The four directors stepped forward onto the balcony.

Eryndor.

Selara.

Kaelen.

Althea.

Their presence alone was enough to pull the hall together again. Hundreds of first year students had spent the last minutes speaking over one another, searching for familiar faces, comparing prey, guessing rankings before the results were even shown, but all of that thinned the moment the four of them appeared above the assembly.

Kaelen walked to the front first.

He did not need to impose himself. The entire hall quieted on its own, as if everyone already knew that from this point onward no one’s imagination would matter anymore. Only the results would.

"Congratulations, students," Kaelen said, his voice carrying through the grand hall with clean clarity. "Once your grades are revealed, those of you who have passed will have finished your first year. After that, you will have one month of rest before second year begins."

No one interrupted.

Some students stood straighter. Others swallowed quietly. The balcony felt very far away from the floor of the hall, but the pressure coming from it reached everyone without any difficulty.

"Before you see your results," Kaelen continued, "I would like to say something. Do not allow disappointment to crush you. Some of you surpassed yourselves. Others could have done more, and you will see that reflected clearly in your grades."

He gave the room a moment to breathe before going on.

"All of you come from different places. Different houses. Different bloodlines. Different families. But within this Academy, your grades are not shaped by your surname. To us, no student is worth less than another. All of you have been given the same tools to work with."

That line reached the hall in different ways depending on who heard it.

For some, it was reassuring.

For others, especially those born into names that had carried them through life long before they had done anything to deserve it, it sounded closer to a warning.

Kaelen didn’t care how they took it.

"I would also like to thank all of you," he said. "For spending this year with us, and for choosing this Academy as the place where you wished to study."

A faint pause.

"With that said, the grades of all first year students will now be revealed."

Excitement tightened through the hall again.

Kaelen raised one hand.

"They will be displayed in projection form, so everyone can see them at once. For those who did not meet the standard required to advance to second year, you will need to work harder. Even so, you will be given one final chance to make up what you failed."

After that, Kaelen fell quiet and lifted his hand higher.

Blue light bloomed in the air.

A large projection unfolded above the hall, pale and luminous, filling the space beneath the high ceiling with shifting names arranged in order. Hundreds of students tilted their heads upward at once, and a wave of movement ran through the room as everyone tried to find themselves within the ranking.

Trafalgar studied it for a brief instant and understood immediately.

’It’s the full global ranking.’

Kaelen’s voice came again from above. "As you all know, none of your grades are divided. Everything has been added together into a global result. You appear here according to how well you performed overall."

That was all the explanation anyone needed.

The hall came alive again, though this time the noise was sharper, tighter, almost frantic. Students searched for their names, their friends, their rivals. Some found relief quickly. Others grew pale the longer they looked.

High above them, Selara had leaned slightly toward Althea, amusement already alive in her expression.

"What, are you searching for your son?" she asked under her breath. "A pity Kaelen wouldn’t let you score anything related to him and left it all to his teachers, hm?"

Althea did not spare her even a trace of embarrassment.

"You know very well I would never manipulate a student’s result," she replied, her tone as serious as ever.

Selara let out a quiet laugh.

"Yes, yes, I know. You’re always so painfully serious." Her lips curved further as she glanced at Althea’s face. "Although what you have on your face right now says something else entirely. You’re just a mother hoping her son did well. That’s normal. Don’t worry, I won’t mock you for it later."

She paused very briefly, enjoying herself.

"I also won’t let Eryndor do it."

That, at least, made Althea finally answer her with a colder sideward look, though by then she had already found what she wanted.

Xavier au Roquefort.

Twenty second place.

Among hundreds of first year students, her adopted son had placed twenty second overall.

The change in her expression was small, but impossible to miss once noticed. Satisfaction was there, yes, though what rose more clearly than that was something warmer and more personal. Pride, the kind a mother could never hide as well as she believed she did.

Selara caught it and smiled as if she had just won something minor but pleasant.

Down below, Trafalgar and the others were also searching the projection.

Bartholomew was the first to find a familiar name.

"I-I’ve found you, Cy-cynthia," he said, lifting a hand slightly as if pointing alone might make the ranking more real. "You’re sixty seventh. That’s really good."

Cynthia blinked.

For a second, genuine surprise replaced the harder expression she had been wearing ever since the results started to appear. She had expected to pass. She had not expected to place that high among so many students.

Trafalgar glanced up toward the projection and nodded lightly. "Not bad."

That was all he said, but coming from him, it carried enough weight for Cynthia to straighten very slightly.

She did not answer. Instead, she searched again and quickly found another name.

"There," she said, turning toward her brother with much less restraint than he would have preferred. "Barth, that’s you. Thirty first."

Bartholomew froze.

His face turned red almost immediately, not because he was unhappy with the result, but because the others were already reacting around him.

Cynthia looked genuinely pleased.

Xavier made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a shout of approval.

Even Zafira gave him a short nod that passed for praise from her.

Bartholomew could survive a monster more easily than that level of attention. He stood there looking as though someone had dropped him into the wrong scene by force.

By then, however, one thing had become impossible to ignore.

Neither Trafalgar’s name nor Zafira’s had appeared yet.

The ranking kept moving.

Students farther down had already been shown. More names disappeared upward as the projection advanced toward the highest positions, and every second that passed made the answer clearer.

The top ten arrived.

Still no Trafalgar.

Still no Zafira.

Still no Alfons.

The mood in the hall changed again. It did not explode outward, but it narrowed. Students who had already found their own positions began to pay attention to something else now. Conversations thinned. More heads tilted upward. Everyone knew what it meant.

The three remaining names had to be near the very top.

Trafalgar kept watching in silence.

The ranking moved again.

Top five.

Top four.

And when the third place name finally appeared, Trafalgar read it aloud before anyone else in his group could.

"Third," he said. "Zafira du Zar’khael."

Xavier was the first to react.

"Top three," he said with a grin. "That sounds right."

Cynthia nodded at once. Bartholomew, still recovering from being thirty first, also managed a quiet congratulations of his own. Zafira accepted it all with her usual calm, though there was the faintest trace of satisfaction in the way she held herself.

Trafalgar kept watching the projection.

"Second..." he murmured.

The hall seemed to draw inward at that moment.

And the point of view shifted.

Alfons’s red eyes locked onto the next name the instant it appeared.

Alfons au Vaelion.

Second place.

The two boys nearest him went quiet on the spot.

A moment ago, they had still been standing near him with the shallow certainty of people who assumed second place among all first years was the kind of result anyone should be proud to claim. From the outside, Alfons looked the same as ever. Straight backed. Composed. His face gave them nothing.

But inside, the result hit him like an insult carved into stone.

Second.

Below him, one name still remained on the top.

One of the other boys swallowed before speaking, careful now.

"That still means..."

He did not finish, because the third one did it for him, saying it out loud in a voice that carried far enough to make the words impossible to ignore.

"First place. Trafalgar du Morgain."

That was enough.

Alfons turned and walked out of the hall.

He did not need to see anything else. He had already seen everything he came here for. The projection had confirmed it cleanly, publicly, in front of the entire first year. Trafalgar stood above him.

The flame inside Alfons’s chest did not go out.

It grew.

Back in the hall, the name remained there in first place, suspended in pale blue light above hundreds of students.

Trafalgar du Morgain.

This time no one could reduce anything to rumor.

At the start of the year, no one had seen Trafalgar as ordinary, but many had still measured him through older stories. A late awakening. Poor mana control. A bastard from House Morgain with less refinement than someone of that name should have possessed. Those ideas had lingered because people liked simple conclusions.

After that came newer rumors.

The war.

The Councils.

What he had done.

How much he had changed.

Students had repeated those stories to one another for months, half believing, half doubting, as people always did when someone rose too quickly for comfort.

But now?

Now they had watched the year unfold.

Now they had seen the practical exam.

Now the ranking stood above all of them with his name at the top.

The old stories had no weight left.

All across the hall, the first year students found themselves staring at Trafalgar.

He stood there beneath the projection, head tilted slightly upward toward the blue light where his name had taken first place. Around him, the top three remained displayed large enough for everyone to read.

Zafira du Zar’khael.

Alfons au Vaelion.

Trafalgar du Morgain.

The names themselves were not surprising. Nearly everyone had expected the heirs of the Great Families to dominate the top three.

What no one had expected was this order.

Trafalgar remained where he was while Alfons left.

Above him, his name held first place.