Noon was still scorching.

  Golden Hour. The sun was right overhead, the Tether's shadow vanished, blinding white light reflecting from Valdor's concrete, Aurum's glass, and Aethelgard's marble.

  The Colosseum was like a giant furnace.

  The smell of teenage sweat, ozone from leaking circuits, and something deeper, heavier, began to be detected.

  Ambient Mana rising.

  Thousands of students, thousands of pulsating Cores simultaneously, making the air feel thick like hot syrup.

  I had just finished speaking.

  And now I knew I had just burned a bridge I hadn't even crossed yet.

  The gravity lift took me back to the highest balcony.

  The energy door opened.

  The air here was colder, but not because of the wind.

  There was another pressure.

  The Mana of the four people in front of me collided with each other, creating an invisible vortex that made my hairs stand on end.

  My Core, in my solar plexus, pulsed softly, like a second heart that had just woken up and was immediately scared.

  They were already waiting.

  Not sitting.

  Standing.

  Four predators in the same cage.

  Titus stepped forward first, his metal footsteps echoing on the floor.

  "Golden chains?"

  A heavy voice, like a slowly swung hammer.

  Vianna cut in before I could open my mouth.

  "4 percent, Wynter. My shares. Ten minutes."

  Silas, almost simultaneously, his soft voice piercing bone.

  "The children of the Sanctum are crying now."

  Kael, cold, one sentence.

  "Article 12. Three votes are enough."

  Four sides.

  No room to breathe.

  My back almost touched the energy fence.

  The air felt heavier, as if an invisible hand was pressing on my chest.

  Why did I say that? Did I deliberately seek death? Or is this a remnant of the old Wynter, who was still brave before amnesia erased his courage? Or do I really hate these chains so much that my tongue moved on its own? Whatever it is, it's too late now.

  They'll tear me apart here if I stay silent.

  I took a deep breath, my chest felt tight.

  My Core pulsed harder.

  Something inside me, very cold, started moving.

  "Golden chains," I repeated, my voice almost trembling.

  "Not iron.

  Not debt.

  Not prayer.

  Gold.

  You use it yourselves. Proudly.

  And the Sovereign laughs seeing you shine while crawling."

  Silence for one second.

  Enough for me to realize my hands were trembling.

  Then I touched the pendant.

  [[GLOBAL PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEM -- AUTHORITY CONFIRMED]]

  A mechanical voice in my ear.

  Hands trembling.

  Heart pounding so hard it felt like it would burst.

  I spoke.

  "The official welcome ceremony for the new academic year is declared concluded.

  All Iron Bastion students return to the Northern sector.

  All Gilded Spire students return to the Eastern sector.

  All Sanctum of Grace students return to the Southern sector.

  Arbiter's Enclave oversees the repatriation process.

  Time given: forty minutes.

  This is an order from the Grand Praetor."

  The voice echoed throughout the Colosseum.

  All giant ad panels went dark immediately.

  Replaced by the silver trinity wheel logo and my face, real-time.

  The ranking board on the northern wall updated instantly:

  WYNTER ASH -- GRAND PRAETOR

  APPROVAL RATING: 28 % ↓↓↓

  Down below, tens of thousands of students froze.

  Then moved orderly, like puppets whose strings were forcibly pulled.

  Some Valdor first-years still stood dazed, forgetting their rows, eyes fixed on my face on the giant screen.

  On this balcony,

  Titus clenched his fist until the metal creaked.

  Vianna closed her hologram roughly.

  Silas smiled, but his eyes were empty.

  Kael nodded once.

  I stared at them.

  My breath was ragged.

  My face pale.

  But I didn't back down.

  "Tomorrow we'll talk."

  I turned around.

  The energy door opened automatically.

  I stepped into the lift.

  As the doors closed,

  I saw my reflection in the glass wall.

  Red eyes glowing.

  Faint blue lines creeping on my neck.

  And my breath, even in broad daylight, emitted a thin frost.

  Smart-ID vibrated.

  [WEAVER: Good.

  You've just postponed the war... for one day.

  Tomorrow morning, this city will wake up with your new name on everyone's lips.

  Don't forget your ice.]

  The lift descended.

  Down there, the Colosseum slowly emptied.

  Students returned to their respective academies,

  like rivers forced to flow into different channels.

  I closed my eyes.

  Hands still trembling.

  This isn't me being cold. Something inside me is starting to wake up.

  Location : Nexus Hall

  The gravity lift doors closed with a soft hiss, separating the outside Colosseum's hustle and bustle from the sterile silence inside.

  I was alone.

  And that's when my body began to betray me.

  Cold.

  Not the cold of AC, or the cold of the seasonal Downdraft wind. This was a cold creeping from the marrow of my bones, spreading to my blood vessels, making the tips of my fingers go numb.

  I clutched my knees, trying to stop this embarrassing trembling. My breath was ragged, and every exhale, white vapor came from my mouth, condensing in the warm cabin air.

  What is this?

  I looked at my reflection in the lift's metal wall. Pale. My lips were turning blue.

  Am I sick? A heart attack? Or maybe someone poisoned me on the balcony earlier?

  I tried to swallow, but my throat felt like swallowing glass shards. My brain, which usually worked like a calculating machine, was now panicking, searching for a diagnosis. Post-traumatic shock? Allergic reaction to the Colosseum atmosphere?

  My hands shook violently as I tried to rub my robe-covered arms, seeking warmth that wasn't there. It felt fragile.

  My thoughts were suddenly thrown back a few hours. To the silent morning in the Penthouse. To the hot pan and the smell of butter.

  I remembered the egg. The Behemoth egg from Aethelgard. Its thick shell speckled with blue. Its price 15 Lux. Equivalent to a Valdor soldier's monthly salary who died in a border trench.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  I cracked it easily. Fried it. Swallowed it. It tasted luxurious. It tasted like power.

  I let out a short laugh, a sound like cracking ice.

  "Ironic," my thoughts whispered, cynical and sharp. "This morning I ate a symbol of luxury paid for with other people's lives. I felt like a king. But now... in this descending metal box, I realize I am the egg."

  My shell had just cracked on the podium earlier. That hero-wannabe speech about "Golden Chains"? That was the first crack. And the city down there... Zero Point City... was a hot pan full of boiling oil ready to fry me alive.

  I spoke of freedom, of breaking chains, while my stomach was still full from the same system of slavery.

  "You're a hypocrite, Wynter," I scolded myself. "And now you're trembling with cold like a coward."

  BZZZT.

  A rough vibration on my wrist cut off that spiral of panic.

  I raised my Smart-ID with a stiff hand. Its screen lit up red. Not Weaver. Not an encrypted message.

  [SENDER: MUNICIPAL COUNCIL -- ADMINISTRATION DEPARTMENT]

  [SUBJECT: CIVIL AUDIT MANDATE]

  [CONTENT: Grand Praetor Ash. Your presence is required at Nexus Hall. Immediately. Code: CIVIL-01.]

  I frowned. Municipal Council? The City Council?

  I knew in theory this city had a civilian government, but in my mind, they were just paper stampers. Why were they summoning me? And why "Required"?

  The lift stopped with a soft thud. The doors opened.

  I took a deep breath, holding the cold breath in my chest, forcing my body upright. I must not appear weak. I was the Grand Praetor now. Even if my blood felt like shaved ice, I had to walk like fire.

  The journey to Nexus Hall using the Mag-Lev Tram gave me a painful perspective.

  This hovering train line split the city at fifty meters high. From behind the window glass, I didn't see academy dormitories or duel fields. I looked down. To the dirty, narrow concrete streets.

  I saw them.

  An electrician hanging on a sparking cable pole, his face black with soot. An old shopkeeper hurriedly closing his shop's rolling door in panic, perhaps afraid of riots after my speech. A garbage truck driver cursing traffic jams because the main road was blocked for a student parade.

  They weren't wearing colorful uniforms. No Valdor armor, no Aurum silk robes. They wore dull gray jumpsuits. Their faces weren't fearful or awed. Their faces... were tired.

  "They don't care," I realized.

  I thought my speech shook the world. I thought I was the protagonist in this revolution drama.

  But for the people down there, I was just a traffic disturbance. For them, "Revolution" meant the market closed and they couldn't eat.

  I felt small. And the cold in my bones stabbed deeper.

  Nexus Hall.

  This building hovered right under the shadow of The Great Tether, like a glass parasite attached to its host.

  As soon as the automatic doors opened, I was immediately assaulted by a foreign atmosphere.

  No smell of ozone from residual magic. No smell of iron or dried blood like in the Colosseum.

  This place smelled of... stale coffee. Damp archive paper. Printer ink. And cheap floor cleaner.

  The sounds were different too. Only the constant hum of servers and the tick-tick-tick from hundreds of holographic keyboards being typed by sour-faced bureaucrats. This wasn't a hero's headquarters. This was a boredom factory.

  A male secretary pointed to a double door without looking at my face. "The Mayor is waiting. Go right in."

  I pushed that door.

  The room was spacious, its walls made of transparent glass showing a 360-degree view of the entire city. But the person sitting in the middle of the room wasn't enjoying the view.

  A middle-aged woman sat behind a work desk that resembled a paper fortress more than a director's desk. She wore a wrinkled gray suit, especially at the sleeves. Her hair was tied up messily. A thin electronic cigarette emitting mint-scented smoke was tucked between her lips.

  She didn't look at me. Her eyes were fixed on a tablet screen showing a line graph diving sharply.

  "Grand Praetor Ash," she said without turning. Her voice was hoarse, the voice of someone who had too many meetings and too little sleep. "Sit. And stop trembling. You're making my room's AC sensors work double."

  I was stunned. She knew I was trembling?

  I sat on a hard visitor's chair. "Mayor Voss," I greeted, trying to sound authoritative. "I received an urgent summons. Is there a security threat?"

  The woman—Elara Voss—finally looked up. Her eyes were sharp, surrounded by thick black eye bags. No signs of magic in her eyes. She was an ordinary human. A Muggle, in old fairy tales.

  But her gaze was more pressing than Imperator Titus's.

  "Security threat?" Elara exhaled cigarette smoke to the side. She let out a short laugh, humorless. "Depends on your definition. For Aurum students, a 'threat' is when their hair gets messy. For me? A threat is this graph."

  She turned her tablet towards me. A red graph in free fall.

  "Your 'Golden Chains' speech... you think you're clever, Kid?"

  I straightened my back, my posture tensing defensively.

  "She's belittling me. Standard bureaucrat tactic. Diminishing the interlocutor to control the negotiation. Don't get provoked. Stay analytical."

  "I was just stating the truth," I replied calmly, though my teeth were chattering from the cold. "This system enslaves students. Someone had to say it. Sarcasm is an effective weapon to shake the status quo."

  Elara stared at me for a long time. The stare of a kindergarten teacher watching a small child eating glue.

  "You think you're the only one aware this system is rotten?" she asked softly. "You think the civilians in this city are stupid? You think the janitor at the front door doesn't know he's enslaved?"

  Her words struck. I fell silent.

  "They know, Kid. The merchants know. The truck drivers know. They understand your sarcasm about 'Golden Chains'," Elara continued, her voice rising an octave. "The problem is, your 'clever joke' on the podium just made the Aurum Stock Index drop four percent in ten minutes."

  I frowned.

  "Four percent? Correlation between political speeches and the stock market... Of course. Aurum manages student betting and insurance. If the Grand Praetor threatens war, risk premiums soar. Investors panic."

  As if reading my mind, Elara pointed outside the window.

  "You calculated the political impact, but you forgot to calculate the fiscal impact. A four percent drop in the Aurum stock market means the exchange rate of Valdor's Merit also falls. That means their purchasing power for Aethelgard's wheat weakens. End result? Bread prices in the market double tomorrow morning."

  She leaned forward, her cigarette smoke hitting my face.

  "The civilians you 'defended' with your pretty speech? They're the ones who will go hungry tomorrow morning because of your mouth. Not you."

  Elara stared at me with undisguised disgust.

  "You'll still sleep soundly in your Penthouse, right? On silk sheets, with automatic heating, eating premium meat rations while the citizens down there scramble for synthetic pasta?"

  My heart stopped beating for a moment.

  "Damn. She's right. I threw a stone into the pond to make a big ripple, but I didn't care who drowned in the waves. I attacked the Tyrants, but it's the ordinary people who bleed."

  The cold in my body intensified. Not because of magic, but because of shame. I felt naked before this old woman. No Grand Praetor's armor could protect me from this fact.

  Elara leaned back in her chair, looking satisfied seeing my pale face.

  "You're confused," she said, softer now, but her tone still condescending. "You're confused why a civilian Mayor dares to lecture a wizard who can freeze a room."

  "I... didn't freeze the room," I retorted quickly.

  "Don't show weakness. Don't let her know I can't control this."

  Elara ignored my denial. "Let me simplify it for your adrenaline-filled knight brain. You might be good at speeches, but you're blind to the city's structure. This city has two heads. Two monsters who hate each other but sleep in one bed."

  She raised her right hand, clenching it.

  "You—High Senate, Students, Praetor—you are WEAPONS. You have cannons, magic, big egos, and the right to die young. You are this city's fangs."

  Then she raised her left hand, opening her palm.

  "Us—City Council, Civilians, Labor Unions—we are LOGISTICS. We cook your rice. We transport your shit from the dorms. We make sure your room lights are on while you're busy learning killing spells. We are this city's stomach."

  Elara brought her two hands together on the desk with a loud SLAP.

  "Weapons without bullets are scrap metal. Students without logistics are corpses starving to death in three days. Never forget who feeds you, Grand Praetor."

  The room fell silent. Only the hum of the AC was heard.

  That explanation... was brutal in its simplicity. I felt stupid. All this time I saw the Suzerains as gods. But it turned out, there were people like Elara holding the switch to their lives.

  "This is the unwritten hierarchy. I thought I stood at the top of the pyramid, but I was standing on a foundation that could be pulled away at any time. I'm not a King. I'm just an armed guest in someone else's house."

  I swallowed my ego. Swallowed the cold.

  "What do you want?" I finally asked. My voice was hoarse. "You didn't summon me just for Economics 101."

  Elara put out her cigarette in the ashtray. Her face turned pragmatic. The face of a merchant bargaining.

  "Stability," she answered shortly. "I don't care if you want to play war games with Valdor or Aethelgard. Kill each other in the arena, burn each other, that's the Senate's business. For us, it's just expensive fireworks."

  She stared sharply into my eyes, looking for signs of agreement.

  "But as long as you can keep your students' blood from spilling onto my merchants' sidewalks, and your magic explosions from cutting the city's power cables... I won't bother you. You handle your part, I handle mine. That's the alliance deal."

  "Non-aggression alliance," my brain translated. "She gives me permission to play in the sandbox, as long as the sand doesn't dirty her house floor. Fair enough. Even advantageous. I need an ally who understands bureaucracy."

  "And if I fail?" I asked, testing her limits.

  Elara smiled thinly. A smile that didn't reach her eyes.

  "If your war starts disrupting my financial balance, or blocking my market streets... I have constitutional authority to 'forget' to send garbage trucks and water trucks to the Senate dorms."

  She tilted her head.

  "You don't want to lead an elite force in the middle of a dysentery outbreak because the toilets are clogged, do you? That's very bad for troop morale. And I'm sure Titus won't be happy if he has to take cold showers for a month."

  I swallowed. That threat was scarier than Titus's fireball. The threat of logistics is a slow and shameful death.

  "Agreed," I replied firmly. "I'll keep conflicts within the Colosseum and Academy fences."

  Elara nodded, satisfied. She opened her desk drawer, took out a ceramic cup, and poured a warm liquid from a thermos.

  "Drink," she commanded, handing me the cup. It smelled herbal, like licorice root and chamomile. "You're pale as a living corpse. Drink before you faint on my expensive carpet. I don't have the budget to clean Praetor bloodstains today."

  I took the cup with trembling hands. The warmth of the ceramic felt painful on my frozen skin. I sipped it. Warm. The liquid flowed to my stomach, and strangely, the trembling in my hands slowly subsided.

  "She's not an enemy," I realized as the warm liquid calmed my nerves. "She's the zookeeper. And I just agreed to be a tame lion in exchange for meat."

  I left Nexus Hall ten minutes later.

  The herbal tea worked. The headache in my temples was gone. But my body... my body still felt foreign. The cold didn't leave, it just... settled. Like a sated wild beast sleeping.

  I stood in front of the lobby lift, waiting for the door to open. My thoughts swirled around Elara's words. About logistics. About bread prices. About how fragile the Grand Praetor's power truly was.

  I pressed the lift call button with my index finger.

  And as I pulled my finger back, I froze.

  The button... wasn't lit.

  The metal button was covered with a layer of white crystals.

  Not vapor. Not dew.

  It was ice. Solid ice creeping quickly from where I touched, freezing the circuit panel behind the button until a soft crack was heard. The button's protective plastic cracked from the extreme temperature.

  I stared at my own finger. Pale, cold, but not painful.

  "Elara was wrong," I whispered.

  White breath came from my mouth again.

  "The tea didn't cure me. Because I'm not sick. This isn't poison. This isn't a fever."

  I clenched my fist. The air around my fist solidified, micro snowflakes forming from the air's moisture and falling slowly to the carpeted floor.

  "The monster isn't out there... the monster is in my own blood. And it just woke up."

  BZZZT.

  My Smart-ID vibrated again.

  [SENDER: THE WEAVER]

  [CONTENT: You've met the Key Keeper (The Mayor). Good. Be the manager she wants for temporary stability. But don't forget, Wynter... that ice in your hand needs training, not hiding. You're no longer a spectator in this theater. You are the winter storm that will bring down its stage.]

  I stared at the message, then at the frozen lift button.

  The lift doors opened. Inside was empty.

  I stepped in, letting the cold embrace me.