The Flow Academy buzzed with energy as students crowded around the massive floating notice board. It hovered gently in the air, glowing with a soft golden light. On it was displayed the academy's Top Ten — a prestigious ranking decided after the first three years based on hard work, improvement, strength, and overall power. Battle or support users could both make the list; only raw capability mattered.
Fifteen-year-old Ra'an stood near the front, his dorm mate Bless beside him. Ra'an wore his usual red-and-black attire, his expression calm on the surface but flickering with barely contained excitement.
Bless leaned in and draped an arm around Ra'an's shoulder. "Wow, dorm buddy… we both made the list. Me at ten, you at eight."
Ra'an nodded silently, a quiet surge of happiness filling his chest.
The Cal-lian mansion stood like a fortress of old nobility on the highest hill overlooking the noble district. Its towering spires of dark obsidian stone and polished marble gleamed under the sun, connected by sweeping archways and guarded by high iron gates etched with ancient family crests. Manicured gardens of perfectly trimmed hedges and rare glowing flowers surrounded the estate, but today the usual peaceful elegance felt heavy and cold.
Inside the grand receiving hall, Ra'an stood frozen before his father.
He had rushed home with the news, proud that he had finally made the Top Ten. The reaction he received was nothing like he had hoped.
"Aren't you shameless?" his father said, voice dripping with disappointment. "Coming home bragging about being ranked eighth? You couldn't even crack the top six. And worst of all, you were outranked by a low-born. How is that even possible? Your brother was at the top during his time. Every generation of our family has dominated… and here you are, happy with eighth place."
Ra'an's fists clenched at his sides.
"You're a total disappointment," his father continued coldly. "I would have hanged myself in shame if you were my only child and I didn't have your brother."
Ra'an had heard variations of this speech his entire life. Constant reminders of his older brother's greatness hung over him like a shadow. The Cal-lian family believed they were destined to be the best. For generations they had been — until Ra'an.
The day he awakened his teleportation Flow, his family had looked down on him. They saw it as a weak, cowardly ability with no real potential. When he was accepted into the academy, no one celebrated; they treated it as the bare minimum expected of their bloodline.
The family had raised him to believe one simple truth: power was everything. Those without it were nothing. They judged people by status, wealth, and strength, viewing low-borns as creatures barely worthy of notice.
Ra'an had once tried to be different. He wanted to carve his own path. But his father's words that day finally broke something inside him. He stopped resisting and fully embraced the family's ideology. Power became his only measure of worth. He vowed then and there to surpass his brother, no matter the cost.
While Cal and Anna had met Koya and become better, freer versions of themselves, Ra'an saw her and felt only contempt.
In a world where power ruled, a flowless girl dared to exist and strive. He hated her stubbornness, believing her efforts were pointless and wasteful. When she made it into the final fifty students selected for the academy, he saw it as a stolen spot. He tried everything to get her expelled — spreading rumors, sabotaging her training, pressuring instructors — but nothing worked.
He never pretended to like her. From the very beginning, he treated her exactly as he saw her: a disappointment, a freak, a waste of space.
Ra'an had almost escaped becoming like this. But he was tired of living in his brother's shadow and sick of weakness in any form. So he trained harder than anyone, rose to the top of his class, and prepared for the Flow Bound — the event where his family would finally stop seeing him as weak.
In his heart, he truly believed he would prove them all wrong.
Then came the day Koya went berserk and nearly destroyed the Golden Arena.
Ra'an had been closest to the blast. The overwhelming power that nearly killed him… he had never felt anything like it. Divine yet dark, uncontrollable and terrifying. It shook him to his core.
Now, sitting alone in his room, most of his body still wrapped in bandages from the incident, Ra'an stared at the wall with cold eyes.
"So she had such power… and hid it all this time," he thought calmly at first.
Then his mood darkened rapidly.
"She must have seen me as weak. Unworthy of facing her real strength. She probably laughed at me behind my back every time I challenged her, thinking I was fooling myself. She knew she could squash me like a bug whenever she wanted…"
Fury boiled up inside him.
"Well, Koya… you'll pay for underestimating me," he said out loud, voice low and venomous.
His body was barely healed, but he stood up anyway. Ignoring the pain, he left the mansion and headed straight back to training.
Only one thought burned in his mind now:
Surpass everyone. Become number one.
To be continued…