Chapter 176 The New Hero

Banners with Dorian’s name hung from every window along Academy Road, still wet with the dye of a single night. Children chanted it, bakers shouted it over their ovens, a woman on a balcony weeping openly into a damp handkerchief.

"Yesterday this city was throwing turnips at us," Nix said, "now it’s knitting him scarves."

"Fate does fast work," Riven said, walking at the back of the Company.

Veska read the banners aloud as they passed, correcting three misspelled signs carefully with a pencil from her sleeve. Nobody asked her to do it, yet nobody in the crowd dared stop her, the corrections being painfully accurate.

"Sign three is missing an apostrophe," she announced to nobody in particular.

Above the road the Marketside bell tower shuddered, cracks racing up its face as it leaned over the whole crowd. Screaming people scattered in every direction through the crowded street, abandoning their carts, their hats, their shoes and their dignity.

"Move, it’s coming down," a guard shouted, "get clear of the road!"

Dorian was already standing beneath it, calm as a man waiting for a carriage, both palms raised toward the sky. The tower came down onto his shoulders with a roar of bricks, yet he held it without bending his knees.

"He caught the whole tower," a baker whispered, "with his bare shoulders."

Light gathered along his shoulders in a halo of gold, the Regard of a whole street pouring into the man. He smiled at the crowd the way a prince smiles at a painting of himself, then eased the tower down.

’He walked to that exact spot before the first crack. He didn’t catch the tower, he scheduled it.’

Blood ran from his nose in a thin line, which he wiped with a handkerchief someone pressed into his hand. Riven counted three red drops on the road, one for each rewind that the Hero Route quietly paid for him.

"Three rewinds before the first brick fell," Mara said, ears flat against her skull.

"The Route took away his ceiling... all he pays is a nosebleed."

Women pressed flowers into Dorian’s arms, a merchant offered a free coat, a small boy begged for his signature. Riven watched the street that jeered him yesterday forget he existed entirely between one lamp post and the next.

"At least the turnips have stopped," Nix muttered, hugging her coat.

Somewhere behind them a brass band began tuning up for a parade that was not on any schedule.

The practice yard behind the Zero Wing held the academy’s old training pillar, a block as thick as a barrel. Every young cadet swung at it during their first week, leaving a bruise on themselves and no dent in it.

"Let’s measure the gap... Peak against a pillar," Riven said, cracking his knuckles.

He drove Overdue’s pommel into the pillar with all his new Peak strength, the yard ringing like a struck anvil. A crack ran up its face as long as his forearm, stopping short of the top by a full hand.

"A crack that long is a registered achievement," Veska said, "I will file it."

Dorian strolled across the yard with a handkerchief at his nose, followed by admirers like the tail of a comet. He stopped beside the pillar, flicked two fingers against its side, splitting the whole block in half like warm bread.

"Oh, was that yours... I barely touched it," he said, nudging the broken half with his shoe.

Riven kept his face still while the pillar’s top half slid off its base and thudded into the dirt. A whole month of fighting carried him to Peak, yet this man erased the limit with two lazy fingers.

’He’s stronger. Not smarter or braver, just stronger. The Route handed it to him in one night.’

"Practice, extra," Dorian said, patting his shoulder, "maybe next year you can dent it."

"Next year I’ll bring a hammer and a ladder to look you in the eye."

Riven waited until Dorian’s admirers carried him away, then opened the System with a quick flick of two stiff fingers. The Choir refund sat in his ledger like a fat harvest, twenty-six million waiting to be turned into honest strength.

[ Purchase: Resonance, filled to the daily cap | Cost: 1,450,000 RF | Balance: 24,578,600 ]

[ Counter: Recovery | Cost: 9,000 RF | Balance: 24,569,600 ]

He rolled his shoulders as the strength settled, "Let’s see if money can buy a dent."

Power filled his Core to the brim, tight as a drum, then he hit the lower half of the pillar. This time the crack climbed to the very top and a corner flaked away, nothing like Dorian’s two idle fingers.

"Cracking it twice is not nothing," Isolde said, tucking her needle away.

"It’s not enough."

Proctor Brannock unrolled the seeding chart on the dais at noon while students packed the great hall to the rafters. Fenella, from Dorian’s study circle, rose with a thick ledger and proposed sweetly that the hero take the top seed.

"Everyone saw who caught the tower this morning," Fenella said, "the top seed is plainly his."

Cheers rose from every bench, Dorian lowering his eyes modestly while his shoulders still glowed faintly. Brannock reached for his stamp, plainly relieved that the whole question had such an easy answer.

"Put the stamp down, Proctor," a clear voice said from the front bench.

Ysabel rose from the front bench with her Council cord pinned to her collar, silencing the entire hall at once. She walked to the dais, took the chalk from Brannock’s fingers, and crossed out the top line of the board.

Fenella lurched to her feet, "Madam President, with respect—"

"Seeding belongs to the President under article six... and the President has decided."

She wrote Riven of Class Zero on the top line in large looping letters, then underlined it twice. The hall erupted, Class Zero’s remaining students shouting loudest, Tobin hurling his hat as high as the rafters.

"Top seed to Class Zero," Brannock read out, voice cracking, "so recorded in the minutes."

’Ysabel just overruled the hero in front of the whole school. I’m going to hear about this at Council for weeks.’

Dorian’s smile never moved, but a single drop of blood slid from his nose onto his pristine white collar. Behind his eyes he rewound three seconds, swapping his brittle smile for a gracious one before anyone could notice.

"It is a clerical error," Fenella whispered to her neighbor, "it must be."

"It isn’t an error, dear."

Yukine sat three rows back with her hands folded over a pawn, watching Dorian with the patience of a hunter. When the board changed she quietly slid the pawn one small square along her knee, as if recording a move.

"He rewound that, I watched his eyes go blank," Yukine murmured as the hall emptied, "it costs him now."

Aide Lowell appeared at Riven’s elbow as the hall emptied, delicately holding a scented cream envelope between two fingers. The faintest smirk tugged at his mouth, the look of a servant who was supposed to lose this letter.

"From Master Dorian," Lowell said softly, "I searched for a drain deep enough to lose it in."

’Dorian never invites anyone anywhere for free. Whatever is in this envelope has a price.’

The card inside held one line of careful handwriting, "Let’s talk like the only two people who know this is a story."