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Zik sat hunched behind Ember in Mage 101, his knee bouncing under the desk hard enough that he was sure someone would notice. He'd been watching her ever since freshman orientation—the way she flipped her hair when she was bored, the way she rolled her eyes at the professors. And today, in the span of one class period, he'd already watched her shoot down two other guys.
But it was his turn now.
He'd fallen for her the second he'd laid eyes on her, and he hadn't been able to shake it since. He had to ask her, and this was his chance.
The note in his hand was damp from how long he'd been gripping it. Before the bell rang, he sucked in a breath, tapped Ember on the shoulder, and held the note out before his nerve could fail him.
She took it—and for one electric second, her finger brushed against his.
That was it. That single touch sent something like lightning up his arm. A brief moment of ecstasy. He watched her. His eyes wide, unblinking.
She was reading it. Now she's writing back. She's actually writing back. This is happening. This is actually happening.
She handed the note back to him, not even bothering to look behind.
He unfolded it and read:
BUZZ OFF, FLY!
The bottom dropped out of his stomach. His face went hot, then cold, then hot again. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out—just a strange, airless wheeze, like his lungs had forgotten how to work. The room tilted slightly.
The bell rang. Ember stood, slung her bag over her shoulder, and walked out without so much as a glance back.
Zik sat frozen, the note crumpled in his shaking fist. Around him, the laughter started.
"Rejected!" someone called out.
"Yeah, nice one, Fly!" another voice added, and the nickname landed like a slap—worse than the rejection itself, somehow.
He didn't even have the energy to look up. He just stared at the desk, willing the floor to swallow him whole.
Then a hand landed on his shoulder. Firm. Not unkind.
"Come with me."
Zik looked up, dazed, into the face of someone he didn't recognize. But he was past the point of caring where he went—anywhere had to be better than here. He let himself be pulled to his feet and followed, his hand still trembling at his side.
— — —
The basement beneath the old east wing hadn't been used for anything official in years—some forgotten storage room, half-filled with broken desks and a single buzzing light that flickered if you walked too close to it. It smelled like dust and old paper. It was, by unspoken agreement, the kind of place nobody officially ever bothered to check.
Zik barely registered any of it. He was still replaying the note in his head—BUZZ OFF, FLY!—on a loop that wouldn't quit, when he realized he was standing in front of people. A dozen of them, maybe more, all watching him with the kind of expression that suggested they knew exactly what he'd just been through. Because they'd been through it too.
Someone put something around his wrist. A red wristband. The number 43, stamped across the top. On the bottom, two letters: ER.
"Welcome," said a voice from somewhere in the group, not unkindly, "to the Ember Rejects."
Every single person in this room had one thing in common: Ember had rejected them. All of them. The headcount started long before the Academy had ever started.
At first, it was a joke. A dumb, self-deprecating little badge of honor passed between friends. "Oh, you got shot down too? Welcome to the club, man." Guys would laugh about it in the hallways, compare notes, rank each other's rejection lines like they were trading cards. Mine was worse. No, mine was worse. It was almost funny, in a pathetic sort of way.
But jokes have a way of curdling when you keep telling them.
What started as something to laugh off began to fester underneath the surface. The laughter got thinner. The jokes got meaner—not toward themselves anymore, but toward her. Someone would mutter something under their breath about Ember thinking she was better than everyone. Someone else would nod along. And little by little, the blame shifted. It wasn't that they'd been too nervous, too awkward, too forward. No—it was her fault. She was cold. She was cruel. She got off on humiliating people.
The bitterness grew quietly at first, the way mold spreads behind a wall before anyone notices the smell. A shared grievance became a shared identity.
And then, one day, the funding started flowing in. Nobody knew exactly where it came from at first—just that suddenly there was money. Real money. Enough to buy things a basement club of bitter students had no business owning.
The "Ember Rejects" stopped being a joke and started being a group—a real one, with members, with meetings, with a badge and a number system. It became something with a budget, a structure, and a plan.
And somewhere above them, oblivious, Ember walked to her next class.
The countdown had begun.
— — —
Meanwhile, back in Support 101, Landen had finished the training modules. They were simple enough—mostly things he already knew from a decade of competitive play—but a few details stood out, particularly the casting mechanics.
When he readied a skill, a faint range bubble bloomed around him, marking the exact limit of the ability's casting range. This feature changes depending on whether in a match or in real life, but overall, a great feature to have.
Then there was the targeting feature. The moment he went to cast or attack, a small bullseye snapped onto the intended location, showing precisely where the effect would land. And if there were multiple targets in range, he could lock onto one specifically—after that, every attack would track to that target automatically.
Landen turned the ideas over in his head. Range indicators. Auto-targeting. Target-lock. These weren't just interface conveniences—they functioned like passive abilities in their own right. Free abilities, baked into the MOBA system itself, which gave him a huge advantage.
With the first four beginner modules cleared—each providing five EXP—he now sat at 80 of 100 experience points. Pretty solid for an hour of work.
Outside the system, in the actual classroom, Professor Varro had already dismissed the class. Students filed past on their way out, casting curious glances at the boy sitting cross-legged near the exit, eyes closed, looking for all the world like he was deep in some advanced meditative technique. A few girls slowed. Then stopped. Then drifted back.
Within a few minutes, a small cluster had formed around him, whispering, exchanging glances, clearly debating whether disturbing him would be rude. Someone poked his shoulder. He didn't stir—still cataloging his EXP total, blissfully unaware. Encouraged, another reached for his hair—long, dark, and entirely too tempting to leave alone.
Braids began to take shape. Then a second set. The girls worked with the quiet focus of artists, utterly absorbed, while Landen sat there reviewing his stats.
Finally satisfied, Landen closed out the module summary and opened his eyes.
He blinked.
He was staring at roughly a dozen girls, all staring back at him with the soft, delighted focus of people who'd just finished decorating a sleeping cat.
Landen's brain, still half inside the menu screen, took a full second to catch up.
Then all the beautiful faces began to register. With the sheer numbers and proximity of them all, he was sure that his brain would melt from whatever curse was in his mind.
He let out a yelp that could've shattered glass, launched ten feet straight into the air, executed two unnecessary backflips, and landed in a defensive crouch at the back of the room—heart hammering, two neat pixie braids bouncing on either side of his head.
Fortunately, there was a second exit.
A beat of silence. The girls blinked. Landen blinked.
Then he turned, located the second exit, and sprinted through it without a single word—braids bouncing triumphantly behind him like tiny victory flags.
— — —
Landen burst out of the academy building at a dead sprint, lungs burning, braids whipping wildly behind him—only to skid to a halt as he realized he'd run straight into the dormitory courtyard, where what looked like half the school was currently moving about between classes.
Then, from across the courtyard, a group of people, led by a broad-shouldered guy with the unmistakable swagger of someone who'd been waiting for this exact opportunity, started walking over. Team Orvyn's emblem sat stitched on their jackets.
"We know who you are," their leader said. "You're not fooling anyone with your pixie hair and makeup."
Makeup? Landen touched his face. His fingers came away smudged—someone had given him dark eyeliner and a flush of rosy blush along his cheekbones while he'd been busy reviewing his EXP totals. Combined with the braids, he probably looked like he was three days away from debuting in a boy band.
"That's right, Mifaso," he smirked, clearly pleased with himself. "You can't hide from us."
Landen scratched the back of his head, utterly lost. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again—and that was as far as he got before Elle stepped smoothly in front of him, arms crossed, chin raised like she'd been waiting all day for someone to start something.
"Nobody's hiding from weaklings like you," she said, voice flat and unimpressed. "If you want something, come get it."
The boy's smirk widened. "Fine. My name is Ryker," he said, jabbing a thumb at his own chest. "Let's do this right now. Me and him. One-on-one. I'll take his title one way or another."
"Okay, Ryker," Elle said, emphasizing his name. "Landen's never shied away from a fight."
Before Landen could so much as protest, Elle and Ryker were striding off together toward a glowing fighting pod near the courtyard's edge, talking logistics like he wasn't even part of the conversation anymore.
Landen stood frozen in place, two pixie braids swaying gently in the breeze, blush still bright on his cheeks, smiling the nervous smile of a man who had just woken up into a situation he had zero context for.
"Umm... ha—" He glanced around at the crowd of students now watching him with great interest. "What just happened?"
Landen smiled nervously.
Suddenly, Maledic gripped Landen's shoulder. "Prepare for battle, brother."
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