The morning sun broke over Aethelgard with crisp, autumn clarity, lighting up the shattered quartz dome of the Grand Colosseum where repair cranes were already at work clearing the debris from the championship match. In Workshop Bay 12, the smell of fresh chicory coffee and toasted ration bread drifted from Toby’s electric skillet. It mixed with the clean scents of gun solvent, saddle soap, and leather conditioner.
Arthur Vance sat at the steel workbench, step by step entering the squad’s final body metrics into his brass-bound cold and exact journal. Beside his elbow lay the morning edition of the Imperial Herald, its front page dominated by screaming headlines. APEXBIO BOARD SUSPENDED // HIGH Trial ORDERS ASSET FREEZE // COMMONER ACADEMY TERROR REIGN ENDED.
Arthur turned his attention back to his ledger, his fountain pen scratching across the heavy cotton parchment. The growth across the championship tournament had been extraordinary:
Grimm had solidified his Mid-Silver B-Rank status at thirty-two percent purity, his black glass bone-armor dense enough to deflect high-caliber fire-powder projectiles with zero micro-fracturing. Pip had crossed thirty percent purity, mastering hypersonic sky fusion and high-sky star-fire lancing. Titus stood as a rock-steady land-wide pillar at twenty-eight percent purity, capable of grounding multi-megajoule heat discharges directly into earth-shaking bedrock.
