# Chapter 1: The Stone's Verdict
The Solara Grand Academy had not changed its gates in two hundred years, which meant Zane knew exactly where the architect had hidden the structural weaknesses in the outer wall's third buttress.
He stood in the outer courtyard at dawn, watching golden spires pierce the morning sky while first-year students gathered in nervous clusters. The grand entrance hall loomed ahead_hite marble columns carved with scenes of Valerius's "heroic" victory over the Demon King. Zane had to stop himself from correcting the proportions. The real battle had taken place in a swamp, not the sunlit plateau depicted in the propaganda.
His threadbare cotton uniform marked him immediately. Silk-robed nobles clustered to the left of the courtyard fountain, their family crests embroidered in gold thread. Commoners huddled to the right in rough-spun cloth, their eyes downcast. The Academy's hierarchy made itself visible before a single word was spoken.
Zane joined the commoner group without comment. A girl beside him whispered nervous prayers to Lumina. He resisted the urge to tell her that her goddess was a parasitic entity that fed on human potential. Some truths were better left unspoken.
At precisely six bells, the Grand Ceremony Hall's bronze doors swung inward.
The hall's vaulted ceiling stretched five stories high, reinforced with defensive wards that Zane had personally designed in his previous life. He noted with clinical interest that the third-layer binding had degraded by approximately fifteen percent. Sloppy maintenance. The Academy's current war-mages wouldn't survive a coordinated assault.
Students filed into rows before a raised dais where a crystalline pillar stood beneath a shaft of morning light. The Affinity Stone. Its surface pulsed with soft white luminescence_umina's signature, that cloying divine energy that made Zane's new skin crawl with recognition.
The upper balcony doors opened.
Headmaster Valerius entered like a king surveying his kingdom. Fifty-three years old now, his hair silver at the temples but his body still carrying the warrior's frame that had swung the Holy Sword through Xylos's chest. He wore formal Academy regalia, and at his hip, Solaris gleamed with barely contained divine power.
The hall fell silent. Every student dropped into a bow.
Zane lowered his head with the others, but his eyes remained fixed on his old nemesis. The man who had killed him. The man whose PTSD-haunted dreams Zane had inhabited for two decades, watching through the veil of death as Valerius woke screaming from nightmares of their final battle.
You didn't beat me with skill, Zane thought coldly. You won because your goddess cheated.
Valerius's gaze swept the hall, and for one suspended heartbeat, his eyes passed over Zane's position. The Headmaster's hand twitched toward Solaris's hilt.
Then the moment passed. Valerius ascended to his observation chair, and the ceremony began.
"The Affinity Stone reveals your divine gift," announced the Academy Proctor, a severe woman in midnight blue robes. "Your rank determines your path. S-Rank to A-Rank: the elite combat track. B-Rank to C-Rank: standard military curriculum. D-Rank and below: service track training."
She paused, and her voice hardened. "Mana-Nulls will be expelled immediately. The Academy does not waste resources on the magically dead."
Nervous whispers rippled through the commoner section. Zane remained still, calculating his approach. The Affinity Stone operated on Compact principles_t measured how readily a body channeled Lumina's pre-packaged magic. His current body, deliberately selected by whoever reincarnated him, had zero natural affinity. He was, by the Compact's measure, completely worthless.
Perfect cover. But only if he could fake the minimum threshold.
"Alistair val-Corvus."
A golden-haired boy in silk robes strode to the dais with the confidence of inherited privilege. He placed his palm on the Affinity Stone without hesitation.
The crystal erupted.
Golden fire roared up the pillar in a blazing column that reached the vaulted ceiling, its heat washing over the hall in waves. Students gasped. Even the Proctor stepped back.
"S-Rank Fire," she announced, barely concealing her awe. "The first S-Rank this Academy has seen in a decade."
Alistair returned to his section amid thunderous applause from the nobles. He caught Zane's eye across the hall and smirked_he look of a predator spotting prey.
Zane filed the threat assessment away. S-Rank affinity, overconfident, tactically unsound based on his showboating display. Manageable.
The ceremony continued. Noble after noble produced respectable flames, gusts of wind, pillars of earth. The Compact's "gifts" on full display_afe, limited, leashed power for obedient servants.
Then came the commoners.
"Seraphina Lin."
A girl with ink-stained fingers and intelligent eyes approached the stone. Her flame manifested as a controlled tongue of fire, steady and precise rather than impressive.
"C-Rank Fire."
Scattered applause. Seraphina returned to her seat with quiet dignity, though Zane noticed her knuckles were white where they gripped her robe. C-Rank was respectable for a commoner. It meant survival.
More names. More mediocre displays. D-Ranks who produced sparks. E-Ranks whose flames guttered like dying candles.
"Zane. No family name."
The hall's attention shifted to him with the predatory focus of a crowd sensing potential humiliation. Zane walked to the dais, his footsteps echoing in the sudden silence.
He placed his hand on the Affinity Stone.
The crystal remained dark.
Three seconds passed. Five. Ten.
The Proctor's expression hardened into contempt. In the noble section, laughter began_uiet at first, then building.
"Even the stone rejects gutter trash!" Alistair's voice carried across the hall.
From his observation throne, Valerius leaned forward. His hand moved to Solaris's hilt as he prepared to pronounce expulsion.
Zane's left hand remained on the stone. His right hand slipped into his frayed sleeve where a small pin waited_cavenged from a slum seamstress, its point filed sharp. He pressed the pin against his thumb beneath his palm, breaking skin. Blood welled.
In his mind, he spoke a True Word from the Primordial tongue_ot Lumina's bastardized modern magic, but the ancient language that commanded reality itself.
[Ignite].
The Hemo-kinesis activated. His blood superheated instantly, agony lancing up his arm as if he'd plunged his hand into a forge. The blood's energy, forced into controlled combustion, produced a flickering red-orange flame no larger than a candle's flame inside the crystal.
The Affinity Stone flickered. Barely. A pathetic glow that made the earlier displays look like infernos.
But it was light.
The Proctor stared. Consulted her ranking chart. Her lips pressed into a thin line.
"E-Rank Fire. Vestigial classification."
Not expelled. Barely.
Zane removed his hand, blood smeared beneath his palm, pain radiating through his bones. He walked back to the commoner section through a hall filled with mocking laughter.
"Defective commoner garbage," Alistair announced to his friends, loud enough to carry. "Even his magic is broken."
Zane took his seat. The ceremony concluded with final assignments. Class A through D received their elite dormitory placements, their advanced curriculum tracks, their paths to power.
Class F_he failures and service-track_eceived basement quarters and a warning that they existed "at the Academy's sufferance."
Fourteen names on the Class F roster. Including his own.
From the observation balcony, Valerius watched Zane's retreating back for three full seconds. His hand remained on Solaris's hilt. Something about the boy's posture, the way he moved
No. Impossible. Xylos was dead. Valerius had felt the Archfiend's heart stop beneath his blade twenty years ago.
He forced his hand away from his sword and sat back. Old war trauma. Nothing more.
Class F's assigned corridor descended into the Academy's basement level, away from the sunlight and marble halls of the upper floors. The stone steps were worn, damp, and cold.
As Zane descended into the dim passage where Class F waited in the Academy's forgotten bowels, he allowed himself the ghost of a smile.
They had built their hero factory directly over his old war room's foundation. The supreme command chamber where Archfiend Xylos had planned the campaigns that nearly broke the world_ow repurposed as storage for the Academy's discarded trash.
The irony was perfect.
**