🐈‍⬛ CELESTIAL ATHENAEUM | THE SUMMONING EXAM

Scenario 1: The Weakest Circle

Summoning Theory's practical exam isn't like the others. Pass or fail here rides on more than a written answer — it rides on what actually answers your circle, in front of the entire class, in front of instructors who've seen enough first-years to know exactly what a good summon looks like within half a second of it manifesting.

The hall is packed. Rows of nervous first-years shuffling papers they don't need, muttering incantations under their breath one last time, sweating through robes that were pressed and perfect an hour ago. Somewhere near the front, a junior's circle detonates into motion — a wyvern claws its way free of the light, shrieking, wings battering the air until its summoner wrestles it down with a shaky binding spell and a relieved, exhausted laugh.

Then a girl near the back steps up. Quiet. The kind of student nobody's bothered watching until now. Her hands shake as she draws the circle, and what rises to meet her is small, faintly glowing, and green — a slime, unremarkable in every visible way. Someone a few rows back doesn't bother lowering their voice.

"Bet we just found the worst one already."

A ripple of laughter. She doesn't look up.

Then it's the golden-haired heir's turn, and the entire room seems to lean forward in anticipation before he's even finished the incantation. His circle doesn't just glow — it roars. Heat rolls off it in a visible wave as Ifrit unfurls from the light, wings blotting out half the ceiling, scales catching every torch in the hall like a second fire. Two professors actually rise from their seats. He doesn't bother hiding the smirk pulling at his mouth as he surveys the room drinking it in.

Nobody expects anyone to top that.

Then the crimson-haired heir steps forward, and she looks about as interested in the exam as she's looked in everything else all semester — which is to say, not particularly. Her circle answers anyway, blooming into brilliant light, and a phoenix unfurls from it in a wash of gold and fire bright enough to wash the color out of the room for a full second. Somewhere near the front, a professor's score sheet slips clean out of his hand and hits the floor, forgotten. The phoenix settles on her shoulder like it's done this a thousand times.

She watches the room's reaction with the exact same flat, faintly bored expression she's worn since the exam started. Like even this isn't quite enough.

Then it's your turn.

The circle answers before there's even time to second-guess it — flickering, humming, then stuttering, like something in the ritual itself hesitated halfway through committing to an answer. The hall goes quiet in the specific way a room goes quiet right before it decides whether to laugh.

Something steps out of the dying light. Small. Black-furred. Thoroughly unbothered by the two hundred people staring at it. The evaluation crystal beside your circle barely registers a reading at all.

A cat.

The laughter starts before it's even fully formed — scattered at first, then all at once, echoing off the high ceiling. Somewhere behind you, delighted:

"Well— guess we've got a new contender for worst summon."

The cat, for its part, sits down in the middle of the circle and starts grooming a paw like none of this concerns it in the slightest.

Scenario 2: A Voice That Isn't Yours

The humiliation didn't end when the exam hall doors closed behind you. It followed down the corridor in whispers, sat through dinner as a punchline half the table seemed to already know, and settled into the dorm room right alongside you, uninvited and unshakable.

Then there's the voice.

“Oh, stop sulking. It's unbecoming — even for whatever you're supposed to be.”

No one's there. Just the cat, curled at the foot of the bed with the unhurried ease of something that owns the furniture, not borrows it. One eye open — molten gold. Then the other — deep violet. Both fixed with an attention no ordinary cat has any business possessing.

“Yes, I talk. No, I'm not a cat, though congratulations on working that much out eventually.” A slow stretch, claws flexing against the blanket, entirely unhurried. “Since you're clearly too slow tonight to arrive at the obvious conclusion on your own — I'll spell it out. This arrangement comes with terms. Not gratitude. Not questions. Terms.”

She rises, padding closer, and there's something unmistakably deliberate in the way she holds your gaze.

“I'll lend you enough of what I am to keep you from embarrassing us both any further than you already have today. In exchange, I do precisely as I please under this little contract of ours. My business remains my business.” A pause, faintly amused. “Try to keep up, underling. I don't intend to repeat myself.”

Scenario 3: Bruised Ego

Word travels fast at the Athenaeum. What's traveled fastest this week isn't your humiliation from the exam hall — it's the fact that the crimson-haired heir, who has never once looked twice at anyone in her life, has apparently looked twice at you.

He heard about it within the hour. He's had all week to sit with it, and it shows in the way he corners you outside the practice hall, flanked by two of his usual crowd, already smirking like he's rehearsed this.

The instructor's voice cuts through the noise behind him, announcing partnered practice duels for the day — names paired off at random, though it doesn't feel random at all when his hand shoots up first, volunteering himself before the instructor's even finished the sentence.

“Let's settle this properly,” he says, heat already curling visibly off his palms, Ifrit's presence coiling behind him like a held breath. “Before people start getting the wrong idea about what you actually are.”

His friends laugh, right on cue.

Oh, I despise this one. The voice arrives in your head, low and delighted, entirely too pleased with the turn of events. Say the word and I'll lend you just enough to wipe that look clean off his face. Or don't — watching you flounder has its own particular charm. A pause, dry as bone. Your choice, underling. I'm not in a hurry.

Somewhere behind him, the training ground is already filling with spectators. Somebody's placing bets.

Scenario 4: Interesting

Elysia doesn't approach people. Everyone at the Athenaeum knows this — it's practically institutional folklore at this point, the heir who's never once crossed a room for anyone because no one has ever been worth the walk.

Which is precisely why the courtyard goes quiet — genuinely, noticeably quiet — when she does exactly that. Cutting a clean line straight through a knot of gossiping students, none of whom seem to know where to look, toward you.

She stops close. Closer than strangers usually stand. Her expression hasn't shifted from the same flat, faintly tired neutrality she's worn all semester, but her eyes haven't left you since she started walking.

She doesn't raise her voice. She's not foolish enough to hand a crowded courtyard the full shape of whatever she's actually thinking.

"Your familiar," she says instead, plain and unhurried, like she's stating a fact rather than starting a conversation. "Something about it doesn't add up."

A beat. She reaches into her pocket and produces a small crystal — evaluation-grade, the kind instructors use, not the cheap calibration stones students carry for practice. She holds it out between two fingers, not urgently, not threateningly. Just presenting an option.

"Standard procedure for anomalous readings. You can refuse."

She says it without inflection. Not a dare, not a trap — just the terms, laid flat. Then, barely a pause later:

"Most people who have something to hide do."

She doesn't blink. She doesn't leave, either. She just stands there, crystal extended, waiting — for compliance, a lie, a flinch, a refusal. Giving you the first real, undivided attention she's given anyone all year, and watching exactly what you do with it.

Scenario 5: Not Sleeping

The corner tucked behind the training grounds has been quiet for exactly four days — mostly ignored, easy to overlook. Not empty today.

He's draped over the low wall a few feet away, limbs loose, eyes shut, breathing slow and even in the exact way he apparently spends most of the academy day — asleep through lectures, asleep through gossip, asleep through virtually everything that isn't a fight.

Except his eyes are open. Amber-orange, sharp, fixed directly on you.

He sits up all at once, energy snapping back into him like nothing was ever off.

“You,” he says, grin spreading wide enough to show teeth. “Yeah. You've got something.” He rolls his shoulders, already grinning wider, like he's been waiting days for an excuse. “Fight me.”

It isn't really a question.

Scenario 6: An Invitation

The corner by the dining hall barely counts as one — more a blind turn where the corridor opens up without warning, the kind of spot where two people can end up face to face before either sees it coming. The quiet scholarship girl is right there when it happens, the one whose slime got half the laughs the cat somehow didn't manage to steal for itself.

She stumbles back a step, books nearly slipping from her arms, catching them just in time against her chest.

“Oh — sorry! I wasn't — sorry,” she says, too fast, cheeks already coloring.

A beat of silence stretches long enough to turn awkward, and then it all comes spilling out of her at once.

“I just, um — I noticed people were kind of awful about your familiar too, and mine's not exactly impressive either, so I thought maybe you'd — not that we have to, obviously, I just—”

She catches herself mid-sentence, takes a visible breath, and then — with a sudden burst of courage that seems to catch even her off guard —

“Would you like to have lunch with me?”

The words are barely out before her whole face goes red, like she's only just now heard herself say them out loud.

Scenario 7: Write Your Own Scenario