Chapter 97: Promotion
The classroom had only ten seats and eight of them mattered. Everything else was tools pretending to be furniture - four writing boards that sat on the walls as if there weren’t more that could fold from behind them, rolled terrain sheets clipped to rails, two ceiling projectors like patient owls...
Break time had different rules in here. Arashi used the far board to sketch shot arcs that could never happen in any world with laws. Esen added sound effects for each impossible line, trying to annoy him. Hikari had a thin stack of reports about the northern ridgeline and the old rail cut - she turned pages like you were supposed to hear the map in them. Keahi sat cross-legged on the counter by the window, sipping quiet tea. Lynea was pretending not to look at her notes. Feris occupied a corner and the door with the kind of stillness that told the room it was not alone. Ichiro was... Buried in a book, to say the least.
Raizen flexed his hand. The taser burn had faded to a faint red, a souvenir that could pass for a stain in the right light. He tapped the skin, counting breath in the ribs, not the throat. The ache answered like an old neighbor - still here, less loud. Good enough.
"Vending unit ate my credit again" Esen announced, holding up a sad packet that was supposed to have some snacks that costed... Let’s just say that nothing wasn’t expensive at the Academy.
"Consider it training" Arashi said without looking. "Endurance in the face of deprivation."
"Consider this" Esen said, flicking the empty packet so it stuck to Arashi’s sketch. "Your line just hit a baguette."
Feris let out a wide smile from her small corner. "Baguettes have better armor than you think."
Raizen let the joke pass through him and into the room. Calm was a thing you held up to the light and pretended you had found, not made. He rolled his shoulder and the harness memory tugged back - a ghost weight that asked to be worn again. Not yet. Kori would murder him in a labeled sequence if she caught him training again before clearance. And when I say training, it basically means hugging the walls, desperately trying not to lose your perfect balance on wires.
The door opened like trouble had been on time twice.
Kori stormed in with her coat half-buttoned and the clipboard already moving. She did not so much cross the room as mark it with a straight line. The Elite Scholar room stood up a little inside itself.
"Congratulations, disasters!" she said, not smiling. "You have been promoted."
Silence took a desk.
Esen blinked. "Huh?"
"You will stand one week from today in front of the Council Spire" Kori continued, pace constant, eyes doing inventory. "It’ll be public. Neoshima wants to see the next defenders breathe the same air as the city before it expects you to defend it. Everybody’s done it."
Arashi’s pen fell off the board. Keahi set her cup down with two fingers. Feris didn’t move.
"Officials from Atlan, Ukai, Haldor and other cities will attend" Kori said, flipping a page. "Smile with your eyes, not your teeth. The first-years you humiliated in the arena will be there as well. Don’t wave. They are still technically your peers."
Saffi slid in during the sentence with a breath and a smear across her cheek that might have been copper or soot. She froze mid-step. "Did I miss -"
"Yes" Kori said. "And no. Sit. Try not to leak machine oil on the fabric seats, they’re expensive."
"For now, you’re what I call..." Kori went on. "Field Cadets. You will be attached to suppression teams for live Nyx contact within the month after ceremony. Of course, low-class. Until then you will learn to know the ground you’ll bleed on."
She looked at each of them then, one second more for Raizen, as if she could smell the Underworks on him under soap and sleep. He held her gaze and then found somewhere else to put it.
"This is not about swinging prettier" Kori said. "This is not about seeing your reflection in the Spire glass and thinking you know your face. It is about not dying when something that does not love you decides to make you part of the ground. You’ll learn the team the way you learned your own breath. If any of you insists on being a hero, I will write your eulogy myself and it will be short."
"Inspirational" Saffi murmured.
"I can list failure statistics" Kori offered.
"We’re inspired" Saffi said quickly. "Too inspired"
Kori’s pen ticked. "Good. Saffi - you will split your time between this room and the workshop. You may kiss your machines and information goodbye at midnight but not later. And Alteea. Tell her to handle everything herself, her "Assistant" isn’t available 24/7. Esen, Arashi - your play will become drills. Hikari - you will run map recitations for the room until they hate your voice. Lynea, Keahi - you will enforce hand signal discipline. Feris - you will teach entry and exit like religion. Raizen... I guess you can keep refining your prototype while studying."
Everyone looked at Raizen. He tried to look like a man who had never touched anything fun.
"Questions?" Kori asked.
"Do we bow?" Esen asked, "or wave."
"You will stand still" Kori said. "Standing still is hard for you. Consider this growth."
"And the visiting officials" Hikari said. "Anything we should know about them."
"They are officials" Kori said. "They have names and cities and needs. That is enough. You will ignore them with respect."
"Will Solomon be there?"
Kori’s pen paused. "He is Neoshima’s face! The spire’s his thing! He is always there."
Silence set its cup down. The room breathed together once.
"Remember" Kori said. "Ceremony is theater. Combat is math. The first-years you beat will cheer or they’ll hope you fall. Neither really matters. Your team does."
She checked the clock and her patience at the same time. "Ten minutes of break remain. Use them like you paid for them."
The room expelled a breath it had been renting. Sound returned in pieces.
Arashi climbed onto a chair with the look of a man about to declare a holiday. "Given developments, leadership falls naturally to those with vision and hair. I accept."
"Leadership falls naturally to those who can read a map without crying" Esen said, stealing the chair out from under one of Arashi’s boots with a casual foot. "I accept on your behalf."
"You cannot lead a sandwich to a mouth" Arashi said.
"You cannot lead a thought to a conclusion" Esen said.
"What could you possibly mean!? I can lead too many!"
They squared up in the light way, not the heavy way. The room ignored them with affection.
Saffi leaned toward Raizen, voice low. "You good?"
"Fine" he said.
"Your hand says otherwise."
"The hand always tricks." He flexed. The red faded when he looked away.
Hikari closed her notebook and sat nearer without making it a moment. "You should sleep tonight."
"I should. Will I?"
Keahi set her cup down and stood. "We will need a hand signal for fall back left" she said to Lynea.
Lynea threw a complicated look: "We won’t be needing any signals"
Arashi and Esen’s argument found punchlines and died. The room changed temperature - not colder, just more honest.
They filed out into the narrow hall that pretended to be wider when it wanted you to feel important. The Spire’s top cut the sky in the far window, white and certain. People beyond the glass had no idea whether to clap yet. They would learn.
At the threshold, Arashi and Esen started again.
"Captain" Arashi said, pointing to himself with a flourish.
"Captain" Esen said, pointing to anyone else.
"Vice-Captain" Arashi amended nobly.
"Vice calamity" Esen corrected.
Feris stepped between them without touching either. "Move."
They moved. That was leadership, too.
Raizen stayed one heartbeat longer in the doorway and let the week line up in his head. Overview, memory, signals, pairs, protocols, rehearsal, silence. Ceremony in front of the Council Spire. Officials from far cities, first years he had beaten and a city that wanted to believe it could see its future before it arrived.
He thought of the under-alleys where nobody applauded. Of a name that had walked back into his life without opening a door. He thought of the harness waiting for permission and of Kori’s eyes counting how many of his bones he had borrowed.
It was not the training that made his chest feel tight. It was the public part - the standing in daylight where everyone could take a measurement and call it truth. Courage looked different when the lights were on. It looked like not sneezing, not tripping, not existing incorrectly. It looked like breathing as one when the city wanted eight performances and you only had one soul.
It was time.