart rate remaining entirely flat despite the tactical anomaly. Has he concluded that my cost outweighs my utility? Is he throwing me out?
Arthur's gaze dropped to his left forearm, concealed beneath his crisp uniform sleeve. The phantom weight of the seven jet-black rings anchored him. He possessed the God-rank alchemical catalyst. He commanded a genuine Emperor-tier blessing. He operated with a frictionless, highly optimized cognitive engine that Sinclair had personally engineered to cure his inattentional blindness.
No, Arthur concluded, a mask of polite, absolute calm settling over his features. Even by the most ruthless, conservative estimations of my value, my tactical yield is far too high for him to simply discard. Sinclair's logic is omniscient. He knows exactly what he is doing. If he is sending me into the Vertical Chamber alone, it is because my presence there without him serves a specific, structural purpose.
Arthur picked up the sealed parchment, tucking it smoothly into his breast pocket. He offered Sinclair a gentle, flawlessly practiced smile.
"Understood," Arthur said, his voice a picture of harmless obedience. "I will handle them."
Arthur pushed open the heavy iron doors of the Academic Board's Vertical Chamber.
Instead of the oppressive, psychological gloom he had mapped out, a blinding, sterile luminescence flooded the cylindrical room. The shadows were completely eradicated, exposing the cold, meticulously scrubbed masonry of the walls.
Five towering, wooden arrowhead platforms hovered suspended in the airspace above the floor.
Arthur's amber eyes swept the assembly without a microsecond of hesitation. Head Instructor Clive sat on the far-left platform, his cane resting stoically against his knee. The adjacent pedestals were occupied by the veteran faces of the Second and Fourth-Year Head Instructors he had caught glimpses of over the past year. On the far right, occupying the space where Vigo had once governed, sat an unfamiliar instructor draped in pristine Academy regalia.
But it was the central pedestal that commanded Arthur's attention.
Occupying the space of the disgraced delegate was a woman he had never seen before. She sat with a relaxed, almost regal posture that entirely defied the rigid, punitive tension of the chamber.
She leaned forward, lacing her fingers together over the polished wooden railing.
"I am Regia Agellid, the newly and formally appointed Headmaster of this Academy," she declared, her voice carrying a calm, commanding resonance that effortlessly filled the vast room.
The phonetic sequence registered. Arthur's Autonomic Merged Processor instantly accessed the Inferior Archives' geographical and political indices: Regia Agellid. Former councilmember of the Manderjik Federation, representing one of its twelve independent provinces. A direct descendant of the royal Agellid dynasty from the Western Plains. Distinguished Emperor-rank mage and premier researcher at the Central Mage Tower.
Her gaze softened slightly as it settled on Arthur. "I must begin by apologizing for how you were treated under the previous, unofficial administration. The Delegate you faced before was merely sent to ensure the Academy's operational continuity in Headmaster Drevayne's absence, and to handle our rapidly shifting finances. He overstepped."
Arthur maintained his flawless, polite smile, maintaining who he had to be while his mind rapidly cataloged the shift in administrative power dynamics.
Regia sighed, a wry, distinctly human smile breaking her formal facade. "However, because of William's little theatrical stunt in this very room two months ago, your case regarding the subterranean laboratory was never formally settled."
Arthur caught the specific phonetic execution. William. She spoke Sinclair's first name with a highly informal, casual familiarity, entirely bypassing his surname or student rank. The map of Sinclair's vast network immediately expanded in Arthur's mind.
"While the Academy has certainly failed you, your involvement in illegal Black Magic experiments cannot go entirely unanswered, Cedric," Regia stated, her tone firming into an authoritative absolute. "Your mandated punishment will be the direct mentorship of a new student."
Before Arthur could process a vocal response, a set of heavy side doors unlatched at the base of the chamber.
A boy stepped onto the floor.
Arthur's eyes snapped to the figure. He wore pristine, immaculate white cotton robes. An untamed halo of fluffy, pure-white hair framed his head, but it was the boy's striking crimson eyes that instantly triggered Arthur's threat-assessment protocols. The boy possessed a terrifying lack of malice or deceit—an aura of pure, impenetrable serenity.
The boy looked up at the suspended platforms, then turned to Arthur, offering a blinding, entirely innocent smile.
"My name is Cyril Celestine," the boy declared, his voice bright and unburdened by the crushing gravity of the room. "I'll be in your care from now on, mentor!"