Chapter 1191: Crossing Swords

Lucavion’s presence in the Magicians’ Block would take some getting used to.

Fortunately for those still deciding whether his enrollment represented academic flexibility or institutional decline, he had no intention of abandoning the part of the Academy that actually claimed him.

The first days of formal instruction settled quickly after that. Lecture halls filled according to schedules that were no longer provisional, assignments began accumulating, and the distinction between orientation and ordinary Academy life disappeared beneath attendance records and increasingly dissatisfied students.

For the Martial Arts Block, ordinary life involved considerably fewer desks than it did in the Magicians’ Block.

By the time Lucavion entered the reinforced practical hall for their first controlled combat session, the protective formations beneath the floor were active, the weapon-inspection frames along the walls had been opened, and most of the students had gathered according to disciplines that required considerably more room than Arcane Structural Theory ever had.

Valeria had been among them long enough to watch the hall come alive.

Students entered through three reinforced archways, carrying the weapons registered beneath their declared disciplines. Each passed through one of the inspection frames before joining the floor, where Academy restraint seals were fixed around guards, hafts and reinforced grips. The seals did not alter a weapon’s weight, balance or response to mana. They allowed the formations surrounding each lane to recognize dangerous trajectories and intervene before a clean strike became a fatal one.

Swordsmen claimed the open centre in loose groups, spear users drifted toward the longer lanes marked along the eastern floor, while those carrying axes, hammers and other weapons poorly suited to crowded surroundings were directed toward the outer boundaries before carelessness could become an injury report.

The arrangements were sensible. The hall was broad enough to accommodate several disciplines at once, with an elevated ceiling, reinforced pillars recessed into the walls and enough distance between the marked areas to prevent a missed strike from wandering into another exercise. Even so, shared space demanded awareness. Several students passing through inspection appeared to regard that awareness as someone else’s responsibility.

Valeria tightened the final strap around her wrist before resting one hand upon the familiar grip of her zweihander.

The Olarion weapon had been designed for her family’s foundational style, from the distance between its grip and guard to the distribution of weight along the heavy blade. A lighter substitute might have permitted faster recovery, but it would also have removed the commitment upon which her cuts, transitions and defensive structure depended.

There would have been little value in testing her with anything else.

The restraint seal surrounding the guard brightened once as it synchronized with the formations beneath the floor. Valeria drew the blade far enough to inspect the edge, then returned it to its sheath across her back.

Around her, the disorder of arrival had already begun settling into patterns.

Acquaintances formed during the examinations now stood near one another without needing to discuss it. Students compared restraint seals, argued over which practice lanes offered better footing and watched the upper end of the rankings whenever one of its names crossed the hall. The board had not followed them inside, but its influence had. A high placement drew space, interest and the occasional stare held half a second too long by someone deciding whether admiration or challenge would prove more useful.

Most had not yet learned to conceal the calculation.

Valeria followed one such gaze toward the western inspection frame and found Caeden fastening the restraint seal around the shaft of his sword. His broad frame made the weapon appear almost proportionate, which was an achievement in itself.

She had encountered soldiers of unusual size during her time travelling as a knight, including men who had worn reinforced plate because ordinary harnesses could not accommodate their shoulders. Few had possessed Caeden’s sheer breadth. Fewer still had moved beneath it without appearing burdened by their own mass.

Knowing Lucavion had made the frame familiar. The two had spent enough time together during the examinations that seeing one usually meant the other would not be far away.

Lucavion, however, had yet to appear.

Valeria’s attention moved on before the absence could become worth examining and stopped near the sword inspection frames.

Jesse Burns stood there with her long sword resting against one shoulder, listening as two members of the Lorian delegation exchanged remarks beside her. She answered when addressed and shifted aside when another student approached the frame, but nothing in the arrangement suggested intimacy. The conversation belonged to people sharing a nation and circumstance, not companions who had deliberately sought one another out.

That had remained true throughout the first days.

Jesse’s presence within the Academy had been strangely faint. Valeria had seen her among the Lorian students, leaving lectures or crossing the residential courts, yet rarely with anyone near enough to suggest an established routine. She neither avoided the delegation nor appeared especially attached to it.

For someone who had crossed national borders as part of an official exchange, that distance was unusual.

’Perhaps the delegation was never the reason she came.’

The possibility presented an obvious alternative, but Valeria left it where it was. Whatever existed between Jesse and Lucavion had begun long before Jesse reached Arcanis. She had no intention of building conclusions from glimpses across corridors when the woman herself had offered none.

A steel sheath struck the side of an inspection frame with a hard knock.

The student responsible had attempted to turn away without accounting for the sword at his hip. He corrected himself quickly when the nearest instructor looked over, and the brief disruption shifted Valeria’s attention toward the central lanes.

Varen had taken a place there with his greatsword across his back, the space around the weapon maintained without any request being made. Two students nearby had begun discussing his performance during the examinations in lowered voices, though their attention kept returning to the greatsword as if expecting him to demonstrate the answer to whatever question occupied them.

Rowen stood farther ahead.

His sword was already secured at his side, its restraint seal fixed neatly around the guard. He was testing the weapon’s position with small, economical adjustments, confirming that the added seal did not interfere with his draw. Nothing in his posture advertised the strength that had placed him first within the Martial Arts Block. It did not need to. The students around him had already created a respectful boundary, and even those pretending disinterest measured themselves against him whenever he moved.

Valeria’s fingers settled more firmly around the grip above her shoulder.

House Drayke’s heir carried the sword without ornament, but the simplicity made what lay behind it more difficult to ignore. The stance, the disciplined alignment of shoulder and wrist, the ease with which the weapon remained centred through every small adjustment—none of it had been inherited merely because his family possessed the right name.

Neither had what awakened through his sword.

Her gaze remained upon him while the instructor crossed toward the front of the hall and called for the students to finish their preparations. Conversations thinned rather than stopping at once; blades returned to their sheaths, groups shifted behind the marked lines, and the remaining noise compressed into the scrape of boots and the final clicks of restraint seals being secured.

The official session had not yet begun.

The doors opened behind her.

Valeria recognized the arriving footsteps before she turned. They carried none of the haste expected from someone entering with so little time remaining, and when Lucavion passed beneath the archway, his practice uniform sat properly enough to prove that the timing had been deliberate rather than accidental.

His estoc hung at his side.

Its narrow blade remained concealed within the scabbard, but the weapon’s presence completed something that lecture halls and formation rooms never quite managed. It belonged against his hip as naturally as the careless rhythm of his steps belonged to him.

His gaze crossed the gathered students, found her among them and settled there.

Valeria rested one hand over the grip of her zweihander.

"Just in time."

Lucavion glanced toward the instructor at the front of the hall, then back to her. "I still had time."

"Only by the most generous interpretation."

He accepted the correction without argument and continued inward, carrying himself with the same loose economy she remembered from Andelheim. The academic portions of the Academy did not reject him outright, but lecture halls, formation plates and orderly rows of desks placed a faint contradiction around his presence. He could function within them. He could even excel when sufficiently provoked.

This hall required no such adjustment.

Reinforced stone beneath his boots, real weapons at every side and enough open distance for violence to become instruction—he belonged among those things before reaching the inspection frame. His posture changed little, yet whatever appeared idle elsewhere became readiness here. The students who noticed his entrance saw the fifth-ranked freshman arriving late. Valeria saw a swordsman stepping onto familiar ground.

Caeden raised his sword in brief acknowledgment. Lucavion looked it over, made some remark about the Academy reinforcing the floor specifically for him, and received a flat answer that did nothing to discourage the satisfaction on his face. Their exchange ended there. Caeden returned to checking the seal around the shaft while Lucavion approached the nearest inspection frame.

Another gaze followed him.

Jesse had stopped listening to the Lorian student beside her. The change was small: her head turned, the sword lowered from her shoulder, and her attention fixed upon Lucavion before anyone else near her appeared to notice his arrival.

Valeria registered it without assigning meaning.

Lucavion placed his estoc within the inspection field. Pale lines travelled from the pommel to the narrow point, recording its dimensions before a restraint seal formed around the guard. He checked the seal with his thumb, but his attention did not remain upon the weapon.

He looked across the hall instead.

At her.

Recognition arrived with the memory.

Earlier, he had reached for her cheek once and allowed her to catch him, only to alter the second attempt after teaching her what to expect. His fingers had slipped past her interception and pulled at her face with intolerable satisfaction. She had pursued him through the residential court afterward, certain that returning the offense by force would restore the balance.

When the opportunity came, she had chosen otherwise.

Her fingers remembered the slight resistance of his cheek between them and, more unexpectedly, how cold his skin had felt beneath the touch. She had pulled it only enough to answer him, declared them even and walked several turns in the wrong direction before admitting that her own residence lay elsewhere.

Heat gathered beneath Valeria’s cheeks before discipline contained it.

’It was a touch. Nothing more.’

Across the hall, Lucavion’s eyes narrowed with immediate amusement.

Then he winked.

Her grip closed around the zweihander. The embarrassment disappeared beneath a cleaner irritation, and Valeria met his gaze long enough to make clear that repeating the provocation in a hall full of real weapons would be unwise.

Lucavion removed the estoc from the inspection field as though he had received no warning whatsoever.

A single impact sounded from the front of the hall.

The instructor had struck the iron-shod end of his scabbard against the reinforced floor. Conversations ended across the nearest groups; a second impact was unnecessary. Students abandoned the informal boundaries formed around friends and rivals, lowered their weapons and turned toward him. Even the remaining balance checks ceased before he began speaking.

"Form three lines. Keep your declared discipline visible."

The hall reorganized at once. Greatswords and other heavy weapons moved toward the wider section on the left, conventional swords occupied the centre, while spears and longer weapons formed along the extended markings to the right. Lucavion joined the central line after the briefest examination of the floor, leaving Valeria several places away among the heavy-blade students.

The instructor waited until the last student settled.

"Today’s session is diagnostic."