Nobody in Group Seven had an explanation, and that bothered Marcus more than anything else about the entire ceremony.
"How," he said, for the fourth time, switching his stare between Alden's name and Elara's as if repetition might eventually make it make sense.
"The crystal decides the groups," said Lena Hart, adjusting her glasses.
This was Alden's first real introduction to the fourth member of their team — a scholarship student from a merchant family, known across the academy for sharp grades, catastrophic luck, and an apparent gift for stating the obvious with total confidence.
"That doesn't explain why," Marcus said.
"The crystal doesn't explain itself."
"That's not helpful."
"Most true things aren't."
Marcus looked personally wounded by the observation. Alden decided, on the spot, that he liked Lena quite a bit.
The four of them drifted to the edge of the plaza and took stock of a group composition that made very little obvious sense: the academy's strongest student, a fixture in the combat top ten, one of the sharpest minds in the school, and a name that had spent the year competing for the bottom of the rankings rather than the top of anything. The imbalance was hard to miss, which meant it probably wasn't an accident.
The Ledger agreed, characteristically unhelpful about the details. Observation Recorded. Group Formation Not Random. He resisted the urge to demand an explanation out loud, and predictably, it dissolved before offering one.
They spent the rest of the morning on a training field, scratching maps into the dirt and arguing over roles. Marcus took frontline. Elara took main damage. Lena took support, and nobody argued. Then all three of them turned to look at Alden.
"That's a little rude," he said.
"I'll handle scouting," he offered, once the silence had gone on long enough, and the others nodded — not glamorous, but it fit. His strength had never lived in a straight fight. It lived in noticing things before anyone else thought to.
Role Assessment Complete. Compatibility: High. Interesting. One more small confirmation that the system had opinions about how he was supposed to fit into all of this.
By afternoon something had genuinely shifted. Marcus stopped needing to prove he was the strongest person present. Lena stopped apologizing every time she opened her mouth. Even Alden felt himself relax, just slightly. Group Seven had stopped feeling like a random draw and started, tentatively, to feel like a team.
The sun had started sinking when Professor Seraphine Vale crossed the field toward them, and Alden noticed her first — old habits, always watching before anyone else thought to. The Ledger flared the instant she entered his line of sight.
Authority Resonance Detected.
Same warning as the ceremony. He'd gotten the point.
"Good afternoon," Vale said, warm and unhurried, and addressed all four of them at once. "You have an early start tomorrow. The first Rift Trial begins at sunrise." A few groans rose from a neighboring group, which she ignored entirely. "As of this evening, all participants are restricted to academy grounds. Recent events require additional precautions."
The Rift Spawn. There wasn't much else recent events could mean.
"This shouldn't affect your preparations," she added, after a pause a beat too long, with a faint smile aimed squarely at him. Group Seven disbanded not long after, and Alden walked back alone, grateful for how quiet the grounds had gone.
The Ledger opened again, slower this time.
New Objective Available: Investigate Professor Seraphine Vale.Reward: Unknown. Risk: Unknown.
He stopped walking. In his admittedly limited experience, that particular combination had never once led anywhere good. He looked up toward the academy's central tower, where the professor's office presumably sat behind one of its dark windows, and felt a chill that had nothing to do with the evening air. For the first time since the Ledger had chosen him, he genuinely wasn't sure he wanted to follow where it was pointing.
Two hours later he was in the library instead of his bed, which by now had stopped registering as odd even to himself. He pulled every historical record that might connect to Authorities, Soul Signatures, or Professor Vale by any indirect route he could think of. The results were thin — Authorities barely appeared outside the oldest texts, and even those references came in fragments, incomplete in a way that felt less like the natural erosion of old records and more like someone had gone through and deliberately removed the missing pieces.
One volume near the bottom shelf caught his eye — thick, cracked leather, titled The Fall of the Seven Sovereigns. Near the center, several pages had been torn free, leaving a single surviving paragraph.
"When the Sovereigns vanished, their Authorities were scattered across the world. Should an Heir emerge, the balance between Rift and Reality may be threatened."
Heir. The word had barely settled before the Ledger stirred, and this time it didn't offer a warning. It offered a memory he didn't remember having.
Soul Archive: Fragment Decoded.
Not sound. Not quite thought. Something the Rift Spawn had pushed directly into the space behind his eyes in the half-second before Elara had pulled him into the trees, buried too deep to surface until now.
Found... Heir...
The cold that went through him had nothing to do with the library's draft.
"Interesting choice of reading."
He looked up into Professor Vale's face and his brain simply stalled. She sat down across from him without waiting to be asked, as though the seat had always been reserved for exactly this moment.
"Most third-years don't spend their evenings reading about ancient Sovereigns," she said.
"I like history," he tried.
"That's true." Something in how she said it — flat, certain, confirming rather than accepting — bothered him more than an accusation would have. She glanced toward the moonlit windows. "The world believes Rifts are disasters. Dangerous tears in reality."
"Aren't they?"
"They are. But that isn't all they are." She turned back to him, something unreadable in her expression. "Rifts don't only bring monsters into our world. They bring pieces of forgotten history back with them."
The academy bell cut her off, ringing once, twice, three times, and every light in the library flickered in time with it. Vale's expression changed instantly — the warmth gone, replaced by something focused and sharp enough to look genuinely dangerous.
His stomach dropped. Outside, the bell kept ringing, and beneath it he could hear voices rising across the grounds — the particular chaos of an academy that had just realized something had gone very wrong.
Then the Ledger tore open with a burst of gold brighter than anything it had shown him yet.
Emergency Objective Issued.A Rift Has Opened Inside Blackthorn Academy.Survive.
The ground shuddered beneath his feet. Somewhere beyond the walls, something answered the bell back.