There’s no such thing as a fair system, just the illusion of one.

  —Camber Quinlan

  I woke before dawn and laid in bed, watching the indigo sky give way to violet and peach as the sun crept over the mountains, feeling sorry for myself. My dreams had been full of running and hiding, as things I couldn’t see chased me down endless hallways and through widely overgrown gardens.

  Eventually, though, my bladder got the best of me, and I threw off the covers and went in search of the lavatory. I found it at the end of the hall, just a few doors down from my own. Inside, the porcelain-tiled room was silent, and I took the opportunity to clean yesterday’s grime off my skin. I found a bar of soap left in one of the showers and a fluffy pile of towels stowed neatly in a cupboard.

  The water came out hot—real hot, not boiled-on-a-stove-and-hauled kind of hot. It stung at first, sharp as steam, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. I’d never bathed in anything warmer than dishwater. This felt wasteful. Wrong. Like I was using something that didn’t belong to me.

  I scrubbed fast, until my skin turned pink, then ran the soap through my hair, working out the grease and soot until the water ran clear and my violet mop felt like straw under my fingers. But no matter how hard I scrubbed, I still felt like a stain on clean tile.

  Once I was dressed and combed, I tentatively made my way down the hall, following my nose and ears until I stumbled into the cafeteria, a wide space dominated by a large set of windows on one end and a long set of serving stations against the other. In between were dozens of tables, some of which, housed other early risers eating their breakfasts.

  I hesitated just inside the doorway, stomach growling, brain still unsure of the rules. Was I supposed to line up somewhere? Was food free? Did they check rank before you got a plate?

  No one looked up. Or if they did, they didn’t see me—just another body in black, another sleep-crumpled uniform drifting through the gears of the machine.

  The air smelled like coffee, buttered toast, and something faintly metallic—eggs, maybe, or whatever they ate up here. A few stewards in muted blue jackets moved behind the counters, scooping ladles of porridge into shallow bowls or slicing neatly through slabs of something brown and steaming.

  I spotted a tray stack near the entrance and grabbed one, careful not to clatter. The first station held mugs and a row of taps labeled in clipped, technical script. I scanned the labels and chose the one marked Coffee: High Roast and filled a cup halfway. The smell hit me first—rich and velvety. Not burnt like the stuff we brewed back home. It smelled like Winter’s Eve, when we’d scrape together enough coin to split one pot between all four of us at that café on the MiddleCity border. Luxury, by our standards. This wasn’t that, not really. But it was close enough that my shoulders dropped half an inch before I could stop them.

  The second station offered soft rolls, sliced fruit, and a metal bin labeled "protein cubes." I didn’t ask. Just took two and moved on.

  I found an empty table near the back, one with a view of a different courtyard and no chance of someone sitting down beside me. I didn’t want company. Not yet. Not when my scalp still stung from scrubbing, and I still felt like I might spontaneously combust if someone asked me who I was.

  I sat. Ate in small bites, slow and mechanical. The protein cubes tasted like damp paper. The bread was better. The coffee was… not. I didn’t know what was wrong with it, but it didn’t taste right.

  A group of students walked past my table without a glance, their laughter tight and polished. I caught the tail end of a sentence: “…if you’re not in the top hundred by Winterterm, you may as well not come back.”

  I stared into my cup, heart pounding, appetite gone.

  They must be talking about the Rankings. That massive board in the main hall.

  “You’re her, aren’t you?”

  I looked up and jumped—a girl I hadn’t seen approach was standing there, eyes sharp, tray in hand. Her hair was a soft, powdery pink—the kind you had to pay for, tone weekly, and wear like a signature. It clashed beautifully with the gold trim on her uniform.

  “Who?” I countered.

  “You. The extra first year.”

  Extra first year? Is that what they were calling me?

  “Oh yeah?” I hedged. “What makes you think that?”

  She set her tray down across from mine and sat like she belonged there—every inch of her folded into perfect posture, long hands stacking one over the other as she studied my face.

  “Because I don’t know you.”

  “And you know everyone?” I groused, picking up my fork and poking at the remains of the protein cube.

  She laughed—a soft, practiced sound. I couldn’t tell if it was friendly or just well-rehearsed.

  “The fact that you even asked that proves my point.” She held out a hand, elegant and deliberate. “Seraphine Quell.”

  I took it, wary. “Iolite Trenfell.”

  “Word is, Master Oxwell plucked you off the street and sponsored you,” she said, picking up her fork and spearing a piece of fruit with surgical ease. “You must be some kind of genius.” She popped it into her mouth and chewed, eyes never leaving mine. Watching. Weighing.

  I shifted in my seat. “That’s not exactly how it happened.”

  “No?” She stabbed another cube, her voice mild. “Do tell.”

  “I, uh, he found something I made and—”

  “Seraphine,” a male voice said, saving me from the horrible mess I was making. She turned and gave the young man approaching us an arch look.

  “Phineas,” she greeted, then gestured toward me. “Meet the new student.”

  He was stocky, broad-shouldered, with ruddy skin and a thin silver scar slicing through one eyebrow. That brow lifted now as he looked me over, eyes lingering just a beat too long on the top of my head.

  “So you’re the one everyone’s talking about. Lower City?”

  Heat crept up my neck, and I looked down at my plate. “Yeah.”

  “Thought so. That hair.”

  “Phineas Loxley, meet Iolite—” Seraphine paused. “Trenfall, was it?”

  “Trenfell,” I corrected before I could stop myself.

  “Iolite Trenfell,” she repeated smoothly.

  “Pleasure to meet you,” he said—automatically, already turning back to her. “You have your notes from Dr. Marche’s lecture yesterday? I think I misunderstood what he was saying about the reproduction of chemically introduced cells.”

  “No. I already lent them to Milendra. If you can track her down, you’re welcome to them.”

  “Appreciate it,” he said. He shot me a quick, perfunctory smile before going back to his own table. As Phineas walked away, Seraphine speared another bite of fruit, unhurried, like the interruption had only existed to emphasize her place at the center of the room.

  “You’ll want to be careful with him,” she said lightly.

  I glanced up. “Why?”

  She shrugged, slicing into a soft yellow wedge. “He’s not unkind. Just easily led. He worships anyone above him—by points or pedigree.”

  “You sound like one of the ones above him.”

  Her lips curved. “Not the way he’d like.”

  I went back to my coffee. It still tasted wrong—like it had been filtered through silk and scraped clean of anything real.

  “Funny,” Seraphine murmured, watching me over the rim of her own cup. “Most people who’ve never had coffee before at least pretend to like it. First day nerves, and all.”

  I stiffened. “I’ve had coffee before.”

  Her eyebrows lifted slightly, just enough to be condescending. “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure I didn’t hallucinate it.”

  She smiled like someone flipping a coin they already knew would land in their favor. “This roast is from the Royal Reserve. Doesn’t circulate outside the Palace kitchens. Even most of us don’t get it unless there’s a surplus.”

  I looked down at the cup between my hands. “Then maybe they should’ve kept it.”

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  Her smile twitched. Just a fraction. “You’ll develop a taste for quality eventually.”

  “Or maybe I already have one,” I said, sweet as salt.

  Her face darkened, and she leaned forward, resting her chin delicately on the back of her hand. “Here’s the thing, Iolite.” Her words were clipped and clean. “You’re a curiosity. A glitch. And Velspire doesn’t like glitches. It’s a system built on balance—rankings, quotas, lineage, legacy. Then you drop in, courtesy of a man who doesn’t even teach here anymore, and suddenly no one’s sure where to place you.”

  “I didn’t ask to be placed.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” She picked up her napkin, dabbed at the corner of her mouth, then folded it like a letter. “You’re here. And whether you like it or not, you’re going to upset someone’s math.”

  “Yours?”

  Her smile didn’t falter. “Not yet. But I do have a very tidy equation going, and I’d prefer it stay that way.”

  I stared at her, unsure whether she’d just threatened me or offered something closer to respect. Maybe both.

  She stood, gathering her tray and smoothing the front of her uniform with one precise hand.

  “Lecture Hall Six is through the west corridor, down two flights,” she said. “You’ll want to get there early. Rell locks the door once the bell rings.”

  I blinked. “How do you know where I’m supposed to be?”

  She gave a soft, amused laugh. “Please. You think I didn’t read the roster the moment I heard we had an unranked addition?” She tilted her head. “You’re not the only one with a sharp eye.”

  I was suddenly conscious of my scraped-together uniform, the clumsy repair I’d done on my satchel this morning. Seraphine looked untouched. Composed. Designed.

  “Good luck in class,” she said.

  Then she turned and left without waiting for a response, leaving behind the faint smell of citrus and something sharp—like powder and polish and the promise of pain if you played your numbers wrong.

  I stood up and dumped my tray, wiped my palms on my slacks, and followed Seraphine’s directions through the west corridor. The hallways were quieter now—most students had already cleared out, probably already heading to their classes. The further I went, the less decorative things became. The marble gave way to industrial tile, the windows grew narrow and slitted, and the hallway lights buzzed faintly overhead like mechanical wasps.

  A bell chimed somewhere deep in the building, clear and cold.

  I picked up my pace.

  Lecture Hall Six loomed ahead, the door already propped open. Inside, it looked less like a classroom and more like a minor theater—steep rows of benches tiered around a broad floor-level space, with a giant blackboard dominating the front wall. The board gleamed like obsidian, every inch spotless. The ceiling arched overhead in a copper curve, latticed with pipes and warm-glowing gaslight tubes. Brass numerics had been carved into the front rows. The room was already two thirds full of milling students who talked in small groups or lounged across benches.

  I kept my head down and scanned for the emptiest part of the room.

  Back left corner. Two empty benches. No one clustered near them.

  Perfect.

  I slipped between the rows and sank onto the far end of one, wedging myself into the corner with my satchel pressed against the wall. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it was hidden. I pulled out a few sheets of blank parchment and my pen, placing them neatly on the bolted-down desk in front of me, careful to make sure the pen didn’t roll off the top. I didn’t have a spare. If I dropped this one, I was screwed.

  The rest of the room filled quickly.

  Voices filtered in—a rising tide of chatter, laughter, the scuff of polished boots. I clocked the upper-city accents immediately: clipped, bright, casually arrogant. A lot of candy-colored heads. A lot of posture. Most of them moved like they’d been in this building before. Maybe they had. Maybe their parents had.

  A handful stood out—messier hair, secondhand satchels, faces that watched more than they spoke. Middle city, probably. Maybe one or two lower, if they were very lucky or very smart.

  Then came her.

  The girl made straight for my corner of the lecture hall like she’d known I was there before she even entered the room. Tall, perfectly composed, coat tailored to fit like it had been sewn for her spine. Her dark brown braid gleamed like a polished whip. She stopped at my desk, looked at me without smiling.

  “You’re in my seat.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  She gestured to the bench. “That’s where I sit.”

  I glanced around. Nothing was marked. No names. No tags. Just open space.

  “I don’t see your name on it,” I said, and turned back to my parchment.

  There was a long pause.

  Then, quietly but firmly: “I always sit there.”

  “Well,” I said, “today you don’t.”

  I didn’t look up. I heard the breath she drew in. Not angry—controlled. Measured. Like someone filing away a detail for later use. When I finally did glance at her, her face had gone smooth. Not blank—just closed. The way a trapdoor looks right before it snaps shut.

  She moved three seats down without another word, and the boys already sitting there scurried off when she glared at them.

  I watched all of it.

  Then I watched her, because she watched me—from three seats away, like I’d become a variable she hadn’t expected in her calculation.

  Unlike the rest of the students, she didn’t chat or laugh or lounge in her seat. She just sat. Straight and composed and polished. And never looked away

  I ignored her. For a while. Or tried to. But every time I glanced up, she was still watching—expression calm, spine like a ruler, gaze unblinking.

  I found myself caught in it. A stare-off I hadn’t agreed to.

  Two minutes passed. Maybe three.

  Then I frowned. This was stupid and pointless. I turned deliberately, reached for my pen, and looked away like she wasn’t worth the ink I was about to waste.

  Let her stew on that.

  The room quieted as footsteps echoed from the hallway outside. Sharp. Quick. A little too fast to be calm.

  The woman who walked in looked barely older than the students in the front row. Her coat was rumpled, her vibrant teal hair pinned up like it was done in a hurry, and half of it fell back down again. She carried a roll of parchment under one arm and a stack of slates under the other, like she didn’t trust anyone else to handle them right.

  She dropped the slates on the desk with a loud thwack, rolled out the parchment with one hand, and turned to face us—sharp-chinned, fast-eyed, and already writing before anyone could settle.

  That had to be Lecturer Tamsin Rell.

  She didn’t wait. Just picked up a piece of chalk and launched.

  “Welcome to Mathematics & Measurement,” she said. “We’ve already covered conversion tables, base calibrations, and the Aldric Constant. If you missed that, catch up. Quickly.”

  A few students straightened. I swallowed hard.

  “Please remember,” she added, scribbling something in perfect, narrow script onto the board behind her, “math isn’t a ladder. It’s a spiral. You will circle back to what you don’t understand. Over and over. Until you do.”

  She underlined the word do three times, then turned to face us again.

  “And trust me, you will misunderstand things. That’s not a flaw. That’s a feature.”

  She scanned the room with a quick flick of her gaze—sharp and hungry—and for a second, I could’ve sworn it landed on me and stuck. Just for a second.

  Behind us, the door creaked open.

  Every head turned.

  A boy stepped in like he owned the place. Tall, broad-shouldered, the sleeves of his uniform jacket rolled to the elbow like he hadn’t bothered to button them that morning. His dark hair was cropped short, face shadowed with the barest trace of stubble he clearly wasn’t supposed to have. He carried nothing—no satchel, no notes, not even a pen.

  “Mr. Roe,” Rell said flatly, chalk still raised. “So kind of you to grace us.”

  The boy paused halfway down the short flight of stairs to the desks. “Got turned around.”

  Rell didn’t blink. “This building hasn’t moved in three decades.”

  A few students snickered. He didn’t smile. Just shrugged once, then jogged down the remaining steps and dropped into the empty seat beside me like the spot had been saved.

  I shifted, caught off guard. He didn’t look at me, didn’t introduce himself—just leaned back, arms draped along the bench like he might doze off at any second.

  “Since you’re here, perhaps you can tell us,” Rell said, turning back to the board, “how the Aldric Constant applies to gear ratio stabilization in mechanical redundancies.”

  Silence.

  I braced myself for the smug nothingness of someone making a joke or asking her to repeat the question.

  Instead, Roe reached over and plucked my parchment from under my hand.

  “Hey—”

  He ignored me, tilted the page toward him, and scanned the margin where I’d been sketching some new gear designs.

  “Gear timing sequences,” he said, squinting at my shorthand, voice low and clear. “The Aldric Constant maps variance across compounded gear trains, mainly in constructs that can’t tolerate lag—good use for weaponized drones or balance-critical automata.”

  A pause.

  Then Rell said, “Not what I asked.”

  Another ripple of snickering, smaller this time. Roe didn’t seem fazed.

  “You’re talking about the lower application theorem,” she continued, walking toward the front of the class. “Which is useful for reinforcement design, yes. But I asked about stabilization—which requires you to apply the Constant as a flex factor, not a limit. The distinction matters, Mr. Roe.”

  She returned to the board and wrote out a long equation in a practiced hand. I snatched my parchment back, cheeks hot. Cal didn’t react, didn’t apologize—just leaned back again and smirked like the whole thing had been mildly entertaining.

  “Now,” Rell said, brushing chalk dust from her fingers, “I’m sure some of you are wondering why any of this matters. Why a load-bearing constant or gear synchrony ratio should take up space in your already-overstuffed brains.”

  She turned to face us fully. Her smile was thin.

  “Because unlike what you may have heard, math does matter. And no, it’s not because a well-placed theorem can win you points in a deathmatch—though I’d pay good coin to watch someone try.”

  A ripple of laughter.

  “But because every single thing you build will be judged. And everything that fails? Will be punished.”

  The laughter faded.

  “You’re not just being graded on function. You’re being graded on precision. On elegance. On how closely your machines, your calculations, your chaos aligns with control. You think you’ll survive the Quarterfinals with brute strength and clever timing? Maybe. Once. But this place doesn’t care how fast you hit. It cares how well you calculated the strike.”

  She walked back to her desk, unfurled another scroll, and started copying out the day’s lecture sequence.

  “Everything we do in this room is about understanding the shape of force. How to channel it. Measure it. Anticipate it.”

  She tapped the board once.

  “Because the difference between a functioning system and a fatal error? That’s math. That’s you.”

  No one said anything.

  She didn’t look at me, not directly, but I thought—maybe—her gaze flicked to the back row again before she began to write.

  Next to me, Roe stretched his legs out like he was settling in for a nap. I tucked my parchment beneath my elbow and didn’t look at him again.