Alden ignored everyone the moment he got back to the dormitory — not on purpose, exactly, but the Ledger had just unlocked something called Research Mode, and expecting him to focus on anything else that same evening was optimistic at best.
Marcus tried starting a conversation. Alden nodded somewhere in the general vicinity of agreement without processing a word of it. Lena asked him a direct question; he answered what was probably a completely different one. Eventually Elara took one look at him and said, flatly, "Leave him alone."
"Why?" Marcus asked.
"He found a new book."
Alden pointed at her without looking up. "She gets it."
Once he'd shut himself in his room, he summoned the Ledger properly, and for the first time since it had chosen him, the book looked different — new silver runes glowing faintly across its cover, a section he hadn't seen before unfolding as the pages parted.
Soul Archive — Research Mode.Available Records: 3. Restricted Records: 9,997+.
"Only three," he muttered. The Ledger offered no apology, which felt personally offensive given the sheer scale of everything it was apparently withholding. Still — three was infinitely better than none, and he opened the first record without wasting the chance.
Rift Creatures — Classification System.Tier One: Minor Threat. Tier Two: Elite Threat. Tier Three: Catastrophic Threat. Tier Four: Sovereign Threat.
He grabbed a notebook and copied everything down as fast as it appeared. Several lines in, buried under the entry for Tier Two, he found the shadow wolf from two nights ago listed by name. Not Tier One, as most students had assumed watching the instructors dismantle it with apparent ease. Tier Two. Elite threat.
That reframed the whole fight in his head. The academy staff hadn't simply swatted aside a minor pest — they'd taken down something genuinely dangerous without a single student getting hurt, and made it look almost routine. His respect for Blackthorn's instructors climbed another notch, and so did his unease about whoever had engineered a minor breach into producing something that rated that high.
The second record stopped him cold in a different way.
Warden Cultivation — Realm Classification.Realms: Initiate · Warden · Knight Warden · Rift Hunter · Void Slayer · High Sentinel · Dragonbane · World Guardian · Star Sovereign.Each Realm subdivides into four Stages: Initial, Middle, Advanced, Peak.
He'd heard instructors reference "rank" and "stage" for three years without anyone ever laying out the actual ladder this cleanly. Curious now, he pushed further, and the Ledger obliged with something he hadn't expected to ask for.
Host Realm: Not Applicable.Advancement Path: Authority-Bound (Non-Standard).Reference — Third-Year Cohort Average: Initiate, Middle to Advanced Stage.
He read it twice. Not weak. Not unranked. Not applicable — a category the system didn't have a slot for on the same ladder everyone else climbed. Three years of being told he sat at the bottom of a chart, and it turned out he'd never actually been on the chart at all. He wasn't sure yet whether that was better or worse than the alternative. It was, at least, an answer, and he'd take those wherever he could get them.
It also meant something else, once he sat with it: Elara wasn't simply talented. If the cohort average sat at Initiate Middle to Advanced, and she'd held the top rank in their year for three straight years, she was almost certainly sitting at Initiate Peak Stage already — one push from breaking into Warden itself, a Realm most third-years wouldn't touch before graduation. That gap had never been visible to him before tonight. Now that he had numbers to hang it on, it looked considerably wider than he'd assumed.
The third record turned out to be more immediately frustrating than useful.
Authority — Restricted Information.Synchronization Requirement Not Met. Current: 3%. Required: 15%.
He stared at the page. The page, unhelpfully, stared back. After a long moment he closed it. "You're doing this on purpose."
The Ledger said nothing, which he chose to interpret as quiet guilt.
He spent the next hour working through everything he'd gathered, and by the end his notebook had filled considerably — though, true to form, he'd ended the night with more questions than he'd started it with. That seemed to be a permanent condition at this point.
The next morning's combat training carried a different weight than any session before it. The Rift was still up there, still visible, and everyone in the class knew it. On Training Ground Four, Team Seven assembled alongside several other third-year groups, Gareth standing at the front with his sword resting against one shoulder.
"Today," he said, looking over the assembled students, "we find out how many of you would actually survive a real emergency."
Nobody spoke. Marcus leaned toward Alden and whispered, "I like him."
The session focused entirely on team combat rather than individual technique — coordination, communication, the kind of instinctive trust that mattered more than raw strength once things actually went wrong. Team Seven discovered almost immediately that their four approaches didn't naturally align. Marcus wanted to charge. Elara wanted efficiency. Lena wanted a plan first. Alden mostly wanted to survive the next thirty seconds.
"Push forward!" Marcus shouted mid-drill.
"That's a terrible idea," Lena shot back instantly.
"It worked yesterday."
"It worked because Elara saved you."
"Technicality," Marcus said, pointing dramatically at nothing in particular.
An hour in, things improved, slightly. They weren't naturally synchronized, but they learned fast. Marcus started listening, at least occasionally. Lena stopped assuming everyone shared her exact frame of reference. Elara's instructions got sharper and clearer. Alden fed in observations as they came to him. For the first time, the four of them functioned as something closer to a unit than four individuals who happened to share a name on a roster.
Not perfect. Functional. Progress, either way.
During a break, Gareth walked over and studied the four of them for a long moment before nodding. "You have potential." Marcus straightened visibly. Gareth ignored him entirely. "Your biggest weakness isn't power." That got Alden's full attention — advice from a working Warden was worth more than most academy lectures combined. "It's trust. Inside a Rift, when something goes wrong, you won't have time to debate it. You either trust each other completely, or people die."
Nobody laughed. Nobody had a counterargument ready. The lesson sat heavier than any sword strike from the whole session.
That evening, as Alden reviewed the day's notes, a knock pulled him out of them. He opened the door to find Elara standing there, holding two training swords.
"I need a sparring partner," she said.
"Why me?"
"Marcus enjoys winning too much to be useful practice."
Fair.
"And Lena?"
"Worse."
Also fair, unfortunately. She held one of the swords out — a simple, direct challenge with no room to overthink it. Alden took it.
Because for the first time since he'd arrived at this academy, the Ledger had just told him, in writing, that he wasn't standing on the same ladder as everyone ranking above him. Whether that was a demotion or something else entirely, some part of him badly wanted to find out exactly how far it had actually taken him.