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Chapter 60: The Line Between Pretending and Becoming

ผู้เขียน: VANCIA
last update ปรับปรุงล่าสุด: 2025-06-07 15:12:06

The ballroom glows beneath us like a vision carved from crystal and consequence. Soft orchestral music floats just beneath the hum of enchantments and nerves—violins gliding like breath across glass, the harp weaving gilded notes through the low-throated murmur of the crowd. Everywhere, velvet shimmers and candlelight kisses sequined hems. And from the second-floor gallery, where we first-years are assembled like sacrificial ornaments atop a stage, the whole thing looks less like a dance and more like a coronation.

Or an execution.

My gloves are damp.I didn’t realize I was walking toward him until my feet had already betrayed me.

Professor Marwood stood near the front of the gallery like a finely carved statue of judgment, his dark academic robes pressed to sharp precision, silver embroidery glinting like runes under the chandelier glow. He did not lean. He did not blink too often. He stood with the rigidity of a man who believed his presence alone held more weight than any rulebook,
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  • THE AUREUM TRIAL: BLOOD OATH   Chapter 63: The Heir’s Selection: The Dance He Dared to Ask

    I did not mean to look at him—did not want to. The intention was never there, only the inevitable gravity of it, the impossible weight that seemed to curl around my spine and tilt my chin upward before I had the presence of mind to resist it. My gaze flicked upward, brief as a breath held too long and released too suddenly, and in that fragile moment—barely more than a blink—I met his eyes.And the world, for a heartbeat, ceased its turning.Atlas Blackwood stood not ten feet from where I stood frozen, and though there were people all around us, pressing in with polite murmurs and silken laughter and the rustling hush of formalwear sweeping marble floors, I could not hear a single voice, nor see a single face. There was only him, carved in shadow and candlelight, tall and terrifyingly still in his dark maroon tailored coat that gleamed faintly beneath the ballroom's golden glow like it had been stitched from starlight and grave intentions.My breath caught—or perhaps it never made it

  • THE AUREUM TRIAL: BLOOD OATH   Chapter 62: Seen By the One Who Should Not See

    The moment my name passed through Professor Marwood’s mouth, the silence became alive.“Aubrey Sinclair,” he said, not with warmth nor condemnation, but with the impassive gravity of a man delivering a verdict carved in stone. “Of no formal House. Bloodline… unregistered. Ashwood Academy’s first ever admitted Omega.”The words didn’t fall like feathers—they struck like stones.Each syllable felt like it echoed twice, once in the air and once inside my chest, a slow thunder that rolled and reverberated long after the sound itself had faded. My name. My blood. My station. Exposed. Declared. Final. And the crowd—oh, the crowd responded not with noise, but with stillness. With an almost unholy kind of quiet. One born not of reverence, but of recoil.The ballroom, once brimming with candlelight and enchantment, now felt too bright, too sharp. Every shimmering veil and glass of champagne seemed to have frozen mid-breath, caught in the act of pretending that this place—this moment—was untouc

  • THE AUREUM TRIAL: BLOOD OATH   Chapter 61:What a Best Friend Would Never Say Aloud

    Callum’s fingers found mine with the quiet precision of someone used to leading others into danger disguised as duty. His touch was warm, grounding, unshaking. The opposite of me. We stood together beneath the vast golden arch at the very top of the grand staircase—two figures framed by the breathless grandeur of the Moonlit Ball. The world below shimmered like a pageant in amber, gilded and waiting, the ballroom swelling with silence as soon as we stepped forward into the light.I could feel the moment catch.The chandeliers—wrought in twisted glass and phoenix-gold, hovering midair like captured constellations—tilted ever so slightly in our direction, their enchanted filaments flaring brighter as if to anoint us. Magic stirred the air. The ambient hum of violin strings softened to a hush, allowing the crisp tap of a distant heel, the clink of a glass being set too hard against a saucer, to punctuate the stillness like a pin to a balloon. Dozens—no, hundreds—of faces turned upward, t

  • THE AUREUM TRIAL: BLOOD OATH   Chapter 60: The Line Between Pretending and Becoming

    The ballroom glows beneath us like a vision carved from crystal and consequence. Soft orchestral music floats just beneath the hum of enchantments and nerves—violins gliding like breath across glass, the harp weaving gilded notes through the low-throated murmur of the crowd. Everywhere, velvet shimmers and candlelight kisses sequined hems. And from the second-floor gallery, where we first-years are assembled like sacrificial ornaments atop a stage, the whole thing looks less like a dance and more like a coronation.Or an execution.My gloves are damp.I didn’t realize I was walking toward him until my feet had already betrayed me.Professor Marwood stood near the front of the gallery like a finely carved statue of judgment, his dark academic robes pressed to sharp precision, silver embroidery glinting like runes under the chandelier glow. He did not lean. He did not blink too often. He stood with the rigidity of a man who believed his presence alone held more weight than any rulebook,

  • THE AUREUM TRIAL: BLOOD OATH   Chapter 59: The Moment the Water Turned Gold

    The sound that followed was not thunder.And yet it rolled through the ballroom like a stormfront gathering at the edge of something sacred—hollow and sharp and utterly final. A breath had not yet finished crossing the lips of a hundred wide-eyed students when the gilded double doors at the far end of the ballroom groaned open, slower than seemed necessary, revealing nothing but shadow for a heartbeat too long.Then he stepped through it.Atlas Blackwood.He did not hurry. He did not smile. He did not pause.He walked with the kind of silence that made noise irrelevant, like the entire room had forgotten its song simply to watch him cross a threshold. He was dressed in deep maroon—not red, not burgundy, but a blood-rich shade so dark it swallowed light and returned only consequence. The suit was tailored so perfectly it looked as though it had been sewn onto him by a seamstress who had never touched anything but royalty. The fabric clung to him like allegiance, marked by subtle embroi

  • THE AUREUM TRIAL: BLOOD OATH   Chapter 58: The Aureum Trial: Not All Will Survive

    The ballroom held its breath.Or maybe I did.The room was still alive with shimmering movement—skirts catching the light like falling stars, voices laced with silken bravado—but everything around me dimmed, just a little, as I turned back to Callum. The music below had shifted to something quieter, a string ensemble tuning into a haunting prelude. My hand rested on the carved railing, steady in appearance, but my pulse thudded beneath my skin, uneven.“The Aureum Trial,” I repeated, barely more than a whisper. “What… is it?”Callum’s jaw tightened. Not with annoyance—but with caution, as if he wasn’t sure how much to say. Then he exhaled, folding his hands neatly in front of him, gaze fixed on the marble below.“It’s… not something they advertise in the pamphlets,” he began softly, voice low and even. “But everyone in Ashwood’s upper circles knows. It’s tradition. Old. Sacred. Brutal.”I turned slightly to face him, my dress whispering against the stone underfoot. “Sacred and brutal

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