Aiden Crest walked into the Great Hall at 7:15 AM on a Monday morning and sat at the villain's table.
The Great Hall didn't gasp. Three thousand people don't gasp simultaneously — the physiology doesn't support it. What they did was worse: they went quiet. Not silent — the ambient noise of eating and conversation continued — but the volume dropped by approximately forty percent as the brain of every student within visual range attempted to process the image of the academy's most famous commoner, the boy who'd beaten the Valdrake heir in the entrance exam, sitting down beside the Valdrake heir's swordswoman girlfriend and across from the Seraphel saintess.
At the villain's table.
With thirteen other people.
