The lecture grounds of the Academy resembled a small coliseum. Semi-circular rows of polished stone benches rose like waves, encircling a raised obsidian platform. Students filled the seats with restless chatter, buzzing over the recent sparring match, still murmuring about Andre's illusions and Hyuk's cold precision.
A distant chime rang through the air, silencing them.
Then came the sound of footsteps. They were soft, rhythmic, and deliberate. An older woman stepped onto the platform, her tall frame hunched slightly under a heavy furred shawl. Her dark green robes shimmered faintly with embedded Nous runes that glowed with age rather than power. Her voice rang clear without amplification, cutting through the afternoon haze.
"Today," she began, "we discuss the Arkan Scale, and why it exists."
The crowd straightened, some students pulling out enchanted slates or notebooks. Andre, of course, leaned back, arms crossed, unimpressed.
The instructor raised a finger, and behind her, five massive floating sigils appeared in the air, each one rotating slowly with ethereal gravitas.
EMBER. ASHEN. ARGENT. OBSIDIAN. CROWN. ARKAN.
"These are not just titles. They are the measure of your lives, and the dangers that will threaten them."
She pointed to the lowest tier.
"Ember. The spark of Nous. Students, new Enforcers, and low-tier Nouson. Most of you live here. It is where mistakes are allowed."
A few students looked offended. Andre smirked.
"Ashen. When that spark is forged through training. Proficiency. Control. You are no longer a danger to yourself, but still quite fragile."
She moved her hand to the next.
"Argent. Those who gleam under pressure. Intermediate Enforcers, rare Nouson. Dangerous in groups."
The glyph for Obsidian pulsed darker.
"Obsidian. Forged and sharp. Killers of cities. High Nous output, mastery of blessings or spells. Nouson of this class require multiple Enforcer squads. The failure rate is significant."
Her voice dimmed, solemn.
Then she gestured to the next sigil: Crown. It flared briefly, regal and terrible.
"Crown-class. Living disasters. Those with control over elements of reality itself. A handful exist. Some of you have read about the Crown-class sorcerer who summoned a storm that has not stopped raining for ten years."
Gasps rippled.
Then came the final symbol. ARKAN.
She did not speak immediately. Even the glyph hovered differently. It moved as if it followed its own law.
"There are only three mortals in history to reach this class. One destroyed half of Old Liv. Another ascended with Caliburnus in hand. The third." She let the pause linger. "They were never found. Only fear was left in their wake."
The glyph vanished.
"These ranks apply to you. To Nouson. To those blessed or cursed. You will be tested against them. Some of you." Her eyes swept the class. "Will never rise beyond Ashen. That is not failure. It is honesty."
A slow breath. "Rank is not destiny. But ignorance of it is death."
With that, the floating sigils dissolved into thin mist.
"Your Academy Identification Cards will reflect your current standing. They are embedded with Nous-responsive runes and will update based on quarterly assessments."
She clapped once. "Dismissed."
Later that day, the trio stood under the shade of a tree behind the main building, cards in hand.
Andre stared at his ID, the red-gold EMBER glyph at the bottom glinting like a low flame.
He scoffed. "This thing must be busted."
"Same," Amari said, flipping his own. His bore the sleek silver of ARGENT. "I thought I would get Obsidian, not just be the most dangerous intern alive."
Hari turned his over. A dull iron-gray shimmer. ASHEN.
Andre raised a brow at Amari. "You got Argent? For what? Poetry?"
Amari rolled his eyes. "Spellcasting potential. Nous reserves. Reflex sync. You know, talent." Then he nodded toward Andre, tone softening. "Honestly? I do not think you are far from Ashen yourself. You gave Hyuk trouble."
"I lost."
"Yeah, but you did not break."
Hari examined his own card quietly, fingers curling slightly. "Ashen makes sense," he muttered. "I am just a guy with muscles and broken spells."
"You are more than that," Amari said. "If we measured by street instincts and raw strength, you would be Argent already. But without a wish, yeah. That is the difference-maker."
Andre's voice was bitter. "So we are just numbers now? Letters on a fancy card?"
"No," Amari said flatly. "We are targets."
A silence passed.
Amari glanced at both of them. "Most people peak at Argent. That is the ceiling for ninety-nine percent of Enforcers. Obsidian is for elites, the ones who want to make history or rewrite it. Crown and Arkan? Those are fairytales. War gods. Dead men walking. Like Queen Sophia and Anya. They are Crown rank, and some people think our queen is a skip away from Arkan. It will be history if it happens."
Andre still stared at his card like it had insulted him. "So if I want to be taken seriously, I need to climb."
Hari tucked his away. "Then climb."
The trio wandered lazily through one of the academy's quieter courtyards, weaving between statues of past Enforcers and broken training dummies. Their ID cards were still warm in their hands, the freshly embedded Nous runes humming faintly.
Andre flipped his over for the fourth time, still fuming. "They really put me at Ember. Like I am some background character."
Hari shrugged. "I mean, you lost."
"I performed," Andre said, indignant. "If the Arkan Scale was based on crowd reaction, I would be top tier."
"Then we would all be ranked based on applause," Amari muttered, twirling his card between his fingers.
Andre shot him a look. "Easy for you to talk, Mr. Argent. What exactly gave you the edge? Big reserves?"
Amari stopped walking and tilted his head. "Partly."
He tapped the corner of his card. Another glyph flickered to life beneath the silver ARGENT rank. A swirling green spiral, subtle but unmistakable.
Andre blinked. "What is that?"
"A blessing," Amari said. "It activated a few months before we applied. I did not think it mattered until the Academy mentioned theirs get logged."
Hari raised a brow. "You never told us which blessing."
Amari shrugged. "Did not think it mattered. It is called Natural. Makes spellcasting and wish alignment come easy. Spells stick in my head like they belong. I watched an instructor do silent invocation last semester. Took me three tries to mimic it."
Andre crossed his arms, eyeing the spiral. "So not only do you get to skip time and train in your little dream dimension, you also get free spell buffs on top?"
"That dream dimension burns away my humanity if I use it too much," Amari said flatly. "So yeah, I would say it balances out."
Hari spoke up quietly. "It makes sense now. The way your Nous reacts to stimuli, how it bends with your intention."
"Exactly," Amari said. "A blessing is not something you ask for like a wish. It is intrinsic. Inherited, or latent. Usually it shows up when your Nous stabilizes."
Andre looked down at his own card, still bare. No second glyph. No green spiral. "So no wish, no blessing, Ember rank. What is next? They going to say I am adopted?"
"You probably are," Amari quipped.
Andre ignored him. "If I did have a blessing, it would be something cool. Like, I do not know, Clutch Factor. I get stronger when people watch."
Hari grinned faintly. "You mean Performer's Heart? That is actually a real one."
Andre lit up. "See? That sounds like me!"
"Except that it is not," Amari said. "Not yet, anyway."
Andre's smirk faded a little. He looked at his hands, flexed his fingers like they held invisible weight. "Then what am I?"
Hari looked at him. "The guy who did not break."
Andre met his gaze. There was no sarcasm in Hari's face.
Amari added, "The guy who made Hyuk blink."
Andre scoffed, but a hint of pride tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Yeah. And when I do get a blessing or wish, I am leapfrogging all your fancy glyphs."
Hari pocketed his card. "Then do it."
Later that night, the moon was swollen and low, casting a pale sheen across the tree line bordering the Academy's perimeter. The tall grass rippled in the wind, the only sound the occasional chirp of nocturnal insects. A trio of Enforcer trainees, led by a single upper-rank scout, trudged cautiously through the outskirts. A late-night patrol, more punishment than assignment.
"Eyes up," barked the scout. "This close to the eastern border, you stay alert."
The youngest trainee, a nervous boy with glowing runes pulsing faintly on his boots, muttered, "There is never anything out here. Just farmland and training wards."
But then they saw it.
It was not the bodies. There were none.
It was the absence.
The terrain twisted unnaturally. Trees curved like melting wax, grass blackened to ash in spiral patterns. A boulder the size of a shed hovered silently a few feet above the ground, slowly rotating as if stuck between time and gravity.
The air buzzed with residual Nous. Thick. Angry. Wrong.
The scout immediately halted the group, hand raised.
"Do not touch anything."
One of the older trainees pointed toward a flat stone slab jutting from the warped earth. Upon it: etchings, burnt into the surface with precision and chaos. Symbols not meant for human eyes. Some reversed versions of common casting glyphs, others unfamiliar entirely.
Lying just beneath the slab was a leather-bound book, half-destroyed, the rest soaked through with brackish fluid. The scout gingerly approached and flipped it open with a blade.
"Spellbook," he muttered. "Personalized. Belonged to an instructor."
The pages were rotted along the spine, half-eaten. Not by animal teeth, but something hungrier.
One word had been burned into the last legible page:
MIRAS.
The scout stepped back slowly, color draining from his face.
"Get word to the Academy. Now."
"But what was this?" the youngest asked, voice barely a whisper. "Was it a Nouson?"
"No," the scout said grimly, eyes scanning the symbols again. "Or maybe it was once."
He looked around one last time, then muttered, "This was Obsidian-class. No…"
He hesitated. Swallowed hard.
"Worse."
As they turned to retreat, the hovering boulder above them cracked slightly, leaking a slow drip of liquid Nous. Iridescent. Silent. Like blood from a wound that refused to clot.
The dorm room was dim, lit only by the soft pulse of a rune lamp in the corner. Hari sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on his knees, hands knotted loosely. Outside, the faint echo of laughter rose and fell like a wave. Inside, only silence.
He turned his Academy ID over in his hand. The Ashen glyph flickered cold gray, dull and forgettable.
Amari is a walking dimension. Andre is a delusional prodigy with a magic sword. And me? I am…
He did not finish the thought. He knew it too well already.
On the desk behind him, he had laid out old spell scrolls and domestic glyphs. Basic spells for cleaning, cooking, lighting hearths. Nothing worth teaching in combat drills. And yet he studied them like sacred scripture, slowly combining them into something functional.
A burst of heat wrapped in a silence charm. A traction glyph layered with a minor blink rune. Jury-rigged, messy magic, but his own.
He struck one combo against the ground. A faint gust launched from the floor, accompanied by a brief suction of air, like a vacuum pop. The chair across the room skidded an inch.
Hari blinked. Then smirked.
"It is something."
A knock came at the door.
Three light raps, like a painter tapping her brush against a frame, deciding whether to ruin the canvas.
Hari stood and opened it.
There stood Anya Love.
Hair loose and slightly frizzed, smudges of ink on her collar, a half-eaten fruit in one hand as if she had stolen it on the way here. Her eyes twinkled, amused, bright, and dangerously knowing.
"Well, well," she said, stepping in without invitation. "The Gentle Giant does have secrets."
Hari did not move. She paced the room like a cat in a gallery.
"I heard," she said, inspecting his crude spell combinations. "About the riot. The girl. The makeshift barrier you threw up with broken chalk and a half-done shield glyph." She gave him a playful side glance. "Sloppy, desperate, inspired. You fight like someone who never studied theory, but still passed the test."
Hari raised a brow. "You came here to give me a grade?"
"I came because you are interesting." She popped a piece of the fruit in her mouth. "Besides, I thought I would repay a favor. You saved someone. I like that in a person."
He crossed his arms. "What favor?"
She leaned in slightly, voice a whisper. "I introduced my wife to me. That earned me a few karmic credits."
Hari blinked. "What?"
"Do not worry, it is a long story. The point is, you do not have a wish yet, but I think one is circling you like a nervous lover. Too scared to show up."
Hari looked down at his hands. "I tried once."
"Ohhh." Anya dropped her voice, mock-dramatic. "The Tragedy of the Wishless Man. We should paint that sometime. Black ink, red sky, broken fists."
He looked at her, deadpan.
She laughed, sitting on his desk and swinging her legs slightly. "I am teasing. But not really."
Her expression softened. "Hari, I see the way you move. You do not fight like a soldier. You fight like someone protecting a mural the world already gave up on. You are not wishing for power. You are wishing for permission."
That one hit.
Hari looked away.
"You do not need permission," she said. "What you need is training. A direction. Maybe a nudge."
"A nudge?" he asked.
"I am offering to be your mentor." She bit another chunk of fruit. "Tomorrow. Dawn. Old art tower. Bring spells no one respects. We will humiliate them together."
He hesitated. "Why help me?"
Anya's voice turned quieter. "Because Sophia invited you for a reason, and reasons are not always beautiful. Sometimes they are smudges. Ugly brushstrokes we cover with brighter ones."
She hopped down, moving toward the door.
"Queen Sophia is not evil, Hari," she said, hand on the knob. "But she does not always paint with clean hands. Keep your eyes open. Not everything gilded is golden."
She paused, looking over her shoulder. "Also, I think you are fun. Broody, serious, looks like you have fought three Nouson just trying to get to class. Very dramatic. I can work with that."
Hari snorted, shaking his head.
"Oh, and one last thing," she said, her voice light again. "You do not need a divine gift to protect your friends. But if you learn how to shape chaos," she winked, "even the gods might steal your palette."
The door shut behind her.
Hari stood in silence.
Then, slowly, he turned back to the scrolls on his desk. With quiet determination, he layered another rune, a weight rune stitched onto a laundry charm. A subtle pulse flared. The desk creaked.
He smiled.
Then whispered to himself:
"I do not need a gift to protect them. I just need to be enough."