Ten Minutes to Midnight - The Verdict of Heaven's Selection

The twilight over

The twilight over

Plaza didn’t fall so much as it settled, heavy and damp, like a wet wool blanket thrown over a dying hearth.

A salty, metallic tang—the signature stink of three thousand sweat-soaked candidates and the ozone hum of the

Stone—hung dead in the air.Felix stood near the edge of

Tent #42’s designated perimeter, his boots sinking half an inch into the churned, gray mud.

His knees still felt a bit like overcooked turnip greens from the sheer exertion of the afternoon, but outwardly, he maintained the mild, slightly dazed expression of a clerk who had accidentally wandered into a bar fight.

Next to him,

Gideon was hyperventilating through his nose with a wet, whistling sound, his pudgy fingers frantically working through a greasy paper bag of salted walnuts.”If

I get sent to

Governance,” Gideon whimpered, a spray of walnut dust raining onto his tunic, “my old man will skin me.

He paid three gold

Sovereigns for a tutoring scroll on

Imperial tax codes, and

I used it to press wild parsley.””Shut up,

Gid,” Kaelen snapped from behind them, though the thin boy’s knuckles were white where he gripped his worn leather belt. “The heralds are stepping up.”Across the cobblestone dais, bathed in the harsh, flickering amber light of six massive brass braziers, the

Lecturers stood in a rigid, terrifying line.

Torin leaned against a carved stone pillar, lazily scraping the underside of his fingernails with a bone-handled trench dagger.

He didn’t look at the crowd once; his very presence radiated the quiet, predatory boredom of a wolf watching sheep get sorted for slaughter.Then, a clear, ringing chime struck through the plaza.

Vice-Principal

Artie walked to the center of the wooden stage, the heavy brass seals of the

Academy clinking against his belt.”The scores of the

Comprehensive

Trial,” Artie’s voice boomed, carrying across the silent lake without the aid of a horn—a subtle, terrifying demonstration of

Archon-level

Aether resonance—”have been tallied by the

Examiners.”The crowd of twelve hundred teenagers held its collective breath.

Artie unrolled a long scroll of thick, cream-colored vellum. “First rank of merit.

Standard allocation ceiling is thirty points.

Scores above thirty require three unanimous

Distinguished

Marks from three separate

Chairs.”Julian

Vance stepped forward slightly from the noble enclosure on the left.

His silk coat was immaculate, entirely untouched by the dust that caked the commoners.

A thin, cold smirk played at the corner of his lips as he glanced back toward

Felix, flicking his index finger across his lapel in a gesture of aristocratic disdain.

He knew what he had produced in

It was perfection.”Candidate

Vance,” Artie read, his voice dry as rust. “Theoretical

Composition: 10.

Analysis: 11.

Total score:

Distinguished

Mark awarded by

Chanceries and

Forge.”A collective murmur rippled through the noble rows.

Julian’s chest swelled; thirty-one points was a score that hadn’t been touched in the entrance trials for four seasons.

He raised his chin, his eyes locking onto

Felix with the victorious hunger of an apex predator.I’m going to make you eat that pig comment line by line, you mud-blooded rat, Julian’s smirk seemed to say.Artie didn’t pause for applause. “Candidate

Yvaine of the

Marches.”The tall girl in the faded green tunic didn’t move.

She just stood with her arms crossed, a piece of dry bitter-grass tucked into the corner of her mouth, her dark eyes reflecting the brazier flames.”Apothecary

Mechanics: 11.

Instinct: 10.

Total score:

Distinguished

Mark awarded by

Apothecary and

Anatomy.”Another gasping shockwave hit the plaza.

Thirty-Ones in a single morning?

That was statistically absurd.

Felix let out a slow breath, thinking that

Yvaine’s sharp performance in the jars test made complete sense.Then

Artie turned the page.

The old one-armed veteran stopped, squinted at the parchment, raised a bushy gray eyebrow, and looked directly over his brass spectacles straight into the crowd.

Felix.Felix felt his stomach drop three inches. Oh, come on

Frank… what kind of math did your grading rubrics leave behind?“Candidate

Oakhaven,” Artie announced, his tone dropping an octave into pure, unadulterated bewilderment.The plaza went dead silent.”Practical

Decoding: 10,” Artie read, reading slowly as if checking for a forgery. “Toxicological

Sensation & Memory: 10.

Rhetoric: 11.

Total score:

Distinguished

Mark awarded by

Vanguard… and

Literature.”Silence.

Total, suffocating, absurd silence.

Then the crowd exploded.”Thirty-one?!

Two peasant?!” “Is this a joke?

He was in the tent for fifteen minutes!” “Literature?

Since when does

Literature give an eleven?!”Julian

Vance stood frozen, the color draining from his face so fast it looked as if someone had pulled a plug in his neck.

His hands trembled into tight fists at his sides. “Impossible,” he muttered, his voice cracking like dry ice. “He cheated.

He had to have cheated!

The stone showed a

He has the core capacity of a damp turnip!””Silence!” Artie’s voice slammed down over the chaos like an iron anvil.The crowd instantly choked back their cries, though a thousand eyes burned into the back of

Felix’s head.

Felix just stood there, scratching his cheek, internally cursing the second half of that poem. Why did

I have to go full

Dynasty on them?

Absolute overkill.“Under the

Frank,” Vice-Principal

Artie continued, his gaze sweeping over the three highest-scoring candidates, “when multiple examinees reach the absolute peak margin of thirty-one points, and departmental quotas for high-tier specialty slots overlap, the

Academy does not permit administrative bargaining.”Artie reached behind him.

Summer walked forward carrying a heavy, black-iron urn sealed with ancient brass rivets, inside which three rolled scrolls of thick parchment clicked softly.”The

Selection,” Artie declared, his single hand resting on the rim of the iron urn. “A blind draw of destiny.

The three of you have proven your intellects equal in the eyes of the faculty.

Now, let the

Aether decide which

Discipline claims your bones.”Julian’s face went from pale to a mottled, furious red. “A draw?

I am a scion of the

My brother commands a brigade in the

You want me to draw a scrap of paper out of a bucket like a river-bather?!””Candidate

Vance,” Torin’s voice cut through the air like a rusty saw blade without the instructor looking up from his knife. “Step up and pull, or

I’ll assign you to the

Corps right now.

You’ve got five seconds.”Julian swallowed hard, marched up the stone steps, and thrust his hand into the iron urn, his fingers rustling frantically through the parchment scrolls before pulling one out.

He snapped it open, his eyes widening in sheer, unadulterated horror.”Vanguard

Cadre,” Artie read aloud, a faint, cruel spark of amusement in his old eyes. “Frontline

Assault.”Julian looked like he was about to vomit blood.

Cadre—the meat grinder where nobles went to die in the mud alongside common mercenaries.Yvaine was next.

She walked up the steps with effortless, light strides, pulled a scroll without hesitation, and handed it to

Artie.Artie unrolled it. “Apothecary & Toxicology.” Yvaine gave a single, satisfied nod and walked back down, popping another stalk of bitter-grass into her mouth.Finally, all eyes fell on

Gideon gave him a hard shove in the small of his back. “Go on,

Governance, please.

If you leave me,

I’m going to die in the physicals.”Felix walked up the wooden stairs, his boots groaning against the oak planks.

He reached the black urn and looked at

Vice-Principal

Artie, whose single grey eye seemed to pierce right through

Felix’s ribs, searching for the strange, quiet spirit that sat inside a boy with a

Two core.Felix reached his hand deep into the dark metal cylinder.

There was only one scroll left.

It felt cold and heavy.

He pulled it out and handed it over.Artie opened the parchment, read the single line written in dark indigo ink, and let the corner of his mouth twitch upward into a phantom smile.”Felix

Lin,” Artie announced, his voice echoing across the silent shore. “Vanguard

Line.”Felix closed his eyes for a brief second, feeling the cold wind blowing off

Lake, carrying the scent of pine, wet iron, and distant, inevitable blood. Vanguard, he thought, a strange, dark calm settling over his chest. The front lines.

The sharp end of the spear.He turned around to face the crowd, his eyes landing directly on

Vance, who stared at him with a mixture of hysterical rage and utter disbelief.

The wager was settled, the scores were hung, and

Heaven, it seemed, had a very dark sense of humor.