Chapter 6: The Name on the Roster

Chapter 6: The Name on the Roster

An hour after the first dose, Silas was on the bathroom floor, trying to remember where he had put Kerr’s instructions.

Desk. Under the plate.

Remote Grasp brought the sheet to him. He held it clear of the wet tiles and found the section she had marked. The nausea medicine stayed in his stomach just long enough to help, although the effort of keeping it there left him exhausted. The second dose was easier. The third was not.

He stopped wondering whether every new symptom meant he was dying and began checking the written instructions instead. Fever, nausea, sweating, and fatigue were expected during the first several days. Blood in his vomit, loss of consciousness, or sharp Core pain required an emergency call.

The list stayed beside his bed.

Silas slept whenever the medicine allowed it. Food arrived three times a day because Kerr had added a medical meal schedule to his account. He disliked being monitored, but he ate what came.

By the fourth day of treatment, the fever had eased. He crossed the studio without reaching for furniture and stood long enough to wash his own dishes. His status still described the systemic damage as severe, but his condition had changed from unstable recovery to stabilizing.

He fetched the chalk and moved a few things off the floor. A short practice session seemed manageable now.

The evidence case remained on the lower cabinet shelf. Silas did not touch it. He did not need to. Territorial Awareness gave him the position of every ward mark and the mana lines joining them.

Talia’s work looked simple until he tried to reproduce it.

Remote Grasp could place chalk marks wherever he wanted. His first practice marks were identical in size and spaced exactly as planned. The mana refused to cooperate. One section of the line carried too much, another too little, and the boundary collapsed after eleven seconds.

[Assimilation: 3%.]

He had spent two days studying Talia’s example. Silas rubbed chalk dust off his thumb and checked the number again, hoping he had misread it.

All right. Three.

He waited for his mana to recover before trying again.

His next boundary was meant to detect a cup passing between the desk and the wall. He connected the marks, rolled the cup through with Remote Grasp, and felt the boundary react.

For a moment, he thought he had succeeded.

Then he checked the response. The boundary had recorded the cup as entering from the opposite direction.

Silas rolled it through twice more. The same wrong result returned each time.

"Fine." He sat on the floor beside the cup. "At least you’re consistent."

He erased the marks and tried a redirection boundary. It ignored the moving cup and knocked a water glass off the desk instead. Remote Grasp caught the glass before it hit the floor, but half the water landed on his blanket.

Silas stopped for the day.

He ate with the blanket hanging over the back of the chair to dry. Every time he looked at it, he wanted to fetch the chalk again.

He had managed to keep the line stable. Why had the boundary acted on the glass behind it?

Silas turned his chair toward the window and finished eating. He could examine Talia’s seal in the morning. His head already hurt enough.

The next morning, he opened the storage cabinet and studied Talia’s seal again.

Her first mark carried slightly more mana on the side facing the room. The difference was small enough that he had overlooked it. The line did not merely connect the marks; it already favored a direction before the boundary closed.

Silas returned to his practice area and drew two new marks. This time, he decided which side should detect the crossing before supplying mana. He adjusted the first mark, connected the line, and rolled the cup through.

The response identified the correct direction.

He tried it from the other side. Correct again.

[Assimilation: 6%.]

Silas left the boundary active until maintaining it became uncomfortable, then released it and returned to bed.

From the bed, he watched a spoon cross the practice area under Remote Grasp. He had released the boundary, so there was no warning this time. Tomorrow he wanted it to last long enough that he could stop thinking about it between crossings.

A complete enclosure would take more work. He had yet to connect three marks without losing the line.

Two days remained before the temporary copy expired.

His medical exemption would end in three days. The baseline practical was scheduled for the following morning, four days away. He would have a full day between losing the copy and facing the assessment.

Silas opened the academy terminal to review the assessment. The page listed movement drills, mana control, a supervised Talent demonstration, a judgment exercise, and controlled combat. Students would be assessed in cohorts of eight.

The supervised demonstration brought back a scene from Crownless Requiem’s opening.

Silas remembered the west practice yard and eight first-year students standing on the sand. The original young master had volunteered to demonstrate Remote Grasp against another student. He chose Alden Cross because Alden was common-born, sponsored, and apparently weak.

The examiner had announced Alden’s Talent to the cohort.

D-Rank [Second Attempt]. ℯ

After Alden genuinely failed at an action, his next attempt received a small correction based on the previous mistake. It sounded unimpressive beside the Talents carried by noble heirs and academy prodigies.

The original Silas dragged Alden off his feet with Remote Grasp. Alden stood and tried again. The second pull still put him down, but he resisted longer. On the third, he adjusted his footing and stayed upright. On the fourth, he moved with the force, entered Silas’s reach, and knocked him onto the sand in front of the cohort.

The original Silas turned that embarrassment into a grudge. In several routes, his attempts to retaliate brought him into conflicts that ended with his death.

Silas had no reason to repeat any of it.

Don’t volunteer. Don’t choose Alden. Finish the assessment and leave.

He selected the option to download the assessment rules. There was bound to be something in them about declining a voluntary demonstration.

The cohort roster arrived that evening while he was still reading.

[Baseline Combat Practical — Cohort 17.]

[West Practice Yard.]

[Assessment begins in 4 days.]

Eight names appeared beneath the notice. Silas found his own in the third position, marked with a medical exemption that ended the evening before the assessment.

Alden Cross was sixth.

Silas moved the cursor down to Alden’s name. There was no opponent listed beside it. He checked his own entry, then opened the rules again.

The game had shown the challenge, the fight, and the humiliation afterward. He remembered the other students standing around them, but he had never paid much attention to how that group had been chosen.

Same cohort doesn’t mean same opponent.

He read the demonstration section more carefully. Nothing required him to challenge another student. Paired combat was compulsory, but the instructor would decide the matches after the earlier assessments.

That left him with something he could actually do: keep his mouth shut until his name was called. If somebody tried to provoke him, he could be bored. The original had been good at bored.

Silas returned to the roster and checked the time and location. The west practice yard was farther from the dormitory than he liked. He saved the route, including the colonnade where he could walk in the shade, and added water to his list of things to take.

Across the room, the unused chalk lay beside his practice marks. He still had two days with Boundary Ward. Staring at Alden’s name was wasting them.

[Assimilation: 6%.]

[Remaining Duration: 2 days.]

Silas shut down the terminal for the night. He would try the third mark after breakfast.