THE DARK HEIR OF BLACKTHORN

Chapter Six — Last Place

The dark didn't last. Someone somewhere threw a breaker, and the assessment hall's lights stuttered back on in ragged waves, revealing a room full of students shoving toward the exits, screaming over each other, tripping on shards of crystal that still littered the platform.

Ariana didn't move. She couldn't. Her legs had locked the moment the voice beneath the floor said her name, and now she just stood there in the wreckage while the crowd broke around her like water around a rock.

A hand closed on her arm.

"Not here."

Kael. He didn't wait for her to argue — just pulled her sideways, cutting a straight line through the panic toward a side door most of the fleeing students hadn't noticed yet. Ariana wrenched her arm half-free.

"What was that voice? What's under the school?"

"Not here," he said again, lower this time, and shoved the door open with his shoulder.

The corridor beyond was empty and cold, and the second the door shut behind them, the screaming from the hall dropped to a muffled roar. Ariana rounded on him. "You heard it too. Don't tell me you didn't."

Kael's jaw tightened. For a second she thought he'd actually answer her. Then his expression closed over, smooth and unreadable again, like a door sliding shut.

"Go back to your dormitory."

"That's it? That's all I get?"

"For now." He was already walking away.

She stood there fuming until Master Draven found her ten minutes later in the corridor outside the administration office, his coat still faintly smoking at one sleeve.

"Rose."

"Sir, what happened in there—"

"The crystal malfunctioned." He said it flatly, like a man reading a weather report. "It happens. Older equipment, overloaded circuits. It happens more than the school likes to admit."

"It screamed."

"Crystals under structural stress make sounds. That's physics, not sorcery." He didn't look at her when he said it, which told her more than the words did. "Your result has been logged as unranked. No measurable power detected."

"That's not what happened and you know it."

Draven's eyes finally came up to meet hers, and for just a moment something moved behind them — not fear exactly, but something adjacent to it. Then it was gone. "You'll be placed in Class One with the rest of the first-years," he said. "Report to Room 4 tomorrow morning. Don't be late again." He walked off without waiting for a response, and Ariana was left standing alone in a corridor that suddenly felt much colder than it had a minute ago.

Class One turned out to be nothing like she'd pictured. She'd expected a room full of the powerless, the overlooked, students like the ones she imagined she belonged with — but when she stepped through the door the next morning, half the strongest names from the assessment were already seated. Damien Cross sat near the front, arms crossed, radiating the same coiled stillness he'd had on the platform. A few rows back, Seraphina Vale was laughing at something with two other girls, completely at ease.

A boy near the door caught her staring and smirked. "Didn't know? Everyone starts in Class One. First-years get ranked inside it before they're moved up."

"So it's not—"

"Not for the weak, no." He nodded toward the numbered seating chart posted by the door. "It's for everyone. You just get seated by rank."

Ariana scanned the list from the top down.

#1 — DAMIEN CROSS — S RANK

#2 — —

#3 — SERAPHINA VALE — A RANK

#4 — —

#5 — —

The gaps meant nothing to her yet, but she kept scrolling anyway, down past names and letter grades she didn't recognize, lower and lower, until the numbers finally stopped.

#100 — ARIANA ROSE — UNRANKED

"Guess we know where you land," the boy said, and walked off before she could answer.

She almost let it go at that. Last place, last name, no measurable power — it fit the story everyone had already decided to believe about her. But as she scanned back down the list one more time, something snagged. Ninety-nine students had received a number and a measurable power level. Ariana was the only one left unranked. Hers just said UNRANKED. Not zero. Not last. Unranked — as if there had never been a number small enough, or strange enough, to hold whatever the crystal had found in her.

Ariana stared at the word until the boy who'd spoken to her had already walked away and forgotten she existed. Somewhere underneath the assumption that she'd simply failed, a colder thought was starting to take root: maybe they hadn't put her last because she had nothing. Maybe they'd put her last because they didn't know what to do with whatever she had.

She took her seat in the back corner anyway, in the back row, where the lowest-ranked students had been seated, and let them keep believing what was easier to believe. Nobody watched the bottom of a list. Nobody expected anything from #100. If she wanted to figure out what had actually happened in that hall — what her watch kept trying to tell her, what had been sleeping under the school and had just woken up — the back row was exactly where she needed to be.

She'd barely settled in when the door slammed open hard enough to bounce off the wall.

Another senior stood in the doorway, one hand fisted in the collar of a much smaller boy, dragging him half off his feet into the room. The boy's face had gone white with panic.

"Found this one in the east corridor," the senior announced to the room, like he expected applause. "Restricted floor. You know what happens to first-years who wander where they shouldn't?" He shoved the boy against the wall hard enough to knock the air out of him.

"I got lost," the boy gasped. "I didn't mean—"

"Don't care."

The senior's hand came up, and the room went taut with the kind of silence that meant everyone was watching and no one was going to do anything about it.

Then—

"Put your hand down."

The voice came from the doorway. Everyone froze. Ariana turned.

Kael Veyron stood there, and he wasn't wearing the first-year uniform. A dark senior jacket rested over his shoulders, the silver insignia of the upper division gleaming against his chest. Even Ariana had heard his name by now, whispered in half the conversations she'd overheard since the assessment. Kael Veyron. The strongest student Blackthorn Academy had seen in years — not the strongest first-year, the strongest student, full stop — and every senior in the building was supposed to know better than to test that.

The senior holding the boy lowered his hand immediately. "Veyron," he muttered, and something in his voice had gone thin.

Kael stepped into the classroom, his expression completely calm. "Let him go."

"He's mine to discipline."

"I wasn't asking."

The senior released the boy, who scrambled backward and dropped into the nearest empty seat, shaking. Kael walked toward the senior slowly, unhurried, the way someone walks when they already know exactly how the next ten seconds are going to go.

"You brought a first-year into a classroom to punish him in front of everyone?"

"He entered a restricted corridor."

"Then report him to the proper authority."

"He needs to learn—"

Kael caught his wrist before he could finish, the movement so fast Ariana barely registered it had happened. The senior's face tightened as Kael twisted his arm just enough to force him down onto one knee.

"I said let him go."

"I did."

"And yet you're still here."

Kael released him, and the senior stumbled backward, clutching his wrist, not saying another word. Kael looked around the room at the first-years watching in dead silence.

"Class One isn't a place where seniors come to prove how powerful they are."

His eyes landed briefly on Ariana. Something unreadable passed through them before he looked away again. "Go."

The senior didn't argue. He straightened his uniform, shot Kael one furious look, and walked out. The younger boy stayed frozen in his seat, and the rest of the room stayed exactly as silent as it had been a minute before, nobody quite ready to break whatever spell Kael's presence had put over it.

Kael turned toward the door. Just before he left, his eyes crossed Ariana's again, and for a moment neither of them moved. Then he said, quietly enough that it might have only been meant for himself, and for her:

"Rose."

Ariana frowned. "You know my name?"

His expression didn't change. "I know more than your name."

Her heart skipped. Before she could ask what he meant, Kael turned and walked away, and she watched him disappear down the corridor, the question already forming and refusing to leave her alone. Who exactly was Kael Veyron? And why did the most powerful student in Blackthorn Academy look at her like he'd been waiting for her to come back?

She looked down at her wristwatch out of habit more than anything. The screen flickered.

HE REMEMBERS.

Her breath caught. She looked up fast, but Tessa was three seats over, whispering to Lily about the fight, and hadn't seen a thing. By the time Ariana looked back down, the watch had already gone back to her name.

ARIANA ROSE.

Nothing else. As if it had never said a word at all. But Ariana knew what she'd seen. Kael remembered. The question was — what?

Then, somewhere beneath Blackthorn Academy, something scratched once against the stone.

Scrape.

A pause. Then again.

Scrape.

Ariana slowly raised her head. She wasn't the only one who'd heard it — a few seats over, someone else had gone still too, eyes flicking toward the floor. But it was the empty doorway that held her attention, where Kael's shadow had disappeared moments before, and she found herself wondering whether he'd heard it as well, wherever he'd gone, and whether that same calm expression had finally, somewhere out of sight, broken.

Whatever slept beneath Blackthorn Academy had just started trying to get out.