The cafeteria table seated six, there were ten people around it.

Soren ate his rice and watched the perimeter grow.

Hansel sat on his left with his beetle perched on his shoulder, the thing’s carapace brighter than it had been yesterday.

Cole Harver was on the far end pretending he’d always eaten here.

Two girls from the back row of Vesna’s combat class whose names Soren hadn’t learned yet sat across from each other trading looks every time he moved his fork.

Dani’s moth was on the ceiling above the table.

She was three tables away eating alone because she didn’t want to draw attention, but the moth tracked Soren’s position the way it always did.

Grimm lay under the table with her chin on his boot.

"Your beetle got bigger," Soren said to Hansel.

"Overnight." Hansel tapped the carapace and the beetle clicked its mandibles. "I woke up and the shell had thickened by two millimeters. I measured."

"You measured your beetle’s shell at six in the morning?"

"I measure every morning. I’ve got a spreadsheet." Hansel said this without any indication that he found it unusual.

"But the growth rate spiked and three other Class Z students reported changes too. Greta’s hawk molted a full set of secondary feathers in eight hours. That takes weeks normally."

Soren looked at the beetle.

Through Pack Sense he could feel it, a faint mana signature pulsing in rhythm with his own heartbeat.

The Primordial Heart had a radius.

Beasts that spent enough time near him grew faster because his bond frequency leaked ambient energy the same way Yara’s shadows leaked cold.

He kept eating.

"You could tell us to leave," said one of the back-row girls.

Her name was either Lena or Lina. He’d figure it out eventually.

"Would you?"

"Probably not."

"Then why would I waste the breath?"

Maren dropped her tray on the table hard enough to rattle the silverware and sat down next to him.

Her tail was out because she’d stopped hiding it in the cafeteria after the training yard incident, since everyone had already seen the foxfire.

"Did I miss the recruitment speech?"

"There’s no recruitment speech."

"Good, because you’d be terrible at it." She started eating.

Fen Harrak appeared at the end of the table.

The kid looked different.

He was thinner than before the east wing incident, hollowed out through the cheeks, but he was standing and his beast, a scrap-metal spider the size of a dinner plate, clung to his forearm with its legs wrapped tight.

He didn’t say anything for a few seconds then he sat down.

"Dani told me you carried me to the infirmary," Fen said. He was looking at his tray, not at Soren.

"I did."

"I don’t remember any of it."

"That’s normal. The mana shock erased your short-term memory from that night."

Fen nodded once, his spider’s legs tightened on his arm. "Thanks."

That was all he said. He started eating and nobody made it into more than it was.

Maren was halfway through her bread when she looked at the girls across the table, then at Hansel, then at the growing ring of Class Z students who were pulling chairs from other tables.

"You could try being less impressive," she said, mouth full.

"I beat one guy."

"You beat Class C’s number one with a blind wolf while bleeding from the shoulder, then a Tier-6 goddess stood behind you while you told a Council auditor to go file her paperwork."

She tore off another piece. "One guy."

Selah sat down on Soren’s right.

She didn’t announce herself.

"Your shoulder," Selah said quietly. "How is it?"

"Fine."

She reached across and touched it.

Her fingers were cold and the swelling went down immediately under her palm.

The muscle damage from the lion’s mane-charge had been throbbing all morning but the cold pulled it back.

She held contact for three seconds, then withdrew her hand and went back to eating without making eye contact.

Maren watched Selah touch Soren’s shoulder.

Her bread caught fire.

The flame was small, just a lick of foxfire at the crust edge, but it was there.

Maren looked down at her burning bread, then at Selah, then at the bread again.

Nobody at the table commented.

Hansel’s beetle clicked once. The back-row girls pretended to be fascinated by their soup.

Maren bit into the bread anyway, fire and all, and chewed with an expression that dared anyone to say something.

[DING! — Passive Primordial Aura detected. Bonded entities within 50m of the Primordial Tamer’s Heart experience accelerated growth. Effect scales with tamer rank. Current rank: E. Current radius: 50m. Affected entities: 7.]

Soren dismissed the notification and kept eating.

Seven beasts growing faster because they sat near him at lunch.

The Primordial Heart turned everything into a cultivation tool whether he wanted it to or not.

Troy sat down at the table’s far corner without greeting anyone.

His knight didn’t materialize, which meant he was conserving mana, but the space he occupied was enough.

Nobody from the other classes walked past their section of the cafeteria anymore.

"The auditor left campus an hour ago," Troy said. "Filed her report remotely."

"How do you know that?"

"My family still has Council contacts. She’s not coming back for thirty days unless something triggers an emergency review."

"Good."

"Don’t waste it." Troy picked up his fork. "Thirty days goes fast when people are trying to kill you."

Soren finished his rice.

Grimm shifted under the table, her snout pressing against his ankle.

Through the bond she was calm.

The crowd around the table didn’t bother her because Soren wasn’t bothered, so she wasn’t either.

Soren didn’t want a faction.

He’d said this to himself three times since sitting down.

The problem was that nobody at the table had asked to join anything.

They’d just shown up, eaten next to him, and stayed because something about the arena fight, the beetle growth or the Primordial aura had made Class Z feel different than it used to.

Class Z used to mean the bottom.

The charity cases, the scholarship students whose beasts couldn’t compete with the upper tiers.

Now their beasts were growing overnight and their classmate had beaten a Class C champion with improvised tactics.

Soren pushed his tray forward and stood up. "I need to check the lower levels."

"The seal?" Maren asked.

He nodded once.

Maren stood up.

Selah stood up.

Troy was already standing.

Across the cafeteria, Vesna walked through the side door.

A faculty aide met her with a sealed envelope.

The seal on it was wax pressed with a sigil that Soren recognized from the novel because it only appeared on one type of correspondence.

Council direct communication.

Vesna broke the seal and read the letter.

She folded the letter, put it in her jacket, and walked out without looking at anyone.

Soren watched her leave.

Through Script Sight he felt it, a shift in the events pulling toward a shape he couldn’t see the edges of. Whatever was in that letter had changed something.

He walked toward the stairwell and the three of them followed.