The final week before the Battlemagic exam was a masterclass in psychological torture.

  ?The Academy, which had once felt like a strange but wondrous new home, suddenly felt like a prison. Everywhere I looked, I saw them.

  ?Eleste of House Nox made sure of it. She didn't just walk next to Demian; she paraded him. And the bullying the quiet, vicious, aristocratic cruelty began almost immediately.

  ?On Tuesday, I walked into the Grand Refectory for lunch, carrying my tray toward the corner table where Squad 13 usually sat. My heart did a painful stutter in my chest.

  ?Eleste was sitting in my chair.

  ?She was draped elegantly over the wood, her midnight-silk uniform completely out of place among the battered Academy tunics. Her obsidian hand was resting possessively on Demian’s arm.

  ?I stopped at the edge of the table, gripping my tray so tightly my knuckles turned white. Bram and Pip were sitting opposite them, looking incredibly uncomfortable.

  ?Eleste looked up, her crimson eyes flashing with wicked amusement.

  ?"Oh, look," she purred, loud enough for the neighboring tables of High Elves to hear. "The little stray has come looking for handouts."

  ?"That's my seat," I said, trying to keep my voice steady. I looked directly at Demian, desperate for a sliver of the boy who had sat across from me for a month. Desperate for the partner who used to pass me the salt before I even asked.

  ?Demian didn't look at me. He was staring blankly at his silver goblet, his face a perfect, unreadable mask of ice. He looked like a statue carved from marble.

  ?"Your seat?" Eleste laughed, a delicate, tinkling sound that grated against my eardrums. "Darling, you don't own anything here. You are a guest in our world. A charity case allowed to scurry beneath our boots. The kitchens are that way, human. I'm sure the scullery maids have some scraps for you."

  ?I swallowed the lump of humiliation in my throat. I looked at Demian again. Say something, I pleaded silently. Just look at me.

  ?"Demian," I whispered.

  ?For a fraction of a second, his jaw tightened. The muscles in his neck strained. But then, he slowly raised his head. His purple eyes were dead. They held absolutely no warmth, no recognition.

  ?"Sit somewhere else, Valerie," he said, his voice flat and perfectly even. "You are causing a scene."

  ?The words hit me like a physical blow. The tray in my hands trembled.

  ?Eleste smirked, leaning her head against his shoulder. "You heard the Prince. Run along, pet."

  ?I didn't argue. I turned on my heel and walked out of the Refectory, leaving my lunch behind.

  ?But Tuesday was only the beginning.

  ?On Thursday, the cruelty moved from the dining hall to the corridors. I was walking out of Advanced Arcane Geometry, carrying a heavy stack of theory books. Demian and Eleste were walking in the opposite direction, flanked by a small entourage of Drow and high-tier Demons who had quickly flocked to the General's daughter.

  ?I kept my head down, pressing myself against the stone wall to let them pass.

  ?As Eleste walked by, she didn't just brush my shoulder. She intentionally slammed her elbow into my arm with the force of a trained soldier.

  ?"Ah!"

  ?The heavy books slipped from my grasp, tumbling to the floor with a loud, chaotic clatter. Pages bent. Inkpots rolled across the cobblestones.

  ?The hallway went silent. The entourage stopped to watch.

  ?"Oops," Eleste cooed, looking down at the mess. She didn't look apologetic; she looked triumphant. "How incredibly clumsy. I suppose walking on two legs is still a new concept for your kind. Tell me, human, is it difficult pretending to be civilized when you clearly belong in the mud?"

  ?Her followers snickered.

  ?I dropped to my knees, my face burning with a fiery, humiliating blush, and started frantically gathering my scattered papers.

  ?I paused, looking up at Demian’s boots.

  ?Just a week ago, in this exact hallway, I had stumbled, and he had caught me with his shadow magic. Just a week ago, he had taken these very books from my hands because he said they were too heavy for me.

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  ?I waited. I held my breath, hoping praying that he would bend down. That he would help me pick up a single piece of parchment. That he would tell Eleste to stop.

  ?Demian looked down at me. His expression was completely blank. He looked at me the way one looks at a puddle in the street.

  ?Without a word, he stepped over my books.

  ?"Come, Eleste," he said coldly, his voice echoing in the quiet corridor. "We are going to be late for combat theory."

  ?He kept walking. He didn't look back.

  ?He throws his toys away, Eleste’s venomous voice echoed in my head as I knelt alone on the cold stone floor, gathering my ruined notes.

  ?The betrayal burned like acid in my chest. I had let my guard down. I had trusted a demon with my magic, and worse, with my heart. I had believed him when he said I made him feel normal.

  ?But I was a street rat before I was a magical prodigy. On the streets, when you get stabbed in the back, you don't lie down and bleed out. You don't cry over Princes who treat you like garbage to save their own political skin.

  ?You stand up, patch the wound, and learn how to punch harder.

  ?I had three days until the Arena doors opened for the Battlemagic exam. I was not going to be the broken, pitied human they wanted me to be. I was going to survive.

  The physical bullying the stolen chairs, the knocked-over books was humiliating. But it was the intellectual torture that truly broke me.

  ?On Friday morning, just three days before the exam, we sat in Professor Vector’s Advanced Arcane Theory class. This was my sanctuary. This was the room where I had corrected a fortress barrier equation. This was the room where Demian had first looked at me not as a ticking bomb, but as a genius.

  ?I took my seat in the third row. As usual, Demian sat two rows ahead of me, the silver crest of House Nox gleaming on the back of his immaculate uniform. And, as usual, Eleste sat directly beside him, her midnight-silk armor standing out against the sterile crystal walls of the classroom.

  ?Professor Vector, glowing with shifting geometric light, projected a complex, three-dimensional illusion of a collapsing magical core.

  ?"A Class-4 Volatility Event," Vector hummed, the sound vibrating in our teeth. "The mana is spiraling. It will detonate in ten seconds. How do we contain it? Miss de Valois?"

  ?I straightened up. I knew this. I didn't need to cast a spell to know the math.

  ?"A reductive grounding loop," I answered confidently, ignoring the stares of the high-born students around me. "If you invert the intake channels and anchor them to the earth, the core safely bleeds out its excess energy without an explosion. It’s a flawless stabilization."

  ?I instinctively looked at the back of Demian’s head. Just a few weeks ago, he had watched me solve an equation exactly like this, his purple eyes wide with silent admiration.

  ?But Demian didn't turn around.

  ?Instead, a delicate, venomous laugh echoed through the classroom.

  ?Eleste covered her mouth with a perfectly manicured obsidian hand, her shoulders shaking with mock amusement.

  ?"Oh, Professor," Eleste purred, her crimson eyes gleaming as she looked back over her shoulder at me. "Do we truly grade on such... provincial standards? A grounding loop? How beautifully primitive."

  ?The classroom fell dead silent. Professor Vector’s light shifted to a cautious yellow. "Princess Eleste. Do you have an alternative?"

  ?"Of course," she said, standing up smoothly. She didn't look at the board; she looked directly at me. "A grounding loop is what a peasant does when they are afraid of the fire. They hide from it. They bury it in the dirt."

  ?She walked gracefully to the center of the room.

  ?"In the Night Court," Eleste continued, her voice cold and commanding, "we do not bleed out power. We dominate it. You apply a void-compression matrix. You crush the collapsing core under absolute, overwhelming gravity until it submits and solidifies into a usable mana-crystal. Why reduce a weapon when you can forge one?"

  ?"A void-compression matrix requires the strength of an Arch-Mage," I argued, my face burning. "It's a theoretical brute-force tactic. It's inefficient. My way saves lives without the risk of a secondary blast."

  ?"Your way," Eleste sneered, stepping closer to my desk, "is the philosophy of a coward. It is the mindset of a weak, squishy little human who knows she doesn't have the bloodline to control real power."

  ?She turned her back on me and walked over to Demian. She placed a hand lightly on his shoulder, letting her fingers trail down his collar.

  ?"Isn't that right, Demian darling?" she cooed, her voice echoing in the painfully quiet room. "Tell the human. Tell her the difference between those who survive, and those who rule. Which theory is superior?"

  ?My heart stopped.

  ?I stared at Demian’s profile. Don't do it, I begged him in my mind. You know my math is right. You know it. Please, Demian. Not this.

  ?Demian sat perfectly still. The muscles in his jaw ticked. For a long, agonizing moment, the silence stretched.

  ?Then, slowly, he turned his head.

  ?He didn't look at my eyes. He looked at the textbook sitting on my desk. His face was an impenetrable fortress of ice. The Prince of Darkness, performing for his court.

  ?"The Princess is correct," Demian said.

  ?His voice was soft, but in the quiet room, it sounded like a judge dropping a gavel.

  ?"A grounding loop is a poor man's defense," he continued, his tone stripped of all the warmth and respect he had shown me in the arena. "It is the desperate tactic of a lesser mage. True power requires suppression. The human approach is... inadequate."

  ?A collective snicker rippled through the Elven and Drow students.

  ?I felt the blood drain from my face. It felt as though he had reached into my chest and crushed my lungs. He hadn't just insulted my magic; he had invalidated my mind. He had taken the one thing I was truly proud of, the one thing we had bonded over, and crushed it under his boot just to appease Eleste.

  ?Eleste beamed, a terrifying, victorious smile. "Thank you, Demian. As always, your intellect is as flawless as your lineage."

  ?She returned to her seat, looking at me like I was a stain she had successfully scrubbed from the floor.

  ?I didn't hear a single word Professor Vector said for the rest of the hour. I just sat there, staring blankly at my parchment, my quill trembling in my hand.

  ?When the bell finally tolled, Demian and Eleste were the first to leave, her arm looped tightly through his. He never looked back.

  ?I stayed in my seat until the room was completely empty. I packed my bag slowly, mechanically. The sanctuary of the classroom was gone. The library was tainted. The arena was a graveyard of broken promises.

  ?There was nowhere left to hide.

  ?And that was the exact moment the despair finally burned away, leaving behind a cold, hard ember of pure spite.