Chapter 11

  Jai woke with a dull, throbbing headache behind his eyes.

  His mouth was dry, and his tongue felt like sandpaper, tasting faintly of ash and metal.

  He sat up with a groan, the unfamiliar softness of the academy bed beneath him. The muted light leaking through the wooden blinds was enough to make him wince.

  Sheeren lay curled in a loose coil nearby, her massive body stretched over the stone floor. Her striped fur gleamed in the early light, and golden eyes blinked lazily as he stirred.

  She licked his face once—rough, warm, affectionate—and gave a low, contented rumble before fading into a shimmer of light and slipping back into the mark on his shoulder. It pulsed once in acknowledgment.

  He rubbed his eyes. His head still pounded.

  Talan was already gone, his bed neatly made, his gear packed. A folded parchment on the desk read:

  Jai stared at it for a beat, sighed, then staggered to his feet. There was no time to eat, barely enough to dress. His uniform felt too stiff, his boots too tight, and his mind still fogged from whatever strain had knocked him out yesterday.

  The halls were a blur, filled with students already moving in waves toward the outer training yard. He caught up with Talan just before they reached the practice grounds, panting.

  “Rough morning?” Talan asked with a grin as they walked.

  “Something like that,” Jai muttered.

  By the time they reached the yard, instructors had already begun sorting students by name into loose clusters. At the center stood a raised platform with a single pedestal carved with imperial runes. On it sat a crystal—clear, glassy, unremarkable to the eye. But the pressure in the air around it told a different story.

  Jai’s skin prickled.

  Instructor Veyna, the woman from the registration hall, stepped forward. Her voice cut through the murmurs like a blade.

  “This is a Soul Resonance Crystal. It does not lie. It does not flatter. It does not care about your lineage or your training or your excuses. It reads your soul bond's assimilation rate—the strength of the connection you share with your bonded beast.”

  Murmurs passed through the crowd. Jai heard one student scoff. Another straightened their shoulders nervously.

  “Assimilation rate is not something you can train,” Veyna went on. “You are born with it. It defines the ease with which your soul synchronizes with your bonded beast, how naturally you can channel its power. High scores mean high potential. Low scores... mean hard roads.”

  Students were called up one by one. Most scores hovered between the low forties to high sixties. A handful cracked into the seventies. The murmurs grew louder with each name called, each score revealed by the glowing crystal.

  Then they called Revyn.

  The phoenix-bonded youth moved with measured calm, not a trace of hesitation. He placed his hand on the crystal, and it lit immediately—bright, searing gold.

  “Eighty-eight,” Veyna announced without pause.

  A hush fell over the yard. The highest score yet.

  Revyn bowed his head slightly and stepped back. His expression didn’t change. Not smug. Not proud. Just... still.

  Jai’s name was called next.

  His throat tightened. He walked to the platform with a hollow feeling in his gut, not from nerves—but from exhaustion, uncertainty, a lingering ache in his soul.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  He placed his hand on the crystal.

  For a moment, nothing.

  Then the crystal pulsed. Bright white light surged inside, rimmed in flickers of primal gold. It didn’t flash like Revyn’s, but it glowed hotter, thicker, like a slow-burning flame forced to the surface.

  “Eighty-six.”

  Gasps rang out. Some students turned to stare.

  Jai slowly pulled his hand away. His heartbeat thundered in his ears.

  Talan let out a long whistle as Jai returned to the group. “Well, alright then, mystery boy.”

  Then came Kael.

  He strode forward with the same confidence he carried into every room, golden armor glinting in the sun. The crystal reacted fast—brilliant, fierce light spiraled from within.

  “Seventy-eight.”

  The crowd didn’t gasp this time. They watched. Quietly.

  Kael turned from the crystal, his signature smirk still on his face—but his jaw was tight, the smile not quite reaching his eyes. As he walked back to his spot, his posture remained tall… but tension clung to him like a second skin.

  He didn’t look at Jai.

  He didn’t look at Revyn.

  But Jai felt it—like a line had been drawn in sand.

  Talan leaned closer again. “That’s a lion who’s not used to being third.”

  The crystal test ended with no further fanfare, and Veyna dismissed the students to the mess hall or their next sessions.

  As Jai turned to go, he caught one last look at Kael—still walking, still smiling, but his hands clenched at his sides.

  The rest of the day didn’t get better.

  The second class was combat drills, held in a sunbaked arena littered with training dummies, sand pits, and weapons racks. Jai was already tired when he got there, but that wasn’t the problem.

  The problem was how fast everyone else moved.

  He barely had time to register the first series of stances before the instructor, a wiry man named Master Darven, barked at him to keep up. Nearly everyone else flowed through the forms—parries, sweeps, counters—like they’d drilled them since childhood. Jai stumbled by step three, nearly dropped his training spear, and got shoved aside when he misjudged spacing during sparring rotation.

  Even Talan, cheerful and gangly, moved with a crisp precision Jai couldn’t match.

  By the end of the session, his arms burned, sweat poured down his back, and his pride felt like it had been kicked in the teeth.

  No one laughed, exactly.

  But no one looked surprised either.

  Third class was channeling theory. Jai expected lectures and maybe a few diagrams.

  Instead, they were brought into a meditation hall lined with obsidian tiles and silence so thick it pressed on the skin. A different instructor— Medea, robed and serene—guided them through the process.

  “Feel your bond,” she said. “Call to it. Let the beast within respond.”

  The other students sat cross-legged, breathing slow, focused. Some glowed faintly. One boy with a serpent mark hissed under his breath as his skin shimmered with scale-like light. A girl near the back erupted briefly in frost.

  Jai sat still, jaw tight.

  He closed his eyes. Reached inward.

  There.

  The tiger stirred.

  Sheeren responded like a ripple under his skin, distant but warm. He clung to that pulse, trying to open himself like he had before the entrance exam.

  Nothing.

  Then—something. A flicker. A thread of golden heat crawled down his spine and curled into his limbs. For a moment—twenty seconds, maybe—he felt stronger. His vision sharpened. His breath deepened.

  And then it was gone. Cut off. The connection receded again, like a tide slipping from the shore.

  Not enough. Nowhere near what he’d done before.

  Medea watched him with a curious frown but said nothing.

  Jai clenched his fists in his lap. Around him, most of the others were already mastering basic channeling.

  And he was barely holding on to the edge.

  By the time they made it to the mess hall, Jai’s exhaustion weighed on him like a hundred-pound stone. His limbs felt heavy, his head still throbbing, and his thoughts muddled from trying to catch up with everything. The chatter around him was distant, a dull hum in his ears as he sat down at the table with Talan.

  "Hey, take a seat," Talan said, flashing a grin. A few of Talan’s friends, commoners like him, gathered around, and one of them—a quiet, reserved boy—nodded toward Jai.

  "You're Jai, right?" the boy asked softly, glancing at him with a thoughtful look. "The one who scored high in the test?"

  Jai blinked, still feeling a bit disoriented. "Yeah, that's me."

  The boy smiled slightly. "I’m Garin. Impressive performance. Not many people hit those numbers."

  Jai felt his chest warm slightly. It wasn’t the flashy praise he was used to from the nobles—just quiet recognition, and that made it feel more real.

  "Thanks," Jai muttered, a small smile tugging at his lips.

  The conversation shifted easily. Talan kept the mood light, teasing Jai a bit but in good humor. The group didn’t feel like they were sizing him up—they were just... people. No hidden agendas, no expectations beyond his abilities. For the first time since arriving, Jai felt the weight of his past start to ease, if just for a moment.

  By the end of the meal, Jai was drained. He didn’t have the energy for more chatter. He stood up, looking at the group.

  “I’m going to head back to the room,” Jai said. “Catch you tomorrow.”

  Talan waved him off. “Get some sleep. You’ve earned it.”

  Jai nodded and made his way back to the dorm. His room was empty, Talan already gone. Without a second thought, Jai collapsed onto the bed, not bothering to change out of his uniform. His body sank into the mattress, his mind already slipping into unconsciousness.

  It didn’t take long for the darkness to swallow him. He was asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

  For the first time in a while, Jai felt like he belonged.