The fire had burned low to embers when Professor Khalvar's voice cut through the chatter like a blade through parchnt. "Flag count!" he barked, his silhouette looming against the twilight. "Form up and present your totals."
"Finally!" Towan sprang up with enough energy to scatter pine needles from his clothes. He began plucking flags from his belt with theatrical flourish, each bright banner snapping in the evening breeze. Eleven silken tokens fluttered between his fingers like captured butterflies. "Beat this, losers."
Sylra's smirk could have cut glass. Without rising from her seat, she untied the cords at her waist—thirteen flags cascading to the ground in a victorious waterfall. The firelight caught the tallic threads in the fabric, making them gleam like scattered coins. "I'm sure I won," she said, the understatent dripping with smug satisfaction.
"Wow..." Alira's hands hovered over her modest collection of eight flags, her eyebrows climbing toward her hairline. "I didn't get that many."
Towan threw an arm around her shoulders, giving an encouraging shake. "That's still pretty good!" His voice carried across the clearing, startling a pair of birds from the nearby trees.
Len's fingers moved automatically to her belt, expecting the familiar weight of five flags. Instead, her hands t an unexpected bulk. Nine banners tumbled into her lap, the extra fabric impossibly soft against her palms. The scent of night-blooming jasmine—Sera's signature perfu—still clung faintly to the additional flags.
"Damn, Len," Towan whistled, leaning in for a better look. "You dominated." His grin faltered slightly as he noticed the unfamiliar silks mixed with Len's original colors, but he said nothing. So gifts ca with stories best told in private.
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Rellie's fingers stilled as she counted the silken tokens at her waist—nine flags when there should have been only two. The extra banners carried the faintest scent of jasmine and sothing tallic. (When did soone slip seven flags onto my belt without noticing?—No, How?) Her crimson eyes swept across the gathered students like a searchlight, but every face revealed nothing.
Nearby, Sera stretched with exaggerated laziness before producing exactly two flags from her belt. They dangled limply from her fingers like surrendered battle standards. "I guess I'm the loser around here," she sighed, the picture of dejected defeat. "I barely passed."
The declaration hung in the air, heavier than it should have been. Towan's mouth opened—then closed with an audible click of teeth. Len's fan paused mid-sway. Even Professor Khalvar's pen hesitated over his clipboard for half a heartbeat.
No one spoke. No one needed to.
The unspoken consensus rippled through the group like wind through grass—they all knew better than to challenge the girl who moved through shadows like they were old friends. Rellie simply sipped her tea, the steam obscuring her knowing smile as Sera's silver eyes glittered with private amusent.
The flag count continued in a ripple of colorful silks across the clearing. Deyar's collection of eleven banners fluttered like battle standards as he tied them into a neat bundle. Nearby, Ryn stood half-hidden in the tree's shadow, quietly presenting seven flags—his scarred fingers lingering on the last as if rembering how it ca to be there.
Near the fire's dying light, a cluster of students shifted uncomfortably. "We had six just an hour ago!" one protested, patting empty belts. Another muttered about "impossible thefts" while scanning the crowd with suspicion.
Professor Khalvar's clipboard snapped shut with finality. "If you got your flags stolen and didn't notice," he said, his voice carving through the excuses like a whetstone down a blade, "that says everything." The words hung in the cooling air, stripping bare the difference between those who fought and those who simply wore uniforms.
Ryn's grip tightened on his flags. The professor's judgntal tone tasted familiar—like alleyway lessons learned bleeding in the dark. Yet here, the seven banners in his hands whispered sothing new: You noticed.
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