Chapter 33

Last night's rain had turned the sparring yard into a shallow graveyard for dignity.

Mud clung to the students' pale academy uniforms technically designed to remain immaculate, which felt optimistic in the same way monarchies described themselves as stable right before someone guillotined the metaphor.

Morning drills had already descended into the usual theatre. Nearby, two Legacy students argued over stance positioning with the emotional intensity of rival crypto-bros defending shitcoins.

Combat training always came with the same hollow bravado and smug self-assurance that comes from a room full of people who had never once considered the possibility that the universe might not actually revolve around them personally.

Aster had learned over the past month that greatness was mostly just very loud confidence combined with a trust fund. Combat class simply stripped away enough civilisation for everyone to stop pretending otherwise.

He rolled his staff idly between his palms while Musa adjusted the wraps around his wrists nearby, both of them preparing for their daily spar with the shared enthusiasm of people who had accepted suffering as a lifestyle.

"You ever notice," Aster muttered, watching two noble heirs nearly come to blows after the one disguised an insulted to the other’s house as technique critique, "that half the people here fight like they're personally justifying generational wealth?"

Before Musa could answer — and the expression on his face suggested he absolutely had a response lined up — a shadow fell across them.

Aster looked up.

The woman standing behind them wore dark combat robes draped cleanly despite the mud. She had the focused, evaluating quality of someone who had long since stopped being surprised by incompetence and had simply reclassified it as a natural resource.

Aster recognised her immediately, despite never having formally met her.

Mostly because the academy spoke about her the way medieval peasants probably discussed wandering executioners — with a combination of reverence and the strong personal wish not to be noticed.

The Advanced Combat Instructor.

Aster watched the reactions spread through the surrounding trainees like a pressure wave — the subtle straightening of spines, the sudden absence of sarcasm from people who'd had plenty of it thirty seconds ago.

This wasn’t just another instructor.

This was the instructor for the future Elites.

Saint-path candidates groomed for actual battlefield command instead of academy tournaments and expensive duels sponsored by families with too much inherited power and not enough hobbies.

The people taught by Miss Hecca weren’t students anymore.

They were considered future investments.

Musa straightened so fast it looked involuntary.

Not fear exactly.

Reflex.

Respect carved deep enough into instinct to bypass conscious thought entirely.

"Miss Hecca," Musa said immediately.

"Mr. Mbeka, you’ve placed within the top twenty combat performers of the first-year cohort," she said, voice even and unhurried, like a surgeon describing a procedure. "You'll begin Advanced Combat instruction effective immediately. Your standard combat periods will now fall under my supervision."

She handed him a gold insignia with two swords.

For a second, Musa just blinked.

Then his posture tightened further. Pride crossed his face so quickly Aster almost missed it — a flash, then gone, locked back behind something more careful.

"Understood, Miss Hecca."

A faint sound nearby pulled Aster's attention sideways.

A scoff.

Cassian stood near one of the outer practice rings, arms folded neatly behind his back.

His immaculate uniform somehow remained untouched by mud despite the surrounding battlefield conditions. Honestly, Aster had started suspecting wealth itself might be functioning as an elemental affinity.

He let his gaze drift briefly across Cassian’s collar.

No Advanced Combat insignia.

Oh.

He smiled.

This must be catastrophic for him.

Aster felt genuine joy for the first time all morning.

Musa looked at Aster, uncertainty flickering across his face. "I—"

"Don't worry," Miss Hecca said smoothly, already turning. "I've already instructed the Sgt Halvor to give special attention to Mr Elchen."

Aster's stomach dropped.

Musa hesitated just long enough to look guilty, then gave Aster an apologetic half-smile and headed off at a near-jog. Off to be excellent somewhere else. Very supportive.

Miss Hecca stopped briefly to speak with the Sergeant before moving on — but not before her gaze flicked once toward Aster himself.

Brief. Assessing. Then she walked away.

Aster looked back toward Cassian.

Then sneered at him. "Damn. Must be rough."

"What is?" Cassian's expression barely shifted.

"Losing to Musa academically, spiritually, and physically." Aster winced with theatrical sympathy. "Especially after all that selective breeding effort your family puts in. You'd think the results would be more consistent."

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Several nearby students immediately looked away to hide laughter.

Cassian’s expression barely changed.

Aster pressed on anyway because self-preservation had long since stopped supervising his mouth.

“I’m just saying,” he continued, “if the plague-rat scholarship kid’s best friend makes top twenty before the heir to House Vale, maybe eugenics just statistically isn’t performing as advertised.”

Cassian’s eyes settled on him fully now.

Flat.

Cold.

The kind of anger that got written down and revisited later with planning involved.

“You mistake ranking evaluations for actual combat capability,” Cassian said calmly. “The Advanced Combat program prioritises adaptability and teamwork metrics. Some of us pursue more specialised training.”

Ah yes.

The rich-kid equivalent of I totally could’ve gone pro if I wanted to.

Aster nodded sympathetically. “Of course. And I’m sure your mother tells people you’re very handsome too.”

Cassian’s jaw tightens fractionally.

“You speak very confidently for someone surviving on borrowed relevance,” Cassian replied softly. “Tell me, Elchen, once the novelty of your condition fades, what exactly do you think you’ll have left?”

Before he could answer, a voice cracked across the yard like a whip.

"Mr Elchen."

The Sergeant approached through the mud with the relaxed posture of a man who genuinely enjoyed public violence as a teaching tool. Rain dotted the stubble across his shaved scalp while one gauntleted hand rested lazily against the blade hanging at his waist.

He eyed Aster with visible amusement. “You’ve had a month to get comfortable with your Scripture. Now I want to see how you embarrass yourselves with it.”

The Sergeant’s gaze drifted over the remaining students.

"Mr Groenewaldt."

Across the muddy practice rings, a wiry boy with cropped red hair looked up from tightening the straps on his gauntlets.

Ah.

Great.

Rohan.

The human embodiment of unresolved socioeconomic trauma.

Aster had spent the last month catching Rohan glaring at him across classes with the focused resentment of someone attempting to kill a mosquito through spiritual force alone. Every correction Aster received earned a scoff. Every stumble earned that same ugly little smirk.

They’d barely spoken directly, but the hostility had become weirdly routine by this point. Like seasonal allergies. Or economic collapse.

Rohan stepped closer through the mud — lean frame tense beneath worn training leathers already stained from previous spars. Unlike the Legacy students, his equipment looked repaired instead of maintained. The kind of gear people owned when replacement was financially theoretical.

His eyes flicked briefly toward Cassian. Then toward Aster.

The dislike sharpened instantly.

Interesting. Not allies then. Just overlapping bitterness aimed in the same general direction.

The Sergeant pointed between them.

"Elchen. Groenwaldt. Ring two."

Rohan scoffed immediately. "Seriously?"

The Sergeant's grin widened. "Problem?"

Rohan's jaw flexed once before he shook his head. "No, Sergeant."

An assistant in grey robes suddenly rushed into the yard, breath fogging, leaning close to the Sergeant with something that made the instructor's expression curdle.

He groaned audibly, like bureaucracy itself had just bitten him. "Of course. Paperwork.” He turned back to the class “Don't start without me."

The yard murmured as he left. The tension shifting immediately.

Aster looked at Rohan. The kid's posture had changed— tighter, defensive. Not toward Aster, but toward the audience around them.

Aster rubs a thumb across the cold metal of his staff, the faint hum of his tether syncing with his heartbeat. He has learned to read tension like weather, and this feels like the prelude to thunder. Somewhere in the crowd, someone snickers. Boots squelch in the mud. He thinks about walking off. About letting them have their little gladiator play without him.

Rohan cracks his neck, expression half a sneer, half something heavier — resentment? “What’s wrong, Legacy-boy? Were you born with that stick up your ass, or did they implant it when they gave your inheritance. Too scared to fight without a teacher holding your hand?”

Aster sighs, briefly weighing the energy cost of replying against the satisfaction it might bring. “You’ve been thinking about my ass for a while, huh? Starting to worry me, man.”

The tension between them is palpable now, thick and electric. Students turn to watch, the scent of conflict as familiar here as incense.

Rohan’s glare tightens, jaw shifting like he is chewing on a retort sharp enough to draw blood.

Aster gives him a look halfway between apology and boredom. He doesn’t actually dislike the kid. He just hates how predictable these moments are. Every hierarchy needs its ritual humiliation, and every newcomer has to play one side of the script. He has been both roles before, the proud one and the punching bag, and neither has aged particularly well.

Before Aster can process it, someone else steps into the ring of spectators.

Cassian. Leaning against a practice dummy with that practiced looseness — the kind that cost money to look that effortless.

"Well, well." His eyes landed on Rohan the way you'd look at something stuck to your shoe. "The mongrel's barking back. Guess Wanderers need another reminder of their place."

Rohan didn't flinch. But his jaw tightened, and the look in his eyes went from anger to something older. Resignation with a crust of defiance over the top of it.

Cassian’s attention shifted toward Aster like he was recalculating something unpleasant.

"You're an embarrassment," he said conversationally. "But at least you're a purebred embarrassment." His eyes drifted back toward Rohan. "That still places you several categories above a filthy Wanderer."

Aster had noticed this about Cassian over the past month. He didn't actually see people. He saw ranked contamination levels organised by economic usefulness, which was honestly the most expensive way to be a colossal piece of shit.

"You're technically one of us," Cassian continued, to Aster. "Your bloodline may have declined, but it still belongs to civilisation. Technically a Legacy, however unfortunate the circumstances."

Aster stared. "Thanks for the pep talk, Dad."

Cassian chuckles, ignoring the jab. He steps closer, drawing something from his Dantean — a gleaming brass-and-crystal contraption shaped vaguely like a spider, each joint carved with tiny runic etchings pulsing faintly with stored Faith.

"Here." He tossed it toward Aster. "If you're going to spar, at least make it entertaining. This will give you a little extra bite at the end. Help even the odds."

Aster catches it out of instinct, the metal cool and strangely alive in his palm, the legs clicking slightly like it was settling into the weight of a new hand.

Cassian’s grin widens, eyes glinting with amusement that never touches anything human.

“Because” Cassian says, smile sharp as a scalpel, “people need to know their place. Your existence might be a blight on our history, but people like Rohan are a direct threat to all Legacy’s everywhere. And it’ll be educational for everyone when the Wanderer learns his place.”

The Sergeant’s absence looms larger by the second. Rain drips from the eaves, soft and steady. Around them, students whisper — excitement, pity, anticipation — all feeding on the inevitable.

Aster looks down at the device again. The artifact’s runes pulse faintly with brownish-red light. He slips it into his Dantean anyway, expression unreadable. “Sure,” he says. “Why not. Education’s important.”

Rohan's lip curled the instant he saw Aster accept it. "You really are one of them."

Aster didn't answer. He didn’t have to. The line has already been drawn, clear, sharp, and inevitable.

When the instructor returns, they will both pretend it is just training. A lesson in control, maybe. But as the first droplets of rain begin to patter on the grass of the sparring hall’s open arena, Aster already knows this is heading somewhere uglier.

And for once, he isn’t sure whether he wants to stop it.

His heartbeat steadies as the tethers hum.

Cassian watches with his arms folded behind his back, posture loose with the kind of confidence only possible when you’ve never once been punched by consequence.

“Good,” he says, voice carrying just enough to spread through the crowd. “Let’s see if charity and gutterblood can at least make mud entertaining.”

It isn’t even particularly clever, but several students laugh anyway. Reflexively. Like trained applause in a dictatorship.

Aster caught pieces of the whispers drifting through the rain.

“...won’t last long…”

“Void-Cursed freak probably can’t even control his own Scripture…”

“...Wanderer fights like animals…”

Comforting, honestly.

Hatred was easier to navigate than politeness. At least hatred had the decency to announce itself upfront instead of hiding behind networking opportunities and handshakes.

Aster looked toward Rohan across the ring.

"Ready?"

Rohan rolled his shoulders, gauntlets flaring faintly with latent aether. "You keeping that toy, Legacy-boy? Planning to use it or just polish it?"

Aster resisted the urge to sigh. "You're very fixated on me, you know that? You could try journaling."

Rohan snorted despite himself.

He squared his shoulders, and the runes in his gauntlets kindled red — Earth Typing, a Boxing Scripture, short-range, reinforcement along the joints.

Aster studied him for a second.

The resentment made more sense up close. The worn gear. The repaired seams. The tension in his shoulders whenever Legacies spoke. Rohan didn't look like someone eager for a fight. He looked like someone already exhausted by losing them.