Chapter 39: Entrance Exam (1)

There are names that echo through time, whispered in the pages of history books, etched into the annals of glory and infamy alike.

Twilight Crown Academy is one of them.

Perched atop the ancient cliffs of Aegis Reach, where the wind carries the scent of magic and salt from the distant sea, the Academy predates most standing nations.

It was not built in a time of peace, but during the crucible of war-the War of Liberation, when the tyrant kings were cast down and the First Pact of Sovereignty was signed in dragonblood and dwarven steel.

Twilight Crown was meant to be more than just a place of learning.

It was to be a promise, a crucible for the next generation of heroes, scholars, protectors, and peacemakers.

And for centuries, it lived up to that dream.

The greatest minds, the fiercest warriors, the most gifted enchanters and innovators, all passed through its marbled halls.

Names like Cassandra Velmont, who discovered the first cure for mana poisoning.

Edric Rhun, who charted the Northern Spire Wastes.

Liora Dane, whose sculptures still speak with their own voices centuries later.

Even High Commander Vale, the first shieldbearer of the Alliance of Nations, trained in the Academy’s hallowed dueling grounds.

The Academy didn’t just educate, it forged.

It stood strong even during the Great Ley Line Crisis, when entire regions of the continent were left hollowed and unstable by wild mana storms.

While cities crumbled and natural mana itself became poison, the Academy was a sanctuary of research, stabilization, and recovery.

Its archives held techniques lost elsewhere.

Its mages recalibrated the leylines and anchored dozens of regions back to safety.

But history is a strange creature.

It forgets, even when it remembers.

And ideals, like gold, tarnish when left unguarded.

Now, in this more comfortable era of silver towers and velvet politics, the Twilight Crown is no longer the institution it once was.

Somewhere along the line, the Academy stopped forging the worthy and started grooming the connected.

Merit became optional.

Heritage became paramount.

The entrance exam, once a test of potential, creativity, and adaptability, was slowly twisted.

For those without a crest or a family name that dripped with legacy, two options remained: a list of glowing recommendations from recognized figures of power, or the entrance exam, now more of a gatekeeper than a gateway.

And even then, recommendations were rarely given on merit alone.

Favoritism, deals behind closed doors, subtle threats and polished bribes... these have slithered into the Academy’s great halls like ivy wrapping a ruined statue.

Beautiful from afar, but rotten just beneath the surface.

Yet still, the name endures.

Twilight Crown.

The dream persists, if only in whispers.

In idealistic students who still believe in its legacy.

In teachers who resist the tide.

And in outliers, like a certain apple-counting boy from a tarnished estate, who dare to try anyway.

Perhaps, if the Academy still has a soul buried beneath the centuries, it may yet recognize those who walk in not with titles, but with intent.

Even if the odds are stacked sky-high.

***

To understand the Twilight Crown Academy’s entrance exam is to understand the nature of systemic cruelty, elegantly veiled behind the language of “tradition,” “rigor,” and “merit.”

It is, in theory, the great equalizer.

A path for those not born into storied bloodlines or towering estates.

A test of knowledge and capability.

A chance, however slim, for those with no title and no gilded surname to earn a place amongst the continent’s elite.

In theory.

But in practice, it is little more than a bureaucratic labyrinth.

One that rewards not intelligence or diligence, but access.

The written portion alone is a gauntlet disguised as academia.

Dozens of questions spanning magical theory, political history, classical spell equations, leyline cartography, and arcano-scientific developments from the past two centuries.

All curated from textbooks, research papers, and treatises so obscure and specific that most libraries, especially in the rural, working-class regions, don’t even stock them.

Some are private publications.

Others are editions long out of print.

Many are circulated only among noble-sponsored academies or private tutors employed by the aristocracy.

To even understand the questions requires months, sometimes years, of focused study and the kind of structured instruction only available to the wealthy.

The kind who are, coincidentally, also the ones most likely to bypass the exam altogether through formal letters of recommendation.

These letters, signed by guildmasters, high-ranking officers, political figures, or alumni of sufficient status, act as golden keys.

With enough backing from “reputable sources,” one need not sit for the exam at all.

Some even secure admission by birthright, parents, siblings, or entire family lines having been molded by the Academy before them.

So why even have the entrance exam?

The answer is cruel in its simplicity: optics.

It offers plausible deniability.

A way to claim fairness, to give the illusion of opportunity, while designing the gate in such a way that most will break their spirits on it before they ever reach the latch.

For the vast majority of the continent, where life is a daily struggle to keep bread on the table and fire in the hearth, the idea of spending hours a day studying is a laughable luxury.

Children born to farming, mining, smithing, fishing, they learn early that time is coin, and coin is survival.

And yet, despite it all, there are those who still try.

The fools.

The dreamers.

The stubborn.

The ones who have something to prove.

Among these rare few is Balt, son of Marlen and Hara of Drakefell, a wind-bitten sea village nestled against cliffs where the brine never leaves your clothes and everything smells faintly of fish and wet stone.

Balt was born into a family of Brinestone miners, dangerous work that often left one coughing up flecks of magic-soaked dust.

The last four generations of his family had all died one way or another inside the mines.

But Balt was different.

The first time he touched a rune-imbued fishing rod, it glowed in his hand, humming faintly, like it recognized him.

The village seer, a woman who claimed she once kissed a minor sky god, proclaimed that “the boy’s veins tickle with starlight,” which was the most poetic thing anyone had ever said in Drakefell, and it sealed his fate right then and there.

He would become a Wizard.

And so the entire village, all two hundred and thirty-seven people, rallied together.

They took out loans from merchants, sold off heirlooms, traded barrels of pickled eel to passing traders in exchange for textbooks and scrolls.

They pooled every scrap of knowledge they had, copied spells into dog-eared notebooks, and sent Balt to live with the retired lighthouse keeper who claimed to have once studied in a preparatory school, though no one could ever verify this, and his handwriting looked like a drunk seagull had dipped its feet in ink.

Balt studied by lamplight, his fingers raw from turning pages and his eyes strained from reading words he couldn’t pronounce, let alone understand.

Every time he blinked, he saw equations and rune matrices.

He once fainted during a mock test because he forgot to breathe after reading a ten-part question about multi-nodal mana convergence.

When he finally boarded the caravan to the capital, the villagers cried like he was heading off to war.

He was twenty.

His shoulders were straight, his face determined, and his bags were heavier with guilt than books.

By the time he arrived at the gates of the Twilight Crown Academy, Balt, still a boy by all measures, carried the hopes, debts, and borderline-religious expectations of his entire village.

The entrance exam was his battlefield, his pilgrimage, his penance.

And it had aged him fifty years.

He shuffled into the registration halls looking like a retired veteran of three wars, muttering facts to himself about the invention of the mana quill and the different regional regulations of leyline tapping in pre-unification border zones.

When one of the people handing out registration forms asked him for his name, he answered, “Three-point-seven grams of Arcalite dust will combust at ambient resonance if exposed to triangulated channeling from an uninscribed wand.”

Balt was many things, underprepared, overwhelmed, under slept, but he was trying.

And in the grand tapestry of this world’s cruelty, sometimes effort is the most noble madness of all.

***

The paper cranes had since calmed their erratic fluttering.

A few still drifted gently in the corners of the room, swaying like sleepy birds with nowhere else to be.

The candlelight had burned low, replaced now by the softer hues of the morning sun creeping in through the high-arched windows.

Lucien sat on the floor of the manor’s drawing room, legs crossed, chin in palm, eyes hollow with the weight of what he’d just learned.

Sir Richardson stood by the mantel, arms crossed, sipping morning tea with the casual poise of a man preparing to eulogize someone still alive.

Vaelira leaned against the back of the velvet settee, holding a cup of herbal brew and looking far too composed for what she was about to do to Lucien’s remaining shred of hope.

“So,” she began smoothly, “let’s start with the basics. Do you have anyone… anyone at all who could write you a recommendation letter?”

Lucien opened his mouth.

“No,” Sir Richardson said, not missing a beat.

Lucien’s lips remained parted as he blinked, betrayed by a man who didn’t even pause to let him try.

Vaelira raised an elegant brow.

“What about a certified mentor’s acknowledgement? Someone respected in the field, someone who might take him under their wing?”

“Can’t afford one,” Richardson said, swirling his teacup.

“And even if we could, most reputable names won’t take him.”

Lucien raised a hand meekly.

“I could ask-”

“Due to certain… prior incidents,” Richardson added with a pointed glance at Lucien, who immediately withdrew the raised hand like it had been caught shoplifting.

Vaelira chuckled behind her teacup.

“All right. Then the entrance exam it is. How’s his written portion looking?”

Richardson inhaled deeply, like a man steeling himself before naming a terminal diagnosis.

“He’d need… roughly twenty more years.”

Lucien made a small choking sound.

“TWENTY?!”

“Give or take. It’s the theory that’s the issue. He has no foundation in classical spell theory, his history is patchy at best.”

Vaelira bit her lip, clearly torn between concern and the unshakable urge to laugh.

“Lucien…”

“Just roast me over a fire already,” Lucien muttered, slumping forward.

“At least then I’ll be warm and humiliated.”

“You’d be overcooked in three minutes,” Richardson quipped.

“It's better if we conserve the firewood.”

A brief silence followed, only broken by the soft chirp of a lone paper crane that fluttered down to land on Lucien’s knee like a sympathetic pillow.

“Fine,” Vaelira said at last, setting down her cup.

“Can you write to your father? Maybe he can call in a favor, he is sort of a noble, isn’t he? He must know someone affiliated with the Academy.”

Lucien’s head lifted slightly, like a battered man offered a bowl of soup.

“Y-you think that would work?”

“It’s worth trying,” Richardson conceded, though he sounded doubtful.

So Lucien, with the solemnity of a man writing his last will, penned the letter.

The ink smudged once when his hand trembled with the fragile weight of hope.

[To Father,

I hope this letter finds you in good health. I was wondering, if it’s not too much trouble, could you possibly, perhaps, write me a recommendation for Twilight Crown Academy? It would mean the world to me.

Your son,

Lucien.]

He sealed it, sent it through the estate’s official courier channel, and waited.

A day passed.

Then the reply came.

Surprisingly quick.

He opened it in front of Vaelira and Sir Richardson, hands trembling slightly.

[To Master Lucien Crowley,

It is my duty to inform you that your father, Count Albrecht Crowley, has once again vanished into the wilderness of his own ambitions. He departed three weeks ago on what he calls an “expedition of unprecedented significance.” What that means, I dare not guess, though it involved twelve crates of pickled eels and a taxidermied mongoose.

He left no forwarding address, no schedule of return, and certainly no concern for matters such as heirs, estates, or reality. If the past is any guide (and it rarely is with the Count), we do not expect to hear from him for another three to four years, if then.

In his absence, the household remains under my reluctant stewardship.

Warmest regards,

Edgar P. Thistlewick

Head Steward of Blackthorn Hall]

There was a pause.

Lucien stared at the letter.

Then read it again.

Then, slowly, without a word, he turned, folded onto his knees in the middle of the polished wood floor, raised his face to the heavens, and let out a long, dramatic, “NOOOOOOOOOOOO-”

It echoed through the manor like a man’s soul leaving his body.

A few paper cranes were startled from their slumber and took flight again, perhaps mistaking the despair for some manner of divine calamity.

“Three to four years,” Richardson noted with a sip of tea.

“He did put a margin of error in. Very professional.”

Vaelira laughed behind her hand.

Lucien collapsed onto his back, spread eagle on the floor, staring blankly at the ceiling.

“So that’s it… I’m doomed.”

“Not doomed,” Richardson said.

“Just… screwed. In a particular regard.”

Lucien groaned.

“You two were supposed to help me…”

“We are,” Vaelira said, kneeling beside him and poking his forehead.