He stood there.

Tall. Unshaken. Effortlessly commanding attention without even trying, the kind of presence that didn’t demand to be noticed, yet somehow made everything else in the courtyard feel smaller, quieter, like the world had rearranged itself to frame him.

Ashriel, My handsome...

No.

Stop it.

I cut the thought off immediately, almost violently, severing it at the root before it could bloom into something worse. Like it had no right existing in my head.

What the hell was wrong with me?

I pressed my lips together and stared very hard at a point slightly to the left of his face.

But still...

Out of everyone here.... out of every single person in this academy who had the option to stay comfortably within their own business...

Why would Ashriel want to go to Morvalis with us?

"No. You can’t." Mr. Kaelan’s voice was firm, cutting clean through the tension like a blade through silk. His sharp gaze locked onto Ashriel. He was the leader of Dorm Black, and he wore that title like armor at all times, whether he meant to or not.

But Mr. Asher said nothing. Not a single word.

He only glanced at his brother once... a brief, sideways thing that lasted less than a breath.... before looking away again, his expression completely unreadable.

As though whatever Ashriel chose to do was entirely his own business and had absolutely nothing to do with him.

That alone was... strange.

"Why?" Ashriel asked. His voice was calm. Not defensive. Not emotional. Not the voice of someone who had been challenged and was scrambling to push back. It was the voice of someone who had already decided.

"Because this is a punishment for them, not for you," Ysara replied smoothly, folding her hands in front of her with the practiced composure of someone who had delivered difficult sentences many times before. "You have no affiliation with Dorm Red. This does not concern you."

Her tone was polite, but final.

For a moment, it seemed like that would be the end of it. Like Ashriel would accept the logic of it, nod once, and step back.

Like common sense would prevail and we would all move on.

But Ashriel didn’t move. Instead, he let the silence sit for exactly one beat, long enough to make everyone aware that he had chosen the pause, and then he spoke again, his voice carrying that same quiet authority that somehow felt louder than raised voices ever could.

"The rules of the academy clearly state that anyone willing to enter Morvalis.... punishment or not, may do so at any time, and shouldn’t be stopped."

The courtyard went still.

Wow.... Just...Wow.

I almost clapped. My hands actually twitched. There was a genuine, moment where the impulse moved from my brain directly to my palms before I managed to intercept it.

But honestly, the audacity of it. The sheer, surgical precision of using their own rulebook against them to their faces, without flinching, without even looking particularly pleased about it. That was an art form.

That was something I deeply, quietly respected whether I wanted to or not.

But then my hand was still in Elion’s, so i couldn’t clap. I pulled it away fast, almost like I had touched something hot, and Elion turned to look at me with an expression that could only be described as personally offended, like I had just announced, publicly, that I preferred someone else’s company, and he was filing that away as a grievance to address later.

I Ignore him.

My attention snapped back to Ashriel.

"That is true, Ashriel," Selene said slowly, her brows drawing together in a careful line. She had the look of someone doing math in real time, calculating whether this was a problem and how large a problem it was. "But why would you want to go with them when you’ve done nothing wrong?"

"Because I want to." Simple and direct.

Three words. Three words that carried the full weight of a decision already made, already settled.

It was a statement of fact, delivered with the calm finality of someone who had long since stopped feeling the need to explain himself to anyone.

I stared at him. I hated that I respected that.

"Then let Mr. Asher Tavien decide," Irene said lightly, her gaze drifting toward him with an ease that felt almost too deliberate. Her eyes rested on Mr. Asher just a moment longer than necessary, soft at the edges in a way that the rest of her expression wasn’t.

There was something in it. Something that she hadn’t quite bothered to hide, or perhaps hadn’t noticed she wasn’t hiding.

Interest. Or something that lived in the same neighborhood as desire, wearing slightly different clothes.

I clocked it.

But not my problem.

"Ashriel can do whatever he wants." Mr. Asher’s voice cut through the moment...calm, measured, and completely devoid of anything resembling hesitation. He didn’t look at Irene when he said it, or look at anyone in particular.

And just like that, everything shifted.

A flicker passed through the assembled professors. Not panic, more like the subtle, collective recalibration of people who had expected something and received something else entirely, then disappeared, swallowed by composure.

It moved through us too.

Because we had all expected him to refuse. For him to step forward, pull his brother back with the quiet authority of an older sibling who had been managing Ashriel’s impulses for years. It was the obvious move.

That made me like him a little more.

That was when the idea hit me.

The kind of idea that arrives fully-formed and announces itself with the confidence of a solution.

"Since we all agree that Ashriel can go with Dorm Red..." I stepped forward slightly, letting the words land with the casual ease of someone proposing something perfectly reasonable, "...can I stay back while he takes my place?"

"No!"

Six voices, six professors.

All at once, with a unanimity that would have been impressive if I wasn’t in the topic.

All except Mr. Asher, who said nothing and looked somewhere between mildly entertained and completely unsurprised.

I blinked.

Seriously?

I looked at them. All six of them. Standing there in a perfectly unified wall of refusal, as though they had rehearsed this.

"What kind of rules does this academy even follow?" I muttered, mostly to myself but loud enough that anyone within two feet of me could hear it clearly. "You can choose to go... but you can’t choose to stay back?"

It made absolutely no sense.

It was the kind of logic that only functioned if the point was never fairness to begin with.

I had learned very quickly that this place had its own internal architecture of rules that existed primarily to be inconvenient.

I exhaled through my nose and cursed them quietly and very creatively... cycling through several languages before arriving at the conclusion that there was nothing to be done about it.

This was happening.

"Prepare yourselves," Mr. Asher said calmly. "You will be sent off shortly."

"Wait." Elion raised his hand.

I turned my head just slightly.

"We’re still discussing weapons before some irrelevant interruption happened."

I stared at him.

Did he just...?

He had just referred to Ashriel, in front of Ashriel, as an irrelevant interruption. With his whole chest.

"You will not be going with weapons," Irene said, with a smile that was small and calm and carried absolutely no apology in it whatsoever. "Take care of yourselves."

The words settled over us like a cold hand pressing down. No weapons

But then...

"You will each pick one weapon." Mr. Asher stepped forward, calmly.

And with a single, unhurried motion of his hand, a rack of weapons appeared from nowhere, spreading out before us in the cool morning air as though it had always been waiting just slightly out of sight.

My breath caught.

They looked ordinary enough, the way anything dangerous can manage to look almost ordinary until you pay attention, but there was something beneath the surface of each one, something faintly alive, like the metal remembered something. Like each blade had a history that hadn’t finished yet.

I looked at them slowly, taking inventory without meaning to.

Longswords with silver runes etched deep into the blade, the lines so precise they could only have been made by someone who knew exactly what they were asking the steel to hold. Curved sabers that caught the light in a way that seemed almost intentional. Spears tipped with dark obsidian that absorbed light rather than reflecting it. Daggers balanced with the kind of precision that meant they had been made for a specific purpose by someone who took that purpose seriously. Twin blades, elegant and matched. A heavy battle-axe for someone who needed power over grace. Slender rapiers. And many more

"This is against the rules, Mr. Asher," Ysara said sharply, and for the first time there was something beyond composure in her voice, something clipped and tight.

"I won’t watch my Purgers walk into Morvalis and die on their first mission," he replied, his tone was steady. But someone that had already made its decision before the argument even started and was not interested in being talked out of it.

His gaze shifted to us. "Choose."

No one hesitated after that.

One by one, my dormmates stepped forward, moving along the rack.

Most of them chose swords.

I didn’t blame them. I understood the instinct.

Swords were what you reached for when you needed something reliable and didn’t have time to think about it.

I stepped forward last.

Taking my time in a way that wasn’t quite strategic and wasn’t quite hesitation.

But before I could even reach the rack...

Mr. Asher moved. He reached past the assembled weapons with the ease of someone who had already known, picked something up without ceremony, and turned to face me.

It was... Twin blades.

Sleek, dark-handled, balanced with a precision that was obvious even at a glance—the kind of obvious that only came from being made well. They were just right, in some way that registered before I had words for it.

He held them out to me, with the faintest smile.

"Take this."

For a moment...,

Just a brief, stupid, completely involuntary moment...

I forgot how to breathe.

The smile wasn’t big. It wasn’t warm in any obvious way.

It was just the kind of smile that barely qualified as one by technical standards alone... a slight shift at the corner of his mouth, there and gone before it could be analyzed.

But it landed somewhere in my chest anyway, with the precision of something thrown by someone who knew exactly where to aim.

In a way I didn’t understand. In a way I was not going to examine further.

I took the blades.

The weight settled into my hands like a recognition rather than an introduction. Like they weren’t new to me at all.

Before I could think too much about any of it, Elion reached out and grabbed my hand again, pulling me back into place beside him with the casual possessiveness of someone who had decided long ago that I was his to arrange.

I didn’t resist. Just let him move me

"We’re sorry, Ashriel," Mr. Asher said, turning slightly toward his brother. Something in his voice shifted, not quite softer, but different.

"We didn’t expect you to join them. I didn’t prepare a weapon for you."

Ashriel said nothing. He just stood there, still, composed, expression as unreadable as it had been for this entire conversation.

Then Mr. Kaelan stepped forward. He reached into his coat and produced a small blade, simple, unornamented, functional. The kind of weapon that had no interest in being beautiful. Sharp and efficient and entirely honest about what it was for.

He held it out. Ashriel hesitated but took it.

No gratitude.

Not even a nod of acknowledgment. He simply closed his hand around the hilt and let his arm fall back to his side, as though the entire exchange had happened to someone else and he was only there to collect the object at the end of it.

I watched him for a second.

Then I looked away.

"...What a jerk." I muttered