The weeks after the pairing dissolved into sweat, chalk dust, and the constant hum of the Academy wards.
Progress among the fifteen otherworlders was anything but equal.
Some burned like comets. One boy summoned walls of pure light that left veteran instructors speechless. Another turned ordinary fire into white-hot lances that melted stone. Their names shot to the top of the public leaderboards overnight; taverns toasted them, nobles sent gifts, and the palace already spoke of them in the same breath as legendary heroes.
Others crawled. A girl who had never held a weapon still flinched at every practice swing. A boy who swore gravity here was “wrong” could barely shoulder a shield. Pitying glances followed them, though no one yet dared speak of discarding the failures.
Zeon drifted through it all like smoke.
Never higher than mid-pack, never the explosions or radiant miracles the evaluators craved. When invisible wind blades carved straw dummies into perfect ribbons, he let them call it a “fortunate affinity surge.” When he crossed the sparring yard three strides too fast, he blamed the new boots. Respectable, unremarkable, forgettable — exactly where he wanted to be.
Only Rin saw the truth.
From the shadowed edges of the training fields she watched, arms folded, expression carved from winter stone. Every time he parried too early, redirected a spell with a whisper of wind no one noticed, or stepped through a storm of strikes as though the air itself parted for him, her eyes narrowed a fraction. That was all the acknowledgement he ever received in public. Praise was dangerous; attention was lethal.
Their private dawn sessions in Hall 7-C or deep in the forest were another matter. There she drove him mercilessly — silence over spectacle, precision over power.
“You’re learning to hide in plain sight,” she told him one frostbitten morning. “Keep it that way. The ones who shine brightest are the first the demons decide to extinguish — and the first the crown throws in front of them.”
He understood perfectly.
The dazzling miracles were already being fitted for ceremonial armor and paraded before foreign dignitaries. The quiet, competent ones like Zeon? They were noted, filed, and quietly left to train. Useful, but not yet urgent. Not yet expendable.
The same glittering treatment that turned the prodigies into celebrated weapons made the invisible ones far less likely to be used as disposable tools. For now.
Then came the royal summons.
On a crisp autumn morning the fifteen otherworlders and their mentors were marched through streets lined with cheering crowds to the Grand Palace. Banners snapped overhead; children waved paper effigies of winged heroes. Inside the throne hall, stained glass bled crimson and gold across marble while the king — gaunt, gray, still regal — waited beneath the royal crest.
One by one they knelt.
Titles were bestowed like velvet manacles: Holy Knight of the First Summoning, Bearer of the Fairy’s Grace, Defender of Crown and Continent. Each received an orichalcum medallion inlaid with sapphire — keys to royal wards, restricted libraries, and emergency requisition rights. Estates on the capital’s outskirts were deeded in their names: elegant manors surrounded by gardens and silence. Chests of gold and mana crystals glittered under torchlight.
It looked like boundless generosity.
Rin, standing three paces behind Zeon in the colonnade shadows, saw gilded cages.
The titles tethered them to the hierarchy. The medallions pulsed with faint tracing sigils — she felt them against her skin like spider silk. The estates sat beneath permanent scrying arrays. Every gift was also a leash, pretty and comfortable, but a leash all the same.
And the brightest stars received the prettiest leashes of all.
Zeon accepted his medallion without a flicker. Only Rin noticed the minute clench of his jaw when his fingers closed around the warm metal.
Afterward the chamberlains announced, with practiced benevolence, that the otherworlders would remain housed at the Academy “for continued training and your own safety.” No one argued. Some looked relieved. Some looked calculating. Zeon merely bowed — the perfect picture of grateful obedience.
Later, walking back through streets still echoing with distant cheers, he fell into step beside Rin.
“They just bought us,” he murmured.
“They always planned to,” she answered, eyes forward. “Only the currency was in question.”
He gave a soft, bitter huff. “Titles. Land. Gold. At least the shackles are pretty.”
“Better than iron,” she said. A pause. “The loud ones got the golden chains. You got the velvet ones. Velvet is easier to cut when the time comes.”
Zeon glanced at her. “You’re not dazzled.”
“I’m impressed they think it’ll work on the shiny ones.” Dry, almost amused. “Teenagers like shiny things. They’ll wear the chains proudly — right up until the chains are used to drag them into the meat grinder.”
Silence stretched for several strides.
“And us?” he asked quietly. “The quiet ones?”
Rin watched the palace gates close behind them with the slow finality of a tomb.
“We stay invisible,” she said. “Invisible things are harder to throw away. And harder to notice when they start cutting the ropes.”
Zeon’s fingers brushed the medallion beneath his cloak. It pulsed gently, like a second heartbeat reminding him it was there.
He didn’t take it off.
He already knew — along with three or four of the sharper ones — that going home was a fairy tale wrapped in pretty words. Fifteen successful summonings had cost the fairies a decade of power and half the royal treasury. Returning even one would bankrupt the realm and kill the casters. No one would ever say it aloud. Most of the fifteen still clung to the promise like drowning men clutching driftwood.
Zeon had stopped clinging weeks ago.
He buried the knowledge deep, same place he buried the full extent of his power, and kept walking beside the girl who taught him how to survive by never letting anyone see how dangerous he might become.
End of Chapter 5.