Chapter 50: Aptitude Test (2)
The morning sun spilled across the gravel paths of the D’Claire estate, warm light brushing against dewy hedges and catching on the soft flitter of wings as birds took flight from the garden trees.
A breeze passed low through the orchard, carrying with it the scent of earth and ripening citrus.
Vaelira’s boots struck the ground in a steady rhythm, thud, thud, thud, her breath measured, arms pumping as she finished the final stretch of her morning run.
The hem of her training coat swayed behind her, and strands of lavender hair stuck to her forehead with sweat.
The run did little to ease her thoughts, but it kept them from spiraling.
It was a routine she held onto in Lucien’s absence, as if by running the paths they once took together, she could chase after the worry that trailed her like a shadow.
As she slowed to a jog and approached the servant wing of the estate, a young maid approached with hurried steps, careful not to seem breathless.
“Miss Vaelira,” the girl said with a slight bow, her cheeks flushed.
“A letter arrived for you. It was first delivered to the Aetherveil estate but was then sent here.”
Vaelira raised a brow, curious.
“A letter?”
‘...from Lucien…?’
The maid nodded and held it out.
It was beautiful, made of thick, cream-colored parchment and sealed with violet wax bearing a delicate crescent moon motif.
The envelope edges were gilded lightly in gold, and across the front, in carefully penned cursive, was her name: Lady Vaelira Aetherveil.
And just above it, subtly inked into the envelope by hand, was the unmistakable insignia of Twilight Crown Academy a stylized crown with three rising stars behind it, encircled by Wreath leaves.
Something in her chest skipped.
She took the letter with quiet hands, fingers brushing the embossed wax.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
The maid bowed again and retreated politely, leaving Vaelira alone on the edge of the eastern veranda, where the rose trellises bloomed thick with color.
She sat down slowly on the stone bench by the garden wall, her legs still humming from the run.
The letter rested in her lap, strangely heavy for its size.
Vaelira stared at it a moment longer.
Then, with a soft exhale, she broke the wax and unfolded the contents.
The parchment inside was just as elegant, bordered in faint silver and written in deep blue ink.
It wasn’t a single sheet but two, pressed together with a satin ribbon.
The handwriting was graceful, almost ceremonial.
[To Miss Vaelira Nyx Aetherveil,
We are pleased to inform you that Vaelira Aetherveil has been officially accepted into Twilight Crown Academy.
The Academy received an astounding array of personal endorsements on her behalf, each more compelling than the last. The breadth and caliber of those who spoke for her left no doubt in our minds that she will be a remarkable addition to our institution. We are honored to welcome her into our ranks.
In celebration of this year’s exceptional candidate pool and to welcome those who will soon become a part of our noble institution, the Academy is honored to extend a formal invitation to the Annual Twilight Initiation Ball. This gathering serves as a time-honored tradition wherein aspiring first-years and their close affiliates are granted the opportunity to forge bonds and lay the foundations for the journeys to come.
The Initiation Ball will be held in the Grand Observatory Hall of the Academy, three days after the completion of Aptitude Assessments. Appropriate formal attire is required. Additional invitations will be delivered to the family estates of qualifying candidates upon final confirmation.
We thank you for your continued support and await your presence under the starlit domes of Twilight.
Yours in grace and wisdom,
- Registrar of External Affairs
Twilight Crown Academy]
Vaelira let the letter fall slowly onto her lap, her hands frozen in place as she stared at the words she had just read.
The happiness of being accepted also came with shades of disappointment.
She had hoped it would be from Lucien.
‘Did he make it…’
He wasn’t back yet.
That had to mean something… right?
She hadn’t even realized how tightly she’d been holding her breath until it escaped her in a trembled sigh.
Her shoulders sank as the tension drained from her spine, a flicker of warmth curling through her chest in hesitant relief.
“If he’d failed,” she murmured aloud, “he’d be back by now.”
That was the thought she clung to.
It made sense, he must have passed the written exam and moved on to the next stage, the Aptitude Evaluation.
That had to be it.
Lucien might not be the most studious, but he was clever, when it counted.
Resourceful in the strange, roundabout way only he could be.
But just as quickly, doubt crept in.
Her brows knit together.
A flash of Lucien, wide-eyed and flustered, standing on the steps of the carriage on his first day in the capital.
Laughing nervously as he adjusted his collar, his luggage already half-unzipped because he’d been pickpocketed before he’d even made it to an Inn.
‘Gods, he’d barely arrived before finding himself in trouble.’
And now he was somewhere out there.
Not in a lecture hall or library, but in the wilderness, or whatever twisted trial the Academy considered an “aptitude assessment”, trying to prove himself.
She hated not knowing.
Hated the quiet.
The waiting.
“I just hope you’re alright,” she whispered into the wind, the words slipping free before she could think better of them.
“Wherever you are… just be trying. Just be safe.”
She stared out past, toward the invisible horizon where Lucien had gone, where ambition and uncertainty tangled together like thorns on the same vine.
Her lips curled into a small, wistful smile.
***
Branches whipped across Lucien’s face.
Something clawed at his coat.
He was reasonably sure a squirrel had just used his head as a springboard.
But Lucien didn't stop.
"WHY-" he shrieked, leaping over a log, "-IS EVERYTHING IN THIS GODSFORSAKEN FOREST TRYING TO EAT ME?!"
Behind him, a small army of nightmare-inducing fauna gave chase.
Snarling lizards with spiked tails, a pair of oversized badgers with murder in their beady eyes, and, was that a… was that a deer with fangs?
Yes.
Yes it was.
"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THIS ECOSYSTEM?!"
He ducked under a low-hanging branch, tripped over a root, and flailed forward through a curtain of hanging moss.
A moment later, he popped out the other side, covered in leaves, dirt, and existential regret, and dove behind a fallen tree.
The animals crashed past him, either too stupid or too determined to check if he had actually disappeared.
Lucien lay there panting, chest heaving, face down in the moss.
“This is fine,” he said into the dirt.
“This is exactly what I signed up for. ‘Come to Twilight Crown Academy,’ they said. ‘Prestige, opportunity, education!’”
He rolled over and stared up at the canopy.
“Now I’m being hunted by Bambi’s demonic cousin and a bunch of over-caffeinated raccoons with spikes.”
He sat up and looked at his bracelet.
It gave a single vibration.
North.
“North. Right. Sure. Just… walk north. Through the murder forest. Easy.”
He dragged himself to his feet and stumbled forward, then stopped.
“No. No. This is stupid. I’m being stupid. ‘Go north’ isn’t a strategy, it’s a death wish.”
He rubbed his face, smearing dirt and possibly some bug across his cheek.
“Let’s think for once, Lucien. Use your head. You like thinking. Thinking has kept you alive this long, mostly.”
He clambered up the nearest tree, finding handholds with the desperation of a man whose other option was “become lunch.”
The canopy wasn’t too dense, if you didn’t mind the occasional poisonous vine or angry squirrel, and from the top, he finally saw the lay of the land.
A yellow brick road, faint and distant, shimmered like salvation far ahead.
But between him and that road was a swath of terrain that could generously be described as ‘The Gauntlet of Natural Selection’.
And beyond that?
The northern edge was pulsing with danger.
He didn’t need binoculars to tell.
He could feel it.
“So the further I go north, the worse the animals get. Great. Cool. Love that for me.”
He climbed down carefully, this time without getting attacked by gravity.
“Okay,” he muttered, pacing a small circle.
“This isn’t just a straight-shot test. This is survival. And you know what’s essential for survival? Water. I haven’t had a drop since I got here.”
Still muttering, Lucien looked around.
“Water. Shelter. Path of least monsters. That’s the plan. I am not dying in a magical forest run by sadistic education administrators.”
He pulled a folded, soggy page out of his coat.
The runic sketch on it had mostly smeared, but a faint glow meant it still had some juice.
“Alright. If I can modify this ward to detect running water instead of movement, maybe I can-”
The forest went silent.
Lucien froze mid-rune, head slowly turning.
Birds: gone.
Wind: gone.
Even the annoying buzzing thing that kept trying to fly into his ear: mysteriously absent.
“…No.”
A twig snapped nearby.
Lucien’s mouth went dry.
He reached for his satchel, empty aside from a waterlogged notebook and a charcoal pencil, and sighed.
‘Of course. Of course something else is coming. Why wouldn’t it? At this point, I’m convinced I accidentally enrolled in some kind of a death games.’
The footsteps grew louder.
Steady.
Purposeful.
Lucien crouched low, eyes scanning the shadows between the trees.
He whispered to himself, ‘If it’s another fang-deer, I swear to the stars, I’m turning vegetarian out of spite.’
Another step.
Closer now.
Lucien readied the faintly glowing rune paper and narrowed his eyes.
“Alright, let’s see which fresh hell you are…”
***
The footsteps were heavy.
Lucien crouched low behind a gnarled bush, heart thundering in his chest, sweat dripping down his neck in fat rivulets.
His entire body was a symphony of pain and complaint, bruises singing harmony with his burning legs.
He had barely escaped the last fauna-fueled fiasco with his sanity intact, and now the forest decided it was time for another surprise.
Naturally.
Because of course it did.
He peeked through the foliage, expecting a monster, something with tentacles, maybe.
Or teeth.
Or teeth on tentacles.
Instead, what stepped into view was…a boy.
Lucien blinked.
The boy looked around his age.
A little taller, perhaps, and certainly broader in the shoulders.
His clothes were in tatters, mud and scratches covering every visible inch of him, but he held himself like someone who wanted a fight.
His most striking feature, however, wasn’t his intense expression or his ridiculous physique.
It was the horns.
Two thick, spiraling horns rose from his head like polished ivory ram’s horns, curving slightly back above his ears.
He looked like something straight out of a fantasy illustration that took itself way too seriously.
Also, he was holding a massive battle-axe.
Like, absurdly massive.
The kind of weapon that screamed “I didn’t come here to pass a test, I came to cleave.”
Lucien didn’t even get to open his mouth before the boy charged.
“OH, COME ON, WHY IS THIS ALWAYS MY LIFE?!”
Lucien barely rolled out of the way as the axe came swinging down with terrifying force, splitting the forest floor with a sickening crack.
Bark and soil exploded upward as the impact cleaved a nearby tree clean in half.
Lucien popped back up, scrambling backward on all fours.
“WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!”
The boy adjusted his stance, lifting the axe to rest on his shoulder with casual ease.
“You're quick,” he noted with a grin.
“That's good. I thought this part of the test would be boring.”
Lucien gawked.
“Test?!”
“Yeah,” the horned boy replied, twirling his axe like it weighed nothing.
“I'm a candidate too. Same as you.”
Lucien froze mid-step.
“Wait. You're… You're here for the exam?”
“Yeah.”
The boy nodded, looking confused now.
“Aptitude Test. Twilight Crown. You know, the entrance exam? Why else would I be chasing you through monster-infested woods with an axe?”
Lucien’s mouth opened.
Then closed.
Then opened again, flapping like a beached fish trying to process English.
“Okay, first of all,” Lucien said, raising a trembling finger, “most people don’t phrase that so casually. Second- WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO MURDER ME IF WE’RE BOTH CANDIDATES?!”
The boy blinked.
“...Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?”
Lucien stared.
The horned boy tilted his head, puzzled.
“I mean, it’s a survival test, right? Only the strong pass. I figured it included… you know. Weeding out the weak. Natural selection.”
Lucien dragged his hand down his face.
“Sweet holy mother-, are you telling me you’ve been attacking students this entire time because you thought it was part of the instructions?!”
The horned boy looked genuinely surprised.
“Wait. It’s not?”
Lucien opened his mouth to unleash an avalanche of sarcastic fury, and then stopped.
Because in that exact moment, a glint of gold caught his eye.
Wrapped around the boy’s wrist, just beneath the sleeve of his tattered tunic, was a familiar shimmer.
A thin bracelet, engraved with numbers.
12.
Lucien’s own bracelet buzzed faintly in recognition.
“Oh, you've got to be kidding me…”
He groaned.
The boy followed his gaze and lifted his wrist.
“Oh, this? Yeah. They gave it to me after the paperwork.”
Lucien stepped back again.
“Okay. Listen. Fellow candidate. My name’s Lucien. I am also wearing a bracelet. See? 47. We are both trying to survive this test. But the test is the forest, not each other. Got it?”
The boy scratched his head.
“Huh. You sure?”
Lucien nearly screamed.
“I climbed a tree to escape a pack of four-legged death badgers, I have not had water in eight hours, I’m pretty sure I dislocated a rib sneezing, and you just tried to reenact a lumberjack murder mystery with me.”
The boy paused.
“...So that’s a no?”
“YES, IT’S A NO!”
There was a long pause.
Then, with a sheepish chuckle, the horned boy slung the axe back over his shoulder.
“Well. That’s... My bad.”
“You think?!”
The boy offered a hand.
“Name’s Corin.”
Lucien eyed the axe, the horns, then the hand.
“Lucien Crowley.”
Very slowly, very cautiously, he shook it.
Corin grinned.
“Wanna travel together?”
Lucien stared again.
“You just tried to axe murder me, and now you want to be buddies?!”
Corin shrugged.
“Faster in pairs. Safer too. And if it makes you feel better, I’ll try really hard not to decapitate you.”
Lucien groaned into his hands.
“I hate this school,” he muttered again.
But despite everything, he found himself walking alongside Corin, deeper into the woods, because let’s face it: nothing was worse than surviving a magical death forest alone.
