A murmur swelled through the students packed around the bulletin board—like a wave gathering force—but it wasn’t until the group finally reached the front that they understood why.
Pinned beneath glowing mana-locks, written in crisp black ink and stamped with the unmistakable crest of the Academy, was a brand-new sheet of parchnt.
Aurelian read the first line—and froze.
"...You have got to be joking," he whispered.
Selphine’s brows lifted sharply. "They wouldn’t."
But they had.
The header unfurled itself with a faint shimr, the ink brightening as if eager to announce its own cruelty.
—OFFICIAL ADDENDUM TO FIRST-YEAR EXAMINATION WEEK—
Effective Imdiately: A New Compulsory Exam Has Been Added.
Dead silence.
Then—
"WHAT?!" soone in the crowd exclaid, loud enough to echo off the stone walls.
Elara felt her stomach drop.
Marian actually grabbed her own hair.
Toven looked like he might bite the paper.
Cedric stiffened beside her, jaw clenching.
Selphine’s tone, however, remained perfectly level. "Continue reading."
Aurelian swallowed once, then read aloud:
"All first-year students are hereby required to participate in the newly reinstated evaluation of Magical Theory & Knowledge.
This assessnt will take the form of an oral interview conducted by Academy Magisters.
Each student will be questioned individually on:
—Applied magical principles
—Theoretical spell structures
—Rune logic foundations
—Historical arcana
Attendance is mandatory."
A long, collective scoff rippled through the crowd—sharp, breathy, and perfectly synchronized across fifty different throats. If the Academy had been standing right in front of them, it would’ve been pelted with quills.
"Unbelievable," Valen muttered.
"Actually, no," Marian said, throwing her arms up. "This is exactly what they would do. Of course they’d add another exam. Why not ten? Why not twenty?"
Toven looked two seconds away from climbing the bulletin board and ripping the parchnt off. "We already have seven. Seven! What kind of sadist thinks, ’Hmm, not enough. Let’s shove in an eighth’?"
"Makes you wonder if the Magisters enjoy watching us suffer," Aurelian sighed.
"They do," Selphine said flatly.
Marian pointed at her. "See? She knows. She’s practically nobility, she’s seen the inner workings of evil."
"That is not what I said," Selphine replied, though her tone didn’t deny it either.
Around them, students groaned, cursed, or threw their heads back in pure despair. A second-year passing by snorted under his breath.
"Welco to Arcanis," he muttered. "If you thought they cared about sleep, you enrolled in the wrong academy."
Elara felt the sigh building in her chest before it finally slipped out—a soft, resigned breath that matched half the crowd. An eighth exam. Another layer of tension on a week already stretched thin. Even she felt the weight of it, though she kept her expression composed.
Cedric glanced at her, brow tightening at the edges.
She steadied her smile.
Aurelian leaned closer, squinting at the parchnt. "There’s more."
Marian whimpered. "Of course there is."
A second block of text shimred into clarity beneath the first:
"All students will receive their personal interview ti in a sealed letter delivered to their dormitory rooms before midnight.
Scheduling has been optimized so that no pre-existing examination slot will be affected."
A mont of silence.
Then—
A wave of defeated sighs swept through the crowd. Heavy, uniform, exhausted.
"Great," Valen muttered. "So it’ll be tucked right between two other exams. Perfect."
"Or worse," Quen groaned. "At dawn. Watch get dawn."
"You will get dawn," Selphine said without hesitation.
Quen’s jaw dropped. "Why ?!"
"Because the universe is fair," Aurelian replied dryly.
Mireilla pinched the bridge of her nose. "So we’ll be going to sleep just to wake up to another schedule. Wonderful."
"Sleep?" Marian scoffed. "I don’t even know if I can sleep after this. Oral interviews? With Magisters? Do you know how terrifying that is?"
"Yes," Toven hissed. "Yes, we do."
Even the twins didn’t joke this ti.
Cedric exhaled slowly, shoulders stiff. "At least it won’t interfere with the rest of the schedule."
"Which ans," Aurelian added, "it will be sandwiched around the rest of the schedule."
Another round of exhausted groans.
"Has anyone else noticed," Marian said suddenly, squinting suspiciously at Elara, "that Elowyn hasn’t said a single dramatic thing about this yet?"
All eyes turned.
Elara blinked once, caught mid-thought.
Aurelian raised a brow. "She has been uncharacteristically quiet."
Quen gasped softly, looking between Cedric and Elara. "Wait—wait—don’t tell —"
Valen’s grin spread slowly. "Oh no."
Mireilla’s lips twitched. "He’s going to say it."
Quen leaned in, stage-whispering with the subtlety of a crashing boulder:
"Is she trying to cosplay her silent knight?"
Cedric inhaled sharply.
Marian choked on her own breath.
Toven outright snorted.
Elara stared at Quen for a long, patient beat, the kind a teacher gave a child who had proudly eaten glue.
Then—finally—she smiled.
Soft. Controlled. A shade amused.
"I don’t believe I possess the required... stoicism for that," she said, glancing at Cedric with a polite tilt of her head.
Cedric, gods bless him, managed to keep a straight face—but his ears were suspiciously pink.
Marian fanned herself theatrically. "Oh, we’re teasing both of them tonight. Excellent."
"Focus," Selphine said, though even she couldn’t fully hide the curve at the corner of her lips. She turned her attention to Elara, expression sharpening just slightly. "But truly. Elowyn—what do you think of this?"
Elara folded her hands lightly at her waist.
Her answer ca simple. Steady. Unbothered.
"It doesn’t trouble ."
Valen blinked. "It... doesn’t?"
Toven frowned. "At all?"
Quen stared like she’d grown a second head. "Did you read the part where they said oral interview with Magisters? As in—real Magisters? With real reputations? Who actually know what they’re talking about?"
Marian clutched her shoulders. "People who can sll fear."
Aurelian rubbed his temples. "And lies."
Valen raised a finger. "And ignorance."
Selphine nodded once. "And inconsistency."
Elara’s smile deepened by the slightest fraction.
"All the more reason not to fear it," she said. "If they’re competent, then the questions will be clear. And if they are not..." She lifted one shoulder in a soft half-shrug. "I’ve handled worse."
Marian’s head snapped toward her so fast her braid nearly slapped Valen in the face.
"Handled worse?" she repeated, eyes wide with delighted suspicion. "How? How worse? What does that even an? Elowyn, what exactly have you been doing in your past life that’s worse than Magisters grilling your soul out of your body?"
Elara froze.
Not visibly—not dramatically—but a subtle stillness settled in her shoulders, the kind that only soone paying close attention would notice.
The kind that said: I shouldn’t have said that.
Her mind flickered back to Eveline—icy candlelight, questions that weren’t questions, answers that shaped the course of her future; trials not ant for students but for apprentices forged in the shadow of an Archmage.
She had slipped.
Just one line, one careless truth.
Marian leaned in, already forming ten theories—each less accurate and more chaotic than the last.
"Wait—wait—were you trained by so traveling hermit? Or did you live in the mountains? Or—oh gods—you weren’t part of so underground duel circuit, were you?"
Toven deadpanned, "Marian, underground duel circuits are illegal."
"Exactly!"
Elara opened her mouth—searching for a safe answer, sothing vague, harmless, ordinary—but Selphine stepped neatly into the space before a single word left her lips.
"She ans," Selphine said, tone elegant and unhurried, "that her prior tutor was stringent. Perhaps excessively so."
Elara blinked.
Selphine didn’t look at her—not directly—but the brief brush of her gaze said I’ve got this.
Marian’s eyes widened. "Oh. OH. You had a strict tutor?"
Selphine nodded. "A demanding one, by the sound of it. So instructors prefer... unconventional thods."
Aurelian sighed knowingly. "The kind who ask trick questions and then punish you whether you answer or not."
"Exactly," Selphine replied smoothly.
Toven looked sympathetic. "Oof. Yeah. That sounds worse."
"Right?" Marian shuddered dramatically. "Strict tutors. Terrifying."
Elara let out a small, grateful breath.
"A bit like that," she said quietly. "Yes."
Selphine gave the tiniest nod—barely a movent—but enough to say you’re safe.
Mireilla stretched, rolling her shoulders. "Well, strict tutor or not, we have an oral exam to survive. I’m heading in before my brain lts out of my skull."
Aurelian nodded. "Agreed."
Quen groaned. "I’m going to have nightmares about Magisters asking to define ’rune instability.’"
Valen patted his shoulder solemnly. "You should. You really should."
"Co on," Marian sighed, waving everyone forward. "Let’s face our doom together. Maybe our letters won’t be that bad."
"You will get dawn," Selphine repeated.
Quen whimpered.
Together—still complaining, still laughing, still tense but comforted by one another—they drifted toward their respective dormitory halls.
As for Elara though, soone called her na.
"Elowyn."
It was Cedric.
-------------A/N------------
Here, I made a mistake in the past Chapters. While planning this arc, I planned to write oral exam like this, however in the previous Chapters, I put the Oral Interview with other exams, as if the students were pre-notified.
They were not, and that was why Lucavion’s schedule did not contain it.
Sorry for the mistake.
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