Now though, things were different.
The system had changed what he was, and what he was had changed what was possible, and what was possible now included standing in that arena he had looked toward as a child and written off as a child and quietly mourned as someone who had understood, eventually, that certain things weren't going to happen for him.
They were going to happen.
He was going to participate in the world academy tournament.
He was going to step into that competition with every other continent's best students across from him and find out what that felt like from the inside rather than the outside.
The childhood dream that had collapsed under the weight of apparent reality was still there, it turned out — it had just been waiting under everything else for the circumstances to catch up to it.
The excitement in his chest was real and he didn't try to contain it.
Kael, predictably, had his own take.
