As Wilfred entered the hall, light flooded his vision and nearly blinded him. Golden rays fractured through chandeliers overhead, scattering across the walls in hundreds of glittering shards.
The ceilings were vaulted and ancient, carved with symbols he didn't recognize, but the people moving beneath them wore attire that blended the archaic with the modern so seamlessly that he couldn't place the era at all.
He was somewhere else entirely.
The Hall of Lights. That name surfaced from the original Wilfred's memories as he walked through it, ignoring the stares that followed him from every direction.
Students stood gathered ahead, identifiable by their white and azure blue uniforms, the same ones Harvett and his lackeys had been wearing. The bully himself was already among them, standing tall with his arms crossed.
All of the students faced outward toward a crowd that filled the hall like spectators in a theatre, except no one sat. They stood shoulder to shoulder on the ground floor, and on the upper galleries, figures in finer clothing looked down from behind gilded railings. Nobles. Officials. People who mattered.
They were all here for the same reason.
The Awakening Ceremony happened once a year, and from what Wilfred could piece together from the memories rattling around in his skull, this one had drawn an unusual crowd. The Argentine Dukedom's last son was expected to summon a Great Dragon, a creature that hadn't appeared in over a century.
Not since the Legendary Summoner, King Arthur Pendragon, had ridden one to conquer and unite the Western Lands.
And Wilfred's father, Alexander Von Argentine, the Duke of Swords, was already an Emperor-rank Summoner pressing toward Monarch.
So yes. Everyone was here to watch Wilfred.
'No pressure.'
He stepped into the line. The hall quieted as the Academy Headmaster took his place before the students and addressed the crowd.
While the Headmaster spoke, someone leaned toward him. The whisper carried a smile in it.
"Why were you late? You forgot you had your awakening today?"
Wilfred turned.
The girl beside him had snow-white hair and sea-blue eyes. Her ivory skin was warmer than his, which only made him look paler by comparison.
The original Wilfred's memories supplied her name and everything attached to it: Vixra von Westeria. His childhood friend and daughter of the second great dukedom, with a Monarch-level potential, same as him.
He had no idea how to talk to her, so he just smiled awkwardly.
She seemed to accept that as answer enough.
The Headmaster finished, and the ceremony began. Names were called one at a time, each student walking to a Summoning Circle engraved at the center of the stage.
"Elyon Fredrick."
A boy near the front flinched, then forced himself forward. The memories told Wilfred that Elyon had Peasant-level potential. The lowest rank. In this world, potential was measured at birth and it dictated everything — the rank of your summon, the height of your ceiling. It followed you like a brand.
The summoning circle shimmered beneath Elyon's feet, acknowledging his soul. Sparks of light swirled around him, coalescing into a shape on the ground.
"Elyon Fredrick. Peasant rank, White Rabbit."
The hall rippled with laughter. Not cruel, exactly, but not kind either. Elyon walked back to the line, jaw tight, while the rabbit bounded beside him. At one point it hopped between his legs and nearly sent him sprawling, which drew more laughter.
Wilfred looked away. But not because he felt sorry for the boy.
He was still trying to process what he'd just seen. A living creature had materialized from light. From nothing. A circle on the ground had read a boy's soul and conjured a rabbit into existence.
Every law of biology Wilfred had spent twenty years studying had just been quietly annihilated, and no one in this hall seemed to find that even slightly remarkable.
'What kind of world is this?'
More names were called. More summons materialized, most of them Commoner or Peasant rank. Each one a violation of everything Wilfred understood about how living organisms came to exist, and each one treated as routine.
He watched every single summoning with an attention that had nothing to do with the ceremony and everything to do with the scientist screaming inside his skull.
Then a name cut through the routine.
"Harvett Louis De Vertmont."
The black-haired boy strode out of the line, throwing one last glare at Wilfred before he reached the circle.
Vixra folded her arms. "Lord-level potential. Watch — he'll be insufferable about it for the rest of the year."
A gasp pulled their attention back to the center. The sparks around Harvett had solidified into something massive: a crude, armored centaur knight, its iron plating still smoking with residual energy. It stood nearly three meters tall, and the flagstones cracked beneath its weight.
"Harvett Louis De Vertmont. Lord rank, Iron Sentinel."
Silence, then murmurs erupted across the hall.
"Just like his grandfather."
"He'll take House Vertmont to greater heights!"
Harvett walked back to the line, chin raised. His glare found Wilfred again.
Vixra leaned over. "Don't worry. Once you summon your dragon, that centaur is a footnote."
'If I summon a dragon.'
The thought landed cold. Because the original Wilfred Von Argentine — the boy born with Monarch-level potential, the soul that this summoning circle was designed to read — was dead.
Whatever the circle found when it read Wilfred's soul wouldn't be the Argentine heir's signature. It would be his. A thirty-eight-year-old myrmecologist from a world that didn't have summoning circles or soul ranks or creatures made of light.
He had no idea what that meant.
"Vixra von Westeria."
The white-haired girl beside him smiled, smoothed her skirt, and stepped out.
She reached the center of the circle, and the summoning sparks didn't just flare. They erupted. Silvery light consumed the hall, and from within it, white particles began to drift upward and outward, settling on the crowd like dust.
It was not dust.
"Snow," someone whispered. "It's snowing."
Wilfred watched the particles land on his sleeve and dissolve. The entire hall was blanketed in a soft, cold radiance, and at the center of it all, the sparks pulled together into a shape.
It wasn't quite an owl, though it had an owl's face. Its body was covered in flawless white fur, and it stood on four strong legs, a long feathered tail curling behind it. Compact but powerful, roughly two meters long, its head reaching Vixra's waist. A small blue crystal horn protruded from its brow.
The host's voice cracked.
"Vixra von Westeria. M—Monarch rank, Winter Beast!"
The murmurs swelled again, but the tone was different now. Sharper. Political.
"The Westeria Dukedom is already powerful. With this, the balance between them and the Argentines will shift."
"It won't matter once the Argentine boy summons a Great Dragon. Nothing compares to that."
Up on the upper gallery, the subjects of those whispers watched with practiced indifference. Duke Hermes von Westeria stroked his orange beard, a grin barely hidden behind his hand. Beside him, the Duke of Swords stood silent, his expression giving nothing away.
Wilfred glanced up at his father.
At the same moment, his name was called.
He walked to the center of the hall. Each step louder than the last in the silence. The summoning circle blazed to life beneath his feet, and a thousand people held a single breath.
Wilfred held his too. He was as tensed as the crowd were but for different reasons.
He genuinely did not know what was about to happen.
The circle read his soul.
And then his summon appeared.