The lights didn't just dim - they *pulled*. Mana drained from the ambient conduits lining the auditorium's walls, flowing downward through channels carved into the stone floor, feeding the Attunement Stone until its pulse brightened from pale blue to incandescent white. Jace felt it in his teeth, a harmonic vibration that bypassed his ears entirely and resonated somewhere in the wet architecture of his inner skull. Around him, three hundred sophomores went collectively still.

  Dean Aldric Voss stepped to the podium.

  He was a thin man, sharp-featured, with the careful posture of someone who had once been dangerous and had since traded violence for administration. His class was an open secret - [Runeward], Epic-tier, Controller - but he hadn't been in the field in twenty years. Now he ran Ironhold Academy with the same precision he'd once used to lay siege wards, and he looked out over the assembled students with eyes that were already sorting them into categories.

  "Sophomore class," he said. His voice carried without amplification - a subtle application of Presence that most students wouldn't even register as a skill. "You've spent your freshman year learning the fundamentals. Physical conditioning. Mana theory. Basic combat forms. Dungeon safety protocols. Survival triage." A pause. "Some of you excelled. Some of you survived. All of you are still here, which means you met the minimum threshold, and I will remind you that at Ironhold, the minimum threshold is higher than most institutions' ceiling."

  Jace's jaw tightened. Freshman year had been exactly that - a relentless gauntlet of fundamentals that assumed you'd either keep up or drop out. He'd arrived knowing nothing. The Rust Boroughs didn't offer adventurer prep courses. There were no private combat tutors, no family training halls, no inherited technique manuals. What the Boroughs offered was a childhood spent running from stray dungeon fauna that slipped through the district's aging wards, and the hard-won instinct that came from growing up in a place where something could kill you on any given Tuesday.

  That instinct had kept him afloat during freshman year, barely. The physical conditioning had been brutal - circuits designed for bodies already enhanced by System attributes, which pre-Awakening students didn't have. Jace had run the same laps and lifted the same rune-weighted sleds as kids who'd been training since childhood in private gyms, and he'd finished last more often than not. But he'd finished. The combat fundamentals - basic stances, how to hold a blade without cutting yourself, rudimentary footwork patterns, the mechanics of throwing a punch that wouldn't break your own wrist - had come easier. Not because he was talented, but because he paid attention. He watched the instructors demonstrate a technique and something in his brain catalogued the movement, filed it, replayed it until his body could approximate the shape of it.

  He wasn't good. His aptitude scores confirmed that with the diplomatic brutality of standardized testing. Forty-third percentile in Physical Combat Readiness. Fifty-first in Mana Sensitivity. Fifty-fifth in Tactical Assessment. Aggressively, stubbornly average. Good enough to stay. Not good enough to shine.

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  Mana Theory had been his best subject, which surprised no one more than Jace himself. The dense lectures on mana flow, elemental affinities, and System architecture that put half the class to sleep had landed in his brain like seeds in fertile soil. He didn't just memorize the material - he *understood* it, intuitively, the way some people understood music. Professor Linden had noted it on his evaluation: *Student demonstrates above-average theoretical comprehension but lacks proportional practical application. Recommend continued academic development regardless of class assignment.*

  "Regardless of class assignment." The polite way of saying: *This kid understands how the engine works but can't drive the car.*

  Dean Voss was still speaking. "Today, the System will assess each of you and assign your class. This is not a reward. It is not a punishment. It is a *reading* - the most accurate assessment of your capabilities, your potential, and your path that exists in this world or any other. Some of you will receive what you expected. Some will not. I tell you now, from twenty years in this chair and thirty years before that in the field: your class is not your destiny. It is your starting point."

  *Easy to say when your starting point was Epic-tier*, Jace thought, and immediately felt guilty for thinking it.

  "The procedure is unchanged from centuries of practice. You will approach the Attunement Stone in alphabetical order by surname. You will place both hands on the Stone. You will open yourself to the System's assessment. The process takes between ten and forty-five seconds. You will receive your class notification internally, and the Stone will project a summary visible to the faculty for official recording." Voss's gaze swept the room. "The projection is also visible to your peers. This is by design. At Ironhold, we do not hide what we are. Courage begins with being known."

  Or, Jace thought, it begins with having something worth showing.

  The first name was called.

  "Alden, Sera."

  A girl with close-cropped hair and the lean build of a runner stood from the third row and walked to the Stone. Her hands trembled as she placed them on the crystal's surface. The white light flared, contracted, and then settled into a steady amber glow. Above the Stone, mana-script materialized in clean, precise characters visible to the entire auditorium:

  [SKIRMISHER] - Normal Tier - DPS Role

  The amber light faded. Sera Alden stepped back, her face flushed, her eyes bright. The crowd offered polite applause. [Skirmisher] was solid - a respectable melee DPS class with good progression and a clear path into the Adventurers Guild or military service. Normal-tier, but no one looked down on Normal. Not openly, anyway. Normal was the foundation. Normal kept the lights on.

  Sera returned to her seat with the careful, measured steps of someone whose legs weren't entirely cooperating, and the next name was called.

  It went like that, one by one, the alphabet advancing with the relentless patience of bureaucracy. Jace watched from the M's, which meant he had time - too much time - to observe and categorize and quietly drown in anticipation.