The first day's chaos settled into something that vaguely resembled peace—if peace came with floating camera drones, silent reputation warfare, and aggressive handshakes from people who wanted to sell you their surname on business cards printed with nano-ink that changed color depending on how impressed they were with your response. The events were over, and the rankings were in.
Lucifer Windward. Jin Ashbluff. Aaron Meriot. Ava Peng. Clana Lopez.
And, really, those were the only names that mattered as only they would make it to the Crown Challenge and matter at the same time. The rest were just so much statistical background noise—the kind of names that would appear in tiny font in historical records that future students might be forced to memorize if they were particularly unlucky in their choice of professors.
