The academy gates loomed ahead—arched obsidian doors set into white stone, engraved with stories older than any nation. They parted not with sound, but silence. The kind of silence that swallowed your name if you lingered too long.
Lyren stood at the threshold, no longer dressed in rags.
Gone was the back-alley saint.
In his place stood a young man in a crisp, navy-blue student coat, embroidered with pale silver thread. His hair—still platinum, still unruly—had been tied loosely at the back. His eyes, once stars buried in shadows, now gleamed with faint humor.
Not arrogance. Not warmth.
Something in-between.
A calculated charm with nowhere to rest.
He stepped into the courtyard with all the grace of a bastard noble who'd never been invited, but always arrived first.
—
Valtessan Academy pulsed with order.
Magitech lights hovered between dorms. Students crossed glass bridges suspended over runic channels. Instructors wore robes laced with story-seals and rank badges, trailing ink-like strands of recorded lectures.
Everyone had a place.
Everyone had a house.
Everyone had a name that could be traced.
Except him.
—
"Name?" the registrar asked without looking up.
"Lyren von Ettal."
The quill stopped mid-motion.
"You are not on the current generation lists."
"I'm not part of the current generation," Lyren replied smoothly. "I'm a belated inheritance."
"…House affiliation?"
"None declared."
Pause.
Then, scribble.
"You'll be placed in the wild crest bracket. First-year provisional."
Lyren smiled. "Lovely. Nothing says anonymity like being labeled unpredictable."
—
He entered the lecture hall ten minutes early.
Not for the class.
But to watch.
The students were beautiful and sharp. Rich. Tailored. Arrogant in the way only tradition can afford.
Lyren watched them the way a playwright watches an audience: measuring reactions, cataloguing vanity.
And then he sat beside the most dangerous person in the room.
Princess Avelyne didn't even glance at him.
But she noted his presence with a breath.
A change in the tilt of her chin.
She knew he wasn't a commoner.
He knew she wasn't truly human.
It was a beautiful beginning.
—
At lunch, he ate in silence beneath the archway near the west garden.
Until someone threw a tray beside him.
"You look like someone trying too hard," said the girl—short, sharp-voiced, violet-eyed.
"Ishira Velentis," he said without being introduced.
"You know me?"
"I know tragedy. You wear it well."
She stared.
Then sat.
They didn't speak again for ten minutes.
But neither moved.
The mask held.
And the marble halls learned a new name.
Von Ettal.
They would remember it.