The gates of Rings announced themselves an hour before Nagi actually reached them — gold catching the last of the sunset from so far off that at first he mistook it for the sun itself, sitting low and strange on the horizon.
By the time he understood what he was looking at, the road beneath his feet had gone from packed dirt to cut stone, and the plaza beyond the gates had swallowed him into noise he hadn’t heard in eight days.
*Finally here,* he thought.
*Eight days wasn’t so bad.*
He stopped just inside the gates and let the plaza happen around him for a moment.
Teenagers everywhere — more people his own age in one place than he’d seen in his entire life, all of them funneling toward a cluster of registration desks beneath banners that read *Kingdom Magic Academy Entrance Exam — Prove Your Flow.*
He didn’t know yet what that was supposed to mean.
He supposed he’d find out.
The nobles were easy to spot.
They traveled in clusters, trailing servants who carried their bags, wearing silk that had clearly never touched a road like the one Nagi had just walked.
One boy — blond, the kind of handsome that came with knowing it — floated a small orb of light above his palm for an audience that hadn’t asked to be one.
“My family’s lineage traces back to a minor god,” he was telling them, not quietly.
“This exam’s a formality. I’ll be AA rank by next week.”
The girl beside him laughed like he’d said something clever.
“Obviously. Look at these commoners. They’ll be lucky to clear the D-rank filter.”
Not far off, a different kind of cluster had formed — plainer clothes, worn bags, faces doing a poor job hiding nerves.
A girl with a farmer’s calluses on her hands gripped a staff too tightly for someone just standing still.
“There’s so many nobles,” she said, mostly to the boy next to her, a quiet kid with bandages wrapped around both hands.
“Do you think we even have a chance?”
He was cupping a small flame in his palm, watching it flicker like he needed to prove to himself it was real.
“We have to,” he said.
“My village needs better barriers. That’s what I came here for.”
Nagi stood between the two crowds, watching both without quite belonging to either.
*Nobles with their flashy stuff,* he thought, *and us with nothing special.
Same road, though.
Different starting lines.*
Someone clipped his shoulder — a noble kid mid-flourish, showing off a short, controlled speed spell to nobody in particular.
The boy didn’t apologize.
Didn’t even really look at him.
“Watch it, villager.” His nose wrinkled like the air itself had gotten worse.
“You smell like dirt and low-rank mana. Go back to whatever hole you crawled out of.”
Nagi stepped aside.
Didn’t glare, didn’t answer back — just adjusted the bag on his shoulder and kept walking toward the registration line.
“No point overreacting,” he said, quiet enough that it was mostly for himself.
“Everyone’s here for the same exam.”
The line split in two the way everything here seemed to split in two — a velvet-roped lane for nobles that moved fast and easy, and a longer, slower line for everyone else.
Nagi joined the second without complaint and let the wait happen the way he let most things happen, watching the crowd shuffle forward one name at a time.
*Sixty seconds max, for now,* he thought, while he waited.
*Probably looks weak next to their god-blessed tricks.* He thought of his mother’s hand on the side of his face at the shelter, the thing she’d said right before he left.
*But Mom said flow gently.
That’s what I’ll do.*
Above the registration desks, orbs of pale light hovered over each examiner, flashing preliminary ranks over the heads of whoever stepped forward — a flicker of gold for the nobles, mostly, occasional letters that made their entourages cheer.
The commoners’ results came dimmer.
Steadier, somehow, but dimmer.
“Next,” called an examiner without looking up.
“State your name and village.”
When it was Nagi’s turn, the woman behind the desk gave him the same look she’d probably given the last thirty travel-worn kids that day — a quick, practiced read of dust and distance.
“Name and origin?”
“Nagi Akama.” He kept his voice even, unbothered.
“Juju Village.”
Something in her expression shifted, small enough that most people would’ve missed it.
“Juju. The quiet one on the ley line.” She studied him a beat longer than the question required.
“Interesting. Let’s see your baseline.”
The orb above her desk pulsed to life, a soft hum settling over him like a held breath.
Letters formed, faint and unremarkable: *D-rank — Human Magic, Speed Variant.*
Nothing flashy.
Nothing that made anyone’s entourage cheer.
Behind him, the blond noble from earlier caught sight of the result and laughed under his breath to whoever was listening.
“D-rank? From a village? Oh, this is going to be entertaining.”
Nagi heard it.
He didn’t turn around.
*D is where I start,* he thought, taking the slip the examiner held out to him.
*Flow from there.*
He walked away from the desk into the gathering crowd of accepted applicants — nobles preening, commoners trading nervous smiles, the academy’s towers catching the last color out of the sky as true night settled over the plaza.
He didn’t think much of the examiner’s second glance.
He had no reason to.
She hadn’t said anything wrong, hadn’t done anything unusual — just looked at him a half-second longer than she’d looked at anyone else in that line, the way you might look twice at a word you were almost sure you recognized from somewhere, before deciding you must be mistaken.
*End of Chapter 3*