High above the inner courtyard, in the top floor of the central black tower, Archmage Gallagher Vargas poured amber liquor into a dirty glass. The sharp smell of alcohol filled the messy office.

On his desk, a monitoring crystal linked to the Gauntlet of Will suddenly flared bright red. Then, with a sharp ping, it split perfectly in half, the light dying instantly.

Gallagher stopped pouring. The liquor overflowed, spilling over his knuckles and pooling on the wooden desk.

His cloudy, bloodshot eyes snapped to the broken crystal. The lazy posture vanished.

The heavy oak door to his office swung open. Eleonora Frye, his second-in-command, walked in. Her usually stoic face was pale.

"The Gauntlet's energy reserves," Eleonora said, her voice shaking slightly. "They just flatlined. Completely drained."

Gallagher didn't answer. He dropped the bottle on the desk and walked to the massive floor-to-ceiling window. He looked down at the silver doors of the Gauntlet exit far below.

Eleonora looked down at the clipboard in her hands. "The transit time... it was exactly ten breaths."

Gallagher spun around. His boots scraped hard against the stone floor.

Ten breaths. That didn't just break logic. It tied the all-time record set by Julian Savage, the Order's most terrifying prodigy.

"Give me the file," Gallagher demanded, holding out his hand.

Eleonora handed him the crumpled transfer writ Pip had sent up via the pneumatic tubes.

Gallagher stared at the name. Alina Padilla. He looked at the classification. Prismatic Dud.

A slow, dangerous smile spread across Gallagher's scarred face. He let out a low chuckle.

"Those old fools at Silvercrest," Gallagher muttered, tapping the paper. "They had a monster living in their house and they thought it was a stray dog."

"Should I have the Enforcers escort her to the Inner Ring?" Eleonora asked, stepping forward. "A talent like this needs immediate protection and resources."

Gallagher's smile vanished. His eyes turned cold and calculating.

"No."

He walked back to his desk, grabbed a quill, and dipped it in red ink. He crossed out the section labeled 'Inner Ring Assignment' with a violent slash.

In thick, heavy letters, he wrote: Menial Ward.

Eleonora gasped. "Archmage, you can't be serious. Putting a record-breaking prodigy in the Menial Ward? They scrub floors and clean beast pens. The bullying there is lethal."

"If she breaks from a few peasants throwing mud, she isn't the blade I need," Gallagher said coldly. He stamped the paper with his official seal. "Send it down."

Down in the courtyard, Alina stood calmly in front of the silver doors.

A group of inner disciples stared at her like she was a ghost.

A young disciple with a clipboard stepped forward, his hands shaking so hard the paper rattled. "N-name?"

"Alina Padilla," she said. Her voice was steady, giving away absolutely nothing.

A mechanical brass bird dropped from the sky, landing heavily on the disciple's table. It spat a rolled-up piece of paper from its beak.

The disciple unrolled it. He saw the Archmage's red seal. He read the assignment.

The fear in his eyes instantly evaporated, replaced by deep confusion, and then, a mocking smirk.

"Well, Padilla," the disciple said loudly, making sure the crowd heard. "Looks like you're assigned to the Menial Ward."

The courtyard erupted into whispers.

"Menial Ward? But she survived the Gauntlet."

"The Gauntlet must have malfunctioned. Look at her, she doesn't even have a wand."

"Bullshit," another apprentice scoffed, wiping down a table. "She's a Prismatic Dud. The Padillas must have given her some priceless, illegal family artifact to survive in there. The Archmage probably saw right through her pathetic trick and threw her in the Menial Ward out of sheer disgust."

Alina heard the insults. Her heart rate didn't spike. Her face remained a perfect, blank mask.

She understood exactly what was happening. Gallagher Vargas was a paranoid lunatic. He was testing her.

She didn't scream about injustice. She didn't demand to see the Archmage.

She reached out, took the assignment paper from the smirking disciple, and looked at him.

"Which way?" Alina asked.

The disciple's smirk faltered. Her extreme calm made him incredibly uncomfortable. He pointed a shaking finger toward a dark, descending staircase in the corner of the courtyard.

Alina adjusted the strap of her bag and walked toward the stairs.

Up in the tower, Gallagher watched her through a spyglass spell. He saw her walk away without a single complaint.

He threw his head back and let out a booming laugh. He slammed his hand on the window frame.

"She didn't even blink!" Gallagher shouted, turning to Eleonora. "She knows I'm watching. She knows it's a game, and she just called my bluff. I love her already."

Eleonora looked at the Archmage, then back out the window. A deep sense of dread settled in her stomach.

Alina disappeared into the shadows of the staircase, heading straight into the worst hellhole in Aethelgard.

The stone staircase spiraled downward into the earth.

With every step Alina took, the air grew colder and thicker. The smell of ozone and clean magic faded, replaced by the heavy stench of rotting alchemy ingredients, rust, and unwashed bodies.

In the shadows near the ceiling, tiny red eyes blinked. Shadow sprites. The Order's invisible spy network. Alina felt their gaze on her skin, but she didn't look up.

Back in the high tower, Gallagher sat behind his desk, his fingers drumming a rapid, chaotic beat on the wood.

"Eleonora," he barked. "Initiate a level-one background check on the Padilla family. I want to know exactly what Silvercrest has been hiding."

Eleonora nodded sharply and left the room.

Meanwhile, the rumor mill of Aethelgard was already spinning out of control.

In the alchemy labs on the third floor, an apprentice dropped a vial of sulfur. "Did you hear? The new girl broke Julian's record!"

The lie spread faster than fire. It made sense to them. It protected their egos. A noble cheating was far more believable than a supposed failure outperforming their greatest prodigies.

Alina reached the bottom of the stairs. She walked down a damp, dimly lit corridor.

Two men in rough grey tunics were leaning against the wall, smoking foul-smelling pipes.

"Look at the princess," the taller one sneered as Alina walked by. "Think her fancy artifact is gonna save her when Tegan gets ahold of her?"

"Tegan's gonna eat her alive," the other laughed.

Alina kept her eyes forward. The insults washed over her like water over a stone. In her past life, she had been called a traitor, a whore, a demon. These petty jabs were nothing.

Besides, the rumors were the perfect cover. Let them think she was a cheating, powerless noble. It gave her the ultimate camouflage.

She stopped walking for a fraction of a second. She flexed her fingers.

The massive pool of mana she had absorbed in the Gauntlet sat heavy and stable in her core. It felt like a loaded gun tucked into her waistband.

She pushed open the rusted iron gate at the end of the hall. The hinges screamed.

The Menial Ward courtyard was a massive, muddy pit. Dozens of people in grey rags were scrubbing massive, blood-stained beast organs in wooden tubs or sorting piles of rotting herbs.

The moment the gate screeched, all movement stopped.

Every head turned to look at Alina. Her clean black clothes and straight posture made her stick out like a sore thumb. The air instantly grew thick with hostility.

A massive, thick-necked man carrying a bucket of filthy scrub water sneered. He purposefully swung the bucket hard, sending a wave of black, muddy water splashing directly toward Alina's boots.

Alina didn't jump back.

She shifted her weight to her toes and glided backward exactly half an inch. The movement was so smooth it defied gravity.

The muddy water splashed against the stone, missing the tip of her boot by a millimeter.

The thick-necked man blinked, confused. He opened his mouth to yell at her.

"Get back to work! If the liver vats aren't clean by sundown, nobody eats!" a shrill voice cut through the courtyard.

The crowd parted instantly.

Tegan McCoy, the Quartermaster of the Menial Ward, marched forward. She held a clean white handkerchief over her nose. Her eyes locked onto Alina, practically vibrating with disgust at the sight of Alina's clean clothes.

Alina stood perfectly still. She pulled the assignment paper from her pocket and held it out.

Tegan didn't take it.

Instead, Tegan slapped Alina's hand away. The paper fluttered to the ground, landing in the puddle of muddy water. Tegan's eyes narrowed into slits. The girl's utter lack of fear was not just defiance; it was a direct insult. It made the other workers watch, wait, holding their breath. She had to crush this arrogance, and crush it right now. Tegan stepped forward and planted her heavy leather boot directly on top of the paper, grinding it into the mud.

"I don't care what mansion you crawled out of," Tegan sneered, leaning in close so Alina could smell her sour breath. "Down here, you are a maggot. And you will scrub the floors until your hands bleed."

The courtyard erupted into cruel laughter. They were waiting for the noble girl to cry.

Alina looked down at the muddy boot on her paper.

She didn't yell. She didn't bend down to pick it up.

She slowly raised her head. She locked eyes with Tegan.

Her expression was completely dead. Her eyes were black, freezing voids.

The laughter in the courtyard slowly died out.

Tegan McCoy's heart did a strange, violent stutter in her chest.

The look in Alina's eyes wasn't fear. It wasn't even anger. It was the look a butcher gives a piece of meat before bringing down the cleaver.

Tegan felt a cold sweat break out on the back of her neck. She hated the feeling. She hated this girl for making her feel it.

Tegan puffed out her chest, raising her voice to a shrill scream. "You think you can stare me down? Your orientation is canceled. Your dinner rations are canceled."

Tegan spun around and pointed a stubby finger toward the far corner of the courtyard.

"That is your room," Tegan spat.

It was a dilapidated wooden shed. The door was hanging off its hinges. Inside, it was piled high with rotting hay and visibly crawling with rats.

Several workers gasped. That shed was used for storing diseased animal corpses before incineration. It was a death sentence of infection.

Tegan crossed her arms, a triumphant smirk returning to her face. "Go on. Get comfortable."

She waited for Alina to break. To scream about her rights. To beg for a real bed.

Alina looked at the shed. Then she looked at the center of the courtyard.

Right in the middle of the mud and filth was a massive, flat slab of blue stone. It was exposed to the freezing wind dropping down from the open ceiling grate above.

Alina walked past Tegan. She didn't say a single word.

She walked to the center of the courtyard. She dropped her canvas bag onto the freezing blue stone.

Then, in front of fifty staring people, Alina lay down on the stone.

She used her bag as a pillow. She crossed her hands over her stomach. She closed her eyes. Her breathing slowed to a steady, rhythmic pace.

The courtyard went dead silent. The only sound was the wind howling through the grate.

Tegan's face turned a violent shade of purple. This was worse than a tantrum. This was absolute, blatant defiance. Alina was treating Tegan like she didn't even exist.

"Get up!" Tegan shrieked, marching toward the stone. "Stop playing dead for sympathy, you little bitch!"

Alina didn't move a muscle. Her chest rose and fell evenly.

A desperate-looking worker, eager to earn Tegan's favor, grabbed a wooden broom. He ran forward and thrust the handle toward Alina's shoulder to jab her awake.

The wood never touched her clothes.

A fraction of a second before impact, an invisible wave of repulsion rippled outward from her body. The force wasn't a spell she cast, but rather an unconscious, violent leakage of the chaotic arcane energy she had just swallowed in the Gauntlet of Will, which had yet to be fully digested. The broom handle slammed into this kinetic barrier and instantly shattered into a hundred jagged splinters with a deafening crack.

The worker screamed. He dropped the broken stick, clutching his hands. His palms were covered in severe frostbite burns. He scrambled backward, looking at Alina like she was a demon.

Tegan froze in her tracks. She stared at the shattered ice on the ground. She didn't dare take another step.

"Get back to work!" Tegan screamed at the crowd, her voice cracking with panic. "Leave her! Let her freeze to death!"

The sun set. The temperature plummeted below freezing.

The workers huddled in their cramped, warm barracks, peering out the dirty windows into the dark courtyard.

Alina remained on the stone. Frost began to form on her black jacket and her eyelashes.

But inside her body, the Primordial Conduit was running a perfect internal loop. The freezing external pressure forced her mana to circulate faster, generating a deep, core heat that protected her organs while simultaneously refining her newly expanded magic reserves.

She wasn't suffering. She was training.

High up in the central tower, Gallagher Vargas stood by his window, holding a spyglass spell over his eye.

His hand slowly lowered. The amused smile was gone from his face.

He had expected her to fight. He had expected her to blow up the shed or break Tegan's arm.

Instead, she chose the most agonizing, silent form of psychological warfare. She was using her own body to call his bluff, proving she had a level of discipline that bordered on psychotic.

"She's a soldier," Gallagher whispered to the empty room.

Down in the courtyard, midnight passed.

Tegan tossed and turned in her bed, her stomach tied in knots. She couldn't shake the feeling that she had just locked herself in a cage with a predator.

On the stone, Alina opened her eyes. The twin purple moons of Aethelgard reflected in her dark pupils.

The corners of her mouth twitched up into a microscopic smile.

The trap was set. Now, she just had to wait for it to snap shut.