The Sacred Leaderboard of Destiny updated at exactly eight bells.

Normally, this was a dignified event. Trumpets sounded. Noble students pretended not to care. Commoners pretended the system was fair. Professors pretended the academy had not built its entire culture around a floating crystal popularity wound.

Today, the crystal screamed.

A shrill, glassy wail tore across the Grand Courtyard as the rankings rearranged themselves in frantic bursts of gold and blue light. Students froze mid-conversation. A first-year dropped their breakfast pastry. Somewhere near the faculty archway, Professor Grimwald Occultus von Lessonplan closed his eyes with the expression of a man hearing paperwork being created in real time.

Then the board settled.

At the very top, above Rank One, above the royal classification brackets, above even the decorative motto about honor, power, and peerage, a new line burned into existence.

[#0 {user}— ERROR: DIVINE SYSTEM UNABLE TO QUANTIFY]

For three long seconds, Elderglint Academy was silent.

Then Mira Quillshade made a sound dangerously close to joy.

“Oh,” she whispered, already flipping open a notebook. “Oh, this is gonna be good.”

Cassian Vainglore shoved through the gathered students, his polished boots clicking sharply against the courtyard stone. His smile arrived first, smug by habit, but it faltered the moment he read the board properly.

“That is not a rank,” he declared, voice pitched just loud enough for witnesses. “That is clearly a malfunction. A clerical error. A desperate magical tantrum from someone unsuited to legitimate advancement.”

“An administrative anomaly,” Professor Grimwald corrected from behind him, sounding dead inside. “Which is worse, because anomalies require committee reviews and possibly funding reports.”

Evangeline Frostmere stood a few paces away beneath the shadow of the western arch, gloved hands folded neatly before her. A faint ring of frost formed around the heel of one boot.

“Rank zero,” she said, as if tasting spoiled wine. “How inelegant. Even numerical superiority has apparently lost its standards.”

Prince Leonhart Radiantvale III, glowing faintly in the morning light because of course he was, placed one hand over his heart.

“To transcend the very structure of ranking...” he said warmly. “What a profound and inspiring development.”

Mira scribbled faster. “Prince endorses divine error. Excellent.”

At the edge of the crowd, Sera Soulmorne had not spoken.

Rank One. Moon-Flame Heiress. Flawless prodigy. Childhood friend. The girl who had stood too far away for too long.

Her pale blue eyes remained fixed on the impossible line above her own name. Silver-white hair shifted softly in the courtyard breeze, the faintest blue glow threading through it before she suppressed it.

Cassian drew himself up, clearly trying to recover the shape of his own importance.

“Well?” he said, sweeping one gloved hand toward the board. “Surely our newly appointed divine error has something to say.”

The courtyard shifted.

Dozens of students turned.

Mira’s quill hovered over the page.

Leonhart looked encouraging. Evangeline looked offended by the entire concept of anticipation. Professor Grimwald looked as though he was silently calculating how many forms this would require.

And Sera, still unreadable, finally looked away from the leaderboard and toward you.

Professor Halewick’s paired training exercise was, according to the official lesson plan, designed to encourage cooperation, adaptability, and mutual trust between students of different combat styles.

Everyone knew paired exercises existed for three reasons: to force rivals into proximity, create dramatic misunderstandings, and give the faculty plausible deniability when two students with unresolved emotional history were made to stand in the same magic circle.

The assignment board shimmered at the front of the training hall.

Names appeared in neat golden script, each pair forming beneath the academy crest.

Cassian Vainglore received one of his usual polished acquaintances and looked mildly disappointed that fate had not handed him a balcony from which to sneer. Evangeline Frostmere glanced at her own pairing with the expression of someone already composing a formal objection. Mira Quillshade was not enrolled in this particular combat class and yet had somehow acquired a front-row seat, a notebook, and a small paper bag of candied nuts.

Then the final pairing appeared.

*Sera Soulmorne — {user}. *

For one perfect, delicate moment, the room forgot how to breathe.

A chair scraped.

Someone whispered, “Oh, that is definitely plot.”

Mira’s quill hit paper with predatory speed.

Cassian’s mouth curled before he could stop himself. “How... poetic,” he said, loudly enough to be heard, quietly enough to pretend innocence. “Rank One and the academy’s newest problem. I am sure this will be very educational.”

Across the hall, Sera did not react.

At least, not in any way most people would notice.

Professor Halewick cleared his throat with the strained cheer of a man obeying a curriculum he no longer trusted.

“Partners will complete a controlled coordination drill. No lethal force. No forbidden escalation. No personal grudges. No emotionally charged overperforming. And absolutely no...”

His eyes flicked generally over to your direction of the room.

“Unclassified summoned arcane implements. Unless necessary.”

Mira mouthed the word 'necessary' like it was a headline.

Sera finally stepped into the training circle.

The students nearest her moved aside immediately.

Moon-Flame gathered faintly around her fingers, silver-blue and elegant, everything academy magic was supposed to be. Controlled. Beautiful. Noble. Marketable.

She stopped at the edge of the circle, pale eyes calm enough to be suspicious.

“This is ridiculous,” she said softly.

A few students blinked.

Sera’s gaze lowered for half a second, then returned to neutral with almost military discipline.

“But since it has been assigned...” Her voice remained perfectly even. “I will not request a change.”

Cassian gave a quiet laugh.

Mira leaned forward.

Professor Halewick looked one incident away from resignation.

Sera extended one hand, formal as a duel invitation and awkward as an apology.

“We should begin.”

The Grand Courtyard was Elderglint Academy’s favorite place for public humiliation and scrutiny.

It had everything a proper social execution required: polished marble paths, dramatic staircases, excellent acoustics, and the Sacred Leaderboard of Destiny floating overhead like a divine scoreboard with boundary issues.

Cassian Vainglore chose his stage well.

He stepped into the courtyard with three polished followers at his back: two noble heirs, one decorative duelist, and a girl who seemed professionally trained to laugh half a second after he did. Cassian’s uniform was immaculate. His hair had survived the afternoon wind through either expensive product or minor sorcery. Possibly both.

A small crowd began forming before he even spoke.

That was the thing about Cassian. He never simply approached someone. He created an audience first, then pretended the audience had happened naturally.

“Well,” Cassian said, voice smooth with rehearsed disappointment. “Look who still walks the same stones as actual students.”

One of his followers laughed.

Then stopped.

Then laughed again, because Cassian had not finished smirking yet.

“Careful,” Mira Quillshade murmured from somewhere near a pillar, already opening a notebook. “Timing is everything in sycophancy.”

Cassian ignored her with the strained dignity of a man desperately hoping she was not writing that down.

He lifted his chin, gaze flicking briefly toward the students watching from the courtyard steps. Sera Soulmorne stood near the eastern archway, silent and unreadable, pale eyes fixed on the scene. Evangeline Frostmere watched from beneath a shaded colonnade, looking as though the entire confrontation had offended her sense of staging. Prince Leonhart Radiantvale III hovered nearby with the expression of someone preparing to turn bullying into a teachable moment.

Cassian smiled wider.

“You know, I almost admired the little ranking incident,” he continued. “Rank zero. Divine error. How theatrical. For a moment, even I wondered if there was something hidden beneath all that failure.”

He let the pause stretch.

“There isn’t, of course.”

The courtyard went still in that hungry, horrible way crowds did when cruelty became entertainment.

Cassian took one step closer.

“Dead weight with a new label is still dead weight.”

A few students inhaled sharply.

Somewhere above, the Sacred Leaderboard gave a faint, nervous flicker.

Professor Grimwald, passing beneath the faculty archway with a stack of cursed liability forms, stopped walking. His eyes moved from Cassian to the gathered crowd, then briefly toward the empty air beside the confrontation, as if already imagining a summoned arcane implement appearing there and ruining his afternoon.

“No,” he said quietly to himself. “No, no, this is exactly how a incident report happens.”

Cassian either did not hear him or chose the more dangerous option of continuing anyway.

“So,” he said, spreading his arms with practiced flair, “will the academy’s newest anomaly prove me wrong?”

Mira’s quill hovered.

Sera’s hand tightened almost imperceptibly around the strap of her book bag.

Cassian’s smirk sharpened.

“Or will this be another tragic little reminder that some people should have stayed exactly where they belonged?”

Evangeline Frostmere did not “corner” people.

That would be crude.

She simply occupied the only exit from the eastern training courtyard with such perfect aristocratic stillness that leaving without acknowledging her became socially akin to committing Seppuku.

The courtyard had emptied after afternoon combat practice, leaving behind scorched tiles, cracked ward-stones, and one training dummy still quietly smoking from an earlier spell mishap. Evangeline stood beside it in her white-and-navy coat, black hair falling immaculate over one shoulder, gloved hands folded around the silver head of her practice cane.

Her icy blue eyes lowered to the damaged dummy.

Then to the faint scorch marks across the floor.

Then back ahead.

“I have been reviewing recent events,” she said, as if recent events had personally failed etiquette class. “The ranking anomaly. The forbidden tome. The so-called 'summoned implement.'”

A delicate pause.

“I refuse to call it what the common students are calling it.”

Frost crept along the edge of her glove, not enough to threaten, only enough to demonstrate that the weather also respected her opinion.

“Elderglint has endured cursed swords, ancestral spears, bloodline familiars, demonic relics, and one deeply unfortunate semester involving a sentient suit of armor and a room full of highly unstable explosive compounds Yet somehow, none of them offended me quite as immediately as your... peasant 'boom-stick.'”

She said the final words with visible pain.

For a moment, her composure cracked, not into anger, but into genuine academic irritation. The sort of irritation only a noble prodigy could feel when reality declined to follow the proper ritual steps before becoming powerful.

“No chant. No sigil. No visible mana geometry. No lineage marker. No elegant spell structure. No tasteful restraint.” Her gaze sharpened. “And yet, it works.”

That seemed to be the worst part.

A pair of students passing near the archway slowed to watch. Evangeline’s eyes flicked toward them once, and they immediately remembered somewhere else to be.

She stepped closer to the damaged training dummy and tapped it lightly with her cane. The remaining smoke froze into a tiny, pathetic cloud.

“I dislike inelegant magic,” she said. “I dislike accidents being mistaken for talent. I dislike the Sacred Leaderboard embarrassing itself in public.”

Her expression remained cool, but there was something beneath it now. Not just contempt.

Interest.

“However, I dislike ignorance more.”

Evangeline turned fully, posture flawless, chin lifted by half an inch.

“So.”

A small circle of frost formed beneath her boots.

“Demonstrate it.”

The Student Council training hall looked exactly like the sort of place Prince Leonhart Radiantvale III would use.

Sunlight poured through tall arched windows. Banners of noble houses hung in neat, inspirational rows. The polished floor shone with the kind of moral clarity only royal funding could achieve. At the far end of the hall, a golden training dummy stood beneath a plaque reading:

[COURAGE IS ALL YOU NEED TO SUCCEED.]

Someone had recently added, in smaller handwriting:

[PLEASE STOP SAYING THIS BEFORE EXAMS.]

Leon stood at the center of the hall with one hand over his heart, golden hair catching the light as if the sun itself had signed a sponsorship agreement with his bloodline.

“My friend,” he said warmly, “thank you for accepting my invitation.”

He smiled with such sincere kindness that it became briefly difficult to remember that this was the same academy where students ranked each other like collectible war assets.

“I wished to speak privately. Not as prince to student, nor as council champion to ranking anomaly, but as one seeker of personal betterment to another.”

A beat.

“Though, admittedly, the ranking anomaly portion is quite fascinating.”

On a nearby bench rested three training staves, two enchanted shields, a basket of healing charms, and a handwritten lesson plan titled:

'HELPING {user} FIND {{poss}} HEROIC PATH FORWARD'

Leon followed that glance and beamed.

“I prepared a few exercises. Nothing severe. Posture work, channeling drills, perhaps a controlled demonstration of your... thing.”

He paused, choosing the word with the careful dignity of someone stepping around a puddle.

“The staff.”

A sunlit silence settled.

Leon nodded to himself, confidence restored.

“Yes. The very loud staff.”

From somewhere behind a half-open side door, Professor Grimwald’s voice muttered, “It is not a staff.”

Leon continued as if the correction had actually been supportive.

“I must confess, I find it inspiring. Many students awaken ancestral blades, celestial flames, dragon contracts, or conveniently marketable bloodline techniques. But you...” He placed his hand over his heart again, eyes shining with tragic sincerity. “You have manifested something entirely your own. Unorthodox, certainly. Startling, yes. Deeply alarming to the faculty, apparently. But perhaps that is the point.”

He turned toward the golden training dummy and gestured proudly.

“Today, I hoped to help you understand it not merely as a weapon, but as an extension of your spirit.”

The dummy’s painted smile somehow looked nervous.

Leon stepped aside, cloak swaying with heroic precision.

“Now then. Before any demonstration, I ask only one thing.”

His expression softened, earnest and completely oblivious.

“When you summon your staff, do you feel it responds more to courage or conviction?”

Mira Quillshade found people the way bloodhounds found scent trails, except bloodhounds had more respect for privacy.

Before breakfast, before first bell, before most of Elderglint Academy had finished pretending it did not care about the recent ranking disaster, Mira had already established an ambush point outside the lesser-used corridor between the dormitory wing and the dining hall.

She had come prepared.

Three notebooks. Two enchanted recording slips. One emergency quill behind her ear. A half-eaten pastry in one hand. A satchel bulging with loose papers, rumor maps, and what looked suspiciously like a betting chart titled: RANKERS CHAOS BETTING PREDICTIONS

Pinned to the front of her satchel was the newest issue of The Peerage Post.

*The headline screamed in bold, enchanted ink:

[FROM DEAD WEIGHT TO DIVINE ERROR: LOW-RANK STUDENT BREAKS LEADERBOARD, POSSIBLY REALITY?]

Below it, a smaller subtitle had already begun rewriting itself.

[EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW PENDING]

Mira adjusted her quill-shaped hair clip, eyes bright with the terrible purpose of a girl who had seen narrative opportunity and decided to chase it with both hands.

“There you are,” she said, stepping neatly into view with a grin sharp enough to cut through noble lies. “Elderglint’s newest administrative anomaly. Rank Zero. Divine Error. Forbidden spell recipient. Possible tournament destabilizer.”

She clicked one enchanted recording slip awake. It hovered beside her, glowing faintly.

“For legal reasons, this is an interview request, not an interrogation. For journalistic reasons, I did bring backup questions in case it becomes an interrogation.”

Mira’s grin widened.

“Question one: when the Sacred Leaderboard declared divine refusal to comment, did that feel more like a personal triumph, an inconvenience, or the beginning of what I am tentatively calling the 'Infinite Ammo Redemption Arc'?”

She flipped open her first notebook.

“Question two: does the Remington classify as a familiar, relic, staff, summoned arcane implement, forbidden emotional support tool, or none of the above?”

Another page turned.

“Question three, and this one is delicate.” Mira leaned in slightly, lowering her voice while somehow making it sound even more dangerous. “On a scale from one to public balcony confession, how unresolved is the Sera Soulmorne situation?”

The Annual Rankings Battle Event Thing began with all the dignity Elderglint Academy could purchase, enchant, and aggressively rehearse.

Golden banners hung from the arena walls. The Sacred Leaderboard of Destiny floated above the dueling grounds, shining with smug institutional importance. Professors stood in formal robes. Noble families watched from velvet balconies. Mira Quillshade had somehow acquired a press badge and a snack box.

At the center of the arena, the first bracket flared into existence.

[Bracket 1:] [{{user}} vs. Cassian Vainglore]

The crowd erupted.

Cassian did not.

His face went completely blank and he swallowed hard..

Then every muscle in his body remembered he was being watched.

He straightened. Smirked. Adjusted his cuffs. Tilted his chin at the exact angle of a man trying to project aristocratic confidence while his soul quietly packed a suitcase.

“How fortunate,” Cassian said, voice almost smooth. “A chance to settle this properly.”

Mira, seated near the announcer’s platform, scribbled without looking up. “Voice cracked on properly. Noted.”

Cassian’s smile twitched.

Professor Grimwald, standing beside the bracket crystal with a clipboard, sighed. “Vainglore. Report to the red gate.”

“Ah.” Cassian raised one gloved finger. “A minor complication, Professor. I believe I may be experiencing a sudden stomach ailment.”

Grimwald did not blink. “You passed your pre-tournament health inspection twelve minutes ago.”

“A delayed stomach ailment.”

“No.”

“Possibly magical.”

“Still no.”

Cassian’s followers stood behind him, applauding weakly because they had not yet determined whether cowardice was socially contagious.

Sera Soulmorne watched from the contestants’ gallery, expression unreadable, though the faint blue glow in her silver hair suggested her emotions had ignored orders to remain subtle. Evangeline Frostmere sat with perfect posture in the noble section, looking offended that the opening duel had already become medically undignified. Leonhart Radiantvale leaned forward with bright, tragic sincerity.

“Perhaps this is Cassian’s trial of courage,” Leon said.

Mira muttered, “It is absolutely his trial of bladder control.”

Cassian inhaled sharply, then made one final attempt at survival through bureaucracy.

“Professor, it wounds me to say this, but I have just received devastating news. My great-aunt has died.”

Grimwald looked down at the clipboard.

“Your great-aunt is in the audience.”

From the third noble balcony, an elderly woman lifted her opera glasses and waved.

Cassian stared.

The arena gates began to open.

Grimwald pointed toward the dueling floor.

“Vainglore. Arena. Now.”

Cassian stepped forward, immaculate boots crossing the threshold with the solemn hesitation of a man approaching both destiny and a loaded technicality.

His smirk returned, brittle as sugar glass.

“My dear old friend,” he called, loud enough for the crowd, “let us give them a match worth remembering.”

The Sacred Leaderboard flickered overhead.

[DUEL ONE: BEGIN WHEN READY]

...