The Lost Heir's Crown

Chapter 4: Ranked Two Hundred and Seventeen

There were twice as many people in front of the ranking wall as there had been that morning.

The academy’s central square was never quiet to begin with. By late morning, students filled all four arcades, and the space before the obsidian wall was so crowded there was hardly anywhere to stand.

The new rankings had been posted.

Some had climbed more than a dozen places and were being surrounded by congratulating friends. Some had fallen out of Crown Rank, their faces as white as if they had just received news of a death. More pretended not to care, yet could not stop themselves from looking up at the wall.

I stood at the edge of the crowd.

Two hundred and seventeen.

Avery Vale.

No change.

“At least you did not fall,” Theo said beside me, trying to comfort me.

“Is that worth celebrating?”

Theo choked on the reply.

“For most people, no,” he admitted. “But for you... I thought you would be more upset.”

I looked up at the obsidian wall.

The golden letters wavered faintly in the sunlight, like reflections on water that would not disappear. My name was buried between a long list of unfamiliar surnames, utterly unremarkable.

But it was still there.

It had not been crossed out. It had not become a line on an inventory of belongings.

“I do not have time to be upset,” I said.

Theo did not understand.

I did not explain.

Laughter rose from the center of the square.

Harlan Crowe stood among a group of senior students, the silver wolf on his chest badge flashing painfully in the sun. He had clearly recovered from that morning’s humiliation and even regained his usual air of contempt for everyone around him.

“Two hundred and seventeen.” He raised his voice deliberately. “Vale, you are certainly consistent.”

A few people nearby laughed.

Theo frowned, about to say something.

I ignored Harlan and simply stepped half a pace aside.

There was no point arguing with him.

He wanted everyone’s eyes on us. He wanted me to lose control and restore the face he had lost that morning.

I had no intention of giving it to him.

But Harlan clearly did not intend to let the chance go.

“What, nothing to say now?” He came closer. “I thought you suddenly grew a spine because you had finally found someone to back you up.”

His eyes moved over the crowd.

I knew whom he was looking for. So word of my conversation with Cillian in the corridor had already spread. This academy had eyes everywhere; I would have to be more careful.

Cillian was not in the square today.

Lucien Veyre, meanwhile, stood on the stone steps at the entrance to the main tower, surrounded by several academy officials and senior students. He wore an immaculate dark-blue uniform. From this distance I could not make out his expression, yet he remained the quietest and most impossible presence to ignore in the square.

“Crowe,” Theo said under his breath, “do not start anything.”

Harlan gave a derisive snort.

“Since when is it your turn to interrupt when I am speaking to Vale?”

One of the boys behind him was about to chime in when his foot slipped.

He had been standing on a maintenance step at the edge of the square. Several obsidian slabs that had just been replaced were stacked beside it. It had rained last night, and water still filled the gaps between the stones. As he stepped back, he landed on a loose bronze fastening and crashed into the temporary rain shelter.

First came a shrill scrape of metal.

Then the stone slabs on top of the shelter tilted.

Everyone froze.

It was not an ordinary wooden awning.

To protect the newly replaced plaques on the outer edge of the ranking wall, the academy had built a narrow, tall stone maintenance frame beside it. Metal crossbeams and obsidian slabs weighed it down, making it far more dangerous than it looked.

When the boy fell, he knocked loose the lowest support.

“Move!” someone shouted.

But it was too late.

An obsidian slab as tall as half a person crashed down on the boy’s lower leg. A crossbeam caught at an angle above it, and the entire frame let out a teeth-grating c***k.

The square erupted into chaos.

Some people backed away, some screamed, and some tried to rush forward to help.

“Do not touch it!” I shouted without thinking.

My voice came out louder than I had expected.

The first two people rushing forward stopped.

Every eye turned toward me.

I did not have time to care.

The trapped boy was white with pain and trying to push at the slab. Every time he moved, the tilted crossbeam above shuddered with it. The bronze brace beside him was already bent; it could break completely at any moment.

If we lifted the slab directly, the crossbeam above would come down with it.

“Clear the area first!” I said. “Do not crowd around, and especially do not stand in front of the frame!”

“Who gave you the right to give orders?” Harlan snapped.

I did not even look at him.

“If you want him to come out alive, do not let a second slab fall on him first.”

Harlan’s expression changed.

The trapped student was already in too much pain to form full sentences, his fingers clawing at the ground. Blood seeped slowly from beneath his trouser leg, but it was not spurting.

At least no major artery had ruptured.

At least not yet.

“Who can tie a securing knot?” I asked.

No one answered.

“The kind used in riding training, to secure a crossbeam to a stone ring.”

A girl raised her hand hesitantly.

“I can.”

“Good. You and her”—I pointed to a boy nearby who had not frozen in fear—“go get a towing rope from the training grounds. Do not pass under the frame. Go around on the right.”

They ran off at once.

I crouched down, keeping a little distance from the trapped boy.

“Can you hear me?”

He nodded through clenched teeth.

“What is your name?”

“B-Bennett...”

“All right, Bennett. Do not move your leg, and do not try to push the slab off yourself. Are you dizzy, nauseated, or having trouble breathing?”

“My leg... It hurts...”

“I know,” I said. “Pain means you are still conscious. Look at me. Breathe slowly.”

That was not comfort.

In extreme pain and fear, people unconsciously held their breath, then lost their judgment even faster.

“Can you feel anything inside your shoe?” I asked.

He stared at me.

“What?”

“Your toes. Can you move them?”

He shut his eyes, cold sweat covering his forehead.

“A little... ”

“Good.”

I pressed my hand above his knee, without touching the trapped area.

The bone might be broken, but we could not move him recklessly. The real danger was a second collapse—or everyone rushing in and turning an injury that might still be saved into something irreversible.

Harlan finally crouched down.

“What exactly are you doing?”

“Judging whether he can hold on.”

“The academy medic will be here any moment.”

“The medic will still need someone who has not been crushed further.”

Harlan clenched his jaw.

I looked up at the maintenance frame.

The most dangerous load-bearing point was not the slab, but the deformed bronze brace on the right. Once it snapped, all of the weight would come down.

“Crowe.”

Harlan clearly did not expect me to call him.

“What?”

“Are you strong?”

His face darkened.

“Stronger than you.”

“Good. When the rope comes, you and someone else hold the left side of the crossbeam. Do not lift it; just keep it from sliding any farther down.”

“Why not lift it straight off?”

“Because the right side has no support. If you lift, it will topple the other way.”

He looked at the crooked crossbeam, then at me.

This time, he did not argue.

The towing rope arrived quickly.

I had the girl who could tie knots loop it around a stone pillar in the arcade, then secure it to the left end of the crossbeam. Harlan and another senior student took hold of the rope and gradually pulled it tight at my instruction.

No one shouted a count.

No one rushed in like a hero.

Everyone waited.

Waited for the bent bronze brace to stop its faint groaning.

Waited for the crossbeam to be caught and stop sinking.

“Now,” I said.

Two academy guards finally arrived and, with several students, lifted one corner of the obsidian slab.

They did not throw it aside; they lifted it only high enough to pull Bennett free.

“Do not grab his leg,” I said at once. “Support his shoulders and waist. Pull him out flat.”

When Bennett was dragged from beneath the slab, he let out a scream he could not suppress.

I took the coat Theo handed me and, with him, used it to stabilize Bennett’s leg temporarily.

“Do not tie it too tight,” I said. “We cannot cut off his blood supply.”

Theo’s hands were shaking, but he did as I said.

Seconds later, the bronze brace finally snapped.

The crossbeam slammed downward, but the rope and stone pillar held it fast.

A chorus of gasps broke from the crowd.

If anyone had lifted the slab directly, or if everyone had crowded around and pulled at the frame in a panic, Bennett would not have been the only one lying beneath it now.

The academy medic and his assistants pushed through the crowd. When he saw Bennett’s already stabilized leg, he visibly paused.

“Who handled this?”

No one spoke.

Theo looked at me.

Harlan looked at me too.

I stood and brushed the dust from my hands.

“He needs to get to the infirmary quickly,” I said. “Also check for crush injuries beyond the fracture. He was trapped for at least two minutes.”

The medic stared at me, his expression complicated.

“Have you studied first aid?”

“I have read a little.”

That was not a lie.

At university, we had received basic first-aid training during orientation. The lab also had safety courses. I had never imagined the material everyone found troublesome would save someone’s life in another world.

The medic did not ask more.

He had his assistants carry Bennett away and left several people to cordon off the maintenance frame.

The square finally quieted again.

Harlan stood where he was, still looking displeased.

“Did you know the frame was going to collapse?” he asked.

“No.”

“Then how did you—”

“I only saw that it was already moving.”

I stepped past him, ready to leave.

The murmurs behind me did not disappear at once.

People lowered their voices, but not their eyes.

The ones who had just been discussing my rank were looking at me differently now.

I did not like that change.

They had not suddenly begun to respect Avery Vale.

They had only discovered that the worthless i***t ranked two hundred and seventeen might not be as worthless as they thought.

Theo followed me, seemingly full of questions. In the end, he only asked quietly, “When did you learn all that?”

“I learned it in a dream,” I said lightly.

As we crossed the slowly dispersing crowd, I looked back without thinking.

Lucien Veyre was still standing on the steps at the entrance to the main tower.

He had not approached or joined anyone’s discussion.

He was simply watching me quietly from halfway across the square.

Sunlight fell across his dark-blue uniform, making his face seem even colder. There was neither hostility nor approval in his gaze, only the look of someone reassessing something once unworthy of notice that had now introduced a variable.

I looked away first.

My name on the ranking wall still sat at two hundred and seventeen.

But I knew that from today onward, some people would no longer see it as a number they could simply step over.