The transmission shattered across the screens with a fierce, deafening bang that echoed through the halls, and immediately after, an oppressive, dead silence fell over the immensely tall spaces of Thung Zu.
Lord Zu remained rooted to the marble landing like a stake. He still held his heavy staff, inlaid with black crystals, stiffly aloft, but the dark flame at its peak slowly flickered out. Only a thick, foul-smelling plume of smoke remained, curling lazily upward along the vaults. The Deans on the balustrades broke into a cold sweat as they watched. Not a single person dared to catch a breath. The only thing breaking the icy silence was the erratic, nervous ticking of faltering frequencies in the background.
“THEY’RE ONTO US!!”
Lord Zu’s voice slammed through the hall like a destructive shockwave. This was no ordinary shouting; the pure, pent-up magic behind his voice made the university’s massive stone support beams creak audibly. A visible, purple-black ripple in the air slammed against the walls and hit the chests of the thousands of students deep in the combat pit like a physical hammer. A few first-years instantly doubled over, clutching their ears and letting out pleading cries as their eardrums nearly ruptured.
“THE SPIES ARE DESTROYED!” he roared, his eyes glowing fiercely within the darkness of his hood. “EVERY SECOND YOU WASTED HERE WITH YOUR PATHETIC FIGHTS, THEY WERE ALREADY ONE STEP AHEAD OF US!”
He rammed his heavy staff onto the stone tiles with a dull, devastating crash. The marble floor beneath his feet instantly cracked into a spiderweb of deep, black fissures. Lord Zu turned abruptly and began pacing across the landing with rapid, restless strides. His razor-sharp pupils stared intently at the empty, black projections hanging lifelessly in the air. His jaw was clamped so tightly that his cheekbones turned completely pale. Then he began muttering under his breath, completely lost in the dark current of his own thoughts.
“What kind of masterminds are we dealing with here, for God’s sake…?” Lord Zu murmured, his voice now shifted into a low, dangerous vibration that crawled across the landing like a toxic mist. “They saw the subtle phase deflection of my spy entities within a fraction of a second… No hesitation whatsoever. No prior warning. Just a ruthless, laser-focused execution strike on our frequencies. They were playing with us… They knew from the very first moment we were watching…”
He froze mid-step, clenched his gnarled fist until his knuckles bled white, and stared down into the depth of the hall with a look of cold madness.
“From this exact second: TRAIN!” he screamed, his voice cracking with raw, uncontrolled power. “Train until the enamel on your teeth cracks! Train until the floor is soaked with your own sweat and the warm blood of your comrades! BREAK YOUR LIMITS, OR I WILL BREAK YOU WITH MY OWN HANDS!”
A raw, fanatical, almost insane roar erupted from the ranks of Thung Zu. The paralyzing fear of Lord Zu flipped within a single heartbeat into a surge of absolute, ruthless bloodlust. In the combat pit below, the students lunged at each other once more, this time with a merciless, bloody intensity that painted the marble red.
On the other side of the dimension, upon the sun-drenched, tranquil training fields of the Ward Academy, a soft, warm summer breeze blew through the golden leaves of ancient trees. The snow-white marble of the pathways gleamed brightly in the afternoon sun, and the air smelled of crisp mountain breeze, fresh blossoms, and the subtle scent of sun-warmed wooden training gear.
And at that exact, idyllic spot, a hard, wooden splintering crack shattered the serenity into a thousand pieces.
BAM!
The massive, reinforced wooden arm of the heaviest training dummy on the field was violently severed from its torso by a brutal, spinning hook kick. The thick oak splintered with a sound like a gunshot, as if it were nothing more than brittle matchwood. Miki floated weightlessly through the warm air for a fraction of a second before landing on the tips of her toes with a light, almost feline grace. The heavy block of wood slammed onto the ground with a dull, repulsive thud, crushing the already pulverized, smoking remains of Thung Zu’s magical spy beetle underneath.
“Miki! Stop that right now!”
Nyx marched onto the walkway with rapid, tight, and measured steps. Her raven-black hair fell straight along her sharp, unmoving jawline, and her arms were crossed tightly over her chest. Her dark eyes glared with pent-up irritation at the destruction across the training ground.
“We’ve warned you three times in a row already!” Nyx snapped, coming to a halt barely a meter away from Miki. “The alliance assignments were just finalized. The entire group is standing over here waiting for the guides to pick us up for the tour toward the lecture halls! And you’re out here on your own destroying the academy’s inventory. Do you have a single clue how expensive those magically reinforced training dummies are to replace?”
Miki let her shoulders drop dramatically. She blew a loose lock of hair off her face, let out a deep, drawn-out, utterly theatrical pout-sigh, and began trudging toward Nyx in a slow, theatrical slink. Her feet dragged noisily across the marble tiles.
“Yeah, yeah… I hear you, Nyx…” Miki muttered with a thick, heavy pout, letting her arms dangle like limp ropes by her sides. “You really don't have to pull rank and start yelling right away. That dumb dummy was just looking at me funny, okay? It was literally asking for it with that stupid wooden head of its.”
Silarias, who up until then had been leaning comfortably with his shoulder against a large, white marble pillar, slowly stepped forward. His gaze drifted from the pouting Miki to the light plume of smoke still rising from the pile of pulverized wood. He narrowed his eyes into two thin slits. A subtle, deep crease appeared on his forehead, and his nostrils flared slightly as he took in the surrounding air.
He took a few calm, measured paces toward the ruin of the training dummy and leaned down slowly.
“Nyx…” Silarias spoke softly, his voice quiet yet heavy with rising suspicion. He extended his right hand, letting his slender fingers hover just a centimeter above the scorched wood splinters. “Do you seriously not smell that? Beneath the burnt wood shavings… there’s a really strange, metallic copper residue lingering here. As if something dark… something strange and purplish was trapped deep inside the core of this dummy.”
Nyx cast a quick, fleeting, and utterly uninterested glance at the smoking wreckage and shrugged a single shoulder.
“It’s probably just a cheap, poorly calibrated enchantment from the Research Faculty to make those things move and take hits autonomously, Silarias,” she said in her usual businesslike tone, already turning back toward the path. “Don’t waste your focus and precious energy on a bunch of broken training gear. We need to move. We still have to walk all the way past that gigantic hall to reach the actual lecture wings.”
Silarias remained crouched by the wood for one more second. He carefully rubbed the fine, black dust particles clinging to the ground between his thumb and forefinger. The substance felt ice-cold, as if it were sucking the very warmth out of the sunlight. With a deep breath, he stood up and brushed his hand clean against his side.
“Maybe you’re right…” he murmured softly to himself, though deep down, he didn’t believe it for a second.
Along the broad, tree-lined corridors and the large central courtyard, the newly assigned alliances stood waiting in sizable clusters. The open-air atmosphere was charged with a palpable, nervous tension, as everyone knew they would soon be led in long lines past the massive central hall to gain entry to the rear lecture wings of the academy complex.
On the left side of the wide thoroughfare, the members of the Vipers had assembled.
They wore sleek, streamlined combat suits made of a dark green, scale-like fabric that caught the sunlight with a dangerous sheen. The Vipers were quick-tempered and sharp-minded, constantly on edge.
Felice, a girl with a tight undercut and striking, poison-green eyeshadow, tossed a swift, hard shove at Dante, a lean, wiry boy casually balancing a gleaming steel dagger on the tip of his thumb.
“If you hadn’t screwed up your footwork so embarrassingly during the entrance exam, we’d be standing right at the front of the line for the first class, kid!” Felice snapped with a razor-sharp, provocative smirk on her face.
Dante caught his dagger in a flashing motion at the hilt and pointed it laughingly at her throat with a fluid sweep. “Says the girl who missed a full lightning bolt on a target that was literally standing still? Keep dreaming, Poison Frog!”
Beside them stood Zev, a hot-headed, muscular guy who threw an arm around both of their necks with a wild laugh, roughly nuzzling their heads. They spoke with sharp, provocative jests perpetually on their tongues, constantly striking each other with personal barbs, yet a fierce, unbreakable loyalty radiated from their tight expressions. They were wild, unpredictable beasts, sharp and venomous as scorpions, yet unconditionally tight-knit as a family.
On the right side of the courtyard, an entirely different, almost nauseating atmosphere prevailed. That was where the Griffins had gathered.
The Griffins wore excessively gold-trimmed, polished armor and bright red silk cloaks that billowed proudly in the light breeze. They looked down their noses at the rest of the students, their heads tilted far back, thoroughly steeped in an arrogant, elitist aura. At the head of the gold-and-red group stood Lord Cassian, the noble student with a slick side part and a sharp jawline whom Silarias and Nyx had noticed earlier that day.
The moment Cassian spotted the Goats joining the quietly waiting crowd, his neatly coiffed face twisted into a disdainful, ugly sneer. He nudged his teammates with his elbow and headed straight toward them with dramatic, sweeping strides.
“Well, look at what the wind dragged out of the deepest gutter today!” Cassian bellowed with a forced, mocking laugh that echoed across the entire courtyard. The Griffins around him immediately joined in, laughing loudly and jeering with contempt. “The trash of the outcast fringes! The so-called ‘Goated Outcasts’! Do you actually think you’re allowed to just walk past us toward the classes? You all look like you crawled out of a rotten, foul-smelling slum yesterday!”
The Griffins launched into a full-scale barrage of insults against the newcomers. The most vulgar, haughty, and offensive slurs regarding their origins and attire flew at the Goats.
The desired effect on the Goats, however, was nowhere to be found. To be precise, it was exactly zero.
Silarias stood there, literally yawning so wide his jaw nearly popped out of its socket. He raised his right hand, tilted his head at a comical angle, and began digging deep into his right ear with an utterly bored, vacant expression. Nyx stared up at a few stray clouds in the clear blue sky with a rigid, completely expressionless face, as if she were counting passing birds and the barrage of insults was nothing more than the annoying buzz of a mosquito. Miki was already crouching on the ground somewhere, meticulously navigating a solitary ant along the seam of the marble tiles with a small wooden stick.
Cassian saw that his carefully rehearsed, humiliating speech was making absolutely no impression on the group. His tight face turned bright red within two seconds out of pure, suppressed rage. The veins on his neck swelled dangerously.
“Are you seriously ignoring me, arrogant street scum?!” Cassian roared, his voice cracking nastily. “I AM TALKING TO YOU!”
With a furious, dramatic yank, he drew his gold-trimmed sword halfway from its scabbard. The steel blade glinted harshly in the sunlight. He took a heavy, threatening step forward, determined to make it physical. “I’ll show you real quick what happens to trash that shows zero respect for nobility!”
Before his heavy, polished boots could hit the ground again, a gigantic, dark shadow suddenly fell over him. The warm sunlight was completely blocked out in an instant.
Three massive, colossal figures stepped calmly between the Griffins and the Goats. They were the foremen of the Behemoths. They towered over two meters above the average student, clad in dull, heavy steel armor covered in old battle marks and deep dents. They radiated a slow, nonchalant, and utterly stony energy that seemed to decelerate the entire space around them.
At the lead of the trio stood Thorne, a giant of a man who stared at the fuming Cassian with extremely slow, half-closed eyes. He chewed leisurely on a dry stalk of heather dangling from the left corner of his mouth.
“…Dude,” Thorne spoke, his voice so slow, deep, and low it sounded like a rolling rockslide in a distant valley. “Get… lost… real fast.”
Beside him stood Gorr, a titan with a massive, square jaw who casually shrugged his giant shoulders, as if gravity worked entirely differently on him than on the rest of the world. “You’re just making too much noise, shiny man,” Gorr muttered lazily, not even bothering to lift the gigantic warhammer off his shoulder. “My ears are starting to hurt.”
The third Behemoth, Moke, scratched stoically behind his massive, oak-like ear and simply took one heavy, boulder-like step forward. The sheer, sluggish mass of his body forced Cassian to stumble backward three shaky steps immediately.
Cassian, realizing he was talking to an unmovable wall of living stone that didn’t take him seriously in the slightest, slunk back toward his own teammates with a beet-red face and muttered curses.
Thorne turned in an extremely slow, almost mechanical fashion toward the Goats. He stared at Silarias sluggishly for a few long seconds, let the stalk of heather drift lazily to the other corner of his mouth, and let out a deep, heavy sigh that smelled of mountain air.
“Sorry…” Thorne said, slowly rubbing the back of his neck with an utterly stony gaze. “Those guys… talk WAY too much. It just makes me tired. I’m Thorne. That’s Gorr and Moke.”
“No problem at all,” Silarias said casually, wiping his finger off on the side of his pants. “We barely noticed, honestly.”
“Good…” Gorr muttered slowly and approvingly. “Less talking… is always better.”
At that exact moment, the Viper group came rushing over in a sharp, agile blur. Felice slid right between them with a razor-sharp, provocative gleam in her eyes, while Dante stood diagonally in front of them with his arms crossed, playfully spinning his dagger between his fingers.
“Not bad, Stone Heads,” Felice snapped at the Behemoths with a biting, quick chuckle, before locking her gaze tightly and piercingly onto Miki and Renuardo. Her eyes narrowed to razor-sharp slits. “But what do we have here exactly? Did you guys happen to raid the local kindergarten? You look bizarrely young to be running with a full-fledged alliance. Or were you just assigned here to polish our weapons before the real classes start?”
Dante spun his gleaming dagger rapidly around his fingers and grinned maliciously at Renuardo, who returned the look with a raised eyebrow. “Better watch your step, little guy. One wrong move on the training field, and we’ll puncture you full of holes before you even get the chance to cry.”
Despite the fierce tone and the biting words, a strange, playful energy of respect lingered beneath their posture. They baited, they jabbed ruthlessly, but they stood directly in front of them as if treating them as equals.
Zev, who also belonged to the Vipers, bent far forward toward the crouched Miki with a mock, teasing tone. “Hey little girl… did you lose your mommy during the long wait?”
Miki froze mid-motion with the twig in her hand. She lifted her head very slowly. Her large eyes narrowed into two razor-sharp, deadly slits. The cute, childlike expression on her face vanished into thin air, and the atmospheric pressure around her small knuckles began to visibly vibrate with a sudden, raw shockwave.
“You listen to me real carefully, long ears…” Miki began in an icy, terrifyingly low tone.
Before the situation could fully escalate again, a strange, creaking sound suddenly resonated from the side of the courtyard, near the massive gate of the hall they needed to pass through to reach the lecture rooms.
“Hey… psst… listen up…”
It was a raspy, frail voice that sounded like old, bone-dry paper scraping across stone. The voice originated from a deep, dark shadow behind one of the enormous marble support pillars along the passage.
“I can tell you everything you need to know…” the rasping voice continued in a whisper. “Everything about the upcoming classes… the real power dynamics… the dark secrets of the professors…”
Behind the broad pillar, a small, exceedingly odd group of students sat huddling together on the stone floor. They all wore tattered, frayed cloaks far too large for them, and most of them sported thick, round spectacles on their noses or dirty, yellowed cloths tied over their eyes.
Silarias looked up from the heated confrontation. He turned his gaze toward the dark corner behind the pillar, shot Nyx a quick look with an inquiringly raised eyebrow, and gave a firm nod. Renuardo glanced over as well with an alert, youthful sharpness.
Without wasting another word on the bickering guilds, Silarias immediately set course toward the strange group of recluses. Nyx, Miki, Renuardo, and the rest of the Goats left the Vipers and Behemoths behind and followed tightly in his wake.