THE DISCARDED LUNA‘S REVENGE

Chapter Eight

LYRA’S POV

Monday morning arrived with the crisp, sterile precision of a luxury watch.

The ridge was bathed in an unblemished, golden sunlight that didn’t seem to carry any actual heat—just a cold, expensive glow that illuminated the flawless limestone arches of Garrison Heights Academy. As I stepped off the transit bus at the crest of the mountain, the contrast between where I had spent my weekend and where I was standing now hit me like a physical barrier. Down in the valley, the air smelled of stale grease, frying onions, and the constant, metallic sigh of the rail yards. Up here, it smelled faintly of freshly cut lawns, expensive cedar mulch, and the subtle, collective perfume of multi-generational wealth.

I adjusted the heavy straps of my canvas backpack, my shoulders instantly tightening under the bulky, boxy weight of my level-four uniform. I had ironed the oversized blazer twice the night before, trying to force the stiff, state-allocated material into a shape that didn't scream "charity case," but it was a losing battle. As I walked through the grand wrought-iron gates, the culture shock settled deep into my bones.

In Chicago, my former high school had been a loud, chaotic, democratic melting pot. It was a place built of red brick, scuffed linoleum, and slamming locker doors where everyone ran on the same frantic energy. The teachers there were exhausted, overworked authority figures who commanded respect simply because they were the only ones keeping the roof from falling in. If you talked back, you went to detention. If you didn't do your homework, you failed. The rules were simple, flat, and applied to everyone equally, regardless of whether your father was a shift mechanic or a city clerk.

Garrison Heights didn't have rules; it had an ecosystem.

The students didn't walk through the quad; they drifted in distinct, localized orbits. I stood near the marble fountain in the central courtyard, my eyes quietly tracking the social geography of the student body. It took less than five minutes to realize that the school wasn't divided by academic tracks or athletic interests. It was divided by class registries.

Near the eastern arcade, a group of lower-class scholarship students—the ones whose uniforms bore the subtle, standardized stitching of the lower-tier stipends were huddled together like sheep in a storm. They moved with a frantic, twitching vigilance. I watched a boy with a level-three tag accidentally bump into a taller senior whose blazer bore a heavy, gold-threaded family crest on the pocket.

The reaction was instantaneous and sickening. The scholarship student didn't just apologize; he visibly shrunk. His shoulders caved inward, his chin dropping toward his chest in a submissive, frantic gesture that looked less like a modern student and more like a servant pleading for mercy. He actually bowed his head, his hands flat against his thighs, muttering a string of desperate excuses while the legacy student didn't even look at him. The elite senior simply brushed his sleeve as if he had been touched by a stray particle of soot and kept walking, his friends laughing softly at the display.

A hot, prickly wave of anger flushed through my chest. It upset me down to my core—not because the legacy student was arrogant, but because the valley kids were letting them do it. They were participating in their own degradation, accepting the invisible hierarchy as if it were a law of gravity. In Chicago, if a boy treated another student like that, he would have been met with a clenched fist or a sharp piece of midwestern mind-your-own-business. Here, the oppression was so deeply institutionalized that the victims were doing the enforcement for their masters.

My first period was Advanced Macroeconomics, located in the west wing of the rotunda. The classroom looked more like a corporate boardroom than an instructional space. The desks were arranged in a sweeping, tiered amphitheater of polished dark mahogany, each equipped with an integrated digital terminal and a personalized leather chair.

I deliberately chose a seat in the absolute highest row, farthest from the instructor's podium, tucking my bulky sleeves under the edge of the wood. I wanted the panoramic view. I needed to see how the room settled.

The bell hadn't even rung when the atmosphere in the room shifted, the ambient chatter dropping by half an octave.

Gabriel Jakes walked through the double doors.

He wasn't wearing his blazer today; his uniform sweater was a deep, charcoal cashmere, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows to reveal the lean, athletic cords of his forearms. He didn't look around the room because he didn't need to; he already owned the space. Walking half a step behind him was Benny, her short dark hair neatly brushed, her expression completely detached as she carried a sleek, unbranded leather folio.

Gabriel didn't look toward the back row. He descended the tiered steps with a casual, fluid laziness and took a center seat in the front row, directly opposite the teacher’s desk. Benny slid into the seat immediately to his left, her movements silent and practiced.

The instructor, Mr. Harrison—a sharp-nosed man with silver hair and a tailored suit that probably cost two of my mother's monthly laundry budgets, cleared his throat and stood up. In Chicago, the moment a teacher stood, the room went dead silent out of survival instinct. Here, the students barely breathed.

"Good morning, class," Mr. Harrison said, his voice carrying that smooth, deferential tone that immediately set my teeth on edge. He wasn't addressing a room of subordinates; he was addressing a room of future employers. "We will begin our trimester overview by analyzing the fiscal boundaries of regional trade infrastructure. If you open your local terminals to page fourteen…"

"Harrison," a low, gravelly voice interrupted.

The room went completely still. It was Gabriel. He hadn't raised his hand. He hadn't even sat up straight; he was leaning back in his leather chair, one long leg crossed over the other, his amber eyes fixed lazily on the digital whiteboard.

Mr. Harrison stopped mid-sentence. He didn't scowl. He didn't reach for a detention slip. Instead, a tight, accommodating smile appeared on his face, his shoulders dropping a fraction of an inch. "Yes, Gabriel? Is there a discrepancy in the syllabus?"

"The entire premise of chapter one is an administrative joke," Gabriel drawled, his voice carrying effortlessly through the vaulted acoustics of the room. He didn't look at the teacher; he just tapped a single finger against his mahogany desk. "Your text suggests that public municipal subsidies are the primary drivers of infrastructure growth. That’s an outdated narrative. My father’s firm reallocated forty percent of its private tech holdings into commercial logistics last quarter, and the volume doubled without a single state dollar. The book is irrelevant. Change the case study."

A ripple of sycophantic snickers broke out across the middle tiers. Several legacy students laughed openly, nodding along with Gabriel’s assessment as if he had just delivered a brilliant comedic monologue. They weren't just agreeing with his economic theory; they were worshiping his authority to dictate the parameters of the lesson.

Mr. Harrison blinked, his silver eyebrows twitching slightly, but he didn't offer a single word of correction. He simply tapped his digital terminal, his fingers moving quickly. "An excellent point, Gabriel. The Jakes Group’s recent restructuring does provide a much more... dynamic model for modern corporate efficiency. We will bypass the standard text and focus on the private corporate manifests for the remainder of the week."

I watched the exchange from my high perch, a cold, sour weight settling into my stomach. In Chicago, if a student had spoken to a teacher with that level of casual disrespect, they would have been removed from the room by security before they could finish their sentence. But at Garrison Heights, the standard rules of academic authority didn't apply. The teacher wasn't the master of the classroom; he was an employee of the ecosystem. The legacy students were the true metrics of power, and the administration was simply there to facilitate their convenience.

Benny didn't laugh with the rest of them. She sat entirely still, her gray eyes fixed on her screen, her fingers moving in a steady, rhythmic pattern across her keys as if she were logging a transaction that had already been concluded.

When the final bell rang to dismiss the class, I instinctively went to slide my notebook into my backpack, but a sudden, eerie stillness in the room made me freeze.

Nobody in the upper rows was moving.

I looked down the tiered amphitheater. The scholarship students, scattered along the back and periphery, were sitting like statues, their hands flat on their mahogany desks. None of them zipped their bags. None of them stood up. Across the room, it was an unspoken, unwritten law: the lower-class students did not dare to leave the classroom until the legacy students had completely cleared out. To stand up and block the aisle, to force a legacy student to wait behind a valley stipend jacket, was treated as an unforgivable transgression.

Gabriel rose at a leisurely pace, tossing his leather folio to Benny, who caught it without a word. He stood in the center aisle, laughing softly at a comment Julian made as a small group of high-class seniors gathered around him. They moved toward the double doors with agonizing slowness, taking their time, adjusting their blazers, and treating the entire hallway entrance like their private lounge.

Only when the heavy oak doors finally swung shut behind the last legacy student did a collective, trembling sigh pass through the upper rows. The scholarship students immediately scrambled, the frantic zipping of cheap zippers and the rustle of papers filling the room as everyone rushed to make it to their next period before the final hall warning.

By the time the midday bell rang, my head was throbbing from the sheer cognitive load of keeping my composure. The entire morning had been a repetitive demonstration of the school’s underlying law: the rich spoke, the teachers accommodated, and the low-class students hovered at the edges of the corridors like ghosts.

I needed space. I needed to get away from the suffocating, perfumed air of the classroom wings, so I followed the digital map on my phone toward the central student refectory—the cafeteria.

If the classrooms looked like boardrooms, the cafeteria looked like a grand cathedral. The ceiling rose three stories high, supported by massive timber beams and lined with stained-glass clerestory windows that cast long, geometric shadows across the hundreds of white-clothed tables below. A massive, multi-tiered serving gallery occupied the back wall, staffed by chefs in pristine white coats who were preparing custom artisanal plates for the students.

I walked down the grand marble staircase, my canvas bag feeling heavier with every step. The room was loud, a massive roar of voices and silverware that felt slightly more normal than the classrooms, but the social geography was exactly the same. The center tables—the ones directly beneath the light of the grand windows were occupied by the high-class cliques, their laughter booming toward the rafters. The scholarship students were relegated to the long, narrow counters along the dark wood paneling of the perimeter walls.

As I approached the entrance of the main gallery to find a quiet corner where I could eat the simple turkey sandwich my mother had packed for me, my eyes brushed past a large, decorative shield mounted on the limestone pillar near the queue.

It was an intricate, dark iron emblem, deeply carved into the stone itself. The symbol was stylized and aggressive—a heavy, jagged representation of a thick clump of fur or a wolf’s hide, surrounded by three interlocking silver bands. It looked ancient, like an old European registry mark or a secret society crest from the school's founding century.

I paused for a fraction of a second, my eyes lingering on the sharp lines of the carved fur symbol, before the sudden shift in the crowd pushed me forward. I shook my head, brushing the detail off as completely irrelevant historical vanity, and walked toward a vacant stool hidden behind a large copper pillar at the far edge of the room.