Chapter 28 | Class Ranking

Chapter 28: Chapter 28 | Class Ranking

The table was quiet for a moment.

Dex ate his breakfast with the expression of someone who had decided the most useful thing he could do right now was maintain his energy levels.

"There’s something else," Lyra said.

Corbyn looked at her.

"Stellan," she said.

"What about him," Corbyn said.

Lyra glanced toward the noble center tables. Stellan was there. Front and center as always. But something in the arrangement around him was different. Two students who had been at his immediate left and right yesterday were sitting slightly further away. Not dramatically. Just enough.

"The yield," Lyra said quietly. "Some of the noble students are reading it as weakness."

"It wasn’t weakness," Corbyn said.

"I know that," Lyra said. "You know that. Stellan knows that." She paused. "But the social mathematics of noble houses doesn’t always account for the difference between a calculated retreat and an actual loss." She looked at Corbyn. "He’s paying a cost he didn’t expect to pay. And he’s paying it because of you."

"Is that going to make him come at me harder," Corbyn said.

"I don’t know," Lyra said. "It might make him an ally instead. It depends on whether he decides the cost is your fault or the system’s fault." She closed her notebook. "Either way, watch him."

Corbyn looked at the noble center table.

Stellan was eating without looking at anyone. His posture hadn’t changed. His expression hadn’t changed. But the two empty adjacent seats were there, quiet and visible, and Corbyn understood that for someone like Stellan that kind of social distance had a specific weight.

He’ll decide soon, Ishtar said in Corbyn’s mind. People like him don’t stay in uncertainty long. It costs too much.

=============

Theory of Summoning Mechanics was held at ten in a tiered classroom with a projection board and Professor Ashby moving through content at the speed of someone who assumed the room could keep up.

For once Corbyn found himself following it.

Not all of it. But enough. The foundational content — how classes were assigned, how ranks developed, what the system tracked and why — landed differently now that he had practical experience to map it against.

Ashby was explaining rank progression when Corbyn raised his hand.

Ashby looked at him with mild surprise. Corbyn hadn’t raised his hand in this class before.

"Veatch," Ashby said.

"You said ranks can change through development," Corbyn said. "Can classes?"

Ashby paused.

"Classes are assigned based on soul signature at the point of awakening," Ashby said. "The soul signature reflects accumulated potential — what you’ve developed through your life before awakening. Once assigned, the class is fixed." He paused. "However, some classes have internal upgrade paths. Progression within the class rather than a change of class."

"What determines whether a class has an upgrade path," Corbyn said.

"The class itself," Ashby said. "It’s built into the original design." He looked at Corbyn with the careful expression of someone who knew exactly why this question was being asked. "Not all classes have documented upgrade paths. Older classes especially — the records from the Sovereign Era are incomplete."

He moved on to the next topic.

Corbyn wrote nothing down. He was thinking.

The Calamity Summoner class, Ishtar said in his mind, has an upgrade path. Aldric never reached it. He ran out of time. A pause. Nobody in the current era knows what it looks like.

’Do you?’ Corbyn thought.

I know it exists, Ishtar said. I know it involves the pool. All seven contracts active simultaneously rather than one at a time. Another pause. Beyond that, I genuinely don’t know. Whatever it becomes when all seven are active, Aldric never showed me.

Corbyn looked at the projection board without seeing it.

Seven contracts active simultaneously.

Six names still waiting.

=================

After the last class Corbyn took the long route back to the dormitory. Not intentionally. He just walked and let his feet choose and they chose the path that went past the east wall and the sealed gate perimeter.

The gate was cordoned off. Security tape. Two academy security personnel at the perimeter. The amber frame of the gate itself still visible through the tape, unchanged, as if nothing had happened inside it yesterday.

Corbyn stopped and looked at it.

The bond awareness he’d practiced that morning extended without him deciding to extend it.

The gate was there. He could feel it. Not the way he could feel living things — different. The gate had a quality like pressure. Like a door that was closed but not locked. Like something on the other side that was neither alive nor absent.

He stood there for a moment.

Don’t push it, Ishtar said. Not yet. You don’t have the context for what you’d be reaching into.

’What would I be reaching into?’ Corbyn thought.

Ishtar was quiet for a moment.

Something larger than this world knows about, she said. Something that has been going on for a very long time. Another pause. I will tell you more when you’re ready to use the information rather than just carry it.

’When will that be?’ Corbyn thought.

When you have all seven contracts, she said. When the class reaches what it was built to reach. Then the context will make sense. A pause. Before that it would just be weight you can’t do anything with yet.

Corbyn looked at the gate for another moment.

Then he turned and walked back toward the dormitory.

Behind him the gate sat in its security tape with its amber frame and its closed-but-not-locked quality, patient the way things that have been waiting a long time are patient.

=============================

Evening.

Dex was asleep before nine. The specific talent of someone who never accumulated sleep debt because he paid it immediately.

Corbyn lay on his bed with the ceiling crack above him and the heat beneath his sternum and seven days left on a countdown that he understood less than he had at the start of it.

’Ishtar,’ he thought.

Mm, she said.

’The gates,’ he thought. ’What are they actually.’

A long pause.

Longer than usual.

More than this world knows, she said finally. More than I can explain fully without the context you don’t have yet. She paused. What I can tell you is this. They are not natural. They were not random. Someone built the system they’re part of, and that system is larger than one world or two worlds or a hundred worlds. Another pause. Aldric knew this. It was part of why he did what he did at the Harren Gate. He wasn’t just saving this world. He was refusing to let someone else decide what happened to it.

Corbyn stared at the ceiling.

’And the Rift,’ he thought. ’They’re not from here.’

No, Ishtar said. They come from somewhere the gate connects to. A world that has been using the system deliberately for a long time. She paused. You noticed something was wrong with the lead operative. When you looked at him directly.

Corbyn thought back to the gate. The operative’s face in the green bioluminescence. Something about the way the light caught his eyes. The specific quality of wrong that didn’t have a name.

’What was I seeing,’ Corbyn thought.

Exposure, Ishtar said. Crossing between worlds changes people over time. The further they are from their origin world, the more visible the change becomes. A pause. Most of them don’t come back. They stay here and the change accumulates.

’That’s what made them willing to die for the cause,’ Corbyn thought.

Some of them, Ishtar said. Some of them simply have nowhere left to go back to.

The campus outside the window was quiet. The lanterns doing their patient work.

Corbyn held both pulses. His and the other one. Seven days.

’Ishtar,’ he thought.

Mm.

’When Sekhmet comes,’ he thought. ’What do I say to her.’

The truth, Ishtar said. Whatever you actually are at that moment. Not what you think she wants to hear. Not what you’ve prepared. Another pause. Sekhmet has been alive long enough to know the difference between a person and a performance. Give her the person.

’Even if the person isn’t impressive yet,’ Corbyn thought.

Especially then, Ishtar said. She’s not looking for impressive. She’s looking for real.

Corbyn closed his eyes and fell asleep.