The black invitation card glowed with a faint, vital warmth throughout the entire night.
By the time the morning sun began to filter through the windows, the map etched across its metallic surface had settled into crystal clarity.
It showed a path extending far beyond the borders of Silvercrest, cutting deep into the rugged, uninhabited terrain of the Mistveil Mountains.
There was no formal road marked on the parchment.
No cities or outposts were indicated anywhere near the perimeter.
Only a single, brilliant silver star pulsed steadily at the edge of a dense, ancient forest blanketing the base of the peaks.
Lyra’s brow furrowed as she traced the glowing ink with her finger.
“…That’s where Astral Academy is supposed to be? In the middle of nowhere?”
“It is the coordinates where your journey officially begins, my Queen,” Myrmor’s calm voice resonated within her mind.
“So the academy is completely hidden from the public’s view?”
“You ask an exceptional number of questions.”
“And you answer a remarkably small number of them,” Lyra countered dryly.
“A perfectly balanced relationship.”
Lyra rolled her eyes, shaking her head as she carefully packed the dark parchment away.
The next three days passed in a blur of preparation.
Lyra spent every morning exercising around the steep, gravel streets of her neighborhood.
She couldn’t actively train or strengthen her Beast Soul yet without proper resources, but she could certainly strengthen her own body.
She ran until her lungs screamed and her thighs burned like fire.
She practiced climbing the weathered trees in the backyard and focused entirely on keeping her breathing steady and controlled under physical exertion.
At first, she could barely finish a single lap around the block without stopping to catch her breath.
By the third morning, however, her endurance had adapted.
She could run nearly twice the original distance without breaking her stride.
Myrmor watched her progress from the shadows of her collar, never once interfering.
When she stumbled over loose stones, he said nothing.
When she successfully pushed past her limits, he simply gave a nod of acknowledgment.
On the morning of her departure, her mother stood by the squeaking wooden front gate, holding a neatly folded bundle of heavy fabric in her arms.
“I made you something for the road, sweetheart.”
Lyra took the bundle and carefully unfolded it.
Inside was a sturdy, dark gray travel cloak, complete with heavily reinforced stitching around the shoulders and a deep hood to block out the weather.
“It’s beautiful, Mom…”
“I couldn’t afford expensive tactical armor or enchanted gear like the noble families buy for their children,” her mother said, offering a warm, slightly sad smile.
“But I can still make sure my daughter stays warm in the mountains.”
Lyra stepped forward, hugging her tightly around the neck.
“I’ll come back stronger, Mom. I promise.”
“I know you will.” Her mother’s smile never faltered for a second as she stepped back, patting Lyra’s arms.
But as Lyra turned and began walking down the narrow gravel road, her mother remained standing by the gate, watching intently long after her daughter’s figure finally disappeared past the edge of the district.
Only when she was completely alone in the quiet yard did she reach up to quietly wipe away the tears she had been holding back.
The rugged foothills of the Mistveil Mountains stood several hours’ trek outside the city limits of Silvercrest.
The winding dirt road leading up into the peaks was uncharacteristically crowded, filled with hundreds of young Beast Tamers carrying heavy survival backpacks and travel supplies.
Some hiked completely alone, their expressions tense, while others walked in loud, confident groups.
Every single teenager on the trail carried an official invitation in their hands.
Lyra watched closely as she walked, observing letters of plain white, vibrant blue, and gleaming silver.
Yet, as her eyes swept through the vast crowd, she noticed that absolutely no one else held a midnight-black invitation.
*”…Deeply interesting,”* Myrmor murmured from beneath her hair.
*What is?* Lyra asked silently.
*”Nothing of immediate concern.”*
She let out a soft sigh, adjusting her pack.
*Of course.
By midday, the wide mountain path began to narrow drastically, forcing the travelers into a single file line.
Tall ancient stone pillars lined both sides of the rocky road at regular intervals.
Each pillar was deeply carved with reliefs of magnificent beasts from forgotten ages—some resembled colossal dragons, while others looked entirely unlike any creature
Lyra had ever seen in modern biology textbooks.
Many of the ancient carvings had been severely weathered and cracked by time, rendered almost unrecognizable.
“It feels…” Lyra searched her mind for the right description as she passed beneath a towering stone monolith.
“… incredibly old here.”
“It is,” Myrmor confirmed.
‘I wonder how old it is?’
“Old enough.”
Lyra couldn’t help but chuckle softly beneath her breath.
“I really should have expected that exact answer by now.”
Ahead of them on the trail, a loud, cheerful voice suddenly interrupted the low murmur of the crowd.
“Excuse me! Hey, watch out!”
A young girl with short, vibrant auburn hair came hurrying down the rocky slope toward Lyra, looking slightly out of breath but thoroughly energetic.
“Are you heading toward the Astral coordinates too?”
Lyra nodded cautiously, maintaining a polite distance.
“I think so, yes.”
The girl’s face lit up with a bright smile.
“Oh, thank goodness! Finally! I seriously thought I took a wrong turn at the last gorge. I’m Mira.” She confidently extended her hand toward Lyra.
“Lyra,” she replied, reaching out to shake it.
“So…” Mira asked curiously as they fell into a matching pace together.
“What kind of beast did you end up awakening at the hall?”
Lyra hesitated for a fraction of a second, her fingers tightening slightly on her cloak.
“…An ant.”
An awkward silence descended between them.
“Oh,” Mira said, her smile freezing for a moment as she scratched the back of her head, looking for the right words.
“That’s… well, that’s definitely… unique.”
Lyra couldn’t help but burst into a genuine laugh at the reaction.
“You were very much about to say unfortunate, weren’t you?”
Mira flushed slightly, laughing along.
“Hey, I was trying my best to be polite here!”
“I appreciate the effort,” Lyra smiled.
The lingering tension from the trail dissolved almost instantly.
Not long afterward, another traveler naturally caught up with their pace from behind.
He was exceptionally tall and broad shouldered for his age, carrying an enormous greatsword wrapped in leather strips across his back, a blade nearly as tall as the boy himself.
His dark hair was tied back into a loose, functional ponytail.
Unlike most of the students gossiping along the path, he barely spoke a word.
Catching their gaze, he simply gave a single, firm nod of his head.
“Mason.”
“Mira,” the auburn-haired girl replied brightly.
“Lyra,” she added, nodding back.
Mason acknowledged both names with another silent, disciplined tilt of his head before continuing to stride right beside them, his eyes scanning the ridgeline.
Mira leaned in slightly toward Lyra’s ear, dropping her voice to a theatrical whisper.
” I have a feeling he is a one sentence kind of guy.”
The tall swordsman’s lips twitched very slightly, his gaze remaining fixed straight ahead.
“I can hear you.”
Mira laughed nervously, offering a quick wave of her hand.
“Right! So… your hearing is just as good as your sword. Good to know!”
The mountain trail grew progressively steeper and narrower, forcing dozens of applicants to gather into a dense, tightly packed group as they ascended.
Some chatted excitedly about their prospects, while others silently and calculatingly observed every potential rival around them.
One noble boy proudly walked beside a massive, thick furred Crimson Bear cub that growled at anyone who got too close, while another girl had a sleek Silver Hawk circling gracefully through the mountain air overhead.
Lyra quietly made sure Myrmor remained hidden beneath the heavy folds of her dark gray travel cloak.
She wasn’t ashamed of her companion in the slightest, but she simply had no desire to deal with a repeat of the public ridicule she had faced in Silvercrest.
Late in the afternoon, the ascending path abruptly ended, terminating at the edge of a massive stone cliffside.
Standing before the crowd was a colossal, weathered stone archway that seemed to rise directly out of the bedrock.
Beyond the threshold of the arch, there was absolutely nothing to see—only a dense, impenetrable wall of swirling white mist that blocked all visibility.
Hundreds of students had already gathered in front of the archway, their voices rising in a chaotic swell of confusion.
“Where on earth is the academy?”
“I don’t see any buildings or gates!”
“Did the council give us the wrong coordinates?”
As the anxious murmurs spread through the crowd, a calm, measured voice spoke up from somewhere near the center of the gathering.
“You didn’t come to the wrong place.”
The surrounding students turned their heads.
A slender boy wearing round, wire-rimmed glasses stood there, calmly closing a thick leather-bound reference book in his hands.
Unlike the frantic teenagers around him, there wasn’t the slightest trace of confusion on his face.
“My name is Adrian,” the boy introduced himself smoothly, adjusting his glasses.
“My family has meticulously studied the history of Aetheria’s academic institutions for generations. If your invitation brought you to this exact archway, then you have successfully arrived at the true entrance of Astral Academy.”
A noble student nearby scoffed loudly, pointing an aggressive finger toward the endless wall of white fog.
“This? You’re joking. There’s literally nothing here but a sheer drop and a cloud.”
“That is because Astral Academy is fundamentally not meant to be found by ordinary means,” Adrian explained, his expression entirely unbothered.
“It is recorded in our oldest texts that every single famous academy across the continent can trace its core teachings back to Astral.”
He glanced at the crowd.
“Silvercrest Academy. Apex Sovereign Academy. The Royal Imperial Institutes. They are all considered extraordinary, elite institutions by modern standards. But compared to Astral…” He paused, his voice dropping slightly.
“…they are merely minor branches that grew from a deeply buried, forgotten root.”
A sudden ripple of disbelief and muttering spread through the students.
“That’s impossible.”
“I’ve never even seen this place mentioned in the news.”
“Exactly,” Adrian countered calmly.
“History has a habit of forgetting things the public doesn’t need to know. But the truly Old families preserve records that others lose over time. My grandfather once noted that the very first history book ever written explicitly mentioned Astral Academy. And if those ancient records are accurate…”
He slowly surveyed the faces of the students standing around him.
“…then every single instructor inside this academy possesses strength that far exceeds that of a standard SSS-ranked Beast Master.”
“So cool!.” A blonde boy riding on a black jaguar said.
” I’m only here because my father somehow got the news that Young lord Kael will be here…”
“Me too!” When I received the envelope my old man, had somehow gotten the news of Kael being prepared to go to this school, he said, that all the nobles are waiting for their own letter too, I’m sure he didn’t even know much about this academy.
Hahah.” A chubby boy boasted.
“Me too. When I got mine, my old grandfather finally gave me a smile, he said this was the first good thing I’ve ever done since birth.”
“Man you’ve got it that bad.”
Even the students from the lower class had somehow heard the news too, with this, everyone be it noble and lower class, grouped yo together and started chattering.
But the noise was broken when a girl with Bob cut interrupted.
“Am I the only one that feels this is surreal. Cause SSS ranked Beast Master is something of the legend, how can it be possible to find them as teachers too.”
A crushing silence fell over the entire cliffside.
Even the mountain wind seemed to die down.
No one dared to speak, because every applicant present knew the reality of the world: an SSS-ranked Beast Master was already considered the absolute pinnacle of human power, a living weapon capable of altering nations.
If Astral truly possessed multiple figures who existed far beyond that imagination, then what kind of mythical primordial ground had actually invited them here?
Lyra unconsciously tightened her grip on the strap of her backpack, her heart pounding.
For the very first time, she realized that awakening a common ant might turn out to be the least unusual thing waiting for her on this journey.
At that exact microsecond, the dense white mist within the stone archway began to violently churn.
Slowly, silently, the cloud parted down the middle like a massive, invisible door swinging wide open.