The Academy's Genius Mage

In the observation room above the grounds, the noise of the tournament was a distant thing — muffled footsteps, the occasional crack of a spell somewhere in the forest, the ambient hum of several hundred cadets doing something simultaneously. Up here it was quiet. Controlled.

A wide floating screen hovered in front of Vance, its surface cycling through different feeds from the examination — pairs fighting, pairs running, pairs making decisions under pressure that would matter later. His eyes had settled on one feed in particular and stayed there.

He watched it for a moment without speaking.

Then he exhaled slowly. "You weren’t exaggerating," he said, his voice low but carrying the specific weight of someone revising an assessment they thought was already complete. "That first-year kid. He’s not someone we can afford to overlook."

Behind him, Beatrice rolled her shoulders — a casual, unhurried movement that carried far more ease than the situation probably warranted. Something cracked. She stepped forward just enough to glance at the screen herself.

"I told you that already," she said.

The faint smile on her lips was the kind that came from watching something unfold exactly as you expected it to, which was its own particular satisfaction. Her eyes moved over the feed — Lucas, the sphere, the way the whole manipulation had assembled itself from nothing — and the smile settled.

"For a first-year with no element, he’s already operating at a level most don’t reach until much later." She tilted her head slightly, studying. "Honestly... he’s more interesting than Sylvia right now. And that’s saying something."

Vance didn’t respond immediately. His attention stayed on the screen.

"His instincts are sharp," he said after a moment. "He reads situations quickly. Adapts even faster. That kind of thinking—" his gaze hardened by a fraction, "—paired with real power later on..." He left the rest of it in the air.

Beatrice’s smile widened just slightly.

"Exactly," she said. "And he doesn’t even realize it yet."

The moment Sylvia released the sphere it moved like it had been waiting for permission.

It surged forward — the golden core spinning rapidly, surface tightening and expanding in the same breath, arcs of lightning wrapping around it in violent spirals that didn’t clash with the gold but fed into it, the two energies finding each other and building on what the other brought. Louder. Brighter. More alive with every meter it crossed.

By the time it reached the four cadets, it had already started becoming something else.

"What the—"

They didn’t finish.

The sphere burst outward mid-air, expanding into a massive rotating construct that swallowed the space around it — golden light spinning like a vortex while lightning surged across its surface, striking inward and outward in relentless bursts, the ground beneath trembling as the pull of it dragged all four cadets into its radius before any of them could think about moving.

For a moment their figures were visible inside, struggling against the current, trying to find footing in something that had none.

Then the light intensified.

The rotation accelerated.

And what had been four people disappeared into the storm.

A final crack of lightning split through the sphere before it collapsed inward — shrinking fast, smaller and smaller until nothing remained but scattered sparks dissolving quietly into the air.

Silence.

Sylvia lowered her hand. Her breathing was steady. She flexed her fingers once, feeling the aftereffect move through them, and looked at the space where it had all just been.

"That worked better than expected," she said quietly, to herself mostly. She looked at her palm, the faint residual glow already fading. The satisfied smile that arrived was genuine and small. "I’m definitely having him teach me how to do that properly. Mixing it with lightning like that..." She shook her head slightly. "Too useful to leave alone."

She turned and moved.

She found him a few minutes later.

Lucas sat on a thick branch with one leg hanging loosely off the side, the other bent, both hemispheres secured carefully beside him. The moment he spotted her coming through the trees his expression shifted into that particular combination of relief and irritation that he seemed to reserve specifically for her.

"Well," he said, voice dry, "look who finally decided to show up. You really took your time, Lady Sylvia."

She stopped below the branch and looked up at him with the calm expression of someone who is not going to be rushed by anyone’s timeline but their own. "Oh?" she replied, tilting her head just slightly. "If we’d switched places, would you have handled four opponents at once while giving me time to run off with both hemispheres?" A small pause. "Dear boyfriend?"

Lucas twitched. "So this is your new hobby. Using that word whenever you want to win an argument."

"I didn’t say anything about winning," Sylvia said. "You’re the one keeping score."

"You literally just—"

"I said you handled the hemispheres." She blinked once, the picture of innocence. "You came to the rest of that on your own."

His eye did something involuntary.

"You’re unbelievable," he said.

She smiled. The small pleased kind, fingers resting near her lips like she was holding something back.

Lucas held it together for approximately three more seconds, then gave up entirely and let out a breath, reaching over for the sphere they’d secured. He lifted it slightly, looked at her properly.

"Anyway," he said, the irritation folding itself away as a small grin came through, "we got it."

Sylvia looked at the sphere in his hands and something in her expression did what it did sometimes — the composure softening for just a moment, something quieter and more real sitting under the surface of it. "Yeah," she said. "We did."

The moment held for exactly as long as it could before her eyes shifted automatically to the treeline, scanning, and her posture straightened back into focus. "But this isn’t over. Having what we need just makes us a bigger target now. Until we’re across the boundary, this doesn’t mean anything yet." She looked back at him. "Don’t relax."

Lucas opened his mouth—

Sylvia’s head snapped sideways.

No hesitation, no buildup — her arm was already moving before the thought finished, lightning tearing through the air with a sharp crack, precise and immediate, striking mid-air exactly where two blurred shapes had been closing in on Lucas from behind.

The impact stopped them cold. Their bodies jerked under the current, momentum breaking apart, and they dropped hard to the forest floor.

Lucas stared at the two figures now on the ground.

"...Them again?"

Tool 1 and Tool 2 groaned faintly against the dirt.

Sylvia stepped forward without any particular urgency, lightning already coiling from her fingers into tight bindings that snapped around their arms and legs before either of them had fully registered what had happened. She looked down at them with an expression that was less angry than it was tired in the specific way of someone who expected better and has been proven wrong.

"Unbelievable," she said, flat. "Some people genuinely don’t learn."

The bindings tightened once.

Lucas let out a low whistle, the sphere still held carefully in his arms as he looked between Sylvia and the immobilized pair. "That was fast," he said. "I didn’t even sense them."

Sylvia glanced back at him briefly. "You were focused on holding that properly," she said. "Someone had to stay aware."

Lucas looked down at the sphere in his arms. Back at her.

"...Fair," he said.

She turned fully toward the forest ahead, already reading the path. "We’ve pushed our luck long enough. Every minute we stay is another chance for someone to try something." She stepped forward. "Let’s go."