The silence after the headmaster's confirmation had weight to it. The anticipation from an hour ago—forty students on the edge of something they'd wanted their whole lives—was simply gone, replaced by the particular stillness of people recalibrating what they'd signed up for.
"Casualties. Eighteen students perished during manifestation. Terratia lost five. Ravena two. Luminus three. Vael two. Solara four. Caelum two."
Each continent turned inward simultaneously. Caelum's eight found their answer fast. Two bodies, side by side. Rema and N'joma, spears lying undisturbed beside them.
Mika walked forward without being asked. He stopped beside them, looked down briefly, then said, "May I prepare them for burial and collect their weapons. Nothing should go to waste."
Steady. Clean. The only way he knew how to hold grief.
The headmaster nodded.
"How pitiful."
Lowe of Solara stood with his arms folded, expression loose, almost bored. "So this is Caelum's future prince. Treating death like a scheduling conflict." His gaze moved across the group. "Caelum produces rulers who mistake procedure for strength. I can see the problem clearly."
Levi stepped forward.
"That's enough."
He hadn't decided to release Aether. It came out anyway—a faint pressure that moved through the hall before he could contain it, drawn by something underneath the calm that hadn't finished processing the last hour.
Lowe's composure held. But something shifted in his posture, the small unconscious adjustment of a person whose instincts had registered something their mind was still catching up to.
Soren stepped up beside Levi without a word.
Marcus rested his greatsword on his shoulder. "Say it plainly or don't say it."
Three presences. The hall went quiet in the way halls go quiet when something is about to happen or has just decided not to.
"Enough."
The headmaster's voice didn't rise. The pressure in the hall left immediately—not dissipating, just gone, as she'd reached into the air and removed it.
"Test each other outside these halls." A pause that wasn't long but carried. "And remember—this academy does not tolerate death."
Lowe clicked his tongue and stepped back. Levi held a moment longer, then retreated.
'He'll be a problem,' Levi thought. 'Not today. But eventually.'
The headmaster waited until the hall was fully still.
"Those of you who survived have entered the first realm of cultivation. The Nascent Stage."
She raised one finger. "Foundation. Everything you build from here sits on what you establish now. Talent without foundation is a ceiling pretending to be a floor."
Levi flexed his hand. Even that felt different—more responsive, like the body had quietly upgraded while he wasn't paying attention.
"The Nascent Stage has ten minor realms. Each breakthrough refines your body further—muscle, bone, perception, and your affinity with Aether deepens at every stage."
A student raised his hand. "How do we advance?"
A small sphere appeared above her palm—steady, pulsing, alive in the particular way that made every eye in the hall fix on it.
"You absorb Aether from your surroundings and guide it through your body. Capacity expands naturally as you adapt." She closed her hand. Gone. "Never force more than your body can hold."
Her gaze moved briefly to the fallen.
Nobody spoke.
"Your manuals will teach you the fundamentals. Instructors will supervise until you have them. Your objective is simple—conquer all ten realms of the Nascent Stage. Those who don't will not remain students here."
The hall absorbed that.
Several students paled. Others went inward. A few shifted in the specific way of people converting discomfort into resolve.
Levi smiled.
'Ten realms. I'll be done before most of them find their footing.'
The headmaster looked directly at him.
"For some of you, the greatest obstacle won't be talent." Her gaze didn't move. "It will be pride."
The smile eased. He didn't respond.
She smiled back. Not warmth. The smile of someone who had watched this exact moment play out with different faces more times than she'd kept count of, and had long since stopped being surprised by how it ended.
"Tomorrow," she said, "your true education begins."
They filed out in groups, Caelum's eight among the last. Mika carried the spears. Nobody mentioned it.
The silence held until they were well clear of the hall, and then Ezekiel, who had been walking at the back with his eyes half-closed and his hands in his pockets, spoke without particular inflection.
"Eighteen dead on day one." A pause. "I've had rougher mornings."
Nobody laughed immediately. Then Marcus did, a short genuine sound, and that was enough to crack the rest of it open—quiet laughter moving through the group, the kind that doesn't find anything funny so much as it finds something bearable.
"Honestly," Ezekiel continued, still at the same register, "I thought Marcus would be one of them."
"Tch." Marcus didn't look back. "If greed kills me, it'll be for something worth dying for."
"Bold words from a man who tried to fight an ancient species with a borrowed sword."
More laughter. Genuine this time.
Mika's expression didn't change, but something in it eased slightly, which was its own version of the same thing.
Levi walked at the back, quiet.
'One thing at a time,' he thought. 'Starting at dawn.'