Zephyr stirred beneath his blanket as the faint, purplish hues of morning filtered through the slit in the curtains. The sky beyond still looked like a bruise—dark violet gently giving way to lilac light.
He blinked groggily, eyes still heavy with sleep. For a few seconds, he lay still, cocooned in the warmth of his bed, brain clouded in a gentle fog. And the faint chatter of voice in the background.
He sat up slowly, looking toward the shared bath entrance.
A faint trail of steam lingered in the air. The girls had already finished. They always woke before him—sharp, dutiful, never needing a second call. It was an unspoken agreement in the dorm— they bathed first, no exceptions. Zephyr didn’t complain. He got to sleep in a little longer.
Dragging himself out of bed, he stretched, bones popping. The lingering scent of floral bodywash drifted through the room—light, clean, and strangely motivating.
A few minutes later, once the bathroom had cleared, he slipped in, showered quickly, dressed just like the day before, and fastened his uniform’s jacket with practiced fingers. He didn’t bother checking the mirror. He looked fine. Passable was good enough.
Then he headed out.
The walk to the cafe was a familiar one—stone corridors humming faintly with low Aether currents, morning murmurs drifting from other students headed to drills or theory.
At the café, the usual warmth enveloped him—baked goods, filtered coffee, and the murmur of tired conversation.
He found a window seat and collapsed into it, ordered two muffins and a cup of coffee. Biting into the muffin as the bitter scent of coffee drifted up and filled his lungs. Outside, the dark purple sky slowly gave way for a lighter shade.
Zephyr sipped his coffee, savoring the bitterness—when it hit him.
A sudden disruption, mild to his senses as if even his spatial sence was having morning dullness. His spatial sense flared.
Movement.
Two signatures—fast, intent-driven—collided in the courtyard just outside the café.
CLANG!
The sound rang out with a crisp finality that cut through the morning murmur like a blade through silk.
Zephyr froze mid-sip. His eyes flicked toward the courtyard, narrowing. Through the wide archway, two figures were locked in fierce combat. Steel met steel, blades flashing, limbs shifting with lethal rhythm. Each strike was calculated, forceful. Not a spar. Not training.
A fight.
His gaze traced the line of movement. One student wielded a long blade with brutish swings, the other danced around with smaller, twin weapons, light on her feet but no less deadly. Their Aether flared and hissed on contact—violent, unstable. Real.
He sat motionless, brows subtly drawn, letting his spatial sense map every detail. The clash of momentum, the aggressive posturing, the rippling Aether surges that left marks on the flagstone.
"Are they..... fighting?". Zephyr knew how stupid his question seemed but this wasn’t just unexpected.
It felt personal.
Yet when he looked around—
Nothing.
The students nearby were unbothered. Conversations continued, some yawning over tea, others flipping through their slates or muttering about lectures. The barista, a brown-haired girl he’d seen before, was calmly refilling a pot of coffee.
No one flinched. No one cared.
That was why he doubted his eyes and asked the question if they were fighting.
Zephyr blinked, then without turning his eyes from the fight he reached for Elden.
"Elden what is going on?". Zephyr was still puzzled as nobody seems to want to do something, but if you count the ones that were filming then they were doing something.
"Affirmative. This was an assassination attempt".
"An assassinaton attempt". He muttered under his breath. "Where have I heard this term before". And then he remembered, back when he was attacked by Lunethra, the dorm Elden had judged the fight and that it wasn’t an assassinaton attempt.
"Elden please go on. Am still at loss".
"Affirmative. The assassination attempt is a sanctioned one which is approved by the school". She went into details about the assassination attempt and at the end this was what he learnt.
At the Academy, it was common. Students were allowed to challenge or "hunt" one another for Credits. Through a system tied to the café, they could stroll up to a side console near the counter, browse trough the contract placed, or place an open contract.
Once submitted, the chosen student would be notified. And once both were in the same location, the system would activate—locking the surrounding space in a safe-zone ward, preventing death but allowing real combat.
Winners earned Credits, honor, and reputation. Losers paid the price, publicly.
It wasn’t just accepted—it was a feature of the Academy’s structure. A brutal proving ground. And it is also a place where you go to earn credits or lose it.
Before you could place the contract you need to place a certain amount of credits and then when someone sees it, he also places the bet and so the winner keeps both of the money.
And the worst part was that the challenger and the challenged aren’t shown only that their location is uploaded into their phone in real time.
So if Zephyr was to place a contract and someone like Lunethra signed it, he was definitely going to lose all his money and the invisible status he had amongst the student.
It was the idea that he was able to get so close to the princess unseen. The students assumed he was an invisible figure of the Eplision rank, just like Cealsen. This were little snippet of information his ears caught on.
Zephyr’s eyes slowly returned to the fight. The brutal dance continued, and all the while, the café hummed around him with quiet indifference.
His coffee had gone cold, but his curiosity was only just beginning to simmer.
The two students clashed for the last time before retreating. They figures blurred out of the reach of his eye sight. This was an assassinaton attempt not a brawl so retreat was permitted.
"So they give students scrappy credits. Bait them into taking ridiculous loan. Then monetize fighting without the exception of Arts, this school is definitely abnormal even for a fantasy world".
Zephyr drank the cold coffee with a grimace on his face. He wasn’t about to waste ten credits just because it had gone cold. He walked towards his class, the fight still on his mind.