---
Aren had imagined it as a bone cave.
Narrow corridors, cold stone, instructors like blood-sucking maniacs who fed on failure and smelled like old iron. Something harsh and punishing that matched what it produced.
Instead Selvinina was magnificent.
Towers of pale stone caught the morning light and threw it back in gold. Halls wide enough to march an army through connected to courtyards lined with gardens so precisely maintained they looked painted. Beyond the main buildings the academy sprawled outward — training grounds, libraries, dueling circles, residential wings, a lake — the whole of it the size of a mid-sized county dropped behind a single set of gates.
Aren walked through the main courtyard and kept his face neutral and looked at everything.
He was not the only new arrival. Hundreds of students moved through the space in clusters, attended by servants carrying luggage and wearing house colours. The noise was considerable — greetings and laughter and the particular loud confidence of people who had never been told to be quiet.
It stopped, in small ripples, as he passed.
Aren walked with confidence his posture straight the cold look in his blue eyes.The heirs of barons and counts bowed deeply to him as he passed heads nearly touching the stone. Aren met Two earl heirs Even through they are equal in status they were nervous their hands trembling as they shook hands with Aren . Even the heir of marquees whom Aren met was not meeting his gaze dispite being high in status then him.
A count's heir moved out of his path before he came within ten feet of her.
Another marquess heir across the courtyard glanced his way and then found something extremely interesting to look at in the other direction.
House Vex. diamond mines. silk forest. Every trade route between the Iron Wall and the Ashen Plains. Markus had not been wrong about the name doing its own work.
Aren filed it away.
---
"Aren Vex."
The voice was unhurried and cheerful. He turned.
The boy was about his age, dressed well but not ostentatiously — dark coat, no house colours he recognised, the easy posture of someone who had spent his whole life being comfortable in rooms like this. Brown hair, bright eyes, the particular alert expression of someone who was watching everything and enjoying it.
"Roman Krus," the boy said, extending a hand. "You won't know the house crest but you'll know the name — Golden Rose, first rank merchant guild in the whole empire." He smiled without any of the nervous calculation Aren had been seeing all morning. "I noticed you walking through the courtyard and the courtyard noticing you back. Thought I'd introduce myself before someone more annoying did."
Aren shook the hand.
He was not sure why — something in the complete absence of performance, the lack of careful positioning. Roman Krus was simply himself, apparently, and had decided Aren was worth talking to, and that was the whole of it.
"Aren Vex," Aren said.
"I know," Roman said pleasantly. "Everyone knows. Your house has that effect." He fell into step beside him without asking. "Where are you headed?"
"Nowhere specific"
"Then come with me."
---
Mizellia Thon arrived the way someone accustomed to arriving did — without hurry, without performance, presence preceding her like a quiet announcement. Duke of the South's heir. Tall, composed, dark-haired, wearing the Thon house colours in deep crimson and black. A non-elemental mage, which in a school full of people proud of their elements meant she had gotten very good at other things.
She looked at Aren with the direct assessment of someone who did not waste time on pretence.
He looked back with the same.
They shook hands. Neither of them smiled. An understanding was reached without any words being necessary about it.
Roman watched this exchange with visible interest.
---
"There's someone who wants to meet You Vex," Mizellia said, approximately four minutes after they had met. Not a question. Not a request.
She led them to one of the garden courtyards set into the east wing — quieter, better maintained, the kind of space that had been arranged to allow for private conversations in a school full of ambitious people.
The girl standing near the fountain was young — close to Aren's age, perhaps slightly younger. Small and composed. Silver moonlight hairs slightly different from Aren's hair. She had Dressed simply for a princess, though the simplicity was clearly deliberate, the kind of simple that cost more than elaborate. She was watching them approach with the particular patient stillness of someone accustomed to everyone eventually coming to her.
"Fourth Princess Lura," Roman said quietly beside him. "Youngest of the emperor's children. Four birth elements — celestial, truth, thunder, flame. She sees things."
Aren filed that away.
They were introduced. Lura smiled — genuinely warm, nothing performed about it — and shook hands with Roman and nodded to Mizellia and turned to Aren with her truth element already quietly open the way people with passive abilities sometimes couldn't help.
Then she stopped.
Lura was considered as the blessing of magic goddess luna the patron of raum empire alongside god of war osiris luna and raum are the only gods worshipped in raum
The one who had born With Four elemnts by birth are considered as blessing in empire they are born es only once in centuries
Since birth lura had ability to sense peoples emotions though it was very complex but she could tell if someone was telling lie but no one beside herself know about this ability of her s she had kept it hidden it didn't work all times it sense only emotions that are not controlled.But as Lura looked at Aren she understood that she had touched something in Aren that hurt.
The hatred was not loud. It was not hot. It was cold and it was deep and it had been sitting in him for months like water under ice, patient, total, without floor or ceiling. She had reached in casually the way she probably reached into everyone and found something with no bottom.
Her head tilted forward slightly. A small involuntary flinch.
Aren knew the exact moment she touched it. He had felt the brush of something — faint, a question asked in a language he hadn't known he could hear. His eyes moved to hers.
He leaned forward slightly.
"Save your tricks for later, Your Highness," he said. Quiet. Not unkind. Absolute.
He straightened. Extended his hand.
She looked at him for one long moment — not afraid, he noted, but recalibrating — and then she smiled again, different this time. More real.
She shook his hand.
"Aren Vex," she said. "I've heard of your father."
"Most people have," Aren said.
---
The last two came together.
Colis Viken — nephew of the North Duke, broad-shouldered and unhurried, the easy confidence of someone who knew their position in every room before walking into it. He greeted Aren with the straightforward respect of a peer acknowledging a peer and moved on without ceremony. Aren appreciated the efficiency.
Irisa oarsa — marquess heir, introduced by Roman with the faint smile of someone presenting something he expected to be surprising. She was striking enough that most of the courtyard had noticed her arrival before she'd reached them. She shook Aren's hand with the direct ease of someone who had long ago decided her appearance was simply a fact about her and other people's reactions to it were their own problem.
She was already friends with Roman, which explained the introduction. Within approximately eight minutes she was talking to Aren with the comfortable familiarity of someone who had known him considerably longer, which Aren found mildly disorienting and did not mention.
And last to come was Makhon rastin the heir of west duke Calik Rastin. Aren heard the sound of slap in the courtyard .As he And Roman got there Makhon Rastin tall arrogant face showing of his status as a duke's heir and a Baron's heir was weeping in the floor bowing to him.
It seems that as Makhon was passing he was bumped into him and now for that he was causing scence .
As Makhon turned towards Aren and said "Oh! See whose here ",he sneered"Vex"
Aren nodded in cold response "Rastin"
Makhon shrugged,"just teaching some filth their place ,how are you doing?"
"It's only first day Makhon just keep your status as spoiler lord down" Roman replied
Hearing Roman's Words Makhon's face turned red,"Watch your words Krus even if your family is merchant guild you are not a noble."
And he stromed off towards the main gardern."
Roman and Aren looked at each other and said,"spoiler brat."
---
By the time the arrival bells rang for the first assembly Aren had six names.
Roman. Mizellia. Makhon. Lura. Colis. Irisa.
He stood in the great hall with five hundred new students around him and the academy's towers above him and thought about bone caves, briefly, and the gap between what he had imagined and what the world actually was.
Then the assembly began and he put everything else away and paid attention.
---
— End of Chapter 5—
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What comes next?