Chapter Ten
The Sacred Gear Rankings
"There are seventeen known Sacred Gear users at Kurenai Academy. As of this morning, the most dangerous one is in my homeroom."
The list appeared on a Monday.
Posted on the school's supernatural registry board, a corkboard in the east corridor that most students walked past without knowing what it was.
Mira found it first.
She found Kaito four minutes later, at his shoe locker, and grabbed his arm without speaking.
Pulled him down the corridor.
Pointed.
The board was titled, in small official script:
KURENAI ACADEMY · REGISTERED SACRED GEAR WIELDERS · CURRENT RANKING
Seventeen names. Ranked by assessed threat level. Each entry listed the Gear, the class, the faction affiliation.
Kaito read down the list.
Number seventeen: a first-year girl. Gear: Twilight Healing. Threat level: Low.
Number ten: a third-year boy he recognized from the kendo club. Gear: Sword Birth. Threat level: Mid-High.
Number two: a name he didn't recognize. Gear: [REDACTED]. Threat level: Extreme.
Number one.
He stopped reading.
Number one was him.
RYUSEI, KAITO · Class 3-A · Affiliation: House Valcrest · Sacred Gear: Void Sovereign · Threat Level: UNCLASSIFIED
UNCLASSIFIED.
Not Low. Not High. Not Extreme.
Unclassified. Like they'd started to fill in the box and then stopped.
"When did this go up?" Kaito said.
"This morning," Mira said. "The whole school's seen it by now."
He turned around.
The corridor behind him had gone quiet.
Students were watching. Not the loud, pointing kind of watching. The specific stillness of people reassessing something. Like a room that has just noticed it's standing next to something it doesn't have a category for.
A girl across the hall looked at him, then quickly away.
Two boys from second year stepped back slightly as he turned.
Fear. Small, instinctive. Real.
He'd never had that before.
"Unclassified," he said.
"Nobody's ever seen a Void Sovereign in active use," Mira said quietly. "The registrars don't know how to rate it. So they left it blank."
A blank box on a list of seventeen.
The most dangerous thing on the board, because at least the others had numbers.
"Kaito." Mira's voice had changed slightly. Serious under the warmth. "Number two. The redacted one."
"Yeah."
"That's Caius Aldren. Third-year. He's been ranked first for two years running." She paused. "You just took his spot."
Kaito looked at name number two on the list.
Gear redacted. Threat level: Extreme.
Someone had been number one for two years and had just been pushed to second by a boy who'd been a devil for two weeks.
"Is that a problem?" Kaito said.
Mira opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Looked at something behind him.
Kaito turned.
A boy stood at the end of the corridor. Third-year. Tall, sharp-featured, silver-streaked hair, the kind that happened when a Sacred Gear started changing you from the inside. The uniform immaculate. Eyes like grey winter sky.
He was looking directly at Kaito.
Not with hostility.
Not with fear.
With the calm, specific curiosity of someone who has just found something worth their time.
The boy's mouth curved, small, precise, and he turned and walked away without a word.
The corridor exhaled.
"That was him," Mira said. "That was Caius."
Kaito stared at the empty space the boy had occupied.
The Void Sovereign pulsed once. Deep. Responding to something.
Not threat.
Recognition.
Like one predator seeing another for the first time.
He had the sudden, cold certainty that this was not the last time Caius Aldren would look at him like that.
He was right.
End of Chapter Ten.