Incubus Living In A World Of Superpower Users - Chapter 424

Capítulo 424: Elira Korrin 2

You do not carry pride into a hole. If you drop something, name it. If you find something, do not hide it.

If you are tempted to be impressive, slow down. Impress me by telling me what you do not know. Impress me by finding water every time.”

She let the grid fade and brought the terrain back in full. She pointed to a ridge. “Wind will lie to you here,” she said. She pointed to the marsh.

“There is always a second floor under any floor like this.” She pointed to the broken towers. “High ground is a rumor until a ladder says it’s real. Do not believe rumors.”

Evelyn lifted her hand, not high, just enough for Elira to see it without making a show.

“If the realm chooses to echo something it used to hold,” she asked, “and the proctors do not catch the echo before we do, what do we do when we meet it?”

Elira’s eyes warmed by a fraction. “Name it aloud,” she said. “Old things go quiet when you speak to them like you expect them to have manners.

If that fails, you remember that your feet belong to you and the ground belongs to itself. And you step where the ground will forgive you.”

Everly’s hand rose next, her grin a little too quick for a careful class. “If we run into another pair who acts like we’re in their way, what’s the policy on winning polite arguments?”

“Win by getting where you’re going,” Elira said. “Do not spend your lungs on strangers when stones are counting them.”

Ethan didn’t raise his hand. He waited until Elira looked his way, and she did, because good teachers see when a thought wants to leave a head.

“When we brief,” he said, “do you want us to name confidence or uncertainty first?”

“Uncertainty,” Elira said, without thinking. “Honesty buys more time than pride. Then name the piece you trust most. Make your pair stand on it while you fix the rest.”

That was enough questions. Elira lowered her hand, and the room settled. “We start early,” she said.

“Eat real food. Do not drink anything with a list of ingredients longer than your hand. Be on the south path one hour before your assigned time.

If you are late, you will run extra. If you are early, you will organize water, and you will not be congratulated for doing what you should.”

There was no bell. There didn’t need to be. The room knew class had ended and still didn’t move.

When Elira nodded once, the spell that holds a class together broke in a clean way. Chairs slid. Bags closed. The small talk rose and fell, a soft tide.

Evelyn turned to Ethan, her voice low and meant for the tiny island of the three of them. “Inventory after dinner,” she said.

“No last-minute fixes. If a strap fails tomorrow, it won’t be because we were lazy.”

“I’ll check flares,” Everly said. “And the pulls. And his boots, because he never looks at his boots until a rock speaks to them.”

“I look at my boots,” Ethan said mildly.

“Your boots look at you,” she countered, and bumped his shoulder with a familiar little claim. He let it land because it always did.

Across the room, the boy from earlier gathered his things with more care than he had at the start.

The note-taking girl slid a spare elastic band to a partner whose hair had tried to go to war with gravity.

Two friends who’d been kept apart by the pairing rule touched knuckles once in a way that said they understood why the rule belonged.

Elira watched the class go with that same steady gaze, counting not bodies but details. Who held the door without acting like a hero. Who stepped aside without sighing.

Who checked for trash on the desk, and who left their mess for staff to clean? Small measures that told larger truths.

Satisfied enough for one day, she turned the map off and let the wall be just a wall again.

When the three of them reached the corridor, the light outside had shifted half a tone warmer.

Afternoon edging into evening. The academy breathed with its strange, orderly peace.

Somewhere outside the window line, maintenance clattered a ladder back onto a cart and someone in a distant practice room missed the same note three times and got it right on the fourth.

They didn’t talk much on the walk, and they didn’t need to. The plan walked with them.

In the suite later, they would lay gear out on the rug and argue affectionately about pack order and then give up arguing because Elowen and Lilith had taught them better ways to use energy.

They would label canteens, check seals, and stack protein bars in neat little piles, as neatness alone could make them taste less like duty. They would sleep not early, not late, the kind of sleep that finds you if you make it welcome.

In a building across the city, a man stood with his hands on a desk and watched a thin white line pass over a bait site and keep going.

He did not chase. He let patience wear its teeth down in the right place. He whispered a single word to a room that had earned the truth and then said nothing else.

The city kept pretending it was just a city and did a good job of it.

Back in the classroom, the last students trickled out. Elira remained for a minute longer, alone in the quiet. She picked a chalk stub off the sill, not to write with, to hold.

The small, rough edge grounded the day in something ordinary.

She set it down and smiled once, a private thing, then left the room the way she had entered it—without drama, without noise, with the certainty of a person who intended to be at the gate before anyone else and had no need to tell them why.

Evening settled over Astralis and over the streets beyond. Torches that weren’t torches hummed to life along paths that always had light when students needed it.

The dorm kitchens smelled of broth, steam, and something sweet someone had bribed a cook to make.

The library windows glowed, making people lower their voices even outside the doors. In the training yards, the last two pairs ran route calls like a song they hadn’t memorized yet. In the infirmary, a nurse set out extra bandages on a cart with a habit that had saved lives for years.

Ethan, Evelyn, and Everly reached their suite and did what they had planned: Gear out, checks done, jokes small and quick, never wasting the good ones.

A short message sent to someone who cared to say, “We’re ready,” with no flourishes because the person reading it didn’t need them.

A second message was not sent because it would have promised something nobody could promise, and the three of them were old enough to respect that.

Later, when the suite had gone quiet and the building had, too, Ethan stood for a long moment by the window.

He didn’t look at the view. He watched his reflection just long enough to see that it was still him and not a picture of who he thought he should be.

He turned away. The couch took his weight like it had been waiting to. The twins claimed their usual places without asking.

They said nothing, and the nothing felt like a vow people can keep.

Somewhere in the administrative wing, Elira Korrin wrote two lines in a private ledger she kept as much for herself as for the school.

The first line named a quality the cohort had shown without being told. The second is a hinge that would need oil.

She closed the book and placed it back in a drawer that stuck if you didn’t know how to open it without making it complain. She did.

Night folded itself over the roofs. The ward lights beyond the academy held steady. The city’s breath evened.

The realm waited behind its gate, steady, almost patient, the way a calm sea waits when it knows the tide will turn because it always does. Morning would come.

The gate would open, and people would step through. Some would learn what fear feels like when it behaves, and some would teach courage how to keep count.

The exam would make small cuts and keep its big teeth hidden if the day deserved it.

For now, the map on the director’s wall moved like it liked the work it had to do. For now, the class slept with bags in easy reach and boots placed where hands could find them in the dark without thinking.

For now, Elira set her alarm and closed her eyes without a single wasted promise sitting on her tongue.

Tomorrow waited without impatience. The world held still long enough to make space for one more quiet night.

And when the first soft light touched the eastern windows, when kitchens rattled lids and the tram took its corner with a squeak that said the track had been oiled, the day would begin exactly how it needed to: with people who knew their jobs doing them, and a gate that would open when called.

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