The stone archway shimred with shifting glyphs as Kai led Mari and Willam into the training crucible.
Inside, the chamber unfolded like a dream forged in arcane fire, hexagonal platforms hovered over a bottomless void, mana storms surged in calculated intervals, and glowing nodes pulsed at the arena’s centre like beating hearts.
A perfect simulation of a real Crucible match.
Perfectly brutal.
They failed the first run within seven minutes.
The second, even faster.
By the ninth failure, the silence between them was louder than any spell they had cast.
The average match of Arcane Crucible fell around the fifteen-minute mark, but they couldn’t even last half of that.
Mari knelt on a floating platform, breathing heavily, runes half-sketched in radiant gold beneath her fingertips. Willam stood with his arms crossed, muttering equations to himself, eyes darting through spatial trajectories like he was solving a murder.
Kai didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.
He felt the flaw.
Mari was an excellent Runesmith. Her divine glyphs created barriers, pulsed with radiant shielding, and even retaliated with bursts of sanctified light.
He, of course, handled offense. Spellbreaking. Counter-casting. When enemies struck, he was the blade that t them.
Willam was sharp. Too sharp. He practically inhaled the magical puzzles littered throughout the arena, calculating paths through labyrinth runes, flipping sigils mid-battle, finding openings in arcane logic.
But that wasn’t enough.
Nobody controlled the flow of the battlefield. No one was shifting platforms or initiating battlefield mobility. No one was protecting node territory or rescuing isolated teammates.
"We’re missing a Gatekeeper," Kai said finally, rubbing his temples.
Willam raised a brow. "And here I thought I was the weak link."
"You’re not," Kai replied. "But we can’t win with three. We need soone who can warp the battlefield. Disrupt enemy control. Soone who thinks in pressure curves."
"You an a utility caster," Mari said, standing up. "But summoners and conjurers can’t even use familiars during the match."
Kai scowled.
’Exactly. I’d have just flooded the field with revenants if that rule didn’t exist. But here we are.’
They’d have to find soone else.
More specifically, soone in their year. The rule was simple: first-years only. The Crucible regulations were strict. No upperclassn, coaches, or magical assistants.
Just raw student potential.
He exhaled, then turned to his teammates. "Keep running simulations. You need the rep, and we need the muscle mory. I’ll search."
"Search where?" Willam asked.
Kai was already halfway to the gate.
"Everywhere."
---
The main halls were flooded with post-lecture murmurs and the shimr of spellcraft hanging in the air like perfu. Kai passed students from E through B-Class. So were brash, others withdrawn. All of them had sothing to prove.
He talked to dozens.
A fla user who could barely handle their own ignition radius. A girl from D-Class who nearly set her cloak on fire trying to demonstrate a levitation rune. The most interesting was a pair of twins who argued mid-spell and almost lted the corridor floor.
Class A and S students were out of the question, too powerful, too political, too proud. Mostly nobles like Emille.
Until he saw her.
She was leaning against the corner pillar near the alchemy annex, twirling a strand of black hair between her fingers. Her mana signature hit him like static.
Densely compressed mana.
Elegant.
Dangerous.
She looked up as he approached and smirked.
"Oh, it’s the idiot again."
Kai sighed. "Right. You."
He expected her to walk away. She looked the type: smarter than the rest, sharper than the rest, and way too used to being underestimated.
Instead, she tilted her head, lips curling into sothing resembling amusent. She placed her hands behind her back, shifted her weight like a nervous schoolgirl, and asked:
"You need a fourth?"
"...You- you’d actually say yes?"
Her cheeks flushed slightly. "I was going to say no, but now that you’re being all dramatic and mysterious, I’m curious."
He blinked. "...Right."
She extended her hand. "I’m Naia. S-Class, gravity magic specialization. And before you ask; yes, I am the reason they had to rebuild the east tower."
’I didn’t ask, and nor did I know about any of that. Your specialisation does explain the feeling your mana gives , though.’
Kai took her hand cautiously. "Mirlin. Elentalist."
She grinned. "You’re that Mirlin?"
’As if you don’t already know.’
The next day, everything changed.
---
Their first training session with Naia was nothing short of chaos incarnate.
Willam argued every formation. "She’s prioritising chaos flow over control! This is not mathematically viable!"
’This is a ga of magic. Not maths...’ Kai sighed.
Mari was too slow on platform prediction. One rune misfire nearly sent Naia tumbling into the void.
’I can’t teach her about runes. They’re fundantally different to my sigils. They only temporarily affect sothing, and usually just changes things like density, strength, solidity and more...’
Kai found himself juggling leadership, repositioning, and team managent like a solo act in a collapsing circus tent.
Naia just laughed through it all. She danced across floating terrain with a weightless glide, using pinpoint gravity fields to slide allies across platforms or slam simulated enemies into control zones.
’She has no regard for her teammates’ plans, or even their safety...’
But they improved. Slowly. Painfully.
Willam adjusted his logical rigidity and began anticipating enemy trap logic with terrifying efficiency. He officially took the Puzzlemancer role, transmuting puzzle-locks mid-battle with barely-contained glee.
Mari learned to cast dual glyphs: defence and enhancent. Her divine warding adapted into utility, and her reaction ti tightened under pressure. She beca the Runesmith in truth, her glyphs like bursts of holy code burned into the Crucible’s heart.
Naia was the Gatekeeper. No question. She made the battlefield her own. Controlled movent, platform shifting, teleports, and gravity pulses that turned narrow defeats into unexpected wins.
And Kai...
Kai beca the blade. He always assud that would beco the case, though.
He led the charge, shattered enemy spells with a flick of his hand, and absorbed magical feedback like a storm given form. The Spellbreaker. The frontliner. The spearhead of Shadowbound.
He quickly turned in the edited team forms to the headmaster to register Naia as a new team mber when he saw the instant improvents to the cohesion of the team.
---
Day after day, they trained.
Kai introduced coded hand signals for silent coordination. They practiced golden node blitzes during Final Convergence phases. Simulated ambushes. Rehearsed tower control. Constructed counter-patterns against phantom teams built from known class archetypes.
And soon, people noticed. Everyone noticed.
Many people were beginning to watch their simulated matches.
E-Class students stopped jeering. D-Class muttered nervously. Even C-Class began scouting their matches, taking notes, sneering, whispering behind conjured sigil-shields.
But Kai didn’t care about them.
He trained for four things: ti, silence, status, and Vepice.
That evening, he sat alone in his dorm while Willam practiced more than necessary in the training grounds.
The curse-band on his arm pulsed slowly, its black runes glowing faintly.
He traced a finger across it, then whispered, "Just a little longer."
The band slackened briefly... then tightened again, almost lovingly.
He smiled, bitter and tired.
"The Crucible awaits," he muttered, eyes sharp. "Let’s see how this plays out."
Reviews
All reviews (0)