Chapter 22: The Ranking Board Has My Name At The Bottom And A Council Brand Next To It?!

Soren woke up and the ceiling looked the same but the air felt wrong.

Grimm was sitting by the door.

He got out of bed and pulled his boots on. The stone floor was colder than usual for a Tuesday.

He opened the door and stopped.

The corridor was full of students standing around the digital display set into the stone wall. That screen had been blank since he arrived at the academy.

Now it was bright white and scrolling with names. Three students from the second floor turned and looked at him when he stepped into the hall.

They did not look away.

Grimm pushed past his leg and put her white paws on the tile and gave a low growl.

The students stepped back but they kept staring.

Soren walked up to the board and read the list. His name was at the bottom.

Rank 341 of 342.

There was a small black asterisk right next to his last name.

"They update it weekly," Selah said from behind him.

She was leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed and the frost pattern on her knuckles was completely still.

"Sponsors use the public rankings to recruit for outside contracts."

"I’m an F-rank," Soren said.

"Class Z never appears on the board," Selah said. "Especially not first years. The system doesn’t rank us because we don’t generate revenue. Someone forced your name onto the list."

She walked over and tapped the glass right over the asterisk.

Her finger left a small circle of ice on the screen.

"That mark means Council Watch. A Council member flagged you as an asset or a threat and they want everyone to know."

"Good morning to you too."

"I need coffee," she said.

Soren looked at the asterisk and thought about the Fracture. Thirteen days left.

This was the exact opposite of hiding.

◆◆◆◆

Soren went to the cafeteria and got a tray of cold eggs.

He sat at the corner table and Grimm curled up under his chair.

The hall was loud with students talking about the board. Every time he looked up someone looked away.

Hansel Jay walked over and sat down across from him.

The boy was shaking and he didn’t have a tray.

"My family missed the tuition payment," Hansel said.

Soren put his fork down. "Okay."

"I needed the Inter-Class Trial," Hansel said.

He kept rubbing his hands together against his pants. "Sponsors show up for the Trial and pull students for contracts. I have been practicing the earth hammer for a month."

"You can still get pulled."

"No I can’t," Hansel said.

His voice cracked and a few people at the next table turned around.

"You have a Council asterisk on the board. Every sponsor in the city is going to look at Class Z for the first time in ten years and they are only going to look at you. I am completely invisible now."

Hansel needed rank to eat and pay his way.

Soren had just taken all the oxygen out of the room without doing a single thing.

"Eat my eggs," Soren said.

Hansel stared at him.

"Eat the eggs and stop shaking. We have class."

Hansel took the plate and ate fast.

Soren watched him and realized he was building a group whether he wanted to or not.

People were going to rely on him and that was a problem he could not afford right now.

◆◆◆◆

Class Z was in the basement and the room was colder than usual. Professor Beck was not at the desk.

A woman in her late forties stood at the chalkboard instead.

She wore the grey coat of a Bureau auditor and she was writing her name in tight letters.

Instructor Vesna.

"I teach Class A," she said without turning around.

"The administration reassigned me to Class Z temporarily."

She turned and looked directly at Soren.

She did not look at anyone else in the room.

"Your dorm is a mess," she said. "I read the housing reports. The institution puts Class Z in the unsorted dorm and mixes the genders because the academy does not think F and E ranks are worth the paperwork to sort properly."

Selah shifted in her seat next to Soren. The temperature dropped a degree and frost touched the edge of her desk.

Vesna pulled a clipboard from the desk and tapped it once.

"The Inter-Class Trial is in exactly three weeks," she said.

"Class A versus Class Z. Sanctioned beast combat in the central arena. Your performance dictates your public ranking."

Soren stopped listening and looked at the calendar on the wall. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

The Fracture was coming in thirteen days.

The Trial was in twenty-one days.

The academy was scheduling a public event for a building that was going to be consumed by a dimensional collapse a week before the event started.

That meant the administration didn’t know about the Fracture.

Or it meant the Trial was a trap designed to keep everyone exactly where they were.

He felt a pressure in the back of his skull. It was a familiar weight.

Master.

Soren went completely still and gripped his pen.

Grimm had not spoken in days. Now her voice was back and it was sharp.

The woman with the clipboard works for someone who hates the woman with the seal, Grimm said.

Soren looked at Vesna and then looked at his notebook.

Joan Sawyer had the seal on his chest. Vesna hated Joan.

The Bureau was not a single wall of rules.

It was a group of people fighting each other and he was standing in the middle of it.

[DING! — Soul integrity: 75%. Fracture timer: 13 days.]

The bell rang and Vesna walked out of the room. She did not assign any reading and she did not look back.

Soren packed his bag and walked up the stairs.

The hallways felt too narrow and the lights hummed a low note that made his teeth ache. He pushed the heavy wooden door to his room open and stepped inside.

Selah was sitting on her bed.

She was holding a piece of thick parchment paper and the frost on her fingers was creeping up the edges of the page.

"Did someone die?" he said.

"No," Selah said.

She held the paper out and he took it.

The paper was heavy and the seal at the top was pressed in gold wax.

It was a sponsor invitation.

It had Selah’s name on it.

It offered her a private contract with a Council member named Lior Vasquez Sr.

Soren read the bottom corner and his thumb stopped on the ink.

The date was yesterday.

Someone wrote this invitation a full day before the ranking board updated with Soren’s asterisk.