{Jin’s POV}

******

The early morning sun crested over the jagged stone spires of the Royal Academy, casting long, golden rays that pierced through the lingering dawn mist.

A crisp, biting wind swept across the deserted campus courtyards, rustling the dew-heavy leaves of the ancient oaks.

Somewhere in the canopy, a chorus of songbirds began their sharp, melodic chirping to greet the dawn, completely oblivious to the heavy, underlying tensions of the students sleeping below.

I pushed open the rusted iron doors at the base of the old astronomy tower, stepping out into the freezing morning air. The heavy metal groaned shut behind me with a dull, echoing thud.

I pulled the collar of my dark uniform jacket up against the chill, letting out a long, exhausted breath that instantly plumed into a white cloud. I hadn’t slept a wink.

As I had spent the darkest hours of the night standing in the drafty, abandoned belfry with Tobias. The bespectacled mage was observant. He hadn’t actually seen me tracking Marcus through the corridors, but his mind had easily deduced the underlying pattern of Emma’s sudden, frantic isolation.

"It is not exactly an uncommon occurrence, Jin," Tobias had told me, his voice carrying a quiet, aristocratic disdain as he leaned against the stone windowsill.

"Insecure nobles frequently target commoner scholarship students. It is a pathetic, primitive display of power to compensate for their own academic or magical mediocrity. If Emma is the victim of upper-class ragging, you do not have to handle it alone."

He had looked at me dead in the eye, dropping all of his usual sarcastic pretense.

"My family’s crest carries significant weight," he had offered. "If you need political backing to force an aristocratic bully to back down, you only have to say the word."

As I walked down the cobblestone pathway toward the main campus, I exhaled, slowly.

It was a massive gesture. For him to openly offer his noble backing, to risk dragging his own family into a political feud just to protect a commoner he constantly complained about, proved exactly what kind of person he really was underneath the abrasive exterior.

But I had turned him down.

Tobias thought this was just a simple case of campus hazing. A spoiled noble throwing his weight around to force a smart girl to write his runic translation essays.

He didn’t know about the Capital Syndicate. He didn’t know that Marcus’s family wasn’t just threatening her socially, but actively holding her parents’ hostage over guild protection taxes.

A polite, formal warning from Tobias’s family wouldn’t break an economic stranglehold. It would only force Marcus to back off in public, while retaliating ten times harder against Emma’s family in the shadows.

You don’t cure an infection by putting a bandage over it. You have to burn it out at the root.

"Thanks, Tobias," I muttered softly to the empty courtyard, my boots clicking rhythmically against the stone. "But I’ve got this handled my way."

I checked my pocket watch. It was still a few hours before the morning bell, but I had absolutely no intention of going back to my dorm to sleep.

Mira and her squad were mobilizing to intercept the Syndicate’s southern trade route today. If the bridge demolition went according to my localized system calculations, Marcus’s family would default on their royal charter by midnight tonight.

I rolled my stiff shoulders, completely shaking off the exhaustion. I had a lot of work to do today to make sure my alibi was absolutely ironclad when the financial fallout hit the capital.

Bypassing the dining hall entirely and heading straight back to the dormitories. I pushed my heavy wooden door open, the room was exactly as I had left it.

Kyle was still dead to the world, his snores practically vibrating against the stone walls.

I walked over to his bed and delivered a solid, unceremonious kick to the wooden frame.

"Get up, Kyle. Sun’s up."

Kyle let out a pathetic, muffled groan, blindly pulling his pillow over his face.

"Five more minutes. My ribs are still staging a protest."

"Class is in forty," I replied, ignoring his complaints as I walked over to the washbasin and splashed freezing water onto my face, forcefully washing away the lingering exhaustion of my sleepless night.

"If you make me late, I’m going to spar with you using live steel today."

That finally got him moving. Kyle grumbled a string of colorful curses under his breath, but he rolled out of bed and began heavily shuffling through his morning routine.

By the time we made it to the eastern academic wing, the corridors were already buzzing with the usual morning chaos. We walked into lecture hall and took our usual seats in the middle row, dropping our heavy leather bags onto the wooden desks.

A few minutes later, the classroom door creaked open.

Emma stepped inside.

My eyes instantly caught the movement, but I kept my posture entirely relaxed, deliberately maintaining a blank expression.

She looked terrible.

The vibrant, nervous energy she usually carried was completely gone. Her skin was incredibly pale, almost sickly, and stark, bruised-looking shadows hung heavily under her bright blue eyes. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

She was clutching her bookbag to her chest with a white-knuckled grip, her shoulders hunched defensively. She kept her gaze glued firmly to the floorboards, carefully avoiding even a single glance toward the middle rows as she quickly took an isolated seat at the very front of the class.

Kyle, who had been in the middle of complaining about his empty stomach, completely trailed off. He leaned over his desk, his eyes thoroughly entirely with genuine concern.

"Man..." Kyle whispered, his brow furrowing. "She looks really bad today. You think she caught a fever or something?"

My jaw tightened imperceptibly.

"She probably just stayed up all night studying," I replied, fixing my gaze entirely on the blank blackboard at the front of the room.

"Leave her alone, Kyle. She clearly wants her space."

Kyle looked at me, a flash of hurt and confusion crossing his face at my absolute lack of empathy, but before he could argue, the heavy door at the front of the hall swung open.

Professor Vance strode into the room, his dark academic robes sweeping across the stone floor. The low murmur of the class instantly died down.

Instead of immediately reaching for his chalk to begin the runic theory diagrams, Vance stepped behind his heavy oak desk and picked up a crisp, officially sealed parchment.

"Settle down, everyone," Vance commanded, his stern voice easily carrying to the back of the tiered hall.

"Before we begin Chapter seven, I have a formal announcement forwarded directly from the Student Council."

A quiet ripple of curiosity swept through the room.

"Exactly two weeks from today," Vance announced, unrolling the parchment, "the Royal Academy will commence its annual Spring Festival."

Excited whispers instantly broke out across the desks. Even Kyle perked up, momentarily forgetting his concern for Emma.

"Quiet," Vance snapped, and the room instantly silenced.

"As first-years, this will be your first time participating. For three days, the Academy gates will be open to the public. This includes high-ranking nobility, prominent merchant guilds from the Capital Syndicate, and distinguished alumni."

I narrowed my eyes slightly at the mention of the Capital Syndicate. The timing was almost too perfect.

"Classes will be suspended during the festival," Vance continued smoothly.

"However, you are expected to participate. There will be public exhibition duels in the combat pavilions, magical theory showcases, and various student-run vendor stalls set up across the central courtyards. The Student Council will be distributing the logistical requirements and sign-up sheets by tomorrow morning. I highly suggest you begin preparing your respective displays or tournament registrations. This is a prime opportunity to secure future sponsorships."

Vance rolled the parchment back up and finally picked up his chalk.

"Now," he said, turning to the blackboard.

"Turn your textbooks to page one hundred and twelve. Let us discuss the degradation rate of localized fire runes."

As the sound of turning pages filled the room, my Debugger interface quietly flared to life in the back of my mind.

A public festival. The gates open to the capital’s elite. If Mira dropped that bridge today, the financial fallout for Marcus’s family would hit critical mass right in the middle of the Academy’s most public, heavily populated event of the year.