Chapter 69: Ancient Entity, Class A
The note arrived on my desk before the morning session.
One page, formal header, the assessment division seal.
Re: Companion Registration: Anastasia
Following consultation with the provisional classification committee, the subject has been approved for academic participation at the A-Class level on a non-enrolled basis. Subject may attend A-Class sessions with full access to materials, practical sessions, and facilities. Assessment participation remains at the subject’s discretion.
Effective: Immediately.
I read it.
Then I looked at Anastasia in the chair by the window.
"You knew," I said.
"The meeting with the assessment division head," she said. "She indicated it was likely. She sent the formal note this morning."
"You did not mention it."
"I was not certain until the note arrived." She turned a page in her book. "I am certain now."
I looked at the note again.
Ancient Entity, Class A.
They had put it in the header like a track designation.
She arrived at the classroom four minutes after the session had started.
Hiratsuka looked up from her documents.
"Ashford," she said.
"I received approval this morning," Anastasia said.
"I know." Hiratsuka looked back at her documents. "Sit."
Anastasia looked at the room with the inventory attention she gave everything new, and then she walked to the third row and sat down beside me.
She did not ask whether the seat was taken.
She sat down, placed her book on the desk, and looked at the front of the room.
The student on my other side looked at her, then at me, then back at the front of the room.
Hiratsuka began the session.
Anastasia raised her hand.
Hiratsuka stopped.
The class did not stop. The class went quiet in the specific way of twenty-five people simultaneously deciding not to be the one to say anything.
"Yes," Hiratsuka said.
"I do not know whether companions are expected to answer attendance," Anastasia said.
A pause.
"...Present," she said.
Three students looked at their desks. Two looked at the ceiling. Reinhardt, from the back row, made a sound that was not quite a laugh and converted it, with significant effort, into a cough.
Hiratsuka looked at her for one second.
"Noted," she said, and returned to the curriculum.
Anastasia looked at the front of the room with the expression of someone who had done the correct thing and was satisfied with it.
Hiratsuka covered the third segment of the practical theory curriculum. Anastasia listened with the same careful attention she gave everything. After a while, I realized she wasn’t trying to understand the lecture. She was evaluating it.
After ten minutes she opened her book to a blank page and wrote something.
She slid it toward me without looking at me.
The classification framework for spirit-bound techniques is based on the Seventh Era taxonomy. It predates the current affinity system by four hundred years. Three of the categories she is describing do not exist in the original taxonomy. They were added during the reconstruction period and are not compatible with pre-reconstruction bonding methods.
I looked at what she had written.
I looked at the front of the room.
I wrote beneath it: Are the bonding methods still in use.
She wrote: Some of them. In regions where the reconstruction materials did not circulate widely.
I wrote: You know where.
She looked at what I had written. Then at the front of the room. Then she wrote: Later.
Hiratsuka asked a question at the front. Three students responded. She corrected one of them.
Anastasia wrote something else and slid it over.
She is good.
I wrote: She is.
Anastasia looked at the front of the room with the expression she wore when she was paying someone a compliment and expected them never to know it.
Violet never looked toward our desk.
She did not need to.
The notes moved only twice. That was enough.
She had been watching Amagi since the alchemy session. One strange detail could be dismissed. Several could not. The game adaptation. Knowledge drawn from pre-classification records. A resonance frequency quoted as though he had measured it himself.
Now his companion sat beside him with a classification no one else possessed, writing in a book that looked older than the academy.
She looked at the front of the room and filed it with everything else.
The session ended at the third bell.
Students gathered their materials. The room filled with the specific noise of twenty-five people transitioning from one context to another simultaneously.
Anastasia remained seated.
She finished writing something in her book, capped the pen, and then looked at me.
"The bond feeding," she said, quietly enough that it did not carry. "This evening. The alcove is available until the eighth bell."
"I know," I said.
"Also." She looked at the front of the room, where Hiratsuka was reviewing her documents. "The Seventh Era taxonomy. I can write out the original categories if you want to cross-reference with what the curriculum is using."
"Yes," I said.
She nodded and picked up her book and stood, and in the motion of standing she caught the edge of my notes with her elbow and sent two pages to the floor.
She looked at the pages on the floor.
She looked at me.
"My apologies," she said, which was the most formal thing she had said in my presence since the cave.
She picked them up, set them on the desk, and walked out.
I looked at the notes.
One page looked different from where I had left it. I looked at the next one.
Then the next.
I stopped.
The order I had written them in had been by session date. They were now organized by subject, cross-referenced by a small notation system in the corner of each page that I had not put there.
While walking out.
Tessira appeared at the doorway.
She looked at the desk.
"She reorganized your notes," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"While walking out."
"Apparently."
Tessira looked at the doorway Anastasia had gone through, then back at the desk.
"Is that her organizational system or yours," she said.
"Hers," I said.
"Is it better."
I looked at the notations.
"Yes," I said.
Tessira looked at the desk one more time.
"Alright," she said, and walked out.
***
Elsewhere.
A room with no windows.
Nine seats arranged in a circle. Seven occupied. They did not use each other’s names in this room. A name spoken aloud during an active working bound the speaker to the named. The numbered designation was protection, not rank.
"The Progenitor’s seal broke," Star One said. The voice carried no affect. "Three weeks ago. We confirmed the signature two days later."
"Impossible," Star Three said.
Star One placed a document on the table. The seal signature, rendered in mana-reactive ink, the specific resonance pattern that had not appeared in any detection record for two centuries.
Nobody spoke.
"We confirmed it twice," Star One said.
"Where is she now," Star Two said.
Star Five answered. "The floating academy. She arrived with a student. She has been issued academic access."
"The student," Star Two said. "Classification."
"Unknown origin. Sin carrier. Confirmed integration. Hell’s Fire in a color that does not appear in the taxonomy. He declined to demonstrate his third technique during the entrance assessment."
"How reliable," Star Four said.
"Three independent observations. The academy’s own records confirm the Sin signature. Our contact confirmed the rest."
"The question is what we do about it," Star Three said.
"We act at the assessment," Star Two said.
"The barrier," Star Six said. "The island sits at altitude. The defensive array has held for four hundred years."
"We enter through it," Star One said. "The groundwork has been in place for two years. The Moons approved the timeline before this development. The Progenitor’s emergence accelerates it."
"The sacrifice requirement," Star Two said.
"Five high blood nobles. Three at minimum. Five ensures sufficient mana volume."
"The intake class will have qualifying bloodlines," Star Three said.
"The dungeon assessment," Star Six said. "The mana concentration during performance will provide operational cover."
"Seven days," Star One confirmed.
"The carrier and the Progenitor," Star Three said. "Specifically."
Star One was quiet.
"Nothing yet. They do not know we exist. After the ritual, the Progenitor becomes first priority."
The two empty seats remained empty.
Nobody asked about them.
---
Mysterious Pov
Seven days until the ranking assessment.
Seven days until whatever the Stars were preparing.
At the academy above them, twenty-five students were reviewing bracket positions and training schedules and thinking about what the week ahead would ask of them.
They were all wrong about what the week ahead would ask.
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