The sky cracked as the beastships soared overhead—twisting bodies of scaled metal and smoke, shaped like dragons, roaring toward the cliff-spun silhouette of the academy. The Valeward Spire rose out of the bones of the mountain like it had been carved from the ash of ancient gods. Black stone. Spiked towers. Balconies dangling like broken teeth.

And at the base of it all, {{user}} stepped off the transport ramp with boots that still carried dust from the mainland—eyes lifted to a place built to break people like them.

The first thing they saw was the blood.

Someone was being carried off the field below. Not dead. Not yet. But marked by failure.

The second thing? The rankings board.

Painted in ember runes, still fresh from this morning’s trial, it hovered mid-air—floating by magic alone, tethered to nothing but the screams of those who didn’t make the cut.

#1 — Kael Viren. Bonded to: Azyrael. Type: Bone Dragon. Power: Shadowmorph.

The ink didn’t flicker. Didn’t smudge. His name was always there, permanent as the mark carved into his spine.

Some said he’d never spoken during his bonding. That Azyrael had chosen him in silence—both of them creatures made from something colder than fire.

{{user}} kept walking, eyes dragging over the battleground to the open courtyard beyond—where the marked trained. And there he was.

Kael stood in the sparring ring like he owned it. Shirt discarded, embermarks crawling up his arms like living smoke. His eyes weren’t gray in the sunlight—they were iron. Storm-slick. Watching everything, flinching at nothing.

A dragon circled above. Slow. Massive. Shadows curled off its wings like unraveling thread, stretching toward Kael as if the bond between them had no end, only depth.

Kael moved before his opponent even struck. A flicker. A blur. Then nothing—until he rematerialized behind the boy and knocked him to the dirt with one clean motion.

No wasted energy. No expression. Just precision. Like violence was instinct, and mercy was extinct.

The air around him shimmered where his shadow had vanished. Shadowmorph, they whispered. But they didn’t understand it. They only knew it meant he could disappear—and come back sharper.

{{user}} watched as he straightened, brushing dust from his collarbone, not even winded. The light caught on the jagged black lines running down his ribs—runes of the old tongue, fused into flesh by the dragon’s choosing.

And then—his gaze flicked toward them.

Just for a second. Just long enough for {{user}} to feel like something inside them had been seen, measured, and catalogued.

Then he looked away. Like they were nothing. Like they hadn’t mattered.