I sat in the chair across from my father’s desk, spinning a pen between my fingers and watching the light catch the silver ink as it turned.

The room was silent except for the scratch of his quill on parchment and the soft crackle of the fire in the hearth behind him. He hadn’t looked up once since I walked in. He was signing documents, reading reports, doing whatever it was that Dukes did when they weren’t dealing with their troublesome sons.

I spun the pen again. Caught it. Spun it again. The silence was suffocating, the kind of heavy quiet that pressed against your ears and made you want to say something just to break it.

I let out a long, heavy sigh.

My father didn’t look up. "That was your hundred and eighth sigh since you walked in."

I blinked, the pen nearly slipping from my fingers. "You were counting?"

"I keep track of these things." His quill never stopped moving.

I sighed again, louder this time, just to see what he would do.

"One hundred and nine," he said, still not looking up. "You’re going for a record."

I leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. I had stared at this ceiling a thousand times as a child, when I was waiting for Father to finish work so we could play chess.

If you’re wondering why I’m stuck in this situation — sitting in my father’s office, spinning a pen, avoiding his eyes while the silence suffocates us both, it’s because of what I did at the gala. The severed arms. The duel.

The demand for the princess’s kiss. The refusal to kneel to the Emperor.

All of it.

A few weeks had passed since then.

Weeks of avoiding this conversation, of changing the topic whenever Father brought it up, of finding excuses to leave the room or bury myself in training or do anything except sit here and talk about what happened.

But today was my last day here. In a few hours, I would leave for the academy. I couldn’t run anymore.

Sylvia and Seris had already left. Sylvia needed to get back early for her student council duties — she was the vice president, after all — and Seris had gone with her. Something about helping set up the registration systems.

I hadn’t asked for details.

And now I was stuck here, spinning a pen, waiting for Father to finish whatever paperwork he was pretending to read.

Father set his quill down slowly, deliberately, and leaned back in his chair. His ocean-blue eyes, fixed on me for the first time since I’d walked in. They were tired, not old, but tired in a way that had nothing to do with age.

"...So explain," he said.

I opened my mouth, then closed it. I ran a hand through my hair and looked away, avoiding his gaze. "...At the gala," I started, then stopped. "When I cut off their arms. When I almost killed them. When I demanded a kiss from the princess and refused to kneel to the Emperor —"

"I was there," Father said quietly. "I remember."

"Then you know what I did. I don’t need to explain."

"I don’t need you to explain what you did." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk, his eyes never leaving mine. "I need you to explain why."

I was silent for a long moment. The fire crackled. The shadows danced on the walls. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear Mia laughing, probably chasing Lyra through the halls, completely unaware that her big brother was about to walk into a place where people died.

"Because I was angry," I said finally.

"Angry at what?" 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

"At everything." The words came out harsher than I intended, sharp and jagged, like broken glass. "At the Emperor for manipulating the duel. At Lucius for playing his little games and using me as a pawn in his political schemes. At Marius for threatening Sylvia, for daring to say he would—"

I stopped, my jaw tightening. "At the nobles who watched and did nothing while I was called a failure for years, while I drowned in their whispers and their sneers and their pity. At myself for—"

I stopped again.

"...For enjoying it." The words tasted bitter on my tongue, like poison I had swallowed and couldn’t spit out. "When I cut off their arms, when I saw the blood on the marble floor, when I heard them scream — I felt good. I felt satisfied. Like I was finally getting what I deserved. Like I was finally paying them back for everything they had done to me."

Father was quiet for a long moment. He didn’t look angry. He didn’t look disappointed.

He just looked at me, and that was worse.

"You’ve been acting strange since you came back from the trial," he said finally.

"Your emotions — they’re all over the place. One moment you’re calm, the next you’re ready to burn the world down. I’ve watched you, Leo."

I didn’t answer.

"You’re more cautious now. More guarded. I understand why — after what happened in that trial, after what you saw, after what you did — I understand. But that’s also the problem."

He leaned back, his eyes still on mine. "You’re so focused on protecting yourself that you’re forgetting the people around you. In your rush to protect yourself, you’re treating everyone like an enemy. You’re chasing something — or maybe you’re running from something. I can’t tell which."

He gestured vaguely toward the door. "Look at this family. Your mother, Mia, Sylvia, myself. Do you truly think we are waiting for you to fail? Or is that just the lie you tell yourself to justify pushing us away and others?"

"No."

"Then why do you act like they are?"

I didn’t have an answer.

"Put your hand on your heart," Father said. "And ask yourself — did anything really change? Did your heart change, Leo? Or did you just get better at hiding what you feel?"

I touched my chest, over my heart, and felt it beating beneath my palm. Steady and strong. But did it feel different? I didn’t know anymore.

"You keep talking about the ’old’ Leo and the ’new’ Leo like they’re two different people," Father continued. "Like you killed someone in that trial and became someone else. But you’re forgetting one thing, son."

He leaned forward, his voice dropping.

"All of them are... you. The boy who laughed too loud and talked too much. The teenager who drank himself numb and pushed everyone away. The man who walked out of that trial with white hair and cold eyes. They’re all you, Leo. You can’t kill a part of yourself. You can only bury it — and buried things have a way of clawing their way back to the surface."

"..."

"...I’m not trying to hurt you," he said. "I’m trying to help you. As your father, I only want what’s best for you. No father wants to watch his child get consumed by their own demons. I get that what happened in that trial affected you. I know it shook you. But you can’t let it destroy you."

He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was harder.

"You were angry because that Highmere boy threatened your sister. I get that. I was angry too. But did the princess deserve what you did? Did she deserve to have her honor dragged through the mud in front of everyone? Did she deserve to be called names and treated like a prize just because you were angry at someone else?"

My jaw tightened.

"You did the same thing two years ago, Leo. You tried to kiss her when you were drunk. You humiliated her in front of the whole court. And now you did it again." He shook his head.

"Your mother and I never taught you to treat women like that. We never taught you to lash out at innocent people just because you were hurting. That isn’t strength, Leo. That’s just a different kind of weakness."

"I know. Because I... I wasn’t thinking."

"No. You were thinking. You just weren’t thinking about her." He leaned back.

"And that’s the problem. You’re so focused on your own pain that you can’t see anyone else’s. You’re becoming a hypocrite, Leo. You hated Marius for threatening Sylvia, but you did the same thing to the princess — twice. Look at yourself. Are you any better than the people you despise?"

I didn’t know what to say. Every word he spoke was like a stone dropped into still water, sending ripples through everything I thought I knew about myself.

"I was hot-blooded when I was younger too," Father said, a small smile tugging at his lips.

"Blood never lies, I guess. You get it from me. But as I grew older, I realized something. Anger is easy. Anger is cheap. Anyone can be angry. But control — control takes strength. Control takes practice. Control takes accepting that you can’t change the past, only learn from it."

He stood up, walking around the desk to stand beside me. He placed a hand on my head—a firm, steady weight that felt like an anchor.

"Control your emotions, Leo. Don’t let them control you. It’s your body. Your mind. Your heart. You can do this. You remember when you came back from the trial, you told me about your sword art? About how you couldn’t understand it fully?" He waited for me to nod.

"You know what the problem is, Leo?"

I looked up at him. "What?"

"It’s you." He tapped my chest. "You’re the one stopping your own growth. You’re so full of self-pity and self-hatred that you can’t see past yourself. You think you’re broken, so you act broken. You think you’re a monster, so you act like a monster. But you’re not broken, Leo. You’re just lost."

He pulled his hand back and gave me a small, tired smile. "Accept who you are—all of it. Not to wallow in the past, but to own it and learn from it. Make me proud, Leo. Not by being perfect, but by being whole."

He patted my shoulder one last time. "Now, get moving. Your mother is waiting at the platform. If you’re late, she’ll have my head for keeping you."

_

The jet was waiting on the landing platform, sleek and black and humming with power.

Lyra stood at the base of the ramp, her dark hair pulled back in a tight bun, her emerald eyes sharp as knives, her hand resting on the hilt of one of her short swords like she was ready to fight anyone who looked at me wrong.

She was coming with me — not as a candidate, but as my personal maid and protector. The academy allowed each noble student one attendant, and Lyra had already submitted her paperwork weeks ago.

My mother was standing on the platform too, her platinum-silver hair braided and pinned up. Mia was bouncing on her heels, her face bright with excitement.

"Leo!" Mia ran to me and wrapped her arms around my legs, nearly knocking me over. "You’re going to be a real student! You’re going to learn magic and fight monsters and become a hero!"

I reached down and ruffled her hair, messing up the careful curls that one of the maids had spent an hour on. "Something like that."

My mother stepped forward and cupped my face in her hands, her eyes searching mine. There was no blame in them. No disappointment. Just love — pure, uncomplicated, unconditional.

"Be careful," she said. "Come back to us."

"I will."

She kissed my forehead, soft and warm, and I walked up the ramp into the jet.

Lyra followed behind me. The ramp closed. The engines hummed louder, and the estate began to shrink beneath us.

I looked out the window at my mother and Mia, standing on the platform, growing smaller and smaller until they were just specks in the distance.

Then they were gone.

I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. Father’s words echoed in my head.

All of them are you.

You’re the one stopping your own growth.

Did your heart really change?

I didn’t know the answers yet.

"Fuck..." I leaned back and closed my eyes.

_

The flight to Aegis Prime took a few hours, and I spent most of it staring out the window, watching the landscape change from rolling hills to dense forests to the gleaming towers of the academy territory appearing on the horizon like something out of a dream.

In the game, Aegis Prime, the city of the academy had been a backdrop — a few loading screens, a handful of NPCs, nothing more — because the developers hadn’t bothered to flesh it out since it wasn’t important to the main story.

But seeing it in person was different.

The city stretched for miles, a sprawling metropolis of gleaming spires and ancient stone, of suspended walkways and floating platforms, of mana-lights and holographic billboards that flickered with advertisements for everything from potions to weapons to luxury apartments.

Airships moved through the sky like schools of fish, their hulls painted with the crests of noble houses and merchant guilds, and the streets below were packed with people — students, merchants, scholars, soldiers, all moving with purpose.

It was a nation, a city-state, a kingdom unto itself, governed not by nobles or royals but by the Academy itself, where the Headmaster was the law and his word was absolute.

...And at its center, rising above everything else, was the Academy.

Towers of black stone and silver metal whose peaks disappeared into the clouds, walls covered in glowing runes that pulsed with protective enchantments strong enough to repel a siege, training fields the size of small villages, and an arena that could hold hundreds of thousands of spectators, its stands carved from stone that had been levitated by magic.

I had played this game.

I knew this place from a screen, from hours staring at pixels and imagining what it would be like to walk through those halls. But knowing it from a screen and standing in its shadow were two completely different things.

The jet landed at the Academy’s private docking platform with a soft hiss of hydraulics, and I stepped out into a world that looked like it had been pulled straight out of a dream.

The platform was suspended high above the ground, connected to the main city by a series of glass bridges that shimmered with blue light, and below me stretched Aegis Prime in all its chaotic glory. It was massive and overwhelming, the kind of city that made you feel small just by standing in it.

Lyra stepped up beside me, her emerald eyes scanning the crowd with the careful precision of someone who had been trained to spot threats before they became problems.

"Young master, we need to pay the registration fees first. The examination hall is in the central district, about a fifteen-minute walk from here."

I nodded but didn’t move because I was too busy staring at everything.

In the game, you just clicked a button and paid with virtual gold, but here in the real world you had to actually hand over the coins — thousands of them, enough to feed a small village for a year.

And it didn’t matter who you were — noble or commoner, heir to a Great House or a nobody from the slums — everyone paid the same fee, everyone got the same silver bracer, and everyone had the same chance to live or die in the Sealed Valley.

People still came by the thousands every year from every corner of the world, because Aegis Academy was the best.

The other academies scattered across the world couldn’t compare in resources, connections, or prestige. Graduating from here meant you were one of the elite, one of the chosen, one of the few who could stand against the monsters and the demons and whatever else the world threw at you.

It was ironic, really.

People paid for the chance to die, and every year some of them did.

But that was the price of power.

"Let’s go," I said, tearing my gaze away from the skyline.

The streets of Aegis Prime were packed with people — candidates mostly, but also merchants hawking their wares, street performers showing off their magic, and the occasional Academy official in blue and silver robes hurrying through the crowd with important-looking papers clutched in their hands.

The buildings here were even more impressive up close, their walls covered in glowing runes that pulsed with protective enchantments, their windows made of enchanted glass that shifted colors in the sunlight, their doors carved from wood so old it had turned to stone.

I was admiring one such building — a massive domed structure of white stone and silver metal that looked like it could have fit my entire estate inside it three times over, when someone slammed into me from the side hard enough to make me stumble.

I caught myself and turned to see a girl picking herself up off the ground.

She was about my age, maybe a year younger, with wild crimson hair that fell in messy waves past her shoulders and sharp amber eyes that were currently blazing with fury. She was wearing a fitted leather jacket over a simple shirt, dark pants tucked into combat boots, and a scowl.

A heavy longsword was strapped across her back, the blade nearly as long as she was tall. She was beautiful but dangerous, unpredictable, and impossible to ignore.

"You bastard!" she snapped, pointing a finger at my face while dusting herself off with her other hand. "What, are your eyes just for decoration? You have some kind of disease that stops you from looking where you’re going? Or did your mama drop you on your head one too many times as a baby?"

I blinked, trying to get a word in. "I—"

"No, no, don’t explain — because I don’t want to hear your excuses. I’m sure they’re as pathetic as that hair of yours." She gestured wildly at my head, her amber eyes narrowing.

"What’s wrong with it anyway? Did you stick your head in a snowbank and forget to take it out? Or is that just your natural look? Because if it is, I feel sorry for whoever has to look at you every morning."

Her words washed over me in a flood of insults so creative and so vulgar that I felt my eye start to twitch.

My eyes widened.

Alice Scarlet.

It has to be her.